When we talk about a great personality, we usually only just talk about what he did at that point in time when they did an act of greatness and seldom think about their childhood and how their childhood and experiences they gathered while growing up shaped who they would essentially become. This is actually quite common sense but we never as a rule care about how our past experiences have laid the path ahead. In this regard, the Amar Chitra Katha project is a paradigm changer. Almost all books I have read mention the Individual's past and give us a few examples as to show how the attributes of greatness were already in the child. This reminds me of the tamil proverb விளையும் பயிர் முளையிலேயே தெரியும். This may not be true in all cases though. There are always exceptions.
An example comes to mind. When the villagers tried to rescue Jatin when he got stuck in the weeds, both mom and Jatin, the young child, tell them he would get out of the mess himself. Imagine how this must have seemed to the villagers who saw a child battling the entanglement he had got himself into. And here was one who refused their help. Any other child would have been terrorised. This kind of individuality is extremely rare in a child, one that can come not just from physical strength but strength of a higher nature. It is a mental conviction that went with the times. Bengal was then the sprouting ground of nationalism, of a new renaissance that India had never witnessed before. This certainly has the element of the West to it. Bengal in that sense was the best of both worlds: the east and the west. Indians had long resigned to their fate and accepted foreign rule with open arms. If a foreign force came to conquer them, it was God's will. There was no fighting spirit in the masses. Some did try, but this was not permanent. The Light had long gone. Along with the Light, Force had gone. But any point has its saturation. Bengalis may have collectively said, "Enough is enough. I will tolerate this no more! Let us RISE and FIGHT!" They had become conscious of greatness of their own culture and then rose to fight. Without this sense of awareness, fighting alone would have led to only a temporary result. Bengal thus symbolises the rise of the Brahminic Kshatriya.
Jatin was one among those great personalities who exhibited such values early in their lives. This single incident from his childhood shows how India was ready to take responsibility for the mess she had caught herself in. For the last 8-9 centuries. She had to clear her own mess, which she did, like Jatin. Thus rose the mighty Bengali Kshatriya. His weapons were not swords but the cannons of culturally refined words that carried in them the seeds of national consciousness and the nascent spirit of unity.
Life was the battling ground of these Kshatriyas, something India had long sacrificed to seek the Spirit. If everything ultimately has its purpose, India's act of sacrifice must too. The ever evolving Spirit is not content with what it gains. India in the 18th century was still the richest region in the world, accounting for 25% of the world's GDP but perhaps she wanted to shoulder responsibility for the world's leadership and stepped down voluntarily so others could rise. How could she step down voluntarily? Muslims and the English were mere tools she used to accomplish this purpose. England had not attained the strength necessary to rise to take the role and so Muslims were chosen first. When the conditions were conducive, the English came. Remember, those ones who conquered her in form and not her spirit were traders from England who were perhaps receptive to the force of her calling. They responded to her call for leadership when others didn't. I thus see the whole process as India's own Descent into Inconscience, her own experiment.
Immediately after the incident, Jatin's mother fell ill. People are in our lives for a reason. The moment she thought Jatin was capable of handling himself and India, which she had subconsciously entrusted to him, she left her physical body, She had seen at the subtle level what Jatin was capable of. She was a poet after all! An act, an accomplishment may be said to be completed on a specific day, but the success starts when the ideal takes root in the being. In that one sense, she must have been a prophet.
After the famous episode with the tiger, the doctor tells Jatin he may have to amputate the right leg, Jatin says no, not because he is afraid or anxious about his future. How could he fight the British in his handicapped condition is the first thought he has! Jatin was a conscious embodiment of this unyielding aspiration to rise above the shackles of self-imposed foreign rule, a burning flame in the hearts and minds of Bengalis.
Evil I have read only comes to make Good more perfect. Essentially, it comes to Good to do it Greater Good. The English used treachery and several other substandard means but all the designs they schemed ended up intensifying the efforts of the "natives"! Jatin had be under arrest for 15 months for what was to come next: his soul had to get ready for the greater responsibility he had to shoulder. And that was to take the role of Sri Aurobindo as a successor. To rise to that challenge, treachery by the British was a means, not the only means, but a necessary tool that had lent itself to service.
The first strike the revolutionaries planned after Jatin's leadership for February 21, 1915, did not take off. They had smuggled arms from allied powers who used and exploited the revolutionaries quest for independence. The "Enemy's enemy is my friend" logic was thankfully not made to work by some divine scheme. Note the date, it is no coincidence. In this sense, even before Subash Chandra Bose, Jatin pioneered this technique. Whether it's right or wrong we need not judge. When we enter the subjective age, such errors are bound to take place. Is it inevitable then? Mother says no. She has a solution. A magical potion called Sincerity. But Sri Aurobindo says any development is not perfect in the first few attempts. It takes time. Jatin's example thus falls into this category. India needs this uprirising, what was wanting was the discrimination from whom they sought help. To their credit, they did not know Germany was then an Asuric force.
In the history of Kings, they have all been advised to go away somewhere as a temporary escape so they could come back armed and with time in their favor. But this was not be in the case of Jatin. Even when his compatriots forced him to flee, he didn't. He had come to serve a purpose and he did in the time he got. He wanted to die for the country and he did.
Today also happens to be the 105th dealth anniversary of Jatin.
