‘‘Tum mujhe khoon do, mein tumhe azaadi doonga’’. ‘‘You give me blood, I will give you freedom.’’ India was awoken from her reverie of peace to the ultimate truth that, freedom required courage, notcompromise; that, freedom had a value of incessant struggle, not the price of negotiations, by a leader par excellence – Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.
There was a juncture in India’s recent history where two of her brave sons left the prestigious Indian Civil Services as a mark of their love for their motherland. While one turned to spirituality, the other marched towards an armed resistance. Yes, while Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual conquest still inspires societies worldwide, the iron rooted military tradition began by Netaji continues to be India’s greatest guardian.
Almost 123 years since his birth, Netaji’s risky life and daring deeds have never stopped amazing us. And even amidst very recent theories revolving around his alleged death in a plane crash, it is his keen intellect, and unbreakable organisational skills which often make Indians dream about the superpower independent India would have become with Netaji leading it from the forefront. But destiny or rather the writers of India’s destiny had planned a different story for her.
Netaji was a man whose thoughts paced ahead of his time. For all the latest agitation against patriarchy and misogyny which is flooding social media today, Netaji was the first amongst his contemporaries who gave importance to women in a field dominated by men – The Army. The Rani of Jhansi Regiment of the Azad Hind Fauj whichwas headed by Capt.Lakshmi Sehgal still stands as a testimony of those times when India’s freedom struggle was fought by relentless warriors of grit who believed in the message of the sword and not in the peace advocated by the alphabets against an enemy with ulterior motives and questionable methods.
The political sphere of the world’s largest democracy has been, for decades together, the epicentre for appeasement tactics. And at a time when harmony between religions was gaining greater momentum than the freedom struggle, people from all faiths closely worked with Netaji in the course of his eventful life. Though their vested interests prevented them from taking up the matter of Netaji’s disappearance later on, these associates were living refutations of mundane theories propagated those days about ceaselessly caressing the unfound insecurities of a particular minority community alone.1
Dynamism was yet another priceless facet of this great visionary. He was an admirer of the socialism of Soviet Russia and also wanted a similar regime in independent India. He was influenced by the teachings of Swami Vivekananda and emulated the latter’s value based approach to humanity. To be put in Netaji’s own words, ‘‘my headmaster had roused my aesthetic and moral sense – had given a new impetus to my life – but he had not given me an ideal to which I could give my whole being. That Vivekananda gave me. For days, weeks, months I pored over his works…” Swamiji, whom
Netaji described as the maker of modern India was his ideal and inspiration in pursuing the moral progress of India by remaining rooted to the culture and heritage which form the cornerstone of India’s universal approach to mankind. Therefore, it would be utterly baseless, for those who discard anything Indian, and even claim that Netaji’s thoughts resonated with the opinions voiced by their leaders of yesteryears, in the name of liberalism.2
In the present day globalised world, where we see summits being hosted by countries, pacts being entered into and also conventions being followed, we had a hero in Netaji who, much before the advent of such an integrated world, could predict the positives in having friends on an international level. This however, should not be spitefully misconstrued as being subservient to the agenda of other nations. Also, it should not be made similar to the alliances forged in the time of the World War. This was because; Netaji was the lone leader in his country who engaged in foreign friendship even in the face of deliberate opposition from his contemporaries in India. Yet another incident which might give shape to a controversy is Netaji’s meeting with Hitler. The basic rationale behind this meeting was that Netaji felt that the ruthlessness of Hitler was needed in tackling the brutality of the British. Not that such a humane leader accepted the gruesome atrocities being meted out by the Nazis in Germany which was then dominated by them.
There has always been a false narrative in India that nonviolence was the primary cause for attainment of independence and that the role played by other leaders was only secondary.Successive governments with unhealthy political motives have always reduced the magnitude of Netaji’s contributions into a mere paragraph in school curriculum. It is such a melancholy state of affairs of our nation that students are taught to enjoy freedom, without even knowing to whom they should attribute their freedom. The trial of INA prisoners of war, Netaji’s enormous contact circles outside India, especially in Europe and East Asia and his ideas which blended socialism and spirituality, even today remain as mere distant echoes of a leader who has been long forgotten.
According to Clement Atlee, the British Prime Minister at the time of Independence, the role played by the so called heroes of freedom struggle was ‘minimal’ compared to the impact the trial of INA prisoners of war created in the minds of the people of India. Revolt among the soldiers of the then British Indian Army, their subsequent induction into the INA and a general sense of dissatisfaction among the masses of India due to this, is what gave the final warning signal to the British to end their cruel colonisation of India.
The first of the INA trials of 1945 was the joint one of Shah Nawaz and Prem Sahgal and Gurubaksh Singh Dhillon followed by the trials of Abdul Rashid, Shinghara Singh, Fateh Khan and Captain Malik Munawar Khan Awan. The fact that people from different faiths came together for the greater cause of the motherland also caught public admiration. This was followed by mutinies from the then Royal Indian Navy. Many eminent Congress leaders including Jawaharlal Nehru who had long given up his practice as a lawyer took up the defence of the INA prisoners. The Congress formed a Defence Committee consisting of 17 advocates including Bhulabhai Desai. Gandhi held apparently inspiring sermons with the INA war heroes. Being newly inspired by Gandhi and given secure positions by the establishment in post-Independent India, these soldiers began to forget their real mentor. And even as his followers joined hands with those pseudo revolutionaries, idealists and moderates who once opposed themstaunchly, Netaji, the focal point of modern India’s strength had already faded into the lesser known depths of history.
