jabdakhata

Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose is a very special name for any patriotic Indian. Any book on Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose would attract interest, esp. if the book is titled as Life after Death of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. There are controversies surrounding his alleged disappearance. Government had set up a committee in 1956 which was headed by INA veteran Shah Nawaz Khan. The conclusion of that committee was the affirmation of the official version that Netaji had died in the 1945 plane crash. But Suresh Chandra Bose, the sejda of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, who was a part of the committee did not agree with its findings and submitted a Dissent report which pointed out many flaws with the committee’s findings. In 1970 a one man commission was set up under Justice G.D Khosla to probe Netaji’s death. The conclusion remained the same, that Netaji died in plane crash in 1945. The controversy thus remained dormant for a long time till 1985 September when an unknown Sadhu, called Gumnami Baba ...

The people who doubt that Netaji ever came back to India by literally rising from the dead have many questions. The first and foremost is of course, if he at all came back why didn't he announce himself? Why did he choose to remain as a recluse, as an ascetic? They claim that it was uncharacteristic of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose not to declare himself, not to become a sensation as he would have always done. They said that they cannot believe that Netaji feared for his life and therefore chose to remain hidden from public. They therefore claim that all the stories about Netaji becoming a sannyasin are false. The sadhus are dummies created by the political class for hoodwinking people. In the context of Gumnami Baba or Bhagwanjee being Netaji, let us try to analyze why he could not appear before the public and only could reveal himself to a select few. There are however very good reasons of Netaji's choosing the life of a recluse, a hermit and not announcing himself to the ...

According to Dr. Sinha's account he met a eye witness who was a Chinese spy working in a Japanese canteen. He had apparently got wind of the entire plan of the Japanese to send Netaji out to Dairen after feigning an accident. It seems for several days every day the Japanese tutored Habibur Rahman and other associates on Netaji on how the plane crash theory would be propagated. Of course he was not an interested party in the affairs of Netaji, so he had no reason to lie. Another person whom he met gave him an account of Netaji's life in Dairen. Apparently this latter person was working with Chinese Nationalists against the Chinese Communists. He was working as a barber. He saw Netaji along with other Japanese soldiers. He had already known Netaji through his work in Calcutta. So he spoke with Netaji in Bengali. In order to provide evidence this men showed Dr. Sinha a photo of Subhas Chandra Bose dressed up as a Confucian monk. Apparently this is how he had helped Netaji to rem...

Coming back to Dr. Satyanarayana Sinha. His writing was published in Hinsdustan Standard and in Anandabazar. According to his claim, he went personally in Formossa (Taiwan) and enquired there about an aircraft accident on 18 Aug in Taipei. The response that he got was that there was no airplane accident in that port on that day. Instead an accident happened about a year back in October 1944. But that did not kill Netaji as it is very evident that he lived till August 1945. That there was no aircraft accident was a fact acknowledged by Mukherjee Commission that was set up in early 2000. Although Mukherjee Commission report was rejected by the UPA government which showed open hostility towards it and although the findings of the commission remained inconclusive on account of an alleged falsification of handwriting and DNA reports by two Government experts and two Government labs, justice Mukherjee had clearly articulated that Netaji did not die in the aircrash. The theory was false...

There is now a renewed attempt to get the facts on Netaji straight. The incidents were deliberately obfuscated and put to burial by the erstwhile Governments on account of vested political reasons. The first Government of India started this deliberate obfuscation because of political and selfish personal interests of the then Prime Minister. The successive governments only tried to perpetuate it as otherwise many names of the ruling party Congress would have been dis-reputed because of their involvement and malafide intentions in the cover up. It was assumed that the public of India had a very short memory. The best way to give a quite burial to Netaji is to let the issue settle down and through clever means of propaganda, concealment and with the help of the brute force of the state administrations any opposition or attempt to find the truth could be overcome. The two puppet commissions - Shah Nawaz in 1956 and Khosla in 1970 were set up for the intention of giving an official stamp...

