Subash Chandra Bose, an American Historian and Politics A Terrible deplorable Mixture

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

The book on the right is a collection of short essays. reviews and reflections of a Historian well entrenched in the "South Asia" baliwick. A Jewish heritage amkes him natrually drift to the left of the political spectrum, but when it comes to India we find him squarely with the Congress on all key issues. His book Brothers Against the Raj was based on material found and curated in the Netaji Research Bureau and and therefore presents the lives of Sarat and Subash from a perspective that does not annoy the family. However there is one very offensive line that I eake stong exception to: "British documents of the period note the he (Subash Chandra Bose) was presumed dead. If found alive, he would have been the only civilian tried (p.385). Tried for what Mr, Gordon? The implication of this sinsiter line is that Bose was guilty of collaborating with the Germans and the Japansese on whom the British Raj had declared war. Now it is very clear that being a subject state India had no say in this decision and Indians are at liberty to use the situation created by World War II to puruse its Independence. Leonard Gordon has crossed a line in making this absurd remark. Let me bring in the analogy of General Charles de Gaulle.

After the defeat and surrender of France, Col De Gaulle deserted Ftance and set up the Fighting France and sought soldiers in Algiers to join his force. It was only the good will of Winston Churchill that made de Gaulle join the victory parade after Liberation though his Fightin France had done precious little. And France will not question this politically convenient interpretation as (a) avoided the stigma of collaboration (b) avoided the consequences of defeat in that France was rewarded a victor and got a permanent seat on the Security Council. A defeated nation that collaborated with Germany becamr free of moral and political stain and Subash Chandra Bose who like Gaulle faught for his Nation has to be "tried" as Japan was defeated. Had the tables been turned the results would have been different.

Leonard Gordon has shown how easily his "white privilege" got his easy access to the Indian political and cultural elite. When Indira Gandhi's regime refused visa, he got Jyoti Basu and Satyajit Ray sign a joint letter requesting visa and the then Chief Minster of WEst Bengal Siddhartha Shankar Ray signed it and sent it to the PMO. If this is not privilege what else can we call it. And western scholars are able to suborn Indian loyalties very easily and this unfortunate tendency is still goin on. Every week we have the same suspects joining hands with white American scholars to lambast India. Colonialism still endures,

een

The Bose Deception is germane to this discussion. There has been virulent controversy over the alleged plane crash in August 1944 in which the regime in power in India at that time and the Congress playing to the gallery declared Bose dead. As far as India is concerned the people at large refused to buy this self serving theory especially as the British Government under Clement Atlee decided to Transfer Power to Jawaharlal Nehru and his Party. Bose dead would have been very convenient to this arrangement and this explains why the Intelligence Bureau kept track of Bose and kept up very close surveillence on the family.

Subash Chandra Bose remains the only Hero of the Freedom Struggle.

Jawaharlal Nehru, Netaji Subash Chandra Bose, the RSS and the Myths of Modern India

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Jawaharlal Nehru whom the Indian liberal worships as the very epitome of secularism and democracy based his politics on two huge and monstrous lies  both of which stand completely exposed today. The first was the state sponsored and encouraged propaganda the Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh (the RSS) was behind the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. So sustained and relentless was the aggressive campaign of vilification that even today there are "intellectuals" like Bipan Chandra, Mridula Mukerjee and a host of congress acolytes who carry this false notion like a mark of "secular" identity. The facts is that Jawaharlal Nehru was well aware of the dangers posed to Gandhi, especially after he decided to go on a hunger strike to get from the reluctant regime of Nehru the money owed by India to Pakistan. Nehru chose to ignore all the warning and on the fateful day when Gandhi was shot, Nehru must have been relieved as the nation's attention would now be focused only on Nehru and not Gandhi. In fact, Gandhi was reluctant to share the mid night hour with Nehru and his absence on August 15th 1947 suggests that Gandhi and Nehru had parted ways. While it is not clear if Nehru had a hand in the assassination, what is amply clear that Nehru knowing well that the RSS was not in any way involved in the crime chose to implicate the leaders of the nationalist organization in a crime that shocked the nation. By discrediting the RSS and its opposition to the formation of Pakistan and Partition, Nehru successfully deflected attention from his own failure to prevent the Partition and more pertinently by agreeing to Lord Mountbatten's request for an early date for Independence, Nehru ensured that an unprepared Nation was faced with the horrendous reality of violence and ethnic cleansing on both sides of the border. Nehru's lack of statecraft is clear from this example. However, he sought to vindicate himself by blaming the RSS.

