SETTING PERSPECTIVES RIGHT ... 1

SETTING PERSPECTIVES RIGHT ... 1

THE QUIT INDIA MOVEMENT -- GANDHIJI, NETAJI AND THE GOVERNMENT

The current dispensation at the helm of affairs, despite admitting the fair contribution of Netaji and his INA to the attainment of freedom, like its predecessors in governance of the land, is not content to quit with the 'Quit India' imperative that, to their reckoning, forced the British to quit. After all, the slogan 'Quit India' is catchy and significant in terms of what it verbally implied, although, it failed miserably to deliver the goods in quite the same way as the Mahatma would have endorsed.

The mass violence that erupted across India, subsequent to the Gandhian call and following the arrest of the leader and all his associates in the Congress on account of it, was more in keeping with Netaji's call for armed action which the nation heard with patient expectation via his overseas radio broadcasts from Berlin, Singapore and Rangoon. It was effectively Netaji who was remote-controlling proceedings in India to a large extent thus and playing the role of an active revolutionary Gandhi than the actual passive compromising one resting in the Aga Khan Palace and receiving His Majesty's hospitality. What followed thereafter is well chronicled and the saga unfolded to free India in the way it did.

Yes, it is time to recapture those lost moments of history and enliven them again for posterity to behold and cherish and, so, emerge fitting patriots of the motherland that in chains lies still from 'a million mutinies' [ref. V.S.Naipaul] she yet endures.

Written by Sugata Bose

Sugata Bose Ghosh Gorachand How was Gandhiji the agent of the British exactly as so many people including some researchers claim? Can anyone produce any documentary evidence to this effect? If so, that would be sensational and altering quite the contours of recorded history thus far.

Sugata Bose Ghosh Gorachand By the way, is your book available in hard copy, that is in book form and not in the kindle edition, and how much would it cost in Indian currency?

Ghosh Gorachand Sugata Bose After publication by Kindle Amazon in 2019, I am donating it (published in 2017) to the academic institution's libraries(Universities, High Schools and Colleges). May be one of my relatives will donate this book to you who is living in Kolkata. She is the member in your FB PG.

Sugata Bose Ghosh Gorachand That would be extremely kind of you, indeed, and a great acquisition for me.

Sugata Bose Ashis Kumar Basu Ironed icon -- lovely ! Is it Patel's statue you are referring to, the Statue of unity?

প্রশ্ন রাখুন / Put your queries

প্রশ্ন রাখুন / Put your queries

আমি শীঘ্রই কয়েকজন বিশিষ্ট ব্যক্তির সাক্ষাৎকার নেব নেতাজী বিষয়ক । আপনারা সানন্দে ও নির্দ্বন্দচিত্তে প্রশ্ন রাখুন যা আমার মাধ্যমে এই সকল বিদ্বজ্জনকে করতে চান ।

ইতি,
সুগত বসু

I hope to interview a few prominent personalities soon in connection with our movement centring Netaji. Please feel free to post any question, as many as you can, that you would like through me to ask these leading men of learning and light.

Written by Sugata Bose

THE IMPERATIVES THAT IMPELLED AUROBINDO TO QUIT REVOLUTION ... 1

THE IMPERATIVES THAT IMPELLED AUROBINDO TO QUIT REVOLUTION ... 1

Aurobindo Ghosh was the Voltaire and Rousseau combined of the Indian revolution and more. His fiery editorials sent simmering waves of patriotic fervour among the youth of Bengal of the day and shivers down the spine of the Raj as to what would transpire in case of armed action by the proteges of the eloquent professor fined-tuned in British ways, modes and means. The Raj feared Aurobindo for he was one who, with his superfine intellect and British training in his protracted stay in England, could not be fooled into believing fanciful narratives of the Occidental spreading of civilisation by them and could see through the ulterior motives of British colonisation of India.

Aurobindo's powerful pen hammered home the seeds of revolution just when the Swami Vivekananda had left for his celestial sphere after galvanising the youth of Bengal with his own brand of fiery nationalistic idealism. The Swami left, but handed his baton to Nivedita and Aurobindo, and the duo carried on from there what may be termed the baptism of the Bengal youth into the fire of armed revolution.

