Subhash Chandra Bose
Subhash Chandra Bose, (
Bangla: সুভাষ চন্দ্র বসু
Shubhash Chôndro Boshu) (
January 23,
1897 –
August 18,
1945?
note), also known as
Netaji, was one of the most prominent leaders of the
Indian Independence Movement against the
British Raj. He is immortalised in Indian History for having formed the
Azad Hind Government in exile, and regrouping and leading the
Indian National Army to battle against the allies in
Imphal and
Burma during the
World War II. It is widely regarded that the actions of his nationalist army, and the
revolts that it inspired in the British Indian Armed Forces after the war were one of the main driving forces behind the British decision to relinquish the Raj.
[Dhanjaya Bhat, Writing in The Tribune,Sunday, February 12, 2006. Spectrum Suppl. Which phase of our freedom struggle won for us Independence? Mahatma Gandhi's 1942 Quit India movement or The INA army launched by Netaji Bose to free India or the Royal Indian Navy Mutiny of 1946? According to the British Prime Minister Clement Attlee, during whose regime India became free, it was the INA and the RIN Mutiny of February 18-23 1946 that made the British realise that their time was up in India. An extract from a letter written by P.V. Chuckraborty, former Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court, on March 30 1976, reads thus: "When I was acting as Governor of West Bengal in 1956, Lord Clement Attlee, who as the British Prime Minister in post war years was responsible for India's freedom, visited India and stayed in Raj Bhavan Calcutta for two days`85 I put it straight to him like this: ‘The Quit India Movement of Gandhi practically died out long before 1947 and there was nothing in the Indian situation at that time, which made it necessary for the British to leave India in a hurry. Why then did they do so?' In reply Attlee cited several reasons, the most important of which were the INA activities of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, which weakened the very foundation of the British Empire in India, and the RIN Mutiny which made the British realise that the Indian armed forces could no longer be trusted to prop up the British. When asked about the extent to which the British decision to quit India was influenced by Mahatma Gandhi's 1942 movement, Attlee's lips widened in smile of disdain and he uttered, slowly, ‘Minimal'." http://www.tribuneindia.com/2006/20060212/spectrum/main2.htm.URL accessed on 17-Jul-2006 ][Majumdar, R.C., Three Phases of India's Struggle for Freedom, Bombay, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1967, pp. 58-59.There is, however, no basis for the claim that the Civil Disobedience Movement directly led to independence. The campaigns of Gandhi ... came to an ignoble end about fourteen years before India achieved independence ... During the First World War the Indian revolutionaries sought to take advantage of German help in the shape of war materials to free the country by armed revolt. But the attempt did not succeed. During the Second World War Subhas Bose followed the same method and created the INA. In spite of brilliant planning and initial success, the violent campaigns of Subhas Bose failed ... The Battles for India's freedom were also being fought against Britain, though indirectly, by Hitler in Europe and Japan in Asia. None of these scored direct success, but few would deny that it was the cumulative effect of all the three that brought freedom to India. In particular, the revelations made by the INA trial, and the reaction it produced in India, made it quite plain to the British, already exhausted by the war, that they could no longer depend upon the loyalty of the sepoys for maintaining their authority in India. This had probably the greatest influence upon their final decision to quit India.]Bose was elected president of the
Indian National Congress for two consecutive terms. However, he had to resign from the post in the face of a motion of no-confidence, stemming from ideological conflicts with
Mahatma Gandhi. Bose felt that Mahatma Gandhi's tactics of non-violence would never be sufficient to secure India's independence, and advocated violent resistance. He established a separate political party, the
All India Forward Bloc and continued to call for the full and immediate independence of India from British rule. His stance did not change with the outbreak of War, which he saw as an opportunity to take advantage of British weakness.
He was imprisoned by the British authorities 11 times. At the outset of
World War II, in a daring act of escape from the eyes of the
British, he fled from India, and reached
Germany by a lengthy and dangerous route. He sought an alliance with the Axis powers with the aim of attacking the British in India from the Northwest. When this plan was foiled by the Nazi invasion of the USSR, he headed for
Japan and helped to organise— and later lead— the
Indian National Army, put together from Indian
prisoners-of-war and plantation workers from
Singapore and other parts of
Southeast Asia, against British forces during the Second World War. His political views and the alliances he made with Nazi and other militarist regimes opposed to the British Empire have been the cause of arguments among historians and politicians, with some accusing him of Fascism. He is believed to have died on
18 August,
1945 in a plane crash over
Taiwan, however, contradicting evidence exists regarding his death in the accident.
Subhas Chandra Bose was born to an affluent family in
Cuttack,
Orissa. His father, Janakinath Bose, was a public prosecutor who believed in orthodox nationalism, and later became a member of the
Bengal Legislative Council. Bose was educated at
Fitzwilliam College at
Cambridge University.
