The Gritty Revolutionary

The month of August, to echo Sylvia Plath, is “the odd uneven time” as “the best of summer gone, and the new fall not yet born.” The season is wet and wearisome, overcast and oppressive.

- MANAS DAS

Yet it carries the last emotions of summer and festivity mingled however with those of nostalgia and sadness as the season gradually winds down. To Indians, this bittersweet season has been a very special time for the last 77 years - a time of celebration and a time of remembrance; a time to wow at the vast progress of democracy and to bow before great fighters of freedom.

It is the time to pay tribute to the great souls who gave their all to free their motherland from the clutches of the colonial power. It is also time to retrace the forgotten heroes and their stellar deeds in attaining freedom. The spirit of independence grips everyone and one gets overwhelmed by an intensive feeling of patriotism and pride in our identity as citizens of a free state as we see our national flag being raised atop flagpoles across the country. Yet we often tend to forget the long history and struggles through which the tricolour evolved as the national flag of our country.

We also forget the brave woman, Madam Bhikaji Rustam Cama, who took the first initiative to unfurl our national flag, although in a somewhat different form, on foreign soil at Stuttgart in Germany. The flag was a tricolour - comprising green, saffron and red stripes - and was embellished with the words “Vande Mataram” written in Devnagari script. Unfortunately, the role of Cama, the ‘Mother of Indian Revolutionaries’, has been thrust into near oblivion as we celebrate our national heroes.