People like Pande were not only our links with the past but they were repositories of the history of that period. He penned some of it in his memorable works on Hindu-Muslim unity -- as also on India-China friendship. Rajiv Gandhi had persuaded him to write on the history of the Congress during the party's centenary celebrations which he did.

Pande and those of his time had managed to symbolise Hindu- Muslim unity without baiting either the Hindus or distrusting the Muslims. The Congress started tolose its base in the north when it antagonised one community in order to retain the support of the other, in the process losing large sections of both.

That the past shapes the present goes without saying. And a nation is held together by its symbols. The BSP's attack on Gandhi was problematic not because it criticised an icon but because of the denigration of a national symbol. Today, there is a need for a national response in the wake of sanctions and the international community's attempts to isolate India. These things don't happen automatically.

There is so much valuable information and experience which is disappearing with those -- like Bishamber Nath Pande -- who are moving on and we are not able to capture it as we should. There are places of historical leg-acy which are delaying but we are doing precious little about it.

Take the Harijan Basti in Delhi, where Gandhi lived for a period. It was here that negotiations with the Cabinet Mission took place and the Working Committee of the Congressdecided to go in for the country's partition. It should have been a place of pilgrimage for the visitors who come to the capital from all over the country. But if you visit the colony you may well miss the "memorial".

The story of the heroes of freedom should have been recreated with imagination by our best theatre and film people, with sound and lights, using and modern innovations of technology and communications, for the children of India. They should have thronged these places in this fiftieth year of independence which is about to end with no more than ritualistic noises.

One natural way of improving relations with our neighbours is to preserve and upgrade the places of common heritage with a sense of togetherness. There is in Myanmar the "mazar" of Bahadur Shah Zafar, India's first freedom fighter who fought the 1857 war of independence. There is Gandhi's ashram in Noakhali now in Bangladesh which could do with more funds. There is the spot in Lahore where the resolution for full independencewas passed at a Congress session on January 26, 1930. Congress workers used to read it on that day for years afterwards. It was their charter.

The building at 7, Jantar Mantar in New Delhi should have been a national monument. After independence the headquarters of the Congress shifted here from Swaraj Bhavan in Allahabad, with much of the written history of the party transferred in the forms of books, papers, photographs. Little is known of what has happened to these papers or what condition they are in.

It was after the split in the Congress that the office was taken over by the Congress(O) which later merged in the Janata Party. In a farsighted move, anticipating the disintegration of the Janata Party, S.K.Patil floated a Sardar Patel Trust to own the property, but it did not get registered in time. Officially housing the Janata Dal, with its spit-covered walls and broken steps, this dilapidated property is the story of how we treat our heritage.

The Congress has shown little interest in preservingits rich legacy. Some efforts were made during Narasimha Rao's time but it was too little too late. The Congress woke up to the 50th year of independence only when it felt that the BJP may hijack its "ancestors" after L. K. Advani undertook his Swarna Jayanti Yatra, and tried to link itself not just to Deendayal Upadhyaya or Shyama Prasad Mukherji or Guru Golwalkar but also to Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and Bhagat Singh.

Today it falls on the BJP government to build/renovate/preserve these historical monuments. Such a contribution would not only find a natural way to associate itself with the freedom movement,but would do a national service.

Admittedly this is no more than tokenism. For it is not going to be easy to unify the nation without addressing the real issues of a divided polity, a flawed electoral system, a fractured process of power. They have spawned the divisive forces over the last fifty years.

But one way to make a beginning is to identify with, and draw sustenance from, the symbols of therecent past which helped to fight an imperial enemy within. Introducing people to their heritage is only a starting point.