#MarchForIndianArmy

Everyone must be well aware of  Burhan Wani from Kashmir whose story the News media had covered as a breaking news recently. I am not interested in making him or the media the subject of my article. But this happening in Kashmir had caused a strong reaction here faw away in Kolkata amongst my team members of India fIrst (Reminds me of my article The butterfly effect I wrote long ago.) They at once had decided to conduct a march in Kolkata in order to give respect to the INDIAN ARMY which had been defamed and insulted and questioned and disrespected by the population in Kashmir.

Sunday the 24th of July  was decided for the event to march. The highly enthusiastic and active members of the team completed every formality on time. The rally was to start at 3:30 PM from Central Avenue where we have an idol of the most revered Maharana Pratap. Due to some unavoidable reasons I decided to join the rally a stop later from its start point, reaching there at 4:00 PM. I stood waiting at the next stop for the rally to approach. From far away I could see bikers having flags tied to the bike. An auto rickshaw was in the front playing patriotic songs on loud speaker.

As the rally approached with the crowd waving Indian flags proudly, it gave a different feeling altogether. I let a part of rally pass by me till I could find my team members frantically moving here and there trying to control the crowd, asking them to maintain discipline and 2 separate queues for walking. I noticed that we had different ID cards for Organisers and for volunteers. Some were wearing t-shirts  specially designed for the occasion. A few army personnels were invited to lead the rally and thankfully they all had joined. Most interesting was that we had a proper scout group who were just behind the army personnels, performing march past.

Since the rally was solely to show that we have high respect for our army and for our country, that we are in support of our Indian Army, through out the rally we had volunteers who kept shouting slogans of Vande Mataram and the crowd would repeat out loud after the volunteers. Another one was "Sena hum sharminda hai, Desh ke dushman zinda hai." This in particular I found very sensible as its  because of our army's sacrifices that we could live a peaceful and free life here in our homes. Due to these slogans the rally throughout was fully charged up and the pedestrians passing by could relate to it. Many joined us in this march once they understood our motive for the rally. The crowd kept shouting slogans in pride for the country and the army. Our team members were so happy with the huge crowd gathering for the march that they kept smiling and hugging each other with a sense of pride over the successful ongoing of it.

Then I started hearing slogans like "sun le beta Pakistan, baap hai tera Hindustan" and it totally put my mood off. When out motto was to show respect and love for our own country/army, Why were we trying to show our supremacy over that. Whose ego were we trying to satisfy. This was totally not the agenda

Another slogan was "Ab bhi tera khuuun na khaula, khuun nahi ye pani hai/wo bekaar jawaani hai" and I was like what? Seriously? So this is the idea of patriotism. And who the hell are you to define what I should be doing as a token of my patriotism.  Get my blood boiled and then shout "jis ghar se Burhan niklega us ghar me ghus ke marenge" and then add to the already stinking violence and suffering all around.? And I should believe that killing of these people will actually kill the root cause.? Dont we all know that the idea never dies. Till it keeps getting fed into different minds, we can never ever end this by mere killing of heads. There is such a thin line between patriotism and extremism. Could see it right through in that rally. Nowhere am I demeaning the pains and sufferings that innocent people/army has to undergo due to the enforced terrorism and violence caused by a few dumb heads across the border. But this cannot just get a person sidelined into the vicious cycle of impulsive violence and more blood shed.  Should Never. A wonderful friend once said very beautiful words that "even when a person helps a visually impaired cross a road, thats patriotism." Indeed.

Before the rally, a news article about it was published in a leading english daily. A comment I read  stated that  "Instead of celebrating the killing of terrorists...". This was so disturbing. Is this something to celebrate? Fighting against the enemies of our country/army is one thing but celebrating over a death is just not the ideal of my respected country as far as I believe. Its indeed a failure of us as a modern society and as humans. Such incidences are sad ones that we have a terrorist in our land to fight against. That we have to get them killed and often our lives are lost too in that.

"Sena hum sharminda hai, Desh ke dushman zinda hai." A sloganeer shouts past me and I am reminded of the rally I have come to support. We had by now reached to the end of our rally. It was the statue of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. One of the organisers announced the crowd to encircle the statue and then sing the national anthem. Once the national anthem was completed. We all were proud and happy that the motive to show support and respect to the mother land and its brave army has been fulfilled and we all dispersed to resume with our lives again. A few days later, the event was covered in another leading english newspaper. http://toi.in/VnfsAa45/a18ag Henceforth our team decided to organise another march for Indian army which was concluded successfully.