The Flame Bearers
A Poem, A Video, A Civilizational Invocation
---
We do not begin with protest. We begin with remembrance.
This poem, titled The Flame-Bearers, was not made to impress. It was made to invoke— nine flames that awakened and carried the Shakti of India forward, not as history, but as breath.
🎥
---
✍🏽 Why This Poem Was Written
I wrote The Flame-Bearers in a moment when India felt both radiant and forgotten. The nation had been spoken of too often as problem, policy, pain.
But a nation is also fire.
So I asked: Who kept the fire alive, when the world tried to put it out?
These nine names rose—not just as facts, but as forces:
Roy, Dayananda, Vivekananda — civilizational consciousness awakened.
Tilak, Pal, Lajpat — the ground shook.
Gandhi, Bose, Bhagat — the will incarnated.
And behind them all: Ma Bharati — not a flag, not a map, but the Flame Herself.
---
🌿 The Full Poem
🔥 The Flame-Bearers
A poem in invocation
🌿 Raja Ram Mohan Roy
He walked before the fire.
In silence, he struck the veil —
Indian by birth, rebel by breath,
He raised Reason like a torch in Bengal's shadowed lanes.
When women burned, he wept.
When men bowed, he stood.
“Let light come in,” he said, and it did.
🪔 Swami Dayananda Saraswati
The Vedas are not old, he roared, you are.
He shattered gods of clay and built minds of steel,
Rising from Gujarat’s dust to ignite the North.
His flame was not gentle — it was cleansing.
"He did not whisper reform. He flung it like fire into blind eyes."
🕊️ Swami Vivekananda
If Dayananda struck, Vivekananda soared.
He rose like a mantra in a suit of thunder,
Unfolding India's soul before the world.
Not a monk who fled —
A monk who returned.
“Arise, awake,” he cried. The Himalayas shivered.
📯 Bal Gangadhar Tilak
Tilak was Earth.
Rooted, unmoved, he bore the storm.
He spun festivals into flags,
Math into resistance,
And turned birthright into battlecry.
"His silence could be misread. Until it struck."
🌊 Bipin Chandra Pal
Pal was wind —
Blazing oratory, a Vedantin’s fury,
He spoke like Agni had swallowed Sanskrit and spat it out in English.
He didn’t build. He awakened.
"A mind set on fire doesn’t need structure. It burns through."
🦁 Lala Lajpat Rai
He was the heart of the lion.
Punjab’s pulse beat in his chest.
A tear and a hammer —
He healed and hit, both.
When the lathi fell, he bled freedom.
“Each drop of his blood, a nail in the empire's coffin.”
⚡ Mahatma Gandhi
He carried no sword.
He spun thread into revolution.
He made salt sacred.
He turned the nation inward until it broke outward.
In his silence, mountains moved.
“Be the change,” he said.
And the Ganges nodded.
🌪️ Subhas Chandra Bose
He was the storm.
Where Gandhi walked, Bose ran.
Through Europe, into jungles, onto ships.
He built an army from exile and gave it the sky.
“Give me blood,” he said. And India felt it in her veins.
🔥 Bhagat Singh
And when all else paused —
He didn’t.
He laughed into death.
A boy with a book and a bomb.
"He didn’t live to see freedom. But freedom lived to see him."
🛕 And behind them all — Ma Bharati.
Not a flag.
Not a map.
But a breathing spirit, ancient and waiting.
And in every flame, She rose.
---
📜 Reflections: What It Means to Me
We often ask: Who will lead us now?
But the better question is:
“What part of these flames already burns within us?”
Roy’s clarity.
Dayananda’s fire.
Vivekananda’s thunder.
Tilak’s rootedness.
Pal’s wind.
Lala’s courage.
Gandhi’s inner revolution.
Bose’s storm.
Bhagat’s smile at death.
They need not be distant relics. They are archetypes alive in our choices, our speech, our refusal to forget.
---
🪔 Final Whisper
If you watch the video, don’t just consume it.
Let it light something.
A thought. A vow. A presence.
Because remembrance is not nostalgia. It is return.
And Ma Bharati is not waiting for applause.
She is waiting for torchbearers.
Comments
Post a Comment