Aurobindo was henceforth implicated in the Alipore Bomb Case and would certainly have kissed the noose were it not for Satyen Bose and Kanailal Dutta who shot down the traitor Naren Gosain within the precincts of the Presidency Jail before the latter could testify before the magistrate proving Aurobindo's being the mastermind behind the entire revolutionary activity of the ones accused in the case. Fate provided Aurobindo Chittaranjan Das as defence counsel and in an impassioned speech he proved the utter insufficiency of evidence to in any way implicate his esteemed client with the heinous charge levelled against him. The Judge Beechcroft, an ex-Cambridge colleague, acquitted him of the conviction thus and Aurobindo escaped the certain fate of the hangman's noose, for he was, after all, the mastermind behind the whole plot for which his co-revolutionaries were deported to the Andaman islands for incarceration in the dreaded Cellular Jail.

The British had missed their man but were on the lookout for another excuse to apprehend him and for sure send him to the gallows with better evidential preparedness this time. The plot to assassinate him was also there which prompted Nivedita to convince Aurobindo to quit British Indian soil and seek refuge in the French Indian territory of Chandannagore. When the news leaked unto him that the British had issued an arrest warrant against him again and were on the move to apprehend him, Aurobindo, by now highly spiritually kindled, left for Chandannagore. But Pondicherry being a safer haven for him, he then promptly departed for it where he spent the rest of his days an illumined soul, a sage and an author of epic proportions whose light in the word written is yet to bear its significance on the whole of humanity for ages to come.

The men back home had imagined that Aurobindo would return to revolutionary activity after a hiatus of twelve years when he would contemplate the spiritual imperatives of revolution, strengthen himself by yogic means and then plunge into the struggle for freedom. Even the boy Subhas thought so. But, alas, that was not to be ! Aurobindo Ghosh, revolutionary redoubtable, had transformed into Sri Aurobindo the prophet, seer, sage and redeemer of the whole of humanity for the whole of the advancing times that as yet lay in the womb of futurity.

But Sri Aurobindo did pass his pronouncements on the freedom movement from his seaside habitat in distant Pondicherry and herein began the disputation in dialogue via letters, with Dilip Roy intermediary, in which Dilip played the instrumental part in communicating the contents of Subhas' letters to him, to his own Guru Aurobindo, and Subhas merely got caught in the whirl of the verbal process thereby. But more of that later. Adieu for now !

End of Part 1
To be continued ...

Written by Sugata Bose [Sugata Bose]

A BIG 'THANK YOU' TO THE FAMED TRIO

A BIG 'THANK YOU' TO THE FAMED TRIO

Researchers like Madhusudan Pal, Keshab Bhattacherjee and Drjayanta Choudhuri have over the last few years completely turned the scales over the official narrative of GOI regarding the disappearance, great escape and alleged marriage and progeny of Netaji. We thank them sincerely for their life's labour in the discovery and the unravelling of truth and exhort them to combine forces to bring to greater light the pertinent facts of the aforesaid cases. We can only support their earnest endeavour, wish them all success and patiently await further illumination from their side.

May Netaji bless you all !

Jai Hind !

Written by Sugata Bose

NETAJI RESEARCH BUREAU, TRULY?

NETAJI RESEARCH BUREAU, TRULY?

Does NRB truly qualify to be labelled a research bureau? What research has it done on the disappearance issue beyond going by governmental pronouncements in such? What is its credibility when it yet holds on to the air-crash theory despite research revealing the utter hollowness of the claim?

Why does NRB exhibit such an antipathy to any discussion on the disappearance issue? Does it behove a research bureau to behave thus? Why does it not produce the purported original letter Subhas Bose had written to Sarat Bose, uncharacteristically in Bengali, informing him that he had married and had fathered a daughter? How about establishing the authenticity of the Sisir-Ashoke Bose related Great Escape story?

All these unresolved issues ought to be within the purview of research of a bureau dedicated to such, ought it not?

