A LIFE OF EPIC PROPORTIONS ... 1 [EDITED]

A LIFE OF EPIC PROPORTIONS ... 1 [EDITED]

It may be my misconception born out of inconsistent study but I feel that Gandhiji was never as much respected by all, admired, adored and even loved as Netaji was right from the late 1930s. Gandhi so often thrust himself and his ideas and ideals upon the people of India, but Netaji, never. Never once did he appear to be dictatorial in his approach, even when he was the Prime Minister of the Provisional Government of Free India and the Supreme Commander of the Indian National Army. Even earlier as two-time President of the Indian National Congress in 1938 and 1939, despite severe and perfidious opposition to his plans and programmes by Gandhiji and his supporters within the Congress and their dastardly act of betrayal at Tripuri, did Bose once stray from his sense of personal and national honour to bring self before the country. He sacrificed his political career within the Congress to uphold the interests of the nation to the utmost just as he as a youth had sacrificed his prospective bright career as an ICS officer. Sacrifice was in his blood and the highest sacrifice of career, comfort and council did he do for the motherland. In return he won the hearts of his people, not by subtle application of force or induction or the sleight of sacrifice and gimmick, but by his leading a life utterly dedicated to the well-being of his people and his professing a patriotism that included all and excluded none, that opposed compromise with injustice and iniquity, that envisioned a future for India free of colonised slave mentality and banked on a pragmatic utilisation of every available opportunity in the national and international scenario 'to shake off the sterile curse' of colonial servitude. This single-minded pursuit of real patriotism as opposed to the platitudes and perfidies of the Mahatma and his mean brigade, practised to perfection on the emerging leonine leader in Bose, made him the undisputed heart-throb of the masses, the leader who could be relied upon to deal the enemy the death-blow instead of patching up a perfidious peace treaty with it, especially one as vengeful and vicious as imperial Britain. The people of India may not have understood the subtleties of the advanced policies of national reconstruction chalked up by their Subhas Babu but they were perceptive enough to understand that here was one who would never let them down in a behind-the-scene deal with the Empire that had bled them and their forefathers to death by the tens of millions. As such they gave their hearts to him who stood purely for them like none other before or after, other than the glorious predecessors of this patriot perennial in the early armed revolutionaries. And thus did Subhas Chandra Bose transform himself into yet another 'condensed India', as Swami Vivekananda before him, and emerge the leader of lustrous attributes in Netaji.

Written by Sugata Bose

IN REPLY TO TAMOGHNA DAS SHARMA'S QUESTION POSED YEARS AGO TO WHICH I THEN FAILED TO RESPOND

IN REPLY TO TAMOGHNA DAS SHARMA'S QUESTION POSED YEARS AGO TO WHICH I THEN FAILED TO RESPOND, THE QUESTION RUNNING THUS: "A very pertinent question...Netaji was one of the finest mind readers, had immense foresight followed by determination and love for motherland. Hence, it is assumed that he understood the THE THEN geo political scenario very well and thought of taking the help of Hitler & Co. What is even more important is that he succeeded in convincing a dictator of the stature of Hitler....I would like your help from here onwards since I had been involved in several debates with friends/colleagues and what people ask is that If Hiroshima/Nagasaki had not happened and Netaji succeeded in freeing India from the clutches of the British, would Japan/Germany agree or it would lead to a separate dimension ? Would like your valuable comments.

MY RESPONSE:

If the Axis Powers had won the World War, the world scenario would have changed altogether, but surely India would have retained her newly acquired freedom in the altered world order. Germany and Japan were no more dastardly in their designs than the Anglo-Americans were or have since been. The victory of the Axis powers, improbable as it was, would have been possible only at the cost of a terrible weakening of their power, leaving them in no position to control resurrected India, the very reason why the British were forced to leave the shores of India even after their victory in the war. Japan was better off than Germany in 1944 but would have to contend against the Allies in a titanic struggle for victory which would have completely pulverised her if even she could see her way to a win in the war. Hence, it would have been impractical on her part to have forced herself on India after driving the British off. India was already awake to the call of freedom and with Netaji back and at the helm of affairs, it would have been a mighty nationalist force that the Nippon Army would have had to contend with. The 2.5 million British Indian soldiers shifting loyalty in such an eventuality to Netaji would have formed a formidable force for resistance and Japan would have to settle for a friendly alliance with freed India rather than force her into slavish submission as she did to China earlier on in a totally different scenario. These were complex calculations that Netaji had to make, which he did make over decades of rumination on the emerging world order, and, hence, one may repose faith in the rightfulness of his decisions that governed the fate of future India. However, an Axis victory was never in sight once Soviet Russia had been invaded, Pearl Harbour bombed and America drawn into the war. And, yet, Netaji went for an Axis alliance once Russia refused him cooperation to that effect. This is because Netaji, a keen student of history and international relations, was able to see through the emerging world situation and came to the conclusion that the war would so weaken the world powers that either way it would precipitate the right conditions for an Indian independence. Jai Hind!

