By National News Service, Kolkata
What is virtual reality?
An artificial environment created with computer hardware and software and presented to the user in such a way that it appears and feels like a real environment. To "enter" a virtual reality, a user dons special gloves, earphones, and goggles, all of which receive their input from the computer system. In this way, at least three of the five senses are controlled by the computer. In addition to feeding sensory input to the user, the devices also monitor the user's actions. The goggles, for example, track how the eyes move and respond accordingly by sending new video input. To date, virtual reality systems require extremely expensive hardware and software and are confined mostly to research laboratories. The term virtual reality is sometimes used more generally to refer to any virtual world represented in a computer, even if it's just a text-based or graphical representation.
If you look closely, the Independence of India was a virtual reality. What happened on the 15th of August 1947, did we really become independent. If we replace the word computer hardware and software with Congress party we will find that we are in a virtual world.
What is the history of British colonial rule in India. It is one of betrayal and corruption. The East India Company was steeped in corruption. Individuals in the East India Company were rich and the Company was bankrupt, it had to be nationalized. A saga that still continues today in India. The other side was a sordid tale of betrayal by one Indian on another. The best example being that of Mir Jaffar and Shirazuddin. This was repeated throughout the length and breadth of India, allowing the British to become our masters.
The independence struggle in India was unique in many ways. On one side you had the revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh, Khudiiram, Masterda, Ananta Singh, those brave men who rose in a muntiny in the Sepoy revolt of 1854, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, and the men of the Azad Hind force. There were many more in the length and breadth of India who gave up all, their families, their lives, and went through untold misery. These people wanted an Independent India as a physical reality.
On the other hand there were the leaders of the Congress party. To them Independence was an intellectual exercise, they were educated by the British and to them at most Independence was a well fought game of cricket, well contested, but nevertheless a game that had to be played within the rules and with neutral umpires whose decisions could not be contested, no matter what mistake they made.
Mahatma Gandhi straddled somewhat in between, but closer to the Congress ideology, and when he realized the virtual reality of the Congress it was too late, and he did not live long enough to do anything.
To these people Ananta Singh's action in Chittagong was called the looting of the Armory, not its liberation for a few hours.
The Soldiers of the Azad Hind force to them were deserters and mutineers, lip service was paid to them, but they did not find any place in the Army of Independent India. That was reserved for those trained at Sand Hurst and its native equivalents. They had to know how to hold a glass of wine and a cup of tea. It was when the Chinese had us on the run that we realized that there were more important things, and our armed forces developed into a real fighting force.
When the clock struck at midnight on the 15th of August, because of the ego clash of the men in the Congress party about who would be captain, a nation was divided.
Those who fought with their lives for an Independent India were told to go home and behave themselves, and those British educated elite replaced the white Britishers, and nothing else changed.
Those bureaucrats and police officers who served their British masters with their heart and souls, who had no guilt about punishing the brave Indian revolutionaries to please their British masters and curry favor to them, became the masters of India. The Britishers mostly being uneducated had taken these people, because they were faithful, and came from so called elite families who posed no threat to them. They educated them so that they could read and write for them. These people who had no contribution to make India Independent gained all the fruits of independence. Naturally they became corrupt they did not have any commitment to the nation and till this date they are selfish, caring only for their own well being, and the corruption of the East India Company was ingrained in their DNA and has perpetuated itself over the generations. Today these people have added sycophancy to their bio-data and serve who ever is in power, as long as they are not disturbed in their corrupt ways.
The constituent Assembly merely created a patchwork of the British laws and the American constitution. There is nothing Indian about it, and its basic fabric destroyed by amendments to suit political ends. We hear that one man wrote the constitution, were the other members of the Constituent Assembly merely duffers.
The laws were kept intact. These laws were created by the British so that a handful of men could lord over vast multitudes. The new order in Delhi found these laws suitable because they could perpetuate themselves. All our laws relate to the end of the nineteenth century of the beginning of the twentieth century, hardly any effort was made to change these laws so that the multitudes could benefit from them.
The poor get poorer every day and have become dehumanized to the extent that evolution is turning them back towards the animal species. Their backbones have been broken, and few misguided attempts to awaken them from their stupor has failed miserably, and they have become dacoits with a reddish tint. The rich have become richer, and they are worried if the have the the latest Gucci shoes and designer jeans, and whether they will spend their next holiday in Switzerland or France. They are totally oblivious to the poverty arround them. Then there is those in the middle who are so tired trying to make both ends meet that at the end of the day they do not have any fight left in them.
There are the politicians corrupt, slovenly and beyond the reach of law. They have become a Cosa Nostra, Only when a gang warfare breaks out do any of them get their due.
Now we come back to our revolutionaries, they were busy fighting for an independent India they did not get jobs and when independence came most of them, and their families were left in penury. So, what did the grateful nation do for them? Twenty five years after independence we gave the Tamra Patra's and a pittance of a pension. A free Railway pass and a telephone connection. The real revolutionaries shunned these and died with a heavy heart and frustration.
Like in the virtual world if often seems that Indian Independence is like a bad dream in a virtual world from which we will awaken, or else we await a messiah who will bring us back into the real world from the virtual one.
