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GRATITUDE TO FREEDOM FIGHTERS

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Best Tribute to Freedom Fighters

As we approach our sixtyeigth Independence Day, once again

we cannot but remember our indomitable freedom fighters,

drawn from all parts of this vast landmass characterised by

unique diversity, who underwent superhuman sacrifices and

shed their precious blood so that we, belonging to a different

generation, live a better life unfettered by the ignominy of

imperialist domination and colonial exploitation. The debt of

gratitude that we owe to them cannot be repaid.

Today, on August 11, we observe the centenary of the

martyrdom of Shaheed Khudiram Bose whose life was snuffed

out even before he could complete 19 years of age; he kissed the

gallows on August 11, 2008. And that incident of his execution

electrified the whole country in general and Bengal in particular.

Following his untimely death the song which moved our toiling

people (almost like sarfaroshi ki tamanna) was:

“Ekbaar Biday de Maa, Ghure Aashi

Hashi hashi porbo phansi

Dekhbe Bharatbashi

(Allow me to bid farewell to you, Mother, let me go and

return—

The citizens of India will see with their own eyes

How I march to the gallows smiling all the way)”

The lilting notes of that song touched the soul of every patriotic

Indian and inspired many to plunge into the national movement.

There is a special reason why we must remember Khudiram

Bose today on the centenary of his martyrdom. All young men

engaged in swadeshi, striving to free the country from the iron

grip of British imperialism in an India subjected to alien

subjugation, were deliberately dubbed as “terrorists” in order to

defame the noble ideals that spurred them into action. Khudiram

and his friend Prafulla Chaki had thrown a bomb at a horse-

driven carriage with the intention of killing the British

Magistrate, Kingsford, who by his misdeeds and acts of

oppression had earned infamy among the youth keen to

emancipate India from the burden of foreign yoke. However,

Kingsford was not in the carriage but two English ladies who

could not survive the attack. In his deposition in court Khudiram

expressed deep sorrow and sincere regret for the death of the

innocent ladies while explaining why they had planned to

liquidate Kingsford. This was the most lucid testimony to the

staunch opposition of national revolutionaries like Khudiram to

senseless killings (as is being resorted to by the religious

fundamentalist militants in their operations in Ahmedabad or

Bangalore and/or by the Maoists in their depredations in the

countryside today) and hence the complete dissociation of those

revolutionaries from the terrorist ideology even though they

were purposely called ‘terrorists’. Not only Khudiram. Bhagat

Singh, the icon of the Indian youth in those glorious days of the

freedom struggle, had cogently spelt out his objective of a

socialist India; it was of no mean significance that one of his

close associates, who suffered incarceration with him in Lahore

Jail, in due course became the General Secretary of the

undivided CPI in the early fifties and steered the communist

movement in one of the most critical periods of our post-

independence history. (The birth centenary of that immortal

revolutionary, Ajoy Ghosh, will be observed in six months time,

on February 20 next year.) These were the best sons of India—

and along with them one must not forget to mention the name of

Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose for he belonged to the same

category—but the British rulers and their henchmen

intentionally branded them as ‘terrorists’ in their own vested

interest.

This is also the solemn occasion to remember the most

prominent of our freedom fighters, the Father of the Nation,

Mahatma Gandhi, but for whose extraordinary exploits—

equipped as he was with the twin weapons of truth and non-

violence that guided his every action—we would not have been

able to attain independence in 1947 within a historically brief

time-span since his emergence on the Indian political scene. In

fact he was the nation’s greatest revolutionary who moved

millions while bringing them into the vortex of struggle on a

scale unsurpassed before and in the subsequent period. But when

freedom came on August 15 that year Gandhi was an unhappy

man and he did not join in the celebrations and festivities. The

vivisection of the nation had profoundly disturbed him and the

fratricidal hatred and violence in its train filled him with

immeasurable anguish and agony, if not a sense of despair. Far

from the country’s Capital, he “opened his eyes in free India in a

Muslim house in one of Calcutta’s poorest quarters” as his

grandson, Rajmohan Gandhi, has written in The Good Boatman:

A Portrait of Gandhi. And he even declined to give any message

on Independence Day 1947, the first after the end of British rule.

