Appreciate our Freedom Fighters ! ( 400 words )
Answers
Explanation:
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)â€
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 sen
➠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)â€
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.