Tuesday, July 1, 2008

The Patriot

Its a dream of my childhood to be a true patriot. My beloved mother sitting on the room- floor often sang song of Lata Mangeshker - Ek bar bidaye de ma ghure ashi ( Oh! mother, bid me a goodbye to return to you), a Bengali song composed in the name of a young martyr (Khudiram) who was executed to death by the British colonial power in India. Her tune was so beautiful that touched the heart of a boy. I felt how cruel and inhuman the British was! I was thrilled to hear from my father the stories of a freedom fighter like Subhas Bose against the British misrule.
Then the spring thunder stormed India in the beginning of my youth. A group of a political people started chanting slogans to further liberate India from the stooges of the British left to rule the country. In fact the trouble brewed from the Terai region of North Bengal while a group of landless tribal people bravely fought against feudal lords-police nexus to liberate themselves and their cultivated land. Being inspired from the battle, urban youths under the leadership of some ultra-Marxists spread the movement to nook and corner of our country during seventies.
There was hardly a young guy who was unmoved by the tide of the time. Later it was realised the entire struggle was mismanaged that had cost thousands of innocent and unarmed lives under attacks by the police, military and violent cadres of authorised political parties.I still hold the opinion that the movement was kind of a renaissance particularly in art and culture. But the movement grossly failed to make any political impact in the country by and large. Yet the political culture is still being practised in some jungle areas of the country in protracted form leaving localities to play by the parliamentary parties and rule the people through elections. And this is the ultimate outcome of such an ultra-left movement of seventies.
Its a painful to consider the ultimate outcome of such violent movement. I don't think the love for the countrymen and to fight to overcome their sufferings through any means can be useless. Yes, they miserably failed. But whatever my friend-patriots dreamt and sacrificed to end the tyranny of the proletariat living in Asia, Africa and Latin America will not remain unfulfilled in future. Myself is far away from my friend-patriots and leading a life now only to meet the needs of my kids and surroundings. I'm not living like a true patriot, yet I live only to keep my dreams alive.