Why not allow Netaji researchers like Drjayanta Choudhuri, Madhusudan Pal, Keshab Bhattacherjee and the like, access to all archival material of NRB for unravelling of the many truths that have thus far been kept under cover or been distorted and propagated?

Can NRB answer all these questions and justify duly its name?

Written by Sugata Bose

Sugata Bose Ashis Kumar Basu I have my reservations, too, but this was in another context that I posted. I have written at length on the Aurobindo-Subhas relation with Dilip Roy the go-between. Those pieces were sharply critical of the Aurobindo line and resulted in heated arguments with Bhaskar Mukherjee, a very good friend of mine. Perhaps, one day those interactions of mine with Bhaskar, with his permission, may be re-posted, that is, if I can sift through my files and trace them.

Sugata Bose Bhaskar Mukherjee Aurobindo Ghosh was the Voltaire and Rousseau combined of the Indian revolution and more. And then his phenomenal contribution to Sanatan Dharma's evolving philosophy and his spiritual guidance for future man.

Sugata Bose Ashis Kumar Basu Yes, we must at some not too distant a point in time begin the discussion on this again. Let me meanwhile locate my past posts in this regard.

প্রাতঃপ্রণাম

প্রাতঃপ্রণাম
----------------

প্রাতঃপ্রণাম !
পৃথিবীর মুক্তিদাতা ঋষিদ্বয় ।
গান্ধী নয়, গান্ধী নয়,
নহে কোনো হীন অবক্ষয় ।
এ যে অখণ্ড অমৃতময়
দিব্য দুই আলোর বলয় ।
দরশে করে কর্মনাশ,
অখণ্ড, অক্ষয় ।

ইন্দ্রিয়ের বিষবৃক্ষ
শিকড় হতে নাশি,
রিপু করি জয়,
হে মহীমময়,
কৃপা করো আজি
যেন রণাঙ্গনে সাজি
নেতাজীর বীর যোদ্ধা
রণে অকুতোভয় ।

জয় ভারতের জয় !

রচয়িতা : সুগত বসু (Sugata Bose)

THE NATIONAL DRESS CODE

THE NATIONAL DRESS CODE

Gandhiji integrated the mass movement by simplifying the dress code to the swadeshi type. Even the Nehrus, whose clothes were laundered in Paris, had to wear swadeshi clothes. This nationalised the dress worn by Congressmen and effectively identified the leaders with the poor masses with Gandhiji in loin cloth its best exemplar. No wonder he was so popular with the masses and carried them with him in his bid for independence, albeit in his own way of passive resistance and non-violence et al.

Not very long ago before the Mahatma came on the national scene, Swamiji had exhorted Indians to dress in the dhoti and kurta and all other accessories of the Indian apparel. He was of the opinion that wearing the national dress as opposed to the European suit, coat, collar and tie was essential to expressing national identity.

Gandhiji carried it out in line with the Swadeshi and Boycott Movement of the Anti-partition days of Bengal and carried it rather to extreme measures of making a bonfire of European clothes much to the vexation of the poet Tagore who smelled in it the seeds of mass violence. Much as Tagore was worried about the consequences of stray revolutionary terrorism perpetrated by the Bengal revolutionaries, he was worried about the consequences of Gandhi's action in burning cloth thus.

Today, it seems, we have turned on a new leaf and have adopted European clothes, manners and means, with a gusto quite like our Anglicised ancestors of the days of Young Bengal when they preferred to quote from the Iliad and the Odyssey rather than from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. It is sad, indeed, to witness this modern spectacle of imitation of the West just like our infatuated ancestors did.

Mahatmaji, you have failed in your mission to Indianise us and we owe you for it an apology and a reassurance that we will redress this lapse of ours. We owe it to you, we owe it to Swamiji and we owe it to our dear motherland who has been the source of the finest yarn ever woven anywhere in the world in the annals of history, the Dhaka Muslin which was destroyed root and stem by the barbarous British who cut off the thumbs of the weavers before grinding down their mills.

Written by Sugata Bose