I AM WITH GANDHI AND WITH BOSE, I AM WITH NEHRU AND WITH PATEL

Justifying her rant against Gandhi with her bheekh remarks, Kangana Ranaut says you are either with Gandhi or with Bose. And she is not alone. The right-wing nationalists are clear in their proclamations. It's Bose, not Gandhi. It's Patel, not Nehru. And their cult? Savarkar, Golwalkar and Mookerjee.

But then there is a contradiction here.

In a note to Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Patel talks about the Hindu Right Wing as "anti-national forces of hate and violence" while accusing them of "indulging in arson, robbery, dacoity and murder." He wrote a separate letter to Golwalkar and remarked, "All your speeches are full of communal poison, it was not necessary to spread poison to enthuse Hindus and organise for their protection".

If that was Patel, Bose who was himself a fan of Gandhi had remarked, "By taking advantage of religion and desecrating it, the Hindu Mahasabha has entered the arena of politics. It is the duty of all Hindus to condemn it. Banish these traitors from national life. Don’t listen to them." In fact, Savarkar offered full military cooperation to the British even while the INA was gathering its army and proudly announced that through the efforts of Hindu Mahasabha, one lakh Hindus were recruited into the British armed forces in one year, many of whom joined hands to later decimate the INA.

There is a good majority in the country today that believes in Gandhi and in Bose, that believes in Nehru and in Patel. In asking them to take a side, the Hindu Right Wing does not realize that someone who truly believes in Gandhi or Bose or Nehru or Patel, any of them, may still not be able to support the Hindu Right Wing.

But no, we cannot denigrate the Hindu Right Wing. They deserve our respect for the service they do, we need to appreciate their school of thought that stems from the idea of self-protection. However, hatred can never be a substitute for love. Gandhi may have been wrong, Nehru may have been wrong, Bose may have been wrong, Patel may have been wrong or Savarkar, Golwalkar and Mookerjee may have been wrong. But it may not be a great idea to pull someone down to put someone else on a pedestal. Congress and its allies possibly did that post the independence of 1947. BJP and its allies should not do that post the newly proclaimed independence of 2014. In an attempt to rewrite history, the Hindu Right Wing seems to be treading a wrong path. Two wrongs will not make a right. As someone said, "People with high self esteem don’t taunt. Mocking someone is accepting lower status".