INDIA RISING OR INDIA SINKING?

INDIA RISING OR INDIA SINKING?

We are not doing well as a nation. With an exploding population prospects are gloomy. There is no proper population policy in place. Growth in GDP is being nullified by burgeoning population. There will be civic unrest in the near future as medical facilities will be impossible to provide for such a large mass of people. The same goes for employment and quality education. Fissiparous forces will multiply as national integration will become the challenge of the times. With a degrading environment there will be further economic chaos.

The people are sleeping to these looming dangers as of now but soon they will wake up with a vengeance which shall precipitate problems worse. For all the hype and hoopla centring the leadership, those in power and those out of power, all the half-truths spread about rising India, it must be remembered that for a country that is growing at 18 million heads a year, it is inconceivable that it will remain socioeconomically stable over the next few decades.

We are not lacking in enemies that are watching with interest the slow slide of our vast country into possible anarchy, at least in some segments. There are forces within and without that sure are working for the subversion of our nation and its conversion into some other preferred form. But the worst enemy of our motherland are we ourselves that we choose not to act, that we prefer to sit in inertial mode waiting for better things to happen. The situation is alarming and has population spurt at its epicentre which we need to redress. If we do, we survive to see a better day. If we do not, I shudder to think what may befall us.

Written by Sugata Bose

COMMENTS GALORE ... 40

COMMENTS GALORE ... 40

Sugata Bose @Sanjib Das Gupta : To begin with it must be learning to critically think, organising one's mental faculties as best as one can, suppressing frothy emotions and expressing creative energy in its place, and above all, replacing tamas (sterile inaction) with rajas (fertile activity). Execution of accuracy in work and sustained pursuit of excellence in every phase of national life must be the sine qua non for scaling summits that now so often slip by. Overall, we must be more disciplined in mind and body, less greedy for gold as is our commercial wont these days, more responsible as individuals in terms of making positive contributions to the nation and giving more and demanding less from it if we are to ever emerge as the numero uno nation of the world.

Sugata Bose @Debashis Pathak We weren't disciplined then, we aren't disciplined now as a nation. Victories in 1983 and 2011 do not negate the point made in the post. Even if we had won yesterday, the point made would hold. Were we disciplined as a nation, we would have been making rapid progress in every sphere of national life in comparable terms with the developed nations of the first world which is simply not the case. Our exploding population, poor per capita GDP, proliferating criminalisation of politics, plummeting academic standards, careless ecological destruction are but some of the foremost pointers to the veracity of what I have said whose secondary effect is the frequently failed performance at the highest level in sports. Our Olympic performances are miserably poor relative to USA, China, Germany, France, Japan and a host of other smaller nations of the world. And yet you seek an explanation from me that ought to have been amply evident before the thinking mind.

Sugata Bose @Subhasish Papan Ghosh : This is called post-match, post-tournament analysis and it is very much in place.

Sugata Bose @Soumitra Ghosh Although it worked in the earlier matches, I always felt Rohit Sharma was putting his head to the scaffold too early to disrupt the line and lenghth of the opposition bowlers in the power play. His wicket was so precious and so often he sacrificed it in the 40s and 50s. This was a strategic blunder despite it having apparently been the success mantra in the earlier ten matches. Sharma should have throughout the tournament prized his wicket more and carried on at a relatively slower pace to pile up huge scores for himself and the team. There's room for thought there. One does not sacrifice one's most explosive and prolific batsman this way and expect to win the World Cup. It simply does not happen. Viv Richards made this mistake in the 1983 final (33 of 28 deliveries) to the dismay of the Windies.

Sugata Bose @Umesh Ambadi : Let the players relax now. Why should we? We as a nation must work more, laze less, think more, ease less.

Sugata Bose @Subrata Ganguly : No, even in victory I had pointed out flaws in thinking of the Indian team. Were we to win yesterday, the pertinent features of our national psyche which promote failure would have been as present as they are evident now in defeat to many. Other nations needs a structural overhauling of their cricketing systems but we need a comprehensive overhauling of our national psyche.

