Adopt Netaji's slogans of unity, faith: Prez to youths

The country's youth should adopt Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose's slogans of 'unity, faith and sacrifice', President Pranab Mukherjee said today.
In his message to the Netaji Research Bureau, Kolkata, Mukherjee said the life and sacrifices of Subhash Chandra Bose act as a beacon light for future generations and people should work towards making a strong, prosperous and progressive India.
The President asked the youths to once again adopt "the slogan of 'Ittefaq Itmad Kurbani' or Unity, Faith, Sacrifice as the clarion call of our nation."
"The life and sacrifices of Netaji serve as beacon light for future generations. Our true homage to Netaji would be to work with dedication to make our country for whose sake Netaji sacrificed his everything, so strong, prosperous and progressive that it may one day become a great power in the world," Mukherjee said in the message on Netaji's 118th birth anniversary.

Netaji had believed that free India would become, by example, an alternative model for a post-colonial world through economic equity and a social revolution inspired by harmony between communities that had been misled into hostility, the President said.
Propelled by freedom of faith, gender equality and economic justice for all, India will become a modern nation, he said, remembering the freedom fighter.

The President said the place of Subhas Chandra Bose is "unique" in the history of India's freedom struggle. Netaji was unanimously elected Rashtrapati of the 51st session of the Indian National Congress held in Haripura in February 1938.

His Presidential address at the session was a masterpiece of vision and action. He talked not only of freedom but also of reconstruction and the need for planning by setting up a Planning Committee, Mukherjee said.
Netaji had called for the gradual socialisation of the entire agricultural and industrial system and reminded delegates that "our chief national problems are eradication of poverty, illiteracy and disease", the President said.