The state of a confident nation is best depicted when its emblem conveys the imprimatur of its strength. Small wonder then, the metamorphosis of a bleating lion into that of a roaring one is the vindication of the rise of a ‘ Civilisational Bharat’ trumping the ‘ Constitutional India’, which represents the blend of Chandragupta Maurya’s blood- thirsty swordsmanship piercing the hearts of his enemies as well as Ashoka’s holding aloft the flame of peace burning unless the enemies desecrated the sanctified re-defined Lakshman Rekha. Unequivocally, this transformation of the national image brought about by the roaring lion, is the vindication of India conceivably moving away from its ‘ Always Apologists’ mindset into that of being a ‘ No More Apologists’.
Vivekanand Jha Ranchi: Since my childhood, so far as I do have the vivid recollection of my childhood days, I presume to have read a beautiful story narrated by Swami Vivekananda. The story went by this way: once a lioness, in the process of her pregnancy, ravenously famished, beholding the hordes of sheep, lept onto the last one languishing behind others. Unfortunately in the process of her doing so, she died, but not before she had given a birth to a cub. Thus the cub was nurtured and groomed in the company of sheeps, instead of roaring, began bleating the way other sheeps were doing. Little wonder then, as the cub matured into a lion, he had developed all the ingrained and intrinsic characteristics of the sheep; as soon as the hordes of sheeps beheld a lion, they all would start running helter skelter in search of safe haven. Once a lion, while chasing the herd of sheeps, was surprised to see his own specie among sheeps who, notwithstanding being a lion, had started bleating and running away from him. This pleasant paradox did cause a consternation in the lion, as he marched past all the sheeps and got hold of the lion. Seeing a lion closing in on him, the lion among the herd of sheeps started bleating. Peeved at this apparent pusssailanimity, the lion chasing him, whispered in his ear: ‘ Why you are bleating, you are not a coward sheep, but the brave lion, and you must roar like me’. The lion brought up amidst sheeps, refused to believe what his brother lion had just whispered; instead, he continued to protest, seeking the release from his clutches. At this point, the lion dragged him towards the sea, and showed him his face, and told him how both were similar, having the similar identity of being lions. Beholding his own image, strikingly similar to him, the lion, bleating like sheep, developed the self- confidence hitherto missing in him. He roared like a lion and went away like his friend chasing the herd of sheeps. This is the story narrated by Swami Vivekananda to awaken the hibernating national consciousness of Sanatanis being the pioneer civilisation on earth, yet fell victim to the repeated invasions and colonisation, over a millennium, if not more. This, Swami Vivekananda, strongly believed, was on account of Hindus losing their identity of
being lions, and believed themselves as meek and vulnerable sheeps which only learnt to bleat and pulverise at the sight of far lesser beings, presuming them to be far superior to them in terms of human edification. Unfortunately, even the teachings of India’s Yug Avatar drastically failed to re-invigorate the nation with all his great writings and electrifying speeches.
In the wake of partition of the United India, if anyone suffered the tragic consequences of this apocalypse brought about by the unconscionable greed of few leaders who, in their blatant partisanship of donning the role of ‘ Bhagya Vidhata’ of the multitude, for their selfish ends, pushed the multitude towards their historic annihilation–the death of over two million people, mostly Hindus, was the vindication of the clashes of personal ambitions leading to one of the greatest cataclysmic tragedies ever witnessed by history. And all this because the personal ambitions of Nehru, Jinnah and Patel clashed against each other, with Gandhi playing hide and seek. Be that as it may, the divided India, in the wake of creation of Pakistan, enacted the hitherto the biggest perfidy the world had ever witnessed: The alienation of Hindus from their motherland; expediently converting India into a no- man’s land by imposing a constitutional democracy through a constitution which sought to further alienate Hindus from their national moorings. Moreover, the systematic institutionalisation of the imported concept of secularism, which primarily emphasised upon making India look more a nation of non- Hindus than that of being the motherland of Sanatanis. In this diabolical design, even the photographs sculpted by the famous painter Nandlal Bose, of that of Shri Ram and Shri Krishna, Adi Shankara were treacherously withdrawn without allowing the nation to even take the remote cognizance of the same. This was a severe blow to the overwhelming claims of the ownership of Hindus over their motherland. Worse stil, the history was deliberately tampered to show how inglorious the past of Hindus was: dubbing Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj as the ‘ mountain rat’ and glorifying Akbar, as ‘ Akbar the great’, was another devious attempt to show the Hindu icons in the poor light and institutionalising the glorification of the Mughal rulers was the obvious machination to install in the polity the sordid trappings of Mughal glory and undermining the Hindu greats. Also, the deliberate neglect of Vedas and Upanishads, relegating them to the backyard of the national psyche, was another vilest attempt to remove the vestiges of Sanatan heritage from the national psyche. Moreover, Shah Bano was the final nail in the coffin of the so- called perfidious secularism which took the nation towards the path of making India appear more Islamic than the Hinduism forming the nation’s raison d’etre and its summum bonum.