Sugata Bose @Rabindra Mukhopadhyay : Through individual effort creating small ripples which in turn overtime will raise large waves, eventually catching all in its magnetic influence and altering national culture for good.

Sugata Bose @Umesh Magotra : Good joke. Actually the post was made by me on my X account where there is space limitation. Hence. But you have a good sense of humour which I appreciate. Plus, let me for once stick with just the eleven and not add on any more.

P.S. On post-thought I have complied with your unstated request. Have a look now. Colin Bland---he fields, bats and bowls better than me. So, I prefer to remain selector and not drinks carrier for this dream team.

Sugata Bose @Debjit Banerjee : Depending on the definition of man and God. Second, we cannot know God beyond our own consciousness, superconscious, call it what you will. Conceptions are circumscribed by consciousness. Hence, a definitive problem.

Sugata Bose @Jeeva Raja : All religions imagine God, interpreting internal Reality as external God sitting up in the heavens.

Sugata Bose @Shubhankar Bhattacharya : The statement made in the post may sound atheistic to the undiscerning but is certainly not unspiritual from the Vedantic standpoint where the trinitarian unity of Absolute Existence-Consciousness-Bliss is kept in mind as the acme of spiritual reality which is the essence of the apparent man and is where terrestrial man and his imagined God both dissolve to reveal the real Being that is the nameless Brahman, Atman or simply 'Tat' (That). ['Aitad atmyamidam sarvam tat satyam sa Atma Tattvamasi Shvetaketu.']

Sugata Bose @Pahari Pothik : God you in essence are. If you can negate your existence even for a moment, God would cease to exist. But can you? You can't. Hence, your existence, absolute and timeless, dimensionless, uncaused and untrapped in relativity is God, the term being Abrahamic is a rather sorry description of the real state of things, so to say. Meanwhile, as long as you conceive of yourself through indescribable Maya as perceiving finite man, your idea of God persists with it if you are a theist. If you are an atheist, you still cannot reject Nature as the governing sovereign. If you are a sceptical natural philosopher or scientist, you still must admit evolutionary cause-effect scientific sequence as the determiner of life and natural law and quantum chance as the presiding officers-in-charge of cosmic affairs. The choice is entirely yours or is determined by your environment, upbringing, education, circumstance, cultural setting and genetic tendency, or, as the theist might put it as being determined by your sanskaras (mental tendencies) stemming from past births. It is an intractable question logically speaking but solvable by actual experience of your adored deity through rigorous pursuit of the requisite spiritual disciplines stationed on the stable foundation of absolute continence (brahmacharya). So, God exists in our imagination as God exists in reality, and Reality is God but not as we commonly conceive of it.

Sugata Bose @Ashutosh Bajpai : But imagination's imagination too, I mean, in calculus' second derivative terms.

Sugata Bose @CricBeat : None dares criticise Kohli for his slow-scoring in the final, now that he has scored 765 runs in the tournament. What about Rohit Sharma's strategic blunder throughout the tournament in giving irresponsible flashy starts to the innings, sacrificing his prized wicket in the process, a move that would inevitably backfire if Kohli and company once failed to capitalise on the headstart given by him in the poweplay? Rohit Sharma is our most explosive batsman with three ODI double centuries to his credit  and yet he casually kept sacrificing his wicket in the forties for this queer course of reasoning that his self-immolation would ignite the pyre perennially for the opposition bowlers to dive in. Queer thinking and rightful response by the Aussies at the critical hour when the pyre consumed the Indian batsmen in their place.

Sugata Bose @Umesh Magotra : Thanks a lot, brother. You are my sole supporter. Else, I am bankrupt in my support base.

Sugata Bose @Partha Sanyal : Nostalgic memories, my friend. Those were the halcyon days.

Sugata Bose @Vinod Ekhellikar : One choice please. The word 'greatest' is in the superlative degree of comparison and cannot brook dual positioning.