Written by Sugata Bose

অন্তরার অন্তরায়

অন্তরার অন্তরায়

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হাহা করে হেসে হেসে,

গরমেতে কেশে কেশে,

দেখা যাবে অবশেষে,

পরিক্ষা আগতপ্রায় |

ওরে, ওরে,

Messenger ছেড়ে তুই

Whatsappey আয় |

পড়াশোনা কর বাবা,

বেলা বয়ে যায় |

ফাজিল হবি বা যদি,

মস্করা মহানদি,

সঠিক সময় বোধি,

তাও হওয়া যায় |

এলোমেলো চলিলে,

লঘু কথা বলিলে,

কালের কীলের চোটে

হবি ধরাশায়ী |

তাই বলি ত্বরা করি,

পাঠে তপোরূপে বরি,

শ্রবণে মননে স্মরি,

পড়া করে আয় |

ফল যদি ভালো হয়,

কপাল না কালো হয়,

হৃদে সদা আলো রয়,

কে পাইবে তায়?

তাই বলি পড়া কর,

ছিপ ফেলে মাছ ধর,

গৃহের প্রচীর গড়,

মনোরূপ রথ,

ও যে চারিদিকে ধায় |

সব ছেড়ে লেগে পর,

দিবানিশি পড়া কর,

নইলে উঠিবে ঝড়

শেষ লহমায় |

এখনও সময় আছে,

তুই Whatsappey আয় |

রচয়িতা : সুগত বসু (Sugata Bose)

MY MOTHERLAND

MY MOTHERLAND

There is an intrinsic strength in India which is what holds it as a continuing civilisation since ages despite the ravages of time and repeated invasions threatening to alter the very fabric of its culture. It is the spiritual current of the sages that perhaps holds the web of national life. The powerful thought waves of countless sages through millenia permeating the mind of the masses have lent a solidarity to the civilisation which invasive alien ideologies have failed to overcome. They have in effect been largely absorbed into the flowing Sanatan culture and evolved to become more humane and less antithetical to what is truly and traditionally Indian.

The great national evolution has been going on for ages, the pulse of our national life being in ferrying souls across the turbid waters of binding karma to the other shore of eternal freedom.

Through over two thousand three hundred years of invasions and attacks by foreign forces, often barbarian hordes, and one thousand three hundred years of partial and complete conquest by Asiatic desert tribes and Euro-colonial forces, India, tormented and tortured, plundered and plagued, coerced and converted, culture desecrated, men in tens of millions killed, women enslaved, molested, sold in Arab markets, and finally the holy motherland dismembered in three, has stood up to the challenges thrown at her and survived as a much wounded but still thriving spiritual civilisation.

A galaxy of greats has illuminated this Ayodhya of ours with the Deepavali of their inner effulgence and guided hundred of millions of our ancestors through the dark night of occupation and conquest till now we stand on the edge of an arrival awaited by our seers for millenia, a free nation forging ahead in shaping our eternal destiny, that of creating conditions for that great transit from material bondage to spiritual freedom. We are building our nation for the fulfilment of that great purpose, the liberation of the human soul. India, hoary India, spiritual India, eternal India is the home of souls world-weary and yearning to anchor in primeval moorings, the secure foundation of the Soul, the Atman, the Brahman where all freedom is.

But a cursory view of history is easy where much that is constraining, tortuous, tormenting, clashing, conflicting, the tyrannical tide of events are bypassed by a few scratches of the pen, but which in real terms is full of gory episodes stretching over protracted periods of time when survival of a civilisation becomes doubtful. Words can scarce express the survival ordeals of a conquered race and its recovery through so many centuries of gradual rise amidst terrible persecution and attempted obliteration of its civilisation. The savaging of our Sanatan civilisation is still going on even as we lend our arms to turning the wheels of dharma along the destined direction. We are rising as a nation but amidst confusing conditions where the remnants of alien civilisations, never wholly absorbed but ever tending to rupture the fabric of our ancient heritage, are attempting their unfinished agenda of the subversion of our civilisation and the imposition of a toxic alien civilisation that can never be our own. For it is intolerant, exclusive, theologically and philosophically superficial, puerile and pernicious, which goes against the grain of our Sanatan civilisation.

The nation yet lives, and it is a marvel that it does. Perhaps, it is its inherent spiritual culture, its rootedness in the Vedanta, its wonderfully accessible freedom of the Ishta (Chosen Deity), its continuous energisation by the lifeblood of its never-ending stream of sages, its millenia-old spiritual civilisation prior to its earliest suffered invasions which had already laid down deep civilisational foundations impossible of destruction, the omnipotent thought-current of its sages, its largeness of geography and difficulty of access to its sprawling territorial segments, its racial sturdiness that has always held this earthly life as trifle compared to the spiritual life for the preservation of which it is ever ready to sacrifice all, even life itself, all these and many more intangibles, perhaps, have preserved this race where any other civilisation suffering such horrors of death and desecration would have capitulated and lost its identity for good. History testifies to such episodes galore where civilisations have been destroyed and obliterated for good, but not ours which has manfully withstood all such ordeals and survived.