The latest episode of Nupur Sharma’s innocuous remark, quoting verbatim from Hadith, not a single word of her own, had ushered in the cataclysmic winds which conveyed the impression about how Hindus were eternally robbed of their congenital right of calling India as their birth place. ‘ Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it’, Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s famous quotation of swaraj for Hindus remain an utopia for ever, with India being declared as a secular republic where, excoriation of Hindu gods and goddesses was encouraged, yet quoting anything unpleasant and unpalatable from Islamic scriptures became a taboo, an act of blasphemy! Small wonder then, the nation witnessing the tandav of Islamic hooliganism, since Nupur’s innocuous comment, is the vindication of the fact that, how the eternal tag of the nation being an ‘ Always Apologists’, has come to be institutionalised, over time, so much so that, whereas Hindu gods and goddesses are heathen beings; in fact, the gods and goddesses of the lesser beings, and that of Islamic prophet being so much sacrosanct that, even quoting from Islamic scripture, was dubbed as an act of blasphemy. It is this enormous anomaly which warranted an immediate course correction; among which the bleating lions as the national emblem, which exhibited the characteristic pusssailanimity of the national psyche, needed an immediate makeover.
The national outcry brought about by the brutal killings of Kanhaiyalal, a tailor from Udaipur, and Kohle in Amravati, for supporting Nupur Sharma, are the living testimony of an aggravating Islamic challenge to the national sovereignty; it is in fact, the throwing of gauntlet to anyone daring to call a spade a spade; a fear psychosis sought to be created to silence the voice of sanity in the republic. Unequivocally, the decades of the institutionalised conspiracy to convert India, especially Hindus, as ‘ Always Apologists’, reflected adversely in sapping the vitality of the pioneer race on earth; it had engendered the mindset of cajoling Muslims; to keep them in good humour; to ensure that their sentiments are not hurt, even to the minuscule proportion, even though our own existential identity is blown into smithereens, has begun reflecting adversely on us. The decades of being taught as peace loving, shunning violence at the remote prospect of its occurrence, has contributed to making us the race of cowards; the race to be perpetually bullied, yet remain obsequious in praising the secularism as our avowed mission, even though we are driven towards the state of hopelessness. Hence, in this context, we desperately needed a metamorphosis of national mindset towards regaining our fading vitality; we needed an immediate re-connect with our doctrinaire belief of ‘ Satyamev Jayate’. We needed to re-assert our identity not only as revitalised race, but also as the re-invigorated nation. And therefore, Swami Vivekananda’s glorious teaching of bleating lion re-converted into the roaring one, needed to be installed at the higher pedestal –the national emblem needed a thorough revamping: A journey of a nation from that of being an ‘ Always Apologists’ to that of ‘ No More Apologists’ needed an immediate stamp of approval; the real life bleating lions needed to learn roaring at the earliest, so that message of this re-awakening of India should go across the length and breadth of India as well as to our enemies in our neighbourhood. The arrival of this new emblem with roaring lions, is the living testimony of nation rejecting its ‘ Apologists’ tag and donning the new tag of ‘ No More Apologists’
Vivekanand Jha, an Author, Academician and a Public Intellectual.
