India, Jan. 23 -- Some memories endure not because they are precise, but because they capture a deeper truth.In my school days, a play was staged on Independence Day. The boy playing Subhas Chandra Bose wore NCC khakis and a Gurkha cap. He looked nothing like the calendar portraits of Netaji, yet when he raised his finger and thundered, 'Comrades! Let your battle cry be-To Delhi! To Delhi!' something irreversible entered the imagination.

The play ended with Jai Hind - not merely a slogan, but a salutation that distilled India's diversity into a single ethical address. Long before I understood geopolitics or war, I understood this much: Subhas Chandra Bose was a man who spoke as if time itself could be compelled to move.That refusal to wa...