Sugata Bose @Debanjan Banerjee : Couldn't fit so many in the attractive coloured box. Perhaps, you would have neglected the post were it to become black and white on account of so many inclusions. So, there lies the colourful predicament, you see. Reader attention-span is extremely short and observation fickle. But in principle I agree with you. Vishwanath, though, is there in the list. Meanwhile, do make the choice please.

Sugata Bose @YouTube [Ranveer Allahbadia] : India's population in 2020 was 137 crore and not 130 crore. Accuracy seems not a national attribute in any sphere.

Sugata Bose @Umesh Magotra : You are my sole supporter, my great inspiration to carry on. You are head and shoulders above my faithful followers and have qualified by now as head commentator. 🤣

Sugata Bose @YouTube [ThePrint] : Shekhar Gupta is a trifle frivolous, much too talkative and suffering from a degree of unseemly levity. Besides, his diction, pronunciation at that, is literally terrible.

Sugata Bose @Wake up to a new day with hope and vigour and with the resolve to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds. Golden girl, yours is the expanse ahead to traverse and triumph. Godspeed unto glorious success!

Sugata Bose @Umesh Magotra : You misunderstood my intent. The post means that Bengal no more seminally contributes to India's progress which it used yo do in the days of yore when Gopal Krishna Gokhale famously said, "What Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow." Bengal's cultural decline has severely handicapped India's progress to potential. She would have been far ahead today in every sphere had Bengal positively participated in national proceedings instead of playing the deliberate negative role that it has. These are cryptic posts open to misinterpretation. Hence, the post script provided here by way of response to your pertinent observation.

Sugata Bose @Umesh Magotra : Oh, you are too much! I love your sense of humour. And thanks for promoting me up the order from drinks-carrying twelfth man to pace-facing opening bat.

Sugata Bose @Cricket For India : Yes, for sure. Dhoni's exceptionally high IQ for a cricketer would have clinched us the Cup through right planning and adaptive adoption of strategy.

Sugata Bose @Subhrajyoti Bhowmick : Only it happens to be that this one bad day occurs much less for Australia in crucial matches.

Sugata Bose @Kishore Bhimani became terribly conscious about the time crunch at the end of the show and wished to rapidly wrap up the programme to the effect that he even denied Gavaskar the time and opportunity to answer a question thrown by one in the audience as to whether Sachin Tendulkar was overrated as a batsman in Test cricket as such. But the same Bhimani had no qualms about taking up the lion's share of the interview time by himself needlessly speaking as interviewer when he ought to have allowed the interviewee, Gavaskar, speak much much more. This was a distasteful attempt to steal the show by one who was supposed to merely ask questions and allow the interview to at ease answer them. Bhimani spoilt the show.

Sugata Bose @Umesh Magotra : There you go yet again with your inimitable humour. Bravo, what a talent you have for springing up original surprises! Strange that barring me none else seems to savour such subtle humour put in otherwise easy terms.

Sugata Bose @YouTube [Mirror Niw] : Viewers do not wish for clarification, dear newsreader. It is people like you who wish to cash in on every little incident by making mountain out of molehill.

Sugata Bose @YouTube [The Bharat Army] : Farokh Engineer talks stuff that is extraneous to the subject under discussion. Typical muddled superficial thinker, digressing needlessly from the core conversation.

Sugata Bose @YouTube [UnHerd] : How is liberalism rooted in Christianity when Christianity proclaims itself to be the only true faith through which salvation, redemption, call it what you will, is to be achieved? What is liberal about it, Ms. Ayan Hirsi Ali? Have you studied the Upanishads? Do so if you haven't and come to more illumined conclusions about the philosophical genesis of liberalism, the principle being embedded in the depth-consciousness of man.

Sugata Bose @YouTube [Freedom Speaks] : Progressive way to address regressive problems?