In 1920, Bose took the
Indian Civil Service entrance examination and was placed fourth with highest marks in English. However, he resigned from the prestigious Indian Civil Service in April 1921 despite his high ranking in the merit list, and went on to become an active member of India's independence movement. He joined the
Indian National Congress, and was particularly active in its youth wing. However, Bose's ideals did not match with that of Mahatma Gandhi's belief in non-violence. He therefore returned to Calcutta to work under
Chittaranjan Das, the
Bengali freedom fighter and co-founder (with Motilal Nehru) of the Swaraj Party. In 1921, Bose organised a boycott of the celebrations to mark the visit of the
Prince of Wales to India, which led to his imprisonment. In April 1924, Bose was elected to the post of Chief Executive Officer of the newly constituted Calcutta Corporation wherein C R Das was mayor. Though Subhas was entitled to Rs 3000/month as salary but he decided to take half of that amount ie Rs 1500/month, still a very generous amount, considering a schoolteacher earned Rs 50/month in those days. Later, in October that year, Bose was arrested as a suspected terrorist. At first, he was kept in Alipore jail and later he was exiled to
Mandalay in Burma (where earlier Tilak spent 6 years in prison). On January 23 1930, Bose was once again arrested for leading an "independence procession", protesting against British rule in India. After his release from jail on September 25, he was elected as the
Mayor of the City of Calcutta.
Over a span of 20 years, Bose was incarcerated eleven times by the British, either in India or in
Rangoon. He spent many years in various capacities as the Chief Executive Officer of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation , and later as Mayor himself. Along with
Jawaharlal Nehru, he was one of the radical left wing leaders of the Congress Party. He was exiled from India by the British during the mid 1930s to Europe, where he championed India's cause for self-rule before gatherings and conferences. In 1934 he met the love of his life,
Emilie Schenkl, in Vienna, and they were married in 1937 in
Bad Gastein [ Bose, Sarmila. Love in the time of war. The Telegraph. 15 May, 2005. URL accessed on 7 April 2006].
After his father's death, the British authorities allowed him to land at Calcutta's airport only for the religious rites, which would be followed by his swift departure. During this time he traveled extensively in India and in Europe before stating his political opposition to Gandhi. He became the president of the Haripura Indian National Congress in
1938, against Gandhi's wishes. He was elected for a second term in 1939 in Tripuri Congress Session; Gandhi had supported
Pattabhi Sitaramayya and commented "Pattabhi's defeat is my defeat" after learning the election results. Although Bose won the election, Gandhi's continued opposition led to the latter's resignation from the
Working Committee, and the possibility that the rest of the CWC would resign. In the face of this gesture of no-confidence, Bose himself resigned, and was left with no alternative but to form an independent party, the
All India Forward Bloc. Bose also initiated the concept of the
National Planning Committee in 1938.
Bose advocated the approach that the political instability of war-time Britain should be taken advantage of — rather than simply wait for the British to grant independence after the end of the war (which was the view of Gandhi, Nehru and a section of the Congress leadership at the time). In this, he was influenced by the examples of Italian statesmen
Giuseppe Garibaldi and
Giuseppe Mazzini. During his stay in Europe from 1933 to 1936, he met several European leaders and thinkers, including
Benito Mussolini,
Edvard Beneš,
Karl Seitz,
Eamon de Valera,
Romain Rolland and
Alfred Rosenberg. He came to believe that India could achieve political freedom only if it had political, military and diplomatic support from outside, and that an independent nation necessitated the creation of a national army to secure its sovereignty. His correspondence reveals that despite his clear dislike for British subjugation, he was deeply impressed by their methodical and systematic approach and their steadfastedly disciplinarian outlook towards life. In England, he exchanged ideas with British Labour Party leaders and political thinkers like
Lord Halifax,
George Lansbury,
Clement Attlee,
Arthur Greenwood,
Harold Laski,
J.B.S. Haldane, Ivor Jennings,
G.D.H. Cole,
Gilbert Murray and
Sir Stafford Cripps on the future of India. He came to believe that a free India needed Socialist authoritarianism, on the lines of
Turkey's
Kemal Atatürk, for at least two decades.
