“RESURGENT BHARAT AND OTHER ISSUES; AN ANTHOLOGY OF ESSAYS” BY JAY BHATTACHARJEE BOOK REVIEW BY LT GEN PG KAMATH (VETERAN)

“RESURGENT BHARAT AND OTHER ISSUES; AN ANTHOLOGY OF ESSAYS” BY JAY BHATTACHARJEE

BOOK REVIEW BY LT GEN PG KAMATH (VETERAN)

(First Published in Indian Defence Review)

If one wants to delight oneself with knowledge, humour, wit, sarcasm and real good English then you just cannot afford to miss the book entitled “Resurgent Bharat and Other Issues; An Anthology of Essays” authored by Jay Bhattacharjee (JB). The book is divided into eleven chapters with 82 articles. JB in his book upholds the Indic Civilisation and extols its virtues which unfortunately have been undermined by the Lutyens Zone cabal (LZ).?He perceives that a country that has undergone nearly 800 years of Islamic and British rules has left behind quislings who admire their masters due to their slavish mindset losing self-esteem in their own origins. Thereafter, they masquerade as intellectuals and liberals and decry their own country, trivialise their culture and heritage and attempt to destroy the existential roots of our nation. Their mindset has been deformed by Christian convent education limiting their worldviews to English authors and thoughts that seek to incite in them self-remorse and make them disciples of invaders. The cabal in cahoots with Gandhi-Nehru-Gandhi (GNG) take part in the loot, corruption and doles.?When JB gets at them; there is no holds-barred assault which unwittingly a reader relishes.?He demolishes his victim one by one with subtle sarcasm, and by the brazen portrayal of ‘truth’. We all know; how Manish Tiwari defends the GNG family like a knight in shining armour. JB demolishes him with finesse; I quote “There is so juvenile about his periodic outbursts, designed exclusively to earn brownie points from his employers, that one cannot but feel a little sorry for him occasionally”.?On Sitaram Yechury for one of his asinine comments; JB accuses him of new Marxism that is taught in the rarefied heights of JNU hillocks.?In the same article written in 2013, he advises Yechury to save his party from total extinction.?The election results vindicate his clairvoyance.

If one wants to classify JB as leftist, centrist or rightist then he fits in the fourth category; an unapologetic nationalist with deep respect for Indic values, its pristine culture and glorious heritage.?His views on ‘Freedom of Speech’ depicted in one of his essays are explicit and exquisite. Shouting ‘Fire’ in a crowded theatre when there is no fire certainly does not fall within the ambit of Freedom of Speech under Art 19 of the Constitution. He also cites the landmark judgement given by?????Justice Oliver Wendel Holmes, many decades back.?????In the same vein, one cannot portray a deity revered by a billion people copulating with animals and such outright outrages are defended by the LZ cabal under ‘Freedom of Expression’. He accuses painter Hussain and filmmaker Bhansali of such shameful insensitive shenanigans.?The entire book is replete with worldwide knowledge and classic examples from world history that exudes his scholarship and inadvertently show his exposure to thousands of books that he must have voraciously devoured.

In one of his articles, he says how a defeated ecosystem that has been ruling for seventy years does not quietly exit, once defeated in elections.?Their inability to survive without power makes them fight rear-guard actions through their minions who had been beneficiaries of their decrepit system.?The GNG nexus and their vassals fought tooth and nail with the government for contracting Rafael fighters for their own country.?False narratives were spun and Rahul Gandhi attacked the government to resurrect his party credentials.?JB feels that NDA ministers were not up to the mark to project truth while the detractors had a field day while parading lies in the parliament.?JB then cites similar political chicanery at play in Spain, France and Britain in the first of half the 20th Century.?I am sure you may not know of Zinoviev Letter that was fake and published in Oct 1924 prior to the elections.?It ensured a resounding victory over Labour by the Conservatives.?It took Britain 75 years to accept that it was a forged letter. I have quoted only one example but there are several more JB has penned that broaden our horizon to those shady and hidden events lichened in the thickets and undergrowth of the geopolitical melange.

In another article “Vijay Divas- A Nation’s unpaid Debt to Fallen Warriors” JB laments at the babu-neta nexus who fight court battles unflinchingly to deny the veterans and soldiers their legitimate dues.?On 10 Dec 2014, the government had gone to court to deny disability benefits to former warriors and were turned down.?Seven days later ‘Vijay Divas’ is celebrated to pay homage to the fallen soldiers; what an irony! It was also the time a debate was raging over the construction of the National War Memorial. Earlier it was blocked by politico Sheila Dikshit of GNG nexus, who thought that such a war memorial will spoil the ambience and restrict the free movement of people at the popular hangout.?The righteous wrath of the people deracinated the party in the following elections.?JB says Nationalism is not just an emotion but a primordial sentiment and people’s attachment to the nation is due to civilisational and cultural roots.

Another interesting article is about why Putin is not celebrating the centenary of the Great Bolshevik Revolution in 2017.?Is Putin an anti-revolutionary? Or, he is a conservative? Or, is it that the Soviet Union is no more and new Russia does not want to remember revolutions? In the mid-20th Century; a third of countries across the world were communists and by the end of the century, they could be counted on one finger.?Is there really a necessity to celebrate Communism? Then he connects the Russian Revolution to Charles Dicken's “The Tale of two Cities’ and also to India where the revolution inspired freedom fighters like Bhagat Singh, Surya Sen and the like.?He feels the oligarchs in the Putin era are in control of wealth and to remember a proletariat revolution is certainly not called for.?In governance, he also quotes from Arthashastra, where the concept of ‘Yogakshema’ encompassed the social, political, economic and spiritual welfare of people.?There is a lot to be told but you have to read the book and enjoy the web spun by JB in his inimitable style.

Don’t you please miss the 11th Chapter; Humour and Satire??It is hilarious as you have to undergo a paroxysm of stitches in your stomach.?It kept me joyful and for people like me who do not get up in the morning for ‘laughter therapy’ his book is a ready prescription: Counsellors across the world; are you listening?

I have already run short of words to review the book. Obviously, one cannot talk of all his 82 articles. What I tried to portray is really a fleeting glimpse that neither depicts the richness of his thoughts nor his flair for the language.?