In an artificial neural network, every neuron chosen has certain parameters or weights and biases associated with every feature. So decision making is basically dependent on the weights that we assign to the different parameters and the assigned biases. The weights are adjusted as we move through the back propagation so that the loss is minimized. This is also the way in which a rational choice happens. All our decisions are based on certain evaluation criteria or factors. We already have inherent biases that influence that decision making process. The weights are adjusted according to our perception or analysis of the situation often driven by our ego or emotional conditions. We rationalize our decisions. So in effect there is nothing black and white. Its all shades of gray that we operate with. The world is a complex maze of choices that operate within the realms of gray of varying degree. In choosing our partners to choosing the political party to choosing the religion or for that...

There are certain views that are floating around in intellectual circles that Rabindranath Tagore was an anti Nationalist. I am not sure why Nationalism has become a dirty word with some people, esp. with the liberal elites and the media. Nationalism, which conveys deep sense of pride and respect for one's own country is now synonymous with war mongering, chest thumping and positioning one's own country as greater than the others. No harm in taking that position, in fact the dictionary meanings also convey the similar impression. The dictionary definition of Nationalism as per  https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/ nationalism  - begins with "Loyalty and Devotion to Nation". To me that's important, even though the next few lines dilutes the main definition a little bit. Oxford dictionary defines Nationalistic as Having or expressing strong identification with one's own nation and vigorous support for its interests, especially to the exclusion or d...

The great poet shared a unique relationship with Ramakrishna. He made repeated demands to him that he be born as his son. Ramakrishna refused saying that his father was a pious brahmin. Girish, in a  drunken state abused him profusely for this refusal, but at times while abusing he prostrated on the dirty ground and made pranaam. When Ramakrishna visited his house the next day, Girish was dejected thinking about the colossal blunder that he did. But Sri Ramakrishna's lack of ego made him exclaim that Ramakrishna was nothing but God. That reinforced his belief. Sri Ramakrishna also told him that he would become purer day by day, people would be amazed by his transformation. Exactly that happened. In his later days people used to visit Girish just to hear about Sri Rmakrishna for hours. He was never tired of speaking about his guru. He used to take dip in Ganga during the Dasahara festival saying that he was not doing it to become pure and get absolved from his sins as others do. H...

Now we come to the most important part - the relationship between Girish and Sri Ramakrishna. The lion of the Bengali stage had a tremendous talent. Yet this talent was going haywire owing to the rebellious spirit and the tremendous suffering that the person underwent. This intellectual giant spared nobody in debate and intellectual discussions. His tremendous scholarship and intellect enabled him to have many arguments with eminent scholars of that age, including good natured banters with Swami Vivekananda. But to one person this lion was nothing but a rebellious child. And he turned the actor-director-producer's life to the right course just when he had reached the pinnacle of glory and was about to ruin himself. Sri Ramakrishna had a vision of a naked child holding a glass of wine before Girish had come to him. He always used to have a vision about the real nature of the people of his "inner circle". He saw Narendranath as an ancient sage of the divine realm of t...

Krishna did not want the Mahabharata war. Yet he knew that Mahabharata war was inevitable. He knew the consequences and he knew his larger duty as a friend of Pandavas and as an incarnation to set the wheel of dharma running for ages to come. He knew that given the attitude of the Kauravas towards the Pandavas, given their greed and hatred, a peace treaty was not possible. Duryadhana was sure of his superiority. He had Bhisma, Drona and above everybody else Karna to fight for him. Yet one thing he did not have, dharma, on his side. His mother told him before the beginning of the war - yatah dharma tatah jaya, but he did not listen. He was sure that Pandavas with their limited resources esp. after spending 13 years in the forest and in exile would not be able to muster enough manpower to wage a war. Even if they dared to do so, he had his full army, support of many kings whom he had won over a period of time through either good behavior, bribe or treachery, warriors like Bhisma, Drona...