For whom the bell tolls
By Justice Katju
Many of my heroes are persons who fought against seemingly insuperable odds for freedom or some other high ideal, but were unsuccessful, and were defeated and executed, or suffered some other harsh penalty.
For Indians, foremost among such heroes are Bhagat Singh, Surya Sen ( Masterda ), Chandrashekhar Azad, Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqulla, Rajguru, Sukhdev, Khudiram Bose, etc who fought against the British and were executed. They are our real freedom fighters, but they have been relegated to the footnotes in our history books, and described as mavericks and deviants, outside the mainstream of the freedom struggle, while that feudal minded reactionary, hypocrite, fraud and British agent Gandhi has been painted as a ‘Mahatma’, and thrust down the throats of the gullible Indian people as the ‘Father of the Nation’ ( see my several blogs on Gandhi in my blog justicekatju.blogspot.in ).
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7394vb
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGKN37CEYgE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASbUkQBPgKA&t=40s&pp=ygUaa2F0anUgZ2FuZGhpIGJyaXRpc2ggYWdlbnQ%3D
http://justicekatju.blogspot.com/2016/01/gandhi-and-caste-gandhi-repeatedly-said.html
Apart from these, my other heroes who fought against tremendous odds for a high ideal, but were defeated, are :
1. John Brown, a white man, who before the Civil War ( 1861-65 ) fought against slavery in America, but was caught and hanged
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_(abolitionist)
2. Spartacus, who led a slave revolt in ancient Rome, but was killed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartacus
3. The Russian Decembrists, many of whom were idealistic memmbers of the Russian nobilty, who revolted against Tsar Nicholas 1 in December 1825, demanding a constitutional govt. as in England, but were crushed, hanged or incarcerated in Siberia for 30 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decembrist_revolt
The great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, kept in touch with the banished Decembrists through secret letters.
Leo Tolstoy, when he started writing his great novel ‘ War and Peace ‘ had in mind the Decembrist Revolt
4. The participants in the revolts of 1830, 1848, and 1870 in France and elsewhere in Europe, which failed
5. Toussaint L’ouverture and other blacks who revolted against the white rulers in Haiti, but were suppressed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toussaint_Louverture
6. Emiliano Zapata, Pancho Villa, and others who participated in the Mexican Revolution of the early 20th century, and were defeated and killed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emiliano_Zapata
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancho_Villa
7. Levellers, Lollards and Chartists
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levellers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartism
8. Thomas Muntzer, who opposed both the Catholic Church and Martin Luther, but was killed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_M%C3%BCntzer
9. Hans and Sophie Scholl, who were executed by the Nazis for secretly opposing the Nazis during WW 2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_and_Sophie_Scholl
10. The partipants in the Spanish Civil War ( 1936-39 ) on the Republican side, including the International Brigades
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_faction_(Spanish_Civil_War)
11. Rani of Jhansi, Tantia Tope, Kunwar Singh, Maulvi Ahmadullah, Maulvi Liaquat Ali, and all those who fought against the British in The Great Revolt of 1857
12. The Narodniks of Russia who fought against the Czar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narodniks
13. The leaders and members of the Paris Commune of 1871
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune
All these people fought for high ideals, but failed. Yet they are my heroes, as much as those who succeeded
The English Elizabethan poet Philip Sidney writes about them ” He who shoots his arrow at the midday sun is sure to never hit the mark, yet he shoots higher than he who aims at a bush ”