"The Great Escape"
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Cancelled passport of Bose |
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The famous car that Bose's nephew drove with Bose during the latter's dramatic escape |
On the outbreak of war, Bose advocated a campaign of mass civil disobedience to protest against the Viceroy,
Lord Linlithgow's decision to declare war on India's behalf without consulting the Congress leadership. Having failed to persuade Gandhi of the necessity of this, Bose organised mass protests in Calcutta calling for the 'Holwell Monument' commemorating the
Black Hole of Calcutta, which then stood at the corner of Dalhousie Square, to be removed. He was thrown in jail by the British, but was released following a seven-day hunger strike. Bose's house in Calcutta was kept under surveillance by the CBI, but their vigilance left a good deal to be desired. With two court cases pending, he felt the British would not let him leave the country before the end of the war - it has been suggested that he was desperate to see his wife, who was in
Berlin [ Bose, Sarmila. Love in the time of war. The Telegraph. 15 May, 2005. URL accessed on 7 April 2006]. This set the scene for Bose's "Great Escape" to
Germany, via
Afghanistan and the
Soviet Union. Bose had never been to Afghanistan, and could not speak the local tribal language (
Pashto). For this reason, he enlisted the help of Mian Akbar Shah, then a Forwad Bloc leader in the North West Frontier Province. Shah had been out of India
en route to the
Soviet Union, and suggested a novel disguise for Bose to assume. Since Bose could not speak one word of Pashto, it would make him an easy target of Pashto speakers working for the British. For this reason, Shah suggested that Bose act deaf and dumb, and let his beard grow to mimic those of the tribesmen.
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Bose as the leader of INA |
On
January 19 1941, accompanied by his nephew Sisir K. Bose, Bose gave his watchers the slip and journeyed to Peshawar where he was met at Peshawar Cantonment station by Akbar Shah, Mohammed Shah and Bhagat Ram Talwar. Bose was taken to the home of Abad Khan, a trusted friend of Akbar Shah's. On the 26th January, 1941, Bose began his journey to reach Europe.
In Germany
Having escaped incarceration at home by assuming the guise of a Pathan insurance agent ("Ziaudddin") to reach
Afghanistan, Bose travelled to
Moscow on the passport of an Italian nobleman "Count Orlando Mazzotta". From Moscow, he reached
Rome, and from there he traveled to
Germany, where he instituted the
Special Bureau for India under
Adam von Trott zu Solz, broadcasting on the German-sponsored
Azad Hind Radio. He founded the
Free India Centre in Berlin, and created the
Indian Legion (consisting of some 4500 soldiers) out of Indian prisoners of war who had previously fought for the British in North Africa prior to their capture by
Axis forces. The
Indian Legion was attached to the
Wehrmacht, and later transferred to the
Waffen SS [Rudolf Hartog The Sign of the Tiger (Delhi: Rupa) 2001 pp159-60 ]; its members swore their allegiance to both Hitler and Bose to secure India's independence. At a time, when no one in Germany dared criticise Hitler, Bose was openly critical of Hitler's treatment of Jews, the destruction of democratic institutions in Germany and the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. He was also, however, prepared to envisage an invasion of India via the U.S.S.R. by Nazi troops, spearheaded by the Azad Hind Legion; many have questioned his judgment here, as it seems unlikely that the Germans could have been easily persuaded to leave after such an invasion, which would also have resulted in an Axis victory in the War.
[Sen, S. 1999. Subhas Chandra Bose 1897-1945. From webarchive of this URL. URL accessed on 7 April, 2006.]The lack of interest shown by Hitler in the cause of Indian independence eventually caused Bose to become disillusioned with
Hitler and he decided to leave
Nazi Germany in 1943. He travelled by the German submarine
U-180 around the
Cape of Good Hope to Imperial
Japan (via Japanese submarine
I-29), which helped him raise his army in
Singapore. This was the only civilian transfer across two submarines of two different navies in World War II.
In Japan and South East Asia
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Indian and Azad Hind stamps on Subhas Bose and his Azad Hind Bahini |
The
Indian National Army (INA) was originally founded by the expatriate nationalist leader
Rash Behari Bose, who handed over control of the organisation to Subhas Chandra Bose after his arrival in the Far East in 1943. At its height it consisted of some 85,000 regular troops, including a separate women's army unit named after
Rani Lakshmi Bai (the women's combat army unit was the first of its kind in Asia). These troops were under the aegis of a provisional government, with its own currency, court and civil code, called the
Provisional Government of Free India (or, the
Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind), and recognised by nine
Axis states — Germany, Japan,
Italy, the
Independent State of Croatia,
Wang Jingwei's Government in Nanjing,
Thailand, a provisional government of
Burma,
Manchukuo and Japanese-controlled
Philippines. Of those countries, five were puppet states established by Axis occupation. This government participated as a delegate or observer in the so-called
Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
As the Japanese pressed forward through Burma towards India, some of the INA's troops assisted in the Japanese victory over the British in the battles of
Arakan and
Meiktila, along with the Burmese National Army led by
Ba Maw and
Aung San. A year after the
islands were taken by the Japanese, the Provisional Government and the INA were established in the
Andaman and
Nicobar Islands in the
Bay of Bengal, part of the British Indian Empire under Japanese occupation, which he renamed
Shaheed (Martyr) and
Swaraj (Self-rule). Bose visited the islands on just one occasion late in 1943, when he was carefully screened from the local population by the Japanese authorities, who at that time were torturing the leader of the Indian Independence League on the Islands, Dr. Diwan Singh (who later died of his injuries, in the
Cellular Jail). The islanders made several attempts to alert Bose to their plight, but apparently without success.
