At last, Congress gives violent struggle its due

CALCUTTA, AUG 5: For the first time during post-Independence, a Congress platform, if not officially, unofficially has recognised the fact ...

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CALCUTTA, AUG 5: For the first time during post-Independence, a Congress platform, if not officially, unofficially has recognised the fact that India’s freedom was brought both by those who believed in non-violent struggle as well as armed uprising.

Paying tribute to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose during his centenary year, a senior Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) leader and chairman of the Press and Media Sub-Committee of the three-day plenary session, Manas Bhunia, said it would be befitting for the oldest political party to remind the people about those who sacrificed their lives for the nation.

“This,” he said would also include in the Golden Jubilee year of the country’s independence “those who believed in the philosophy of armed struggle against the British imperialists”.

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He was speaking at a function organised to release a commemorative audio cassette.

The function at least recognised the role of those who didn’t believe in the Gandhian method of non-violence struggle.

But soon senior party leader Pranab Mukherjee set out to educate the audience that the “making of modern India is analogous to the Congress, and that the party can rightfully claim even what was never its”.

However, Mukherjee, without mentioning the source, profusely quoted from one of the famous articles of Bose on the spiritual strength of the Indian civilisation.