Fast fade-out

Hemantbala Chatterjee died this Saturday. Who was she? She was part of our past, if India as a nation has a past apart from the one purveyed...

Hemantbala Chatterjee died this Saturday. Who was she? She was part of our past, if India as a nation has a past apart from the one purveyed by the so-called Hindutva brigade. She was Calcutta8217;s only surviving member of the Rani Jhansi regiment of the Indian National Army.

She was one of the many INA members who were asked to disappear into their villages soon after the country became independent, almost as if they were a blot on the nation8217;s face.

Today, suddenly, there is a set of people pining for a past, a cultural history they think binds all. But that is something that goes beyond our memories, stretching into the terrain of folklore and myth. What about the history which is still within the reach of our memory?

No one wants to claim this past, the one that the country has earned after it united as one body in a struggle for independence from the British.

Hemantabala is dead. She died in utter poverty and has left a daughter behind who must cope with poverty alone in an obscure corner of Calcutta. Hemantabala joined INA when she was a 17 year old college student. After the war was over, she came to India, and was struggling till 1994 when her husband died.

She and her daughter would have starved if they had not come into contact with the publishers of Jayasree, a Bengali monthly started by associates of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. The publishers of the pre-Independence journal came to her rescue and made arrangements for the state freedom fighters pension 8212; a measly sum of Rs 750 8212; for her.But she never complained about her poverty.

Perhaps the right way to honour her and the remaining brave soldiers of the INA living in obscure corners of the country would be to stop the systematic deletion of this chapter from our past.

Story continues below this ad

Do children today know about the sacrifices made by these men and women in alien battlefields in the Far East, for the freedom of this country?

It is Subhas Chandra Bose8217;s birthday today. But January 23 is not celebrated by our country as soldier8217;s day or any such day though there have not been many brave soldiers like him who lived for this country and bore greater sacrifices, not the least of them being to bear the indifference of this country.

There are no chapters devoted to his unique struggle and his life remains a blank for most. So much for history. But not only is his birth an unknown thing to most Indians, his death continues to be a mystery.

As time passes, larger and larger chunks of our past get erased from our memory. Today my children ask me: Who was Netaji? What is INA? And who was Gandhi? Tomorrow many more will ask: What is India?