[ N. Iqbal Singh The Andaman Story (Delhi: Vikas Publ.) 1978 p249; Jayant Dasgupta Japanese in Andaman & Nicobar Islands. Red Sun over Black Water (Delhi: Manas Publications) 2002 pp67, 73-5. With reference to this it is interesting to note that during the 1970s the leader of the Communist Party in the Lok Sabha, Samar Guha, proposed renaming the Islands once again as Shaheed and Swaraj, as Bose would have wanted. This was strongly opposed by K.R. Ganesh, a Minister in Indira Gandhi's Government, and the one prominent Indian politician to have hailed from the Andamans, on the grounds that Bose had failed the people of the islands in 1943. When asked in debate by Guha whether atrocities had been committed before or after Bose's visit, Ganesh replied "Before, during and after" Dasgupta Red Sun over Black Water p77 ]On the Indian mainland, an Indian Tricolour, modeled after that of the Indian National Congress, was raised for the first time in the town in
Moirang, in
Manipur, in northeastern India. The towns of
Kohima and
Imphal were placed under siege by divisions of the Japanese, Burmese and the
Gandhi and
Nehru Brigades of I.N.A. At the time of the Great
Bengal Famine of
1943, during which millions died of starvation as a consequence of British inefficiency and indifference, Bose had offered (through radio) to provide Burmese rice to the victims of the famine. The British authorities in India (and in the UK) refused the offer, arguing that it was made for propaganda purposes.
Bose had hoped that large numbers of soldiers would desert from the Indian Army when they would discover that INA soldiers were attacking British India from the outside.
[ Bose, Subhas Chandra. Speech at a mass rally, Singapore, 9 July 1943. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose & India's Independence. Tanilnation.org. URL accessed on 7 April 2006] However, this did not materialise on a sufficient scale. Instead, as the war situation worsened for the Japanese, troops began to desert from the INA. At the same time Japanese funding for the army diminished, and Bose was forced to raise taxes on the Indian populations of Malaysia and Singapore, sometimes extracting money by force.
[Toye, H. "The Springing Tiger", pp. 112, 113, 115. Collected from Montgomery,A. Subhas Chandra.... JHR.] When the Japanese were defeated at the battles of
Kohima and
Imphal, the Provisional Government's aim of establishing a base in mainland India was lost forever. The INA was forced to pull back, along with the defeated Japanese Army. Japan's surrender also led to the eventual surrender of the
Indian National Army.
Bose advocated complete freedom for India at the earliest, whereas most of the Congress Committee wanted it in phases, through a Dominion status.
[Subhas Chandra Bose.Itihas.sify.com. URL accessed on 7 April 2006]Even though Bose and
Gandhi had differing ideologies, the latter called Bose the
"Patriot of Patriots" in 1942. Bose admired Gandhi, recognising his importance as a symbol of Indian Nationalism; he called him "The Father of Our Nation" in a radio broadcast from Rangoon in 1944, in which he stated that "I am convinced that if we do desire freedom we must be prepared to wade through blood"
[ "Father of Our Nation" (Address to Mahatma Gandhi over the Rangoon Radio on 6th July 1944) The Essential Writings of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Edited by Sisir K Bose & Sugata Bose (Delhi: Oxford University Press) 1997 pp301-2 ], a statement somewhat at odds with Gandhi's philosophy of non-violence. Thus, although they shared the goal of an Independent India, by 1939 the two had become divided over the tactics which should be used to achieve Indian Independence, and to some degree the form which the post-Independence state should take: Gandhi was hostile to
industrialisation, whilst Bose saw it as the only route to making India strong and self-sufficient (in this he may have been influenced, like many other Indian intellectuals of the time, by reports of the success of the
Soviet five-year plans).
Nehru disagreed with Gandhi on this point as well, though not over the tactics of protest.
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Netaji addressing the nation |
At the time the Second World War began, great divisions existed in the Indian independence movement about whether to exploit the weakness of the British to achieve independence. Some felt that any distinctions between the political allegiances and ideologies of the warring factions of Europe were inconsequential in the face of the possibility of Indian independence, given the fact that the British themselves showed so little respect for democracy or democratic reforms in India. Others felt that it was inappropriate to seek concessions when Britain itself was in peril, or else that pressure was better applied within India and in peaceful fashion, and found that their distaste for Nazi Germany and Japan outweighed any possibility that an alliance with them would bring India's independence closer.