Written by Sugata Bose

IN PROTEST AGAINST FACEBOOK FOR THEIR SUSPICION OF ME IMPERSONATING SOMEONE ELSE AND FAKING MY IDENTITY, WHICH IS A LIE, A PREPOSTEROUS CHARGE LEVELLED AGAINST ME CONSEQUENT UPON SOME MISCHIEF-MAKERS SUPPOSEDLY REPORTING ME THUS FOR THEIR OWN REASONS

IN PROTEST AGAINST FACEBOOK FOR THEIR SUSPICION OF ME IMPERSONATING SOMEONE ELSE AND FAKING MY IDENTITY, WHICH IS A LIE, A PREPOSTEROUS CHARGE LEVELLED AGAINST ME CONSEQUENT UPON SOME MISCHIEF-MAKERS SUPPOSEDLY REPORTING ME THUS FOR THEIR OWN REASONS

This is my authentic page. I have not impersonated anyone. Then why does Facebook periodically send these verification orders casting such aspersions on me and threatening to block my page within 15 days in case I do not comply? This is demeaning, outrageous and insulting. If they do such a thing, I will know for sure that it is useless posting anything on Facebook where such damaging charges on my integrity and character may with impunity be made. Countless times have I declared that I do not belong to Netaji's family. It is declared on my profile details unambiguously. Yet, these aspersions. I hereby lodge my protest to the authorities who manage Facebook and request them not to harass me thus in future. If they do continue to harass me though, I will have no recourse left to me than to quit Facebook. Thanks for the support of my followers on Facebook. Do pull in your might now and support me in this protest.

Written by Sugata Bose

SELF-REFLECTION ... 2

SELF-REFLECTION ... 2

Human beings are hardly human. They are like predators hunting down prey. Thus, from home to the world war reigns. It is a perpetual world war. Whither peace? Even apostles of non-violence are so violent in the pursuit of their creed. Mother Teresa used to say, "Peace begins at home." Let us have some peace at home. Family members are not meat for consumption. They are your loved ones. Do not attempt to snuff life out of them before their due natural hour. Let them live. You also live. Love if you can but do not hate. This toxin runs deep today in society and shows up as rulers and commanders with criminal propensities. Give up toxic literature that teaches hate. Give up toxic thoughts about others, especially your family members. There is the seed of violence, and men and women are both culpable to the offence, even if in varying degrees. Be human. Be kind. Be compassionate. That is the best religiosity, the best ethical attitude, the best way of collective living. Give peace a chance, at home, at your workplace and in society at large. 🕉 

Written by Sugata Bose

আসছে স্বামীজীর যুগ | প্রস্তুত হোন |

আসছে স্বামীজীর যুগ | প্রস্তুত হোন |

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মেধাবী ছাত্ররা যারা নৃশংসভাবে ragging করে, তাদের বুদ্ধির বিকাশ হয়ে থাকলেও হৃদয়ের বিকাশ বিন্দুমাত্র হয়নি, চরিত্রগঠন তো হয়ই নি এতটুকুও | জড়বাদের এটি একটি লক্ষণ---হৃদয়হীনতা |

স্বামীজী শিক্ষাকে চরিত্রগঠনমূলক বলে নির্ণীত করেছিলেন | সে আদর্শ বঙ্গসমাজ নেয় নি | তাই এই হাল | জড়বাদ নিছক ভোগবাদে পরিণত হয়েছে একদিকে, অন্যদিকে চরিত্রহীন কপট বিপ্লববাদে | উভয়ই ত্যাজ্য | উন্নত প্রজন্মের আগমনে স্বামীজীর বাণী সার্থকতা লাভ করবে | 

আপাততঃ বঙ্গসমাজে ঘূণ ধরেছে যার নিদর্শন এইসব জঘন্য হত্যাকাণ্ড | রাজনৈতিক স্তরে ক্ষমতা ও অর্থলীপ্সা, দুর্নীতি ও নির্বাচনী হত্যালীলা, যুবসমাজে উচ্ছৃঙ্খলতা, স্বৈরাতার ব্যক্তিস্বাধীনতার নামে ও সাধুসমাজে সাংগঠনিক কাঞ্চনাসক্তি---এই সব জাতির মেরুদণ্ড ভাঙতে উদ্যত |

কিন্তু স্বামীজী আজও জাগ্রত কিছু মানুষের হৃদয়ে, বহু সাধুর অন্তরে, জীবনচর্যায় | তাই বাংলা তথা ভারত জাগবে বিবেকানন্দ-বেদান্ত নির্ঘোষে | আসছে স্বামীজীর যুগ | প্রস্তুত হোন |

রচয়িতা : সুগত বসু (Sugata Bose)