Everything emanates from the mind only eventually to find its flowering in the form of physical symptoms. Throwing off a foreign yoke similarly will take sometime to vanish from the mind. Which means the reverse is true in this case. If the physical, brute force of the intruder is gone, the slavish mentality still persists in the mind. The mental corruption and the sense of shame that they thrust on us still persists in the Indian psyche to some extent. So prophetic was Winston Macaulay when he advised the British parliament in 1835 that India is a very proud nation rich in its culture and the only way to conquer it will be to make them feel ashamed of their nationality and feel as if everything/every thought is imported from the west. They do merit a congratulatory note as they have been very successful in that endeavor.
It is high time that misplaced notions , misappropriated titles, out of proportion egos be settled most humbly to where they belong and rightful heirs be accorded their due place.
I don't think there is any need to repeat history; definitely not in the way Indian NCERT text-books were drafted to tell us. As I feel any reporting of facts can't be neutral and will always be biased towards the narrator's creed of thinking. Let every serious student do his own bit and complete his assignment without an attempt to justify any gargantuan blunder or foresight that might advertently or inadvertently made during the way.
Remember, the aggressor will always like to negotiate with the person/parties who are very amenable to his views and where he can get away with most of the concessions. It is neither natural nor practical for him to indulge in negotiating with hardcores who will exact the last pound of flesh and make you leave that on the table.
Enough of this -"De dee tune Azadi bina khadag bina daal......BS". Not that I am trying to discredit someone's contribution towards India's(Bharat's) freedom struggle. No, I acknowledge them with all humility at my command. But it is only human that if you are aggrandizing someone so much so beyond his human capabilities and that too at the expense of others' hard work, it won't be fair to the other person's legacy which you are contesting or straightaway maligning. Thanks to this back search algorithm called Google developed by some smart minds, you can illumine yourself with some clicks and not wait endlessly for a truth to emerge unlike earlier.
I understand it is highly difficult for all of us to get rid of the cloak of conditioning that we have been raised with, made to read as to who the heroes of Indian freedom struggle where and who the villains' were. And we just accepted it at the face value and involuntarily became a part of the damage wreaking machinery when we narrated that half baked story to an innocent neighbor or acquaintance or corrupted the next generation. Please don't do that.
It is only natural if you have been told "so and so" was a villain and by political machinations is made to dock behind a kathgara in a court of law, you will try to disassociate with all his philosophy lest it land you in trouble.
The disassociation which has been stoked out of a fear psychoses' can prove to be quite detrimental to the evolution of a nation or at least slow down the progress as people will hesitate to come forth and lend their hand to nation building process.
Even at the international scene, in the highest echelons of power, you will see that this hyperbole has ben inflated to such an extent that immediately deflating it is going to lead to an implosion which you definitely don't want. It may be prudent here to let time; with the advent of spring; defog the mirror of any dust for images to appear more crisp.
You can let an ordinary person bask in the glory of his ordinariness. In fact, that is the luxury or the privilege of belonging to the ordinary class. No one judges you. As your decisions, be they good or bad, will affect you and you only-your health, your life, your budget but it will be limited to you only. Or if stretched, it may end up having an impact on your close family. But if a person is exposed to social life and exalted to the podium of "Mahatma" then he better come up to the mark. Yes, he will have a lot of detractors, a lot of people baying for his blood, a lot of people hell bent to prove each of his action and utterance biased in one direction and wrong. But once that dust settles down in due course of time, history will reign supreme at the altar of judgment because it won't have a motive to paint anyone black. It will just narrate the events as they occurred and let the seeker absorb the message as per his/her intellect.
I understand that how a society treats its minorities is testament to its evolution as a civilized society. In this context I am proud that Zoroastrians; who were driven out of their native Persia by Islamic zealots and they sought refuge in Bharat; were absorbed without any compunctions and they too did their part in assimilating in the ethos of the new home. A real "sah naa vavtu" has happened here.
In this context, I will say that one doesn't follow appeasement of one particular minority group at the cost of the majority feelings. You don't sing verses rom Quran in a Hindu temple even in the face of stiff opposition from Hindu devotes there. That way you are trampling upon their feelings in a very despotic manner and such thing will have their repercussions. You don't approach a murderer by the honorific of Bhai Abdul Rasheed and then pervert the exalted teachings of Gita to somehow justify your actions. I thought our father of the nation was smarter than that. You are being an emotional despot as if the world (or Indians at large) do not sing your tune, you would go on a hunger strike. If you can convince, convince with the logic of your argument, not with the threat of harming your body. Anyway, as Shri Krishna says in Gita-"This human life us very precious, but is nashvar-subject to destruction."
This is not secularism. This is favoritism being pushed under the garb of secularism. Please don't play with words. Such an attitude on your part towards one particular community is going to sow the seeds of dissention between them and the majority and set the ground for a narrative of discord and distrust which we find in 21st century Bharat.
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