BS Murthy
2024
When Mohandas Gandhi took the satyagraha path to free India from the British rule, as that was in sync with their pacifist psyche, shaped by the foreign yokes for a millennium, Hindus in their millions flocked to him wide-eyed as if awoke from their collective slumber. However, having sensed that the dispiriting Gandhian way would be self-defeating in every which way, when Subhas Bose came up with ‘give me your blood, I’ll give you freedom’ tune, by and large, it failed to attune with the by then enervated Hindus. It’s as if they were content with having their satyagraha bones broken by the British lathis, bandageable as they were. Whatever, by the time the Union Jack was folded in India, albeit after unfolding the Islamic green in Pakistan, culled out for the Musalmans, Gandhi became a mahatma and his whims the Hindu code and his fancies the Indian credo. What’s worse, his artificial halo has been sustained over the years through a lauding school curriculum and the flattering propaganda machine meant to further the electoral interests of Nehru and his political dynasty in India’s democracy. Though of late, thanks to the information revolution, it transpired that it was not Gandhi’s Quit India ripples that forced the Brits to abandon our shores but it was owing to the fear of Bose’s militaristic impulses surging in the British Indian Army singing them that made them flee, and that’s in Atlee’s words.
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