Sugata Bose @YouTube [Sadhguru] : Puerile assertions made by this supposed yogi masquerading as a true Guru. No match for Prof. Steven Pinker. Distracted digressing dialogues from his side. Pinker is streets ahead, leagues above in his assertions. Prof. Pinker is so clear in his thinking, so precise, logical and articulate that it was a terrible mismatch to pit him in discussion against one of lesser intellectual acumen.

Sugata Bose @Anu Lekha : None. Just resisting the slave mentality of our people that has affected us for millenia and thwarted progress along the lines of individual divine self-expression. This is truly feudal in psychological structure and hinders the democratic fulfillment of our people emerging from tyrannical times dating millenia.

Sugata Bose @Jitendra Abhyankar : True it is that Absolute Truth cannot exist within the universe, so to say, but it may be immanent in it. Absolute Truth is transcendental, beyond the confines of space-time-causality.

Sugata Bose @YouTube [N1 Media Consultancy Private Limited---Discussion on the book 'Fortune Turners: the Quartet that Spun India to Victory'] : Bowling average of Rajinder Goel is 17%. What is that, Madam Moderator?

Sachin Tendulkar neither played Rajinder Goel nor Bishan Singh Bedi and Sunil Gavaskar has not written what Madam Moderator you in your ignorance have blissfully bluttered out. Kindly do your homework well before interviewing such cricketing stalwarts as Rajinder Goel so that you do not suffer such obvious embarrassment on hindsight. 

Select a moderator who is well versed in cricketing lore and in knowledge of the game as such. The one conducting the show seems to be innocent of cricketing knowledge and has spoilt the show completely. Such stalwarts are not everyday born or available for interview as Rajinder Goel and to let go of the opportunity fruitlessly by asking inconsequential questions is a great loss to posterity who will look up these videos to try to know of the halcyon days of our domestic cricket. Indeed a wasted opportunity. Alas!

Sugata Bose @Bratisankar Ghosh : Even if they are, worship is oftentimes sterile and it is better to pursue principle than personality, for the former frees one in its impersonal focus while the latter binds one with all its historical limitations and undue impositions. Principle leads to an infinite expanse of thought whereas personality generally binds its flock unto indiscriminate adulation at its best and fanatical frenzy at its worst. Democracy delivers its promise best along the impersonal line of pursuit of life-giving and truth-seeking principles.

Sugata Bose @Last Breadth : Extraneous unnecessarily disrespectful comment, quite reprehensible. Certainly Netaji would have disapproved of it vehemently. Alas, if this be devotion to the great hero, where will we hide our shame as sincere admirers of him? Surely, Netaji deserves a better deal from those who claim to be his followers and ardent devotees, and surely Netaji, for all his cultural refinement, would have deemed this sort of undue vilification of fellow citizens as a despicable degeneration of the polity and would have brought in heavy censure of the perpetrators.

Sugata Bose @YouTube [tehelkatv] : This 'Guru' (Jaggi Vasudev) speaks a host of gibberish, nonsensical seemingly sensible things, an elaborate verbal trap laid for the gullible to fall into with compliants not lacking to oblige. Such delicious deception is common where the flock follows the shepherd along the blind alleyways of unreason masquerading as reason and millions in the process thus drown in the sea of delusion. A sad day for spirituality where money, machination and mind-management of the masses become mainstream public discourse.

Javed Akhtar is hammering home his point. Jaggi totally stumped.

Sugata Bose @YouTube [Indian Brights' Society] : Why do anchors spoil the show at the end of a brilliant lecture by their needless superficial observations as final comment on the just concluded exposition?