But he had some words of advice for the West Bengal Ministers

calling on him at Hydari Manzil where he was residing in the

city. In short sentences, he conveyed the following:

Be humble. Be forbearing... Now you will be tested through and

through. Beware of power; power corrupts… Do not let

yourselves be entrapped by its pomp and pageantry. Remember,

you are in office to serve the poor in India’s villages.

Don’t those words come from a world completely different from

the one we inhabit at present? Do morality and service to the

poor, the Daridranarayan, hold any significance in the globalised

marketplace we have chosen to embrace discarding the idea of a

welfare state, a socialistic pattern of society and a vibrant public

sector geared to reach the commanding heights of the economy?

However, for persons like us, born a couple of years before

freedom came and brought up in the early years of

independence, the words resonate with greater meaning and

substance in the wake of the recent happenings in the country,

especially the incidents in the Lok Sabha on July 22, arguably

the blackest day in the annals of our parliamentary democracy.

In the last 61 years India has traversed a long distance since the

dawn of freedom and our achievements in different spheres of

activity, from the nuclear field to IT in particular, cannot be

overlooked. It is because of our technological strides that the

world today has accepted this country as a major power and that

recognition has come not only from the US, but the European

Union, Russia and China as well. This is doubtless most

noteworthy. Also striking is the rise of the Indian middle class at

home and abroad. Indeed our scientific progress has been simply

outstanding when juxtaposed against the problems and

adversities we had to endure over the years, not to speak of the

four wars we had to withstand for our own survival as a nation-

state.

Yet for all our successes we cannot escape the fact that the “poor

in India’s villages” are to this day in a state of neglect, misery

and despondency even if some fruits of development have

touched their daily lives. The persisting suicides by farmers in

several States, including the relatively prosperous ones, are at

once a stark reminder of the mounting problems faced by rural

India and a reflection of the growing disparities between the

haves and the have-nots in a neo-liberal environment wherein

India has seceded from Bharat and the gulf between the two

appear to be unbridgeable at this point in time.

Two years ago, on Independence Day 2006, it was written in

these columns that the spurt in Maoist operations in the most

backward regions of the country and the increasing incidence of

terrorist actions in metropolitan India warrant a close

introspection of our policies. It was also unequivocally stated

that attempts to tackle both terror acts through strong-arm

administrative measures without any political move to address

and remove the causes of discontent that engender such acts of

terror cannot in the least bring about a lasting solution to the

problem which is intrinsically intertwined with alienation of

large segments of our own citizens in the lowest rungs of the

socio-economic ladder. (Emphasis added)

That alienation, far from being removed, has in fact become

more pronounced to the detriment of national unity which is also

under attack today from the hardline Hindu Right offensive in

Jammu engendering a deep division between the Jammu region

and the Kashmir Valley. Unless checked in time through

concerted joint moves this division would embolden fissiparous

trends, both indigenous and extra-territorial, to damage the

fabric of our national cohesion and composite culture beyond

repair.

The forces of communalism, casteism, regionalism have neither

been contained nor effectively fought during the last four years

of UPA rule at the Centre. This must be acknowledged as our

collective failure. Now the very existence of the UPA

dispensation is at stake following the withdrawal of support of

the Left parties which extended valuable outside backing to the

Manmohan Singh Government in order to ward off the attempt

by the Hindu communal forces to return to power. The mirage of

unveiling a new kind of relationship with the present-day US

Administration has brought about this Left-UPA break-up for

which the Congress will have to come to grief sooner than later.

