Netaji - Symbol of national integration

Mission Netaji is grateful to Mr M Gandhinathan, former Tokyo Cadet and Chairman of The Netaji Centre, Kuala Lumpur, for the permission to publish extracts from the book Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose - A Malaysian Perspective.

By Colonel Mahboob Ahmad INA, IFS (Retired)

India is more than a country. It is a continent comprising of people who speak different languages, look different and dress differently. It is a country where religion has a very strong base and where followers of perhaps all known religions live and practice their faith in their respective manner.

India has not only almost 850 million people but also has a great diversity of culture. For example, let us take a person from Ladak or the Kashmir Valley in the north and compare him with someone in Kanyakumari in the South or, for that matter, with someone in Rajasthan or Gujarat in the West or Nagaland and Manipur in the East. What have they in common? They do not look alike for their climatic conditions are very different. In fact they can not even converse with one another because they speak completely different languages. Yet each is an Indian. Often they quarrel among themselves, but in time of crisis or danger, they become one. There is some thing which holds them together. It is a fine line but the bond is very strong. It is difficult to find words to describe this. I call it Indianness or being an Indian - the pride of belonging to India, the land which has given them birth and where they shall return ultimately after death or where they shall return ultimately after death or where the ashes of their mortal remains will mingle and become one with the waters of the rivers which flow through the country\\'s length and breadth.

In order to keep this vast and varied multitude of people together, the country needs a leader of the caliber of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. He believed passionately that all Indians, irrespective of the region they come from or language they spoke or religious faith they practiced, were members of the same family. He gave his belief practical shape and convinced all those who came in contact with him that unless this basic fact was accepted without hesitation, there was no future for India.

Netaji as Subhas Babu in his early days was a symbol of the restlessness of Indian youth, who dreamed of a great and free India. As Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, he was the colossus who strode across East Asia and organized and led an army of liberation against the British Empire, entrenched in India for almost 200 years. In the two years when he led the Indian independence movement, he lived a dream - a dream that the dedicated and the restless youths of India had dreamt for decades and for daring to make that dream into a reality, several had gone to gallows with a smile on their faces.

I came in contact with this great man and, in the opinion of many of us, the greatest Indian leader of his time, when I was only 23, a very impressionable age. Netaji opened our eyes, so to say. He made us see Indian through the eyes of an Indian. His call was "Give me blood and I promise you freedom". Indians all over South-East Asia and Burma flocked to him in their thousands, offering all their worldly possessions and their own lives in the service of the nation. He had the knack of getting the best of every person. There was absolutely no distinction about which part of the country he or she came from, or which religious faith he or she followed or which language he or she spoke. It was pleasure and privilege to be an Indian at that time. Many, and I repeat many, of us wanted to become martyrs in the service of our country for a martyr never dies; he becomes immoral and lives forever in the hearts, memory and the history of his country.

Let me now conclude by giving the Azad Hind Government national Anthem. Here the spirit of every freedom fighter of the INA is completely and adequately expressed.

National Anthem

Subh Sukh Chain ki barkha barse; Bharat bhag hai jaga
Punjab, Sind, Gujrat, Maratha, Dravid, Utkal, Banga
Chanchal Sagar Vindh Himala; Nila Jamuna Ganga
Tere nit gun gayen; tujh se jiwan paen;
Sab tan paye asha.

Suraj ban kar jag par chamke, Bharat nam subhaga
Jaya ho, Jaya ho, Jaya ho, Jaya, Jaya, Jaya, Jaya ho,
Sab ke dil men prit basae; teri mithi bani
Har sub eke rahne wale; har mazhab ke prani
Sab bhed aur farak mita ke; sab god me teri ake,
Goondhe prem ki mala

Suraj ban kar jag par chamke, Bharat nam subhaga
Jaya ho, Jaya ho, Jaya ho, Jaya, Jaya, Jaya, Jaya ho,
Bharat naam Subhaga
Subh savere pankh pakharu; tere hi gun gayen
Bas bhari bharpur hawaen; jiwan men rut layen
Sab mil kar Hind pukaren; Jai Azad Hind ke nare
Piara desh hamara

Suraj ban kar jag par chamke, Bharat nam subhaga
Jaya ho, Jaya ho, Jaya ho, Jaya, Jaya, Jaya, Jaya ho,
Bharat naam Subhaga.

Jai Hind.

(Colonel Mahboob Ahmad passed away on June 9, 1992)

About The Netaji Centre: There are about 2,000 former members of the Indian Independence League and the Indian National Army still living in Malaysia and Singapore. Read More