ভাববার বিষয় ... ৩

ভাববার বিষয় ... ৩

প্রথমে দেখতাম ভেতরটা বাইরে | পরে দেখলাম বাইরেটা ভেতরে | শেষে কি তবে বাইরে ভেতর এক অখণ্ড সত্তারূপ বোধ হবে অহংরূপ মাত্রব্যবধান যাকে দ্বিধাবিভক্ত করে রেখেছে অনির্বচনীয় মায়ার দ্বারা? এক নির্দ্বন্দ্বসত্তা বহুল প্রতীত ? তাই কি ঠাকুর সচ্চিদানন্দ সাগরে মনরূপ লাঠির কথা বললেন ? বললেন গঙ্গায় আমিরূপ ঘটের কথা যার ভেতরে জল, বাইরে জল, মাত্র অহংরূপ প্রাচীরের ব্যবধান যা সরে গেলেই সব জলে জলময় একাকার, অধঃ ঊর্ধ্ব পরিপূর্ণ ? একি জল না অমৃত সাগর যার মাঝে মক্ষিকারূপ নরেনকে ঝাঁপ দিতে বললেন অমরত্বের সন্ধানে ? মনের আমি না আমার মন ? একের বহু না বহুর এক ? দৃষ্টি হতে সৃষ্টি না সৃষ্টি হতে দৃষ্টি ?

রচয়িতা : সুগত বসু (Sugata Bose)

ON THE EVE (18 NOVEMBER, 2023)

ON THE EVE (18 NOVEMBER, 2023)

Hours to go before the final. How do you feel about the prospects? Do give your views about the chances of an Indian win. Can India make it?

1983, 2011, 2023?

Will Rohit Sharma score a whirldwind World Cup Final ton, a captain's innings that will career India to victory?

Will Kohli fire again and cement his place in history with a World Cup Final ton?

Will Shubman Gill, Shreyas Iyer, K.L.Rahul and Surya Kumar Yadav attain maturity at the right moment to see India through?

What about the pace trio---Bumrah, Siraj, Shami? Will Shami's epic run continue?

And the spinning duo---Jadeja and Kuldeep? Can they mesmerise the Aussies into submission?