Bose, in particular, was accused of 'collaborating' with the Axis, after he fled to Germany in 1941 and offered Hitler an alliance. He criticized the
British during World War II, saying that while Britain was allegedly fighting for the freedom of the European nations under
Nazi control, it would not grant independence to its own colonies, including
India. It may be observed that along with Nehru, Bose had organized and led protest marches against the Japanese invasion of
Manchuria in 1931, and of China itself in 1938, when he was Congress president. In 1937 he published an article attacking Japanese Imperialism in the Far East, although he betrayed some admiration for other aspects of the Japanese regime
[ "Japan's Role in the Far East" (originally published in the Modern Review in October 1937): "Japan has done great things for herself and for Asia. Her reawakening at the dawn of the present century sent a thrill throughout our Continent. Japan has shattered the white man's prestige in the Far East and has put all the Western imperialist powers on the defensive - not only in the military but also in the economic sphere. She is extremely sensitive - and rightly so - about her self-respect as an Asiatic race. She is determined to drive out the Western powers from the Far East. But could not all this have been achieved without Imperialism, without dismembering the Chinese Republic, without humiliating another proud, cultured and ancient race? No, with all our admiration for Japan, where such admiration is due, our whole heart goes out to China in her hour of trial" The Essential Writings of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Edited by Sisir K. Bose & Sugata Bose (Delhi: Oxford University Press) 1997 p190 ]. Bose's earlier correspondence (prior to 1939) also reflects his deep disapproval of the racist practices of, and annulment of democratic institutions in Nazi Germany
[ Bose to Dr. Thierfelder of the Deutsche Academie, Kurhaus Hochland, Badgastein, 25th March 1936 "Today I regret that I have to return to India with the conviction that the new nationalism of Germany is not only narrow and selfish but arrogant. The recent speech of Herr Hitler in Munich gives the essence of Nazi philosophy......The new racial philosophy which has a very weak scientific foundation stands for the glorification of the white races in general and the German race in particular. Herr Hitler has talked of the destiny of white races to rule over the rest of the world. But the historical fact is that up till now the Asiatics have dominated Europe more than have the Europeans dominated Asia. One only has to consider the repeated invasions of Europe by Mongols, the Turks, the Arabs (Moors), the Huns, and other Asiatic races to understand the strength of my argument...." The Essential Writings of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Edited by Sisir K. Bose & Sugata Bose (Delhi: Oxford University Press) 1997 p155]. He also, however, expressed admiration for the authoritarian methods (though not the racial ideologies) which he saw in Italy and Germany during the 1930s, and thought they could be used in building an independent India
[Sen, S. 1999. Subhas Chandra Bose 1897-1945. From webarchive of this URL.]. Nevertheless, Bose's tenure as Congress Party President (1938-39) did not reflect any particular anti-democratic or authoritarian attributes
[ Montgomery, A.Subhas Chandra Bose and India's Struggle for Independence. pp2-5. Journal of Historical Review. March-April 1994. (Vol. 14, No. 2)]. Rather, his role then was more that of a negotiator, and a consensus-builder within the ranks of the senior Congress leadership (led by
Mahatma Gandhi,
Sardar Patel and
Jawaharlal Nehru and others) on the one hand, and the
Muslim League (led by
Mohammed Ali Jinnah) on the other.
Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Anton Pelinka and Leonard Gordon have remarked that Bose's skills were best illustrated at the negotiating table, rather than on the battlefield.
That Bose eventually changed his political stance (which initially was that of Gandhi and Nehru) reflects his deep discontent with the nature of the British rule, and a growing belief that the formation of an Indian free state was too far into the future on the British political roadmap to be acceptable. At the Tripuri Congress session of 1939, he made his views quite explicit - he demanded for a programme of immediately giving the British Government a six-months ultimatum to grant the national demand of independence and of launching a mass civil disobedience movement if it failed to do so. He believed that "... the country was internally more ripe for a revolution than ever before and that the coming international crisis would give India an opportunity for achieving her emancipation, which is rare in human history."
[The Congress Resigns. indhistory.com].
Bose's judgment in allying with the Japanese has been questioned, as many argue that he would have been unable to ensure an independent India had he ridden to power on Japanese bayonets, and was in danger of being turned into a puppet ruler like Pu-yi, the last Chinese Emperor in
Manchukuo. In 1943
Rash Behari Bose had urged this on him during his last visit to Subhas Bose in Singapore, pointing out that the Japanese had claimed right of conquest in Manchuria and would do so in India, whilst Quit India had shown that this would not be accepted by the Indian Nation
[ C.A. Bayly & T. Harper Forgotten Armies. The Fall of British Asia 1941-5 (London) 2004 p327; A.M. Nair An Indian Freedom Fighter in Japan (New Delhi) 1985 p230 ]. Bose may have believed that the people of India would be with him, and that therefore he would be able to resist Japanese demands. He knew that India was a long way from Japan, and that the Japanese were already at the limits of their capabilities. He also pointed out that the American revolutionaries had accepted assistance from France, and this didn't make the US a French colony
[Sen, S. 1999. Subhas Chandra Bose 1897-1945. From webarchive]. Nevertheless, given the INA's overwhelming dependence on Japanese military support, he would have been in a very weak position. Bose also seems to have ignored the
appalling treatment meted out by the Japanese to the Asian inhabitants of the lands they conquered as part of the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity sphere, which included the forcible recruitment of labour from the overseas Indian population to build projects such as the
Burma Railway, and massacres of Malayan Chinese in Singapore where he spent most of the War.