But immediately the danger to Indian stability comes from all

the forces pledged to perpetuate the neo-liberal paradigm of

development whether through the SEZs in different parts of the

country (including Left-ruled West Bengal) or the manifold

assaults on the aam aadmi’s life and livelihood as well as the

neocolonial offensive aimed at subverting national sovereignty

and jettisoning our independent foreign policy to subserve the

interests of the hyper power flexing its muscles in different parts

of the globe—Iraq, Afghanistan, erstwhile Yugoslavia—while

using every devious means to imperill the existence of Iran

and/or weaken the influence of Russia in the Caucasus and

Central Asia. It is in this context that the anti-imperialist content

of our struggle for national regeneration has taken a new

dimension. And to blunt this struggle money power is being

blatantly employed to carry out nefarious imperialist designs on

Indian soil. The developments surrounding the confidence vote

in the Lok Sabha have brought this out in bold relief.

Regrettably, the media too has fallen prey to such machinations.

We need to effect a change in our approach to meet the

stupdendous challenges before us. Allout anti-imperialist unity,

as was witnessed in the last phase of our freedom struggle, was

aimed at breaking the vice-like grip of vested interests—

represented by Big Business, feudalism and the comprador

class—stalling our advance. That kind of unity must be forged

now against imperialism and its accomplices on the economic

plane seeking to perpetuate the exploitative paradigm of

development based on the neo-liberal ideology of the

Washington Consensus. What is vital is to revive the socialist

framework of advance upholding the legacy of the freedom

struggle at this critical juncture of our post-independence

history.

That indeed will be the best tribute to the abiding memory of our

freedom fighters whom we remember with boundless gratitude

on the auspicious day of our freedom from foreign political

bondage 67 years ago.

-S.P.Ramanathan

III-ECE,MIT

How India got freedom - the hidden story!

Utpal Dutt, the actor who played comedian in one of most memorable role in Hindi Cinema in Golmaal, was arrested on December 27, 1965 by the Government of West Bengal under the Preventive Detention Act. The Government of Bengal and India feared he was "subversive". Why? Because he wrote a play called "Kallol" (Sound of Waves) on an important chapter of Indian Freedom that is never mentioned in any official History book. The Royal Indian Navy Mutiny (or Naval Uprising) of 1946.

The Beginning British were in trouble in 1946. Indians in the Armed forces were no longer trust worthy. The mutiny, that no one in our generation has ever heard of, did to the British colonization, what no other action could have done in the long struggle of 250 years. Said Sir Stafford Cripps, intervening in the debate on the motion to grant Indian Indepence in the British House of Commons in 1947 (‘The Freedom Struggle and the Dravidian Movement’ by P.Ramamurti, Orient Longman, 1987) …The Indian Army in India is not obeying the British officers. We have recruited our workers for the war; they have been demobilised after the war. They are required to repair the factories damaged by Hitler’s bombers. Moreover, they want to join their kith and kin after five and a half years of separation. Their kith and kin also want to join them. In these conditions if we have to rule India for a long time, we

have to keep a permanent British army for a long time in a vast country of four hundred millions. We have no such army….” In August 1945, Subhash Bose had reportedly died, while he collaborated with the Japanese and Hitler to fight the British. After the Second World War was over, three of the top officers of the Indian National Army (INA) - General Shah Nawaz Khan (Muslim), Colonel Prem Sehgal (Hindu) and Colonel Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon (Sikh)were put on trial at the Red Fort in Delhi. Their crime: "waging war against the King Emperor" While Nehru was busy "defending" the three; he (Nehru), Gandhi, Mohd. Ali Jinnah, and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad had come to a secret pact that if Subhash Bose was to enter India (as many knew he hadn't died in 1945), he would be handed over and charged. Unprecedentedly, these trials were very public. Due to the sympathy toward Netaji and the INA in general, there was an instant and large outpouring of passion and patriotism in Indians. These stories were being shared via wireless sets and through media in general on the ships, where the sailors who were being given bad treatment (lack of proper service facilties), got inspired to go out and join together in a strike and rebel against the government. The Spread The mutiny started on 18 February 1946 and by next evening a Naval Central Strike Committee was formed where Leading Signalman M.S Khan and Petty Officer Telegraphist Madan Singh were unanimously elected President and Vice-President respectively.