Fast forward to the 21st century, today we are passing through ironical times when those same critics who were committed to the character assassination of Netaji and ridiculed his idea of developing international allies, praise him and claim him as one among them. ‘Tojo’s Dog’(named after Hideki Tojo, Japanese PM at the time of World War II), he was nicknamed by the Indian followers of Soviet Russia and China. This sheer audacity came from the basic reason that not India’s freedom, but unwavering blind devotion to a foreign ideology even at the cost of the motherland was their sole motto. At a time when this man, in all his grandeur, commanded the respect of the youth of India, the major political figures of the country, nearing old age was busy trying to reap the fruits of the hard work of their youthful days, and was even willing for going into unfair compromises with the British Government. Participation in governance had long overtaken the quest for freedom and it was in this scenario that India needed a leader who uncompromisingly put the freedom of his motherland above everything else. The Presidential elections of the Indian National Congress in 1938 where Netaji was elected the President is ample proof to the large support wielded by him in India, especially among the younger generation. After eight decades of this election, the pathetically partial retelling of our freedom struggle makes us realise that Netaji’s electoral win was not anyone’s failure but rather a clear reflection of the extent to which Netaji had risen by then. His steep rise can be further noticed by the formation of the Forward Bloc in 1939, 4 days after his resignation from the INC at the AICC meeting in Calcutta on 29 April 1939.Just as the name sounds, the Forward Bloc consisted of people from Congress with very forward ideas and thinking. Arguments might be issued forth that even Netaji wanted the Indian National Congress to lead independent India in its reconstruction from colonialism. But this opinion should be analysed in the backdrop of the social scenario of India back then. Indian National Congress was the only major political organization which existed in the country during the freedom struggle and almost all freedom fighters with conflicting as well as likeminded views traced the early beginnings of their social service and political life to this very organization. With the passage of time, many, due to differences of opinion fell out from the Congress. Favouritism and the politics of forming cliques within the organization forced even Netaji to resign from the Indian National Congress. But by and large, the INC dominated the political field of the nation and this was exactly the reason why Netaji wanted reforms in the mind-set of the moderates in Congress. For, he believed in reformation, not the absolute eradication of Indian National Congress. But the decades-long journey of India since 1947 would have made Netaji realise that in certain unchangeable circumstances putting a full-stop was far better than positive modifications.
Meanwhile, the discipline displayed by the budding members of a young nationalist organisationhad long back left a mark in Netaji’s mind. Further he and the organisation’s founder were colleagues in the Congress party. Impressed by their military-like marching style and overall conduct, Netaji expressed his desire to meet him and met him at Nagpur in June 1940. However,the latter was seriously ill and unable to speak and passed away soon. There are two varying inferences to this meeting. While one group says that Netaji came to discuss ‘issues of national importance’, another group says that the meeting was to lay down the foundation of a future alliance between them. Whether it was an alliance or a mere discussion, this failed meeting didn’t cause any loss to either of the leaders. Rather, it was the common man of India who was denied thefruit of the congregation of two of the greatest minds that ever existed in India – Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose of the INA and Dr. Keshav Baliram Hedgewar- founder of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the greatest cultural service organisation that India has ever seen.
Subtle fascism and using one of the oldest political parties of the world as a means for mildly imposing a particular impractical ideology is sadly and undoubtedly the root reason as to why independent India was denied the light of Netaji’s leadership. Even in 2020, the speculations around Netaji’s disappearance and supposed death in the air crash at Taihoku in August 18, 1945 refuse to die down. There are people who believe that he was held a prisoner of war at Siberia and died in the gulags there. There are yet others who believe that Netaji did come back to India and lived as Gumnami Baba, a sadhu who lived in Faizabad in late 1970s and 1980s. The Figges Report and the Shah Nawaz Commission (which had Netaji’s brother Suresh Bose as its member) gave the conclusion that Netaji indeed perished at the air crash at Taihoku. The Khosla commission also reiterated the same in its legal language (as the lone member of the Commission, GD Khosla was a retired Justice of the Punjab High Court) even while pondering over the other explanations of Netaji’s disappearance and sightings.The Mukherjee Commission was of the conclusion Netaji did not die in the plane crash of 1945. It said that his death and cremation were fabricated with the cooperation of the Japanese military authorities and of Habibur Rahman who was with Netaji in the flight from Taipei to Tokyo.
Netaji’s secularism did not mean unethically favouring a particular minority alone. His vision of woman empowerment included dedication to duties more than demanding of rights. His appreciation for Mazzini, the creator of ‘Young Italy’ never discarded the Indian-ness ingrained in him.His support for socialism did not imply the blind imitation of any foreign intellectual who advocates an even more foreign ideology. The international scale of alliances never made him place foreign interests before his country’s.
A Karmayogi in the true sense of the word, Netaji and his life shall remain as perennial and relevant as ever in India. It would be a gross injustice to bring this leader under the category of freedom fighters alone. For, through the methods he devised for the freedom struggle, Netaji gave insight for a hundred generations on how to fearlessly assert independence without relenting to any established force-foreign or native.
A nation which is facing anti nationalism in the name of progressive intellect is made to remember a man who used progressive methods for the upliftment of his countrymen. A society which sings the praise of treacherous terrorists has forgotten a visionary with the real iron grip. So called think-tanks who misuse their power of criticism to settle political scores, should learn from a hero who never targeted back an organisation which tried to demoralize him, his views and his methods. All this was possible by him only because personal interests never existed in his dictionary. Nepotism was a word unknown to him. India was his first priority and her wellbeing was the sole mission of his life.
Indeed, through autumn and spring, this nation needs him. India’s conviction will never forget him. He presented us with the courage that we possess today. And as long as conscience does not bid goodbye to this land, the grandeur of the legend of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose shall forever inspire us.