Written by Sugata Bose

Photo: Internet

ALL-TIME TEST ELEVENS

ALL-TIME INDIA TEST XI

1. Vijay Merchant 

2. Sunil Gavaskar 

3. Virender Sehwag 

4. Sachin Tendulkar 

5. Vinoo Mankad**

6. Rahul Dravid*

7. Farokh Engineer [[[

8. Kapil Dev

9. Amar Singh

10. Ramakant Desai

11. Subhas Gupte

12th man: Eknath Solkar

ALL-TIME AUSTRALIA TEST XI

1. Victor Trumper

2. Mathew Hayden

3. Don Bradman**

4. Stan McCabe

5. Steve Smith

6. Adam Gilchrist [[[

7. Keith Miller

8. Ray Lindwall

9. Shane Warne*

10. Bill O'Reilly 

11. Dennis Lillee

12th man: Richie Benaud

ALL-TIME ENGLAND TEST XI

1. Jack Hobbs

2. Len Hutton**

3. Walter Hammond*

4. Denis Compton 

5. Ken Barrington 

6. Leslie Ames [[[

7. Ian Botham

8. Hedley Verity

9. Harold Larwood

10. Fred Trueman

11. Sydney Francis Barnes

12th man: Kevin Peterson

ALL-TIME WEST INDIES XI

1. Frank Worrell**

2. Gordon Greenidge

3. Vivian Richards 

4. George Headley

5. Brian Lara

6. Garfield Sobers*

7. Jeffrey Dujon [[[

8. Malcolm Marshall

9. Andy Roberts

10. Joel Garner

11. Lance Gibbs

12th man: Clive Lloyd

ALL-TIME SOUTH AFRICA XI

1. Barry Richards

2. Graeme Smith**

3. Graeme Pollock

4. Jacques Kallis

5. Dudley Nourse*

6. AB de Villiers

7. Denis Lindsay [[[

8. Shaun Pollock

9. Hugh Tayfield

10. Dayle Steyn

11. Allan Donald

12th man: Jonty Rhodes 

ALL-TIME NEW ZEALAND XI

1. Glen Turner 

2. Brendon McCullum [[[

3. Kane Williamson**

4. Martin Crowe*

5. Ross Taylor

6. Nathan Astle

7. Chris Cairns

8. Daniel Vettori

9. Richard Hadlee

10. Trent Boult

11. Shane Bond

12th man: Chris Harris

ALL-TIME PAKISTAN TEST XI

1. Hanif Mohammad

2. Saeed Anwar

3. Younis Khan

4. Javed Miandad*

5. Yousuf Youhana

6. Imran Khan**

7. Moin Khan [[[

8. Wasim Akram

9. Waqar Younis

10. Shoaib Akhtar

11. Abdul Qadir

12th man: Shoaib Malik

ALL-TIME SRI LANKA TEST XI

1. Sanath Jayasurya

2. Marvan Atapattu

3. Kumar Sangakkara [[[

4. Aravinda de Silva

5. Mahela Jayawardane*

6. Angelo Mathews

7. Arjuna Ranatunga**

8. Ravi Ratnayake

9. Chaminda Vaas

10. Lasith Malinga 

11. Muttiah Muralidaran

12th man: Peter David Heyn

ALL-TIME TEST WORLD XI

1. Barry Richards (SA)

2. Sunil Gavaskar (Ind)

3. Don Bradman (Aus)**

4. Graeme Pollock (SA)

5. Vivian Richards (WI)

6. Garfield Sobers (WI)*

7. Adam Gilchrist (Aus) [[[

8. Malcolm Marshall (WI)

9. Shane Warne (Aus)

10. Dennis Lillee (Aus)

11. Muttiah Muralidaran (SL)

12th man: Jonty Rhodes (SA)

Teams selected by Sugata Bose 

IN RESPONSE TO THE USUAL MISAPPREHENSION OF A POST OF MINE, A CRICKETING ONE IN THESE CONTENTIOUS TIMES, WHERE THE RESPONDENT ARROGANTLY INSINUATES MY IGNORANCE IN CRICKETING MATTERS

IN RESPONSE TO THE USUAL MISAPPREHENSION OF A POST OF MINE, A CRICKETING ONE IN THESE CONTENTIOUS TIMES, WHERE THE RESPONDENT ARROGANTLY INSINUATES MY IGNORANCE IN CRICKETING MATTERS

Not at all. A post has to be understood in perspective. Else, it is a futile discussion, an endless troll that is best left alone.

P.S. Fanfare is one, analysis another. The critic sees deeper into things than the surface sight of the enchanted follower allows him/her to see. The former, though, advances the cause of both the game and life. The fact that Australia has won five World Cups thus far as opposed to us having won two is because they have a brighter sporting culture where mass adulation is not all that is called 'cricket' but where serious study of the game, its history and the systems associated with the game are given prominence to. Most important is the fact that they do not decry rational original thinking, creative contributions and the fundamental critical approach to life which is the foundation of Western civilisation post the Enlightenment. Our slipshod thinking, hyper-adulation of heroes bordering on irrational worship and neglect of rational thinking make us susceptible to mere frothy emotion instead of depth-understanding of the game and adoption of consequential measures that would make us unfailingly the numero uno team time and time again as Australia historically has been. That we had put in place decades ago some positive institutions like the MRF PACE ACADEMY and the like have paid dividends decades hence whose harvest we are unthinkingly reaping now. That Virat Kohli has set in a new order of heightened physical fitness which was traditionally neglected by us has now begun to show in our much improved fielding and general performance. When this requirement was pointed out by critics decades ago, they were laughed at by their surface-critics that cricket was not football or athletics after all. So, was Bradman's diagnosis of Gavaskar's failures in 1981 down under as his having grown slightly overweight which made his movements at the crease slightly slower, thereby making him susceptible to the faster deliveries a trifle more which was costing him his wicket, neglected by the Little Master. These are debatable issues for sure but they are being cited to consolidate my case. So was Greg Chappell's breaking the immobile mass of Indian cricket criticised by all and sundry except such hawk-eye critics of the game as Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi who with some reservations as to Chappell's methods and means in an Indian setting of an entirely different sociocultural outlook welcomed his initiatives nonetheless and called them constructive for the future of Indian cricket. What Ganguly and Tendulkar did not heed, Dravid did, Dhoni did and now Kohli and company are following suit. Not all but the more intelligent and the diligent section are doing even today for it has now become cricketing culture among the players, not so with the fans, though. Greg Chappell brought about the collapse of the personalised system of cricket in India---albeit often by resorting to questionable means which were undesirable from the view-point of fostering team-spirit---and ushered in the golden age of Indian cricket along Australian lines which intent of the post in altered context is here being resented by followers such as you as well. May my countrymen be better rationalised! But will they, given the social propensity to irrational thinking?