[ Nicholas Tarling (Ed.) The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia Vol.II part 2. From World War II to the Present (Cambridge) 1999 p8 ]Bose has been branded as a fascist in some quarters. Others believe that Bose had clearly expressed his belief that democracy was the best option for India.
[Roy, Dr. R.C. 2004. Social, Economic and Political Philosophy of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. pp.7-8. Orissa Review. URL accessed on 6 April 2006] The pro-Bose thinkers believe that his authoritarian control of the Indian National Army was based on political pragmatism and a post-colonial recovery doctrine rather than any anti-democratic belief.. However, during the war (and possibly as early as the 1930s) Bose seems to have decided that no democratic system could be adequate to overcome India's poverty and social inequalities, and he wrote that an authoritarian state, similar to that of Soviet Russia (which he had also seen and admired) would be needed for the process of national re-building
[ "The Fundamental Problems of India" (An address to the Faculty and students of Tokyo University, November 1944): "You cannot have a so-called democratic system, if that system has to put through economic reforms on a socialistic basis. Therefore we must have a political system - a State - of an authoritarian character. We have had some experience of democratic institutions in India and we have also studied the working of democratic institutions in countries like France, England and United States of America. And we have come to the conclusion that with a democratic system we cannot solve the problems of Free India. Therefore, modern progressive thought in India is in favour of a State of an authoritarian character" The Essential Writings of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Edited by Sisir K. Bose & Sugata Bose (Delhi: Oxford University Press) 1997 pp319-20 ]. Accordingly some suggest that Bose's alliance with the Axis during the war was based on more than just pragmatism, and that Bose may have been a Fascist, though not a Nazi; alternatively, others consider he might have been using populist methods of mobilization common to many postcolonial leaders.
[Sen, S. 1999. Subhas Chandra Bose 1897-1945. From webarchive of this URL.][ Montgomery, A.Subhas Chandra Bose and India's Struggle for Independence. pp2-5. Journal of Historical Review. March-April 1994. (Vol. 14, No. 2)].
Had either of the alliances he forged during the war resulted in Indian independence in the manner he envisaged, it would have been at the cost of an Allied defeat in the Second World War, a price that some Indians would argue is too high: Gandhi himself, in the immediate aftermath of the war, said that Bose had been "foolish in imagining, that by allying himself with the Japanese and the Germans, who were not only aggressive Powers, but also dangerous Powers, he could get Indian freedom"
[ Nirad C. Chaudhuri "Subhas Chandra Bose-His Legacy and Legend" Pacific Affairs Vol. 26, No. 4 (Dec. 1953), pp. 351]. The alternative of non-violent protest within India espoused by Gandhi and the rest of Congress ultimately led to British withdrawal, albeit at the expense of the partition of the country along communal lines. Even before 1939, Congress had secured political concessions from the British in the form of elected Provincial Assemblies, and an agreement that the British taxpayer would foot the bill for Indian re-armament
[ Keith Jeffery "The Second World War" The Oxford History of the British Empire Vol.IV The Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press) 1999 p312 ]. Although it was rejected by Congress at the time, the 1942
Cripps mission's offer of full independence after the war could be considered the point at which the British departure became inevitable
[ Judith Brown Modern India. The Origins of an Asian Democracy 2nd Edition (Oxford) 1994 pp293-316, 328 ]. Britain's weakness after the war, and domestic political pressure on the Labour Government also made British withdrawal more likely. Publicly at least, Bose never believed that this would happen unless they were driven out by force: as late as 1944 he announced that "I am honestly convinced that the British Government will never recognise India's demand for independence"
["Father of Our Nation" (Address to Mahatma Gandhi over the Rangoon Radio on 6th July 1944) The Essential Writings of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Edited by Sisir K Bose & Sugata Bose (Delhi: Oxford University Press) 1997 p301]. In this he was mistaken.
Yet it may be equally true that he would never have accepted the partition of India as true independence, just as Gandhi always refused to accept that the people of India were two separate nations. Some would also argue that it was the activities and spectre of the INA and what Bose represented which convinced the British imperial administration to hand over a divided India to the Congress and the Muslim League.
