Translating Gita 2.47or inventing the national motto

Abstract

PREAMBLE Sandip~lhe fl flamboyant patriot, the dashing fire-eating swadeshi immortalized by Rabindranath in the novel GhareBaire ('Home and the World')-at a point of stress breaks with his far too ornate style and shies away from his habitual pyrotechnics. For once he leaves behind the subterfuge of convoluted expressions and goes for the simplicity of the unclutte red. And, in making the passage from the inflammatory to the unadorned, from the prolix to the bare, Sandip supplies the readers with the clue vital to the unmasking of his own political enterprise-he gives his game away with almost child-like naivety. Sandip, of course, is too clever to make the clue public. He takes care to keep that one moment of rare candor secret-he buries it in his personal diary.