The spread of the Naval mutiny, which started in Bombay was complete - Karachi, Calcutta, Cochin and Vizag. 78 ships, 20 shore establishments and 20,000 sailors had been involved in the strike. Seeing this Naval strike, the Bombay-ites did a one day general strike. Even the Royal Indian Air Force and local police forces joined in the other cities. The NCOs in the British Indian army openly ignored and defied the orders of the British superiors. In Madras and Pune, the Indian Army revolted in the British Garrisons. Riots broke out all over the country. The mutineers were hoisting 3 flags - Indian National COngress, Muslim League and CPI. British people in cars were made to get off and shout "Jai Hind" by the mutineers. The Indian Tricolor was hoisted on many ships and establishments, by just the second day. Such was the crisis that destroyers were gotten and stationed at the Gateway of India in Bombay to deal with the mutineers. Navies of Australia and Canada were also summoned. The third day into this - the Royal Air Force flew an entire squadron of Bombers over Bombay Harbor to show support. Meanwhile the sailors had taken over HMIS Bahadur, Chamak and Himalaya and from the Royal Naval Anti-Aircraft School . It was by that time that the decision to confront the Navy ratings was taken by the British and the sailors aboard the destroyer Hindustan were challenged. The sailors lost many lives and could not fight back much and in the process the ship Hindustanwas destroyed. Betrayal by Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah and Azad

Despite the extensive public support and support from all the wings of the Armed forces - Army, Navy, Air force, and even police - apart from unanimous coming together of people across religious groups at a time when the religious situation had been made really bad due to Partition debate and passion, ALL the National Leaders not only did NOT support the Navy Mutineers and their supporters but instead condemned them. They were leaderless, surely, but they had achieved what NO OTHER generation and group of Indians had achieved in 250 years - turn the Indian Armed forces personnel against their Masters. Subhash Bose had imagined this kind of situation. Little did he know that from the failure of his own Army, would arise a rebellion and a will to fight amongst the rank and file of Indian soldiers hitherto fighting dutifully for the British, often against their own countrymen, to strike back. The Mainstream politicians - from Jinnah to Gandhi, to Nehru to Maulana Azad - ALL let these final Freedom fighters down. They just abandoned them and except for preaching they did nothing to help them. In midst of one of most unprecedented religious tension in the sub-continent, this rebellion and its genesis was a Godsend to reinforce religious and class harmony, which was forged instantly WITHOUT any machination. Yet, it was squandered.... probably deliberately by all those who promised us peace and harmony. These people - the so-called Mainstream politicians spearheaded by Gandhi were interested in only their hold of their masses.. to see themselves being upstaged by a bunch of young upstarts with romantic patriotism in their eyes was unnerving. (James L. Raj; Making and unmaking of British India. Abacus. 1997. p598) Show of fake "constitutional

process" and "principles" was a good way to brush them aside despite all they had been able to do. Real Reason for Independence So what were the three things which convinced the British that India could not be governed by force anymore? Subhash Bose, Indian National Army and the Royal Navy Uprising.. When Justice P.B. Chakrabarty, the Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court once asked the British PM Lord Clement Atlee - responsible for conceding India's Independence, the all important question - "what was the extent of Gandhi’s influence upon the British decision to quit India" His response, with a smirk: “m-i-n-i-m-a-l!“ So, then why did they have to leave if the Quit India movement of 1942 had subsided and nothing major happened in the mainstream politics - then why did the British have to leave so suddenly in 1947?? Clement Atlee's response: Erosion of loyalty to the British Crown among the Indian army and navy personnel as a result of the military activities of Netaji Such was the Congress party scared of the truth coming out that as late as 1965, a Marxist theater actor and writer Utpal Dutt was arrested for writing a passionate play on the VERY event that ensured India its Independence - the Royal Navy Uprising! But as the story goes in our History books....... Reference Links: 1. Royal Indian Navy Mutiny

2. Subhas Chandra Bose, the Indian National Army, and the War of India's Liberation - Ranjan Borra, Journal of Historical Review, no. 3, 4 (Winter 1982) 3. Inside the actor’s mind Vande matram ...........

-PRADAP

III-AUTO (MIT)