[ Dhananjaya Bhat- "RIN mutiny gave a jolt to the British" this URL] They also consider it a backhanded tribute to Bose that the Congress tricolor and the Muslim League green flag flew together for the last time during the
mutiny of the Indian navy in Bombay unleashed in 1946 by popular fury at the trial of INA officers by the British.
[ wikipedia entry on the Bombay Mutiny[1]; Nirad C. Chaudhuri "Subhas Chandra Bose-His Legacy and Legend" Pacific Affairs Vol. 26, No. 4 (Dec. 1953), pp. 349-350 ]. This view is popular in India and among Indian Historians
[ibid] today, but finds little support amongst historians. With hindsight, however, it is admissible that Bose's original goal of starting mass militant revolution among the Indians once his army reached India was certainly the way history acted out, with the stories of the
INA inspiring the British Indian Armed forces into increasingly rebellious resentment.
There is no doubt that Bose was a great patriot
[ Montgomery, A.Subhas Chandra Bose and India's Struggle for Independence. pp2-5. Journal of Historical Review. March-April 1994. (Vol. 14, No. 2)], and was considered as such even by his rivals in the Congress. Gandhi himself wrote that Bose's "... patriotism is second to none"
[ Gandhi, Mohandas K. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Ahmedabad: The Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, Navajivan Trust, 1972-78), Volume LXXXIII, p. 135], and he was moved to proclaim after Bose's disappearance that he was a "prince among patriots" - a reference to Bose's achievement in integrating women and men from all the regions and religions of India in the Indian National Army.
[Bose, Sugata - Maximum Leader, India Today [2]]Bose wanted freedom for India at the earliest opportunity, and to some extent, he didn't care who he had to approach for assistance
[Sen, S.Subhas Chandra Bose 1897-1945. From webarchive]. It is thus quite understandable that he remains a controversial figure to this day.
Bose's famous words "Give me blood, and I shall give you freedom!" (which in Hindi translates to
तुम मुझे खून दो, मैं तुम्हें अाज़ादी दूगँा! ) whereby he urged the people of India to join him in his fight against the British Raj. Spoken at a rally of Indians in Burma, July 4, 1944.A close parallel would be Patrick Henry's "Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death". Spoken in Hindi, Bose's words are highly evocative and are considered an important milestone in the Indian freedom struggle.
His other famous quote was,
चलो दिल्ली!, meaning "On to Delhi!
. This was the call he used to give the INA armies to motivate them. जय हिन्द!
, or, Victory to India!'' was another epithet used by him and later adopted by the Government of India.
In
1941, when the British learned that Bose had sought the support of the
Axis Powers, they ordered their agents to intercept and kill Bose before he reached Germany. A recently declassified intelligence document refers to a top-secret instruction to the
Special Operations Executive (SOE) of British intelligence to murder Bose.
The decision was extraordinary, unusual and rare, and it seemed that the British took Bose much more seriously than many had thought. In fact, the plan to liquidate Bose has few parallels, and appears to be a last desperate measure against a man whose uncompromising radicalism had seriously worried the leadership of the
British Empire [Bhaumik S, British "attempted to kill Bose" BBC news. 15 August 2005. URL accessed on 6 April 2006].
The INA is fondly remembered by some Japanese historians, who see the Japanese efforts to support Bose as proof of their view that Japan really was fighting on behalf of the oppressed peoples of Asia. In addition, the INA is seen by some as an organisation devoid of the divisive energies of
parochialism that have since plagued Indian politics.
Bose's portrait hangs in the
Indian Parliament, and a statue has been erected in front of the
West Bengal Legislative Assembly.
Bose was posthumously awarded the
Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award in 1992, but was later withdrawn in response to a
Supreme Court directive following a Public Interest Litigation filed in the Court against the "
posthumous" nature of the award. The Award Committee could not give conclusive evidence of Bose's death and thus it invalidated the "posthumous" award.
Kolkata's civil airport and
a university have been named after him.
Bose was believed to have died in a plane crash over
Taiwan, while flying to
Tokyo on
18 August 1945. However, his body was never recovered, and theories concerning his possible survival abound. One such claim is that Bose actually died in
Siberia, while in
Soviet captivity. Several committees were set up by the government of India to probe into this matter.
In May 1956, a four-man Indian team (known as Shah Nawaz Committee) visited Japan to probe the circumstances of Bose's alleged death. The Indian government did not then requested assistance from the government of Taiwan in the matter, citing their lack of diplomatic relations with Taiwan. However, as far back as 1956, the Government of Formosa, as Taiwan was then called, informed a British investigation that no air crash had occurred in that country between August and October 1945. Details are available in the book "Netaji - Dead or Alive?" by Indian ex-MP, late Shri Samar Guha. The G D Khosla Commission (1970-1974) too could not reach to any conclusion as it failed to take inputs from Taiwan. Published in 1978, Guha's book is the first-ever and easily the most comprehensive compilation on the Netaji disappearance mystery, which effectively trashes the Taihoku air crash story. On the basis of this book, Mr. Morarji Desai, the then Prime Minister of India, rejected the G D Khosla Commission report in Parliament in 1978.
