DELINEATING THE PATH OF INDEPENDENCE

"Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever widening thought and action-

Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake".

--Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali,1910

In the awake of the first sunshine of 04 Sep 1920 when our nation's father Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi made a clarion call from St. Stephen's college in Delhi to launch the full flaged Non Co-operation Movement. Gandhiji thought this movement as a death over to the barabaric rule of British Empire. He decided to call on for this movement because in the backdrop, the Jallianwala Bagh massacre took place on 13 April 1919 which shuddered the nerves of every Indian, also the Khifalat issue which dealt with the removal of Caliph of Turkey who was seen as the religious head of Muslims , served as a cherry on the cake.

Two years passed, Gandhiji had to call off the movement because of a violent incident in 1922 in Chauri Chaura where the villagers protested against the brutality of policemen and in the clash 22 policemen were killed along with the police station being set on fire. Gandhiji immediately called off the movement as he was a strict follower of non violence. All the national leaders reacted towards this decision , some as a right decision and some as a nightmare.

Many historians believe that the major factor of uplifting the Non Cooperation Movement was not Chauri Chaura incident but because in major fraction of supporters somehow the path to be traced to achieve "purna swaraj" diverged, like Motilal Nehru and Chittaranjan Das made a separate party within the congress and named it as "Swarajya Party", the students who served as the energy currency of the movement were either exhausted completely or stopped by their parents to join the movement further because of the perpetuance of their personal losses.

For the first time Mahatma Gandhi felt that the unity among the Indians was lacking because as soon as the Non Cooperation Movement was uplifted the British army turned into Godzillas with only one motto " Any union or association or any form of gathering must be suppressed by any means", for many years the associations would not be formed and if forcefully they were formed in the morning they were turned into graveyards before the sun sets down. This was not solely possible because of the excellence of the British army, some of our Indian brothers also gave secret tips about these associations to the army but the irony lies in the fact that those betrayers also lost their lives by getting a headshot from the royal bullet of British army and they died peacefully by saying " Ji Hujoor". Some lines from the famous speech of Mr Shashi Tharoor fits the pitiful destiny of those traitors ," No wonder that the sun never sets on the British empire because even God couldn't trust the English in the dark".

After observing all the situations Gandhiji was little bit stressed on how to bring all the Indians on the same march with same enthusiasm , this was the only reason that not a single major movement was launched by him for next 9 years. But he didn't know that his messiah already took birth in the backdrop of Non Cooperation Movement on 25 March 1920 in a small village named Saras near Surat in Gujarat. Her parents gave the name to their child as Usha Mehta who later turned to be Usha Ben meaning the daughter of heaven and the sister of night.

Shortly afterwards, Gandhiji arranged a camp near her village in which little Usha participated, attending sessions and doing a little spinning. In 1928, eight year old Usha indulged in a protest march against the Simon Commission and the nation listened the soft voice of little girl shouting " Simon Go Back". She and other children participated in early morning protests against the British army and used to picket the liquor shops. During one of these protest marches the policemen charged the children and a girl carrying the Indian flag fell down along with the flag. Angry at this incident the elders responded by dressing up the children in colors of the national flag and the determined children again shouted on the faces of the army officials " Policemen, you can wield your sticks and your batons, but you cannot bring down our national flag"

In later years she presented herself as an epitome of sheer dedication and patriotism. She subordinated her individual interest over the country by leaving her education halfway and taking an active part in the freedom struggle and break the shackles of British tyranny. Her life story also shows that she was an integral part of independence and because she never craved recognition or fame but her country's freedom, she deserves to become an unsung hero of national struggle of independence for decades .