SILIGURI: Independent India and the changing times Romit Bagchi
Posted by barunroy on August 15, 2009 FROM THE STATESMAN
SILIGURI, 14 AUG:
The North Bengal University academia seems unanimous in the view that ‘Independence’ as a subjective sentiment has paled into irrelevance under the impact of the socio-political changes. They, however, differ over the causes as far as the blurring of the emotion associated with the most monumental event of India as a nation is concerned. The views might prove enlightening as the nation is all set to celebrate the 63rd Independence Day.
According to an eminent academician, Mr Haren Ghosh, the process is irreversible. “Time is supreme and nothing can escape its tyranny. The patriotic fervour keeps fading with time. The crusaders for national emancipation are now mere figures of history. People no longer identify with those giants. They personified freedom through peerless self-abnegation. They are no longer real and hence the Independence Day no longer evokes passion,” he opined.
But, a celebrated historian, Dr Anada Gopal Ghosh has held the rot prevailing in the political realm responsible for the singular lack of nationalistic exuberance. “The process started off with the ascendancy of the Nehruvian epoch in the political realm. Sri Aurobindo conceived India as the mother, demanding obeisance from her children, while Pundit Nehru envisaged the country as a physical conglomeration of several people. The Nehruvian thinking prevailed and this proved precursor to the era of election-oriented politics. The soul of perennial India seems to have been relegated to the periphery,” Prof Ghosh said.
Mr Suhash Roy Moulick, the senior most professor of the NBU English department, has ascribed the development to the invasion of the occidental culture into the Indian cultural ambience.India is an eternal phenomenon not because of her physical survival in course of history but because of the persistence of her luminous spiritual culture in course of her long existence. The eclipse of this culture means national decadence. And the preponderance of the alien culture seems to have dried up the fount of patriotic vivacity,” Mr Moulick commented.
Can we say that such a radical form of Nationalism could be a building block for Communalism in India. Read this .. http://nation-in-building.blogspot.in/2013/03/growth-of-communalism-in-india.html
ReplyDeleteGiven the tumultuous nature of the uprising, it's difficult to reconstruct history so neatly after more than a century. There were many players and multiple streams of inspiration. Sri Aurobindo's role was like a catalyst responding to the demands of the moment. Hence, judging him from the perspective of some present problem is unfair and a methodological anomaly. [TNM55]
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