As we are heading into the 75th Year of Independence, the nation rejoice in Happiness. As the government, public and Brave Soldiers were filled with pride while they hoisted the Tricolours. Some hoisted near their homes and some on Red forts and Brave Soldiers in the -10 °c mountains sending a clear and cut messages to our enemies that we will protect our motherland at cost of our life’s.

But there’s been a slight misunderstanding that India liberated on the basis of Now Violence. While Non-Violence was also a weapon to all the Indian’s which United all of us from Grass roots to the Upper administration. But people tend to forget how they forget that the first Tricolor was hoisted in Andaman Nicobar under leadership of Netaji Subash Chandra Bose. The INA built under the guidance of Netaji Subash Chandra Bose was just like forgotten by the people. The Historians never tend to teach us more about them in our text books. While the fun fact is that more than INA our history books had mentions of Britishers.

With the slogan of तुम मुझे खुन दो मै तुम्हे आजादी दूंगा! Netaji had attracted all the youth to unite and stand firmly against the Colonial rule of Britishers. But some of our Historians who were bootlickers of Britishers never wanted the Truth that Britishers left India because they had no power to rule further and with raising anger against them for their cruel strategy of starving Indians to death and directing all the resources towards the World War II, had left them with no choice but leaving us.

Historian Brahma Chellany said that the paradox was this –

Countless numbers of Indians died due to British colonial excesses. Just in the manmade Bengal famine of 1942-45, six to seven million starved to death (a toll far greater than the “Holocaust”) due to the British war policy of diverting resources away from India. Britain sent Indian soldiers in large numbers to fight its dirty wars elsewhere, including the two world wars, and many died while serving as cannon fodder. Indeed, the present Indian republic was born in blood: As many as a million civilians died in senseless violence and millions more were uprooted in the British-contrived partition.

Yet the myth of India uniquely charting and securing its independence through non-violence was propagated by the inheritors of the Raj, the British-trained “brown sahibs”. No objective discourse was encouraged post-1947 on the multiple factors – internal and external – that aided India’s independence.

The hope of Indian independence was first kindled by Japan’s victory in the 1904-05 war with Russia – the first time an Asian nation comprehensively defeated a European rival. However, it was the world war that Adolf Hitler unleashed – with imperial Japan undertaking military expeditions in the name of freeing Asia from white colonial rule – that acted as the catalyst. An emboldened Gandhi served a “Quit India” notice on the British in 1942.

While the Subhas Chandra Bose-led INA could not mount a formidable threat to a British colonial military overflowing with Indian recruits, the Bombay mutiny and other sepoy revolts of 1946 triggered by INA prisoners’ trials undermined Britain’s confidence in sustaining the Raj, hastening its exit. Yet, independent India treated INA soldiers shabbily, with many abandoned into penury.

Against this background, the rehabilitation of Bose and the INA has long been overdue. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has done well to initiate the process, however low-key, to give Bose and the INA their due, including recently renaming one Andaman island after Bose and two other Andaman Islands to honour INA’s sacrifices. Modi even wore the INA cap to address a public meeting in Andaman on the 75th anniversary of Bose’s hoisting of the tricolour there.

Recognising unsung heroes is an essential step towards rebalancing the historical narrative. A rules-based international order premised on non-violence remains a worthy aspirational goal. But Indian romancing of non-violence as an effective political instrument crimped national security policy since independence. The country hewed to pacifism (with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru publicly bewailing in 1962 that China had “returned evil for good”) and frowned on materialism (even after China surpassed India’s GDP in 1984-85).

It was our duty to make you realise what things were you missing and we have provided you with some knowledge and now it’s our combined duty to share this.