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Martyr’s Day: Oh! How grand is death too

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As the wholen nation pays its tribute to the martyrs, it is also important to gain an insight into the lives of the families of martyred soldiers and assess the various issues.  

 

Oh! How grand is death too

For the ones martyred

What pain they must have gone through,

when those vicious bullets rained.

Courage like this is showcased only by a few

Sacrificing all for the homeland. 

 

Every year, on the dark day of assassination of Mahatma Gandhi i.e. January 30, India observes the Martyr’s Day to pay her honest reverence to her brave freedom fighters and martyred soldiers. At exactly 11 o’clock, every citizen is supposed to observe a 2 – minute silence in remembrance of these heroes. This gesture appears very small in front of their great service. 

When a soldier is martyred, he is honored with medals and people mourn his death for a few days; but the real brunt is faced by his family. The permanent absence leads to social, economic and psychological problems for the family. Hundreds of children are forced to grow up without a father and many wives are left with the memories of the love they had, penned in numerous letters. The social and economic aspect can be solved through vigorous support and care and various educational and financial facilities. ‘Vasantharatna Foundation for Arts’ is a NGO that works to empower the families of martyred Jawaans.  But the psychological emptiness is often too deep to mend. 

Still the families of martyrs catapult themselves out of the abyss of grief and find pride in the sacrifice of their loved ones. In an interview to ‘Rediff.com’, the family of Captain Saurabh Kalia who was ‘captured, tortured and barbarically killed in the Kargil War, explains how they have coped with his death and are still fighting against the heinous war crime he had to go through.  

But the concern that arises is – How long will we keep losing these young souls? Will the fear in the heart of a soldier’s parents ever come to an end? We call ourselves ‘advanced’ and ‘civilized’, yet the decade began with the fear of outbreak of World War 3. It is without any doubt that our martyred soldiers deserve the highest honor and admiration but none should be made to take the bullet because of the pettiness of some politicians or the failures of our diplomats. 

Mahatma Gandhi quoted, “Peace will not come out of a clash of arms but out of justice lived and done by unarmed nations in the face of odds.” It is time that we rise above our perceived divisions and selflessly strive to build a better world for everyone.

EVE_OF_MARTYR_S_DAY

 

Image Caption – Children pay tribute to Mahatma Gandhi on Martyr’s Day in Patna 

Image Credit – Ranjeet Kumar for the Hindu 

 

Oh! How grand is death too

For the ones martyred

As towards the heights of glory we go,

Their selfless service will forever be remembered. 

Our respectful adieu 

As they leave to be cradled in the loving arms of motherland. 
Featured Image Credit – Press Trust India

Featured Image Caption – Daughter of Colonel MN Rai pays her last respects at his cremation

Ipshika Ghosh 

[email protected] 

 

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Gandhi’s Godse and Godse’s Gandhi

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Gandhi continues to be regarded as one of the greatest visions in texts, facts and figures of history to all but few, Godse and Godse’s Children, here on Martyrs Day we trace back the underlying significance of it.

Is death often quoted for remembering the dead or the murderer is an equal participant in the remembrance? The Modern Indian Politics lends its current stature to many significant instances that shaped parliaments, identities and political heroes and villains of Indian discourse. I strongly believe and advocate that the entire political stigma since 1947 is therefore based on the three Gandhi(s) (Mahatma, Indira and Rajiv) and their assassination(s), which if not wholly has substantially formulated the most of it.

Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination is one of the most important markers of history, documented in numerous forms and writings. Perhaps, no non-literary Indian after Vishnu’s Dashaavtaara has contributed for the inspiration of Indian literature as much as Mahatma Gandhi; his murder escalated writers to preserve his teachings and ideas in whatever available form and the news of this murder spread like a plague, where Nathuram Godse became the point of rage.

On 30th of January 1948, Godse plotted for Gandhi’s life at Birla House with Narayan Apte and 6 others holding the latter guilty for appeasing the minorities especially the Muslims. In his justification of the act, Why I Killed Gandhi, Godse is seen as a devout of Gandhi who respected his thoughts on untouchability and Swaraj, but it was the overshadowing of Savarkar’s influence that clouded his ideology.

By the end of his defence on 5th May 1949 at Punjab High Court, Peterhoff, Simia, Godse wrote, “To my mind, there could be only one reason for Gandhiji and his followers to give their consent to the creation of Pakistan and it is that these people were accustomed to make a show of hesitation and resistance in the beginning and ultimately to surrender to the Muslim demands.”

