Known for his electrifying words, “Give me blood, and I will give you independence”, Subhas Chandra Bose is still a name to conjure with in the state, in general and in Haridwar, in particular. As the nation is celebrating his 121st birth anniversary on Wednesday, a string of commemorative programmes have been held on the day here too to pay warm tribute to the legend who implanted the message of freedom deep into the collective psyche of India, then struggling to shake off the yoke of alien rule.
The people living in Haridwar this correspondent talked to on the special say said that Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose would never die. “He embodies freedom. We have of course got freedom. Several decades have passed since India became free. But the real freedom to attain which the people led by a galaxy of titans struggled during the fateful days is still elusive. The deeper soul of the nation is not satisfied with the state of things prevailing in India. It is craving for real freedom attaining which India would become the ideal country the dream of which charged so many leaders to sacrifice everything. Subhas Chandra Bose embodies the nation’s deeper urge for real freedom. He would remain alive in the collective imagination of the nation as long as we do not get that freedom,” said a teacher of a reputed school based in Haridwar.
An eminent historian Vishnu Dutt Rakesh said that the nation needs a leader like Subhas Chandra Bose. “The country is now poor because of the poverty of leadership. Subhas Chandra was a leader whose one call was enough to galvanise the people, irrespective of caste and colour, into the struggle for a noble cause. He was idealism incarnate, a fire which consumed impurities to make them pure. Unfortunately, he was not present in India when she became free. More unfortunately, we have followers but no leader is left in Indian politics,” he said.
An activist for the cause of women said that it is remarkable that the Indian National Army had an all-women wing. “It seems remarkable, given the time when it was conceived and put into play. It was a conservative time and INA was one of the very few armies in the world then to have an ‘all-women’ combat regiment. His words ‘Freedom is not given, it is taken’ still ring in our ears. He is a beacon of hope for all the oppressed women of India and also of the sub-continent. He would remain so in time to come,” she affirmed.
A district Congress leader said that Netaji’s ideas were revolutionary. “He epitomised the vibrant unity of India. It is enlightening to recall that the ‘Azad Hind Radio’ used to broadcast news in English, Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Punjabi, Pashtu and Urdu, the languages which were understood by then Indian expatriates living then in southeast Asia. This is the beauty of the INA, all-embracing, all-inclusive, yet unflinching to the cause of an India freed from the foreign yoke, charting its own glorious course in the world,” he added.