Written by Sugata Bose

A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE HISTORY OF THE INDIAN AWAKENING CULMINATING IN FREEDOM

A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE HISTORY OF THE INDIAN AWAKENING CULMINATING IN FREEDOM

Subhas Chandra Bose followed in the footsteps of the great revolutionary Rash Behari Bose to create conditions for the freedom of India. Earlier Gandhiji had transformed the elitist Congress movement for freedom into a mass movement which shook the foundations of the British Raj. And what was Gandhiji but the echo of Swamiji? Swamiji had breathed life into a dead nation. Gandhiji quickened it into life and action. But his methods were passive. What was needed was a militancy that would 'shake off the sterile curse' of the colonists, and this was provided by the Bose duo who organised mass militancy, that is, an armed struggle for freedom.

This militancy, however, was not initiated by the Bengal revolutionaries as such but was the legacy of the Revolt of 1857 when the native kings in conjunction with the revolting sepoys nearly overthrew the East India Company's reign in India. The revolt was brutally suppressed with over 100,000 casualties post-war by way of British retribution. But the scars were left behind and a simmering revolutionary movement was in the air with Maharashtra boiling as Phadke raised rebellion which was crushed and the hero sent into exile to die there in oblivion.

The air was rife with revolution to quell which the British set up the safety valve in the form of the Indian National Congress in 1885 where aggrieved Indians could voice their grievances against the Raj along constitutional means instead of taking recourse to violent attempts at overthrowing it.

But we are fast-forwarding events. Let us rewind then a bit. The East India Company had established its stranglehold first in the Bengal Presidency and it was but natural that Bengal, the cultural confluence of the East and the West, should provide India with her resistive powerhouse to free her of colonial consequence.

And so the resistance to colonial conquest came in the form of the Bengal Renaissance with the advent of Rammohan Roy in 1872. The first signs of the national awakening were evident as Roy strode like a colossus across the socioreligious firmament and ushered in the New Age which was the best fusion of the East and the West that he could conceive of and bring into fruition.

Thomas Babbington Macaulay had wished to culturally colonise India by instituting a system of British education which would create a race of Babus or clerks conversant with British modes and mores who would loyally serve their British masters and perpetuate their colonial hold on India. But this western education proved to be the enlightenment that colonised Indians were in need of to shake off the British rule. Ideas of the Enlightenment, of western democracy and human rights, and the emergence of European nation states stirred up the minds of the Indian intelligentsia into seeking greater freedom and autonomy of self-governance. This coupled with religious revival fostered nationalistic feelings among the educated and led to the first rumblings of what later metamorphosed into the freedom movement.

After Vasudev Balwant Phadke's brief aborted rebellion Maharashtra did awake to the call of another tiger, the redoubtable Bal Gangadhar Tilak, who spurred the Marathis into aggressive activity against the British Raj. When plague broke out in Maharashtra the British officers under command overdid their job of sanitisation of the local communities, violating the modesty of women folk in the process, which brought forth the ire of Tilak. His fiery articles in the Kesari and the Maratha ignited minds, foremost among which were those of the three Chapekar brothers who assassinated the dreaded officer Rand for which they were subsequently executed.