However, the Inquiry Commission under
Justice Mukherjee, which investigated the Bose disappearance mystery in the period 1999-2005, did approach the Taiwanese government and obtained information from the Taiwan Government that no plane carrying Bose had ever crashed in Taipei [
3]. The Mukherjee Commission also received a report originating from the US State Department, supporting the claim of the Taiwan Government that no such air crash took place during that time frame [
4].
There are theories of political effort to classify information on the death mystery. In fact, according to some, Nehru did not wish to unveil the mystery behind Bose's disappearance and led to hushing of some important documents.
[ Namboodiri, U. Despite Formosa probe, Nehru closed chapter on Netaji. The Pioneer. URL accessed on 7 April 2006] It has been reported that a conversation reportedly took place between
Josef Stalin and
Vyacheslav Molotov in 1946 about whether Bose should remain in the Soviet Union, although he is supposed to have died the year before. There are theories that Bose had kept contact with the Soviets after the defeat of the Axis powers became apparent, and travelled to Manchuria instead of Taiwan (Manchuria was occupied by the Soviets in the final days of the war).
The Mukherjee Commission submitted its report to the Indian Government on November 8, 2005. The report was tabled in Parliament on May 17, 2006. The probe said in its report that Bose did not die in the plane crash and the ashes at Renkoji temple are not his. However, the Indian Government rejected the findings of the Commission.
Cinema
Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero, was a
2005 film made in
Hindi and
English, directed by
Shyam Benegal.
*
Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose was a
1966 Hindi film directed by Hemen Gupta.
*
Subhas Ghare Fere Nai(
Subhas Did Not Return Home) was a 1958
Bengali film.
*
Pehla Aadmi(
The First Man) was a
1950 Hindi film directed by
Bimal Roy.
Documentary / Television
The Century of Warfare, was a
1994 English language documentary in made in the
USA shows archival footage of Netaji.
War of the Springing Tiger was a
1984 English language documentary made in the
UK for
Channel 4 which examines the role of the Indian National Army during the Second World War.
*
Emilie Schenkl*
Lakshmi Sehgal*
Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon*
Angami Zapu Phizo*
All India Forward Bloc*
All India Netaji Revolutionary Party*
Axis Powers
* Indian Pilgrim: an unfinished autobiography / Subhas Chandra Bose ; edited by Sisir Kumar Bose and Sugata Bose, Oxford University Press, Calcutta, 1997
* Netaji -
Dead or Alive? / Samar Guha ; 1978
* The Indian Struggle, 1920-1942 / Subhas Chandra Bose ; edited by Sisir Kumar Bose and Sugata Bose, Oxford University Press, Calcutta, 1997
* Brothers Against the Raj -- A biography of Indian Nationalists Sarat and Subhas Chandra Bose / Leonard A. Gordon, Princeton University Press, 1990
* Lost hero: a biography of Subhas Bose / Mihir Bose, Quartet Books, London ; 1982
* Democracy Indian style: Subhas Chandra Bose and the creation of India's political culture / Anton Pelinka ; translated by Renée Schell, New Brunswick, NJ : Transaction Publishers (Rutgers University Press), 2003
* Subhas Chandra Bose: a biography / Marshall J. Getz, Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Co., USA, 2002
* The Springing Tiger: Subhash Chandra Bose / Hugh Toye : Cassell, London, 1959
* Netaji and India's freedom: proceedings of the International Netaji Seminar, 1973 / edited by Sisir K. Bose. International Netaji Seminar (1973: Calcutta, India), Netaji Research Bureau, Calcutta, India, 1973
* Correspondence and Selected Documents, 1930-1942 / Subhas Chandra Bose ; edited by Ravindra Kumar, Inter-India, New Delhi, 1992.
* Letters to Emilie Schenkl, 1934-1942 / Subhash Chandra Bose; edited by Sisir Kumar Bose and Sugata Bose, Permanent Black : New Delhi, 2004
* Japanese-trained armies in Southeast Asia: independence and volunteer forces in World War II / Joyce C. Lebra, New York : Columbia University Press, 1977
* Jungle alliance, Japan and the Indian National Army / Joyce C. Lebra, Singapore, Donald Moore for Asia Pacific Press,1971
* The Forgotten Army: India's Armed Struggle for Independence / Peter Ward Fay, Calcutta: Rupa & Co., 1994