This whole expression captivates the premise of Godse’s utterance of defence akin to what Brutus did in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, but a closer look at this does remind us of the similar fallacies on Brutus’ part as we might find in Godse; an undetectable but crucial assumption that Gandhi’s claims and testimonies regarding this issue needs to be dismissed as hypocritical, idiosyncratic or nonsensical- describing them as meticulous lies or ideas with no reality.
Asghar Wajahat’s ‘Godse @ Gandhi Dot Com’ reiterates an important question how crucial are Gandhi and Godse to each other and if survived what grandeur or downsize would have poured on their parts if the play’s conversation between Gandhi and Godse did actually give a chance to the political players in reality.

Where millions offer their condolences to the Father of the Nation on 30th of January, many celebrate Godse as a martyr and reject Gandhi as the Father of the India we know, they believe him to be Father of Pakistan, describing his assassination as vadh of a demon. In a meeting in Bombay in 1993, ‘Gandhi was even called a traitor’ by Nathuram’s younger brother, who was an RSS Kaaryakarta, although the RSS sides itself from accepting Godse as a Sangh Karyakarta opposed to Godse(s) claim.
The Gandhian vision seems incomplete without addressing the questions of many like Godse that Gandhi himself provides in his study, Godse’s entire identity and those of his followers are based as an antithesis of the Gandhian philosophy.

Image Credits: Youngisthan
Faizan Salik
[email protected]

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The Glorification of Gandhi and the Rising Sympathy for Godse

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A look at how Gandhi shaped our nation, along with the parts of his character not discussed popularly.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi or Mahatma Gandhi is popularly remembered as the Father of the Nation. He was one of the leaders at the forefront of the Indian freedom struggle, and has a significant role in the attainment of Indian Independence. These are few of the lines we have been told throughout our lives as children – on the 2nd
October every year, on Independence days, and through our History and Political Science textbooks. This is true for the most part and Gandhi’s return from South Africa did
provide a much-needed boost to the freedom struggle. His work with the downtrodden, and his ideas of non-violence still hold a prominent place in the society today.
However, due to the nature of his death, many of Gandhi’s idiosyncrasies and frailties are ignored when it comes to mainstream dialogue. He is considered to be a man beyond wrongdoing, to be the definition of moral standards, and everything we have been taught all our lives just adds to that line of the narrative. The book Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India by Joseph Lelyveld was banned in his home-state of Gujarat when it came out in 2011.

This is interesting because the book does not break any new ground as such, and still speaks glowingly of Gandhi. Although, it does contain the description of some negative aspects and flaws in the great man’s character.
The banning of this book simply shows how the Indian population cannot withstand any attack in any form on those who they deify as gods.

There are many aspects to Gandhi’s character that should be questioned, because it is through the crevices in popularised and validated ideologies that people find the scope to improve society and, by extrapolation, the world.

One of these aspects showcases that Gandhi was a racist for most of his adult life, especially while working on civil rights in South Africa. His work centered on giving Indians more power and rights, as compared to the local natives who he felt were “inferior”. Gandhi wrote to Adolf Hitler twice in 1939 and 1940,and while it was to call for peace, he did write the following- “…nor do we believe you are the monster described by your opponents”.
Sexually, Gandhi had maintained a vow of celibacy; however, according to Lelyveld’s and Jad Adams’ Gandhi: Naked Ambition, it was said that he maintained close and intimate contact with females, making teenagers, women, and allegedly even his own grandniece sleep naked with him
to test his vow of celibacy. He was incredibly sexist and homophobic, propagating the belief that women should be responsible for the sexual assaults they face. He justified honour killings, labelled women who used
contraceptives as “whores”, and once chopped off the hair of two female followers who were being harassed so that the perpetrators would stop. He also led a campaign to have all traces of homoerotic tradition removed from Hindu temples as part of a “sexual cleansing” initiative.
Gandhi might have been the reason that India is still an ideologically backward, and sexually repressed nation. However, it is no justification for the current narrative propagated by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the extremist right-wing labelling Nathuram Godse, Gandhi’s killer, as a hero. The incident involving Pragya Thakur serves as a recent example to this belief. The rise of Hindutva under the extreme right has led to many such people being given a status that
they do not deserve.
To conclude, here is the statement by a student from the University
of Delhi, who does not wish to be named, “I know Gandhi did a lot of messed up things, but how can anyone even think (that) celebrating his killer is good? He still helped our freedom struggle; the celebration of his death because he worked to help the Muslim minority just shows the rising intolerance in our country.”

Feature Image Credits: DU Beat Archives.

Prabhanu Kumar Das
[email protected] 

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