The fire of freedom ignited in Maharashtra soon spread to the Bengal Presidency where Aurobindo Ghosh carried the torch and ushered in the 'Agni Yug'. Swami Vivekananda's body lay prostrate at Belur Math on 4 July, 1902 and from the flames of his funeral pyre was lit the torch of freedom. Swamiji's revolutionary message implicit in his speeches and writings carried the day as the ignited youth of Bengal read into the seer's mind as to what was expected of them---nothing short of the resurrection of the motherland beginning with the political freedom of the country. And in plunged the fairest flowers of Bengal's youth to carrying out the Master's orders. Bagha Jatin and Hemchandra Ghosh had in person received orders to the effect, and now was the hour of action. Curzon's Partition of Bengal further fuelled the fire and secret societies like the Anushilan Samity and the Jugantar became rife with revolutionary activity.

In the North Swami Dayananda Saraswati had set alight the hearts and minds of the youth with his revolutionary socioreligious campaign and set afoot a movement for the spiritual and social revival of the Hindus. His clarion call 'Back to the Vedas' instilled pride into drooping souls and hearkened to the glorious days of India's antiquity. His educational and socioreligious programmes brought forth many an eminent leader of the future freedom movement, prominent among which were the fearless Lala Lajpat Rai and the Hindu activist Swami Shraddhanand. Bhai Parmanand and Lala Hardayal were two other prominent members of the Arya Samaj. The Arya Samaj captured the imagination of the masses in the Punjab and in effect consolidated them for India's future political movement. Likewise in Bengal sprang up the Brahmo Samaj and the Prarthana Samaj in Maharashtra, socioreligious movements which were the precursors to the great mass movement in the Gandhian era to follow. These were not specifically oriented towards the political emancipation of India but were religious reform movements that strengthened the polity, that nourished its adolescent years before it emerged into full-scale adult struggle for political independence under Gandhi in its non-violent phase and the revolutionaries in its armed phase, at first sporadic, then the full-blown assault of the INA.

Maharashtra was followed by Bengal in the wake of Swamiji's death and the arrival of Aurobindo in 1903 from Baroda to take charge of the extremist movement. Curzon's Partition of Bengal in 1905 further exacerbated things and secret societies Anushilan Samity and Jugantar struck terror in the hearts of the British by their daring acts of assassination of British high-ranked officials. The Swadeshi and the Boycott Movements coming as response to the Partition consolidated Bengali response to British imperialism and the Aurobindo-Barin-led armed revolutionary movement that culminated in the Alipore Bomb Case made Kolkata a hot-bed of anti-British activity forcing the Crown to shift colonial capital city from Kolkata to New Delhi in 1912. Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki's attempted assassination of Kingsford in Muzaffarpur followed by the discovery of the bomb-making factory at Manicktola resulted in the implication of Aurobindo Ghosh in anti-Crown conspiracy, and with his year-long incarceration in Alipore Jail in 1908-09 the tide of the revolutionary movement began to turn. Aurobindo in solitary confinement had spiritual realisations which convinced him that his career of the soul lay elsewhere and he quit politics to go into ascetic seclusion in Pondicherry where he served thenceforth the larger cause of the spiritual emancipation of humanity, its evolution from the mental phase to the supramental phase. Thus was Aurobindo lost to the freedom movement and the armed revolutionary movement which he had fathered fell into a lull but not for long.

Meanwhile, in 1907 the Congress had split at Surat amidst acrimonious circumstances into the Moderate faction and the Extremist faction with Aurobindo Ghosh and Tilak having led the charge of the latter.

The Punjab had become another hotbed of revolution with the US-based Ghadar Party with local operatives in the state sowing seeds of an impending insurrection in India. So was the India House in London rife with clandestine revolutionary activity. These two external agencies attempted to overthrow British rule in India during the Great War of 1914-18.

Now emerged the dangerous duo of Bagha Jatin and Rash Behari Bose who conducted the actual operation of armed insurrection. With German arms' assistance Bagha Jatin managed to stage a near-coup which through internal betrayal was aborted, although the revolutionary along with his comrades-in-arms redeemed himself at the Battle of Balasore in 1915. The shipment carrying German arms supply was intercepted by the British and a golden opportunity was lost to oust the colonists at a time when they were at their weakest.

Written by Sugata Bose