With his younger colleague, Netaji Subash Chandra Bose, Nehru maintained less than cordial relations. Netaji was a towering intellectual with a first class degree from Cambridge University, unlike Nehru's "gentle man " pass degree, a successful passage through the ICS Examinations and Nehru was not a patch on this great man. In spite of the growing lure of Soviet style Socialism over his intellectual horizon, particularly in the 1930's, Nehru was astute enough not to take his socialism to the point of disrupting his relationship with Gandhi. In other words political expediency ensured that Nehru continued to pay homage to Gandhian ideals, whereas Bose was man enough to declare his opposition to the Gandhian methods. Bose escaped from Calcutta to Germ,any from where he continued the struggle for India's independence. And after the collapse of the Quit India Movement of 1942, the English decided to quit India but at at a cost" Partition and Quit. Netaji's contribution to India's Independence was beyond doubt of outstanding moment and was also an important element in the legitimization of the new Indian state which was born in 1947.Had Netaji been alive, Nehru stood no chance of towering over the Indian Nation like a colossus, of course, with feet of clay. The disappearance of Netaji was essential to ensure the survival of Nehru's regime.

On August 18th  1945 Netaji escaped to Russia via Manchuria and the plane crash theory was floated in order to cover up his tracks. Nehru was quick to declare Netaji dead and tried to appropriate the legacy of the Indian National Army by covertly suggesting that Netaji could be tried as a "war criminal" by the Allies due to his alliance with the Japanese Empire and Germany. There is some evidence to show that Nehru wrote to Clement Atlee suggesting that Netaji could be tried as a war criminal. It is against this background that Netaji decided to fake his death and escape to Soviet Russia. There are credible witnesses to that fact that he was seen in Russia, perhaps Siberia as late as 1963. The Mookerjee Commission also rejected the death in an air crash theory propagated by Nehru and his gang.

The recent revelations that the regime of Nehru used the Intelligence Bureau to tail the Bose Family and maintained total surveillance on the Sisir Bose Household comes as no great surprise. Nehru was mortally afraid of a return of Netaji.

Therefore the entire politics of Nehru in the post Independence era rested on two great lies.

Subash Chandra Bose: His Majesty's Opponent by Sugata Bose

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Subash Chandra Bose is a tragic figure in Indian history and an enigmatic personality in Indian historiography. Jawaharlal Nehru, his rival and a self-appointed heir of Gandhi declared with joyful glee that Bose had died in a plane crash near Taiwan and thereby ignited a controversy which is still reverberating. Nehru relief at the untimely demise of Subash Chandra Bose was transparently clear and I dare say that Nehru was the real beneficiary of the death of Subash Chandra Bose. The plane crash removed from the scene a very powerful and charismatic figure from the landscape of Indian politics. And the quick elimination of Gandhiji meant that in the post Independence era, Nehru was virtually without a rival. Even Sardar Patel was constantly humiliated by Nehru in the years following Independence, that he died a broken man, his dreams shattered by the barrage of humiliation inflicted by the first Prime Minister. Incidentally, on the day Gandhi met his untimely death he was scheduled to meet Nehru and talk to him about the impending resignation of Sardar Patel from the cabinet.

The political life of Subash Candra Bose is fascinating and the eminent historian Dr Sugata Bose has done a splendid job in contextualizing the career of Bose within the framework of the national movement. Jawarharlal Nehru being a rumbustious factional leader had created a pro-left faction within the Congress party. While public ally deferring to Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru astutely created a ginger group consisting of left wing ideologues like Kriplani and Jayaprakas Narayan and this left oriented faction was being pitted against the nationalist such as Bose. One outcome of this strategy was the marinalization of Subash Chanra Bose within the Congress Party and even when Bose won the election to the Presidency of the AICC, the Nehruvian faction prevailed upon Gandhi to disown Bose. The rest as they say is history.

Bose's decision to leave India and seek the assistance of Japan and Germany still remains a controversial issue in Indian historiography. The pro-Nehru bran of state sponsored historians like Bipan Chandra and the like hint that Subash Chandra Bose was a proto fascist and expalin the alliance with Germany in terms of an inherent anti-democratic streak in the personality of Bose. What they deliberately ignore, and this point is well argued in Sugata Bose's recent book, is that factional in-fighting within the Congress aided and promoted by Jawarhar Lal Nehru had made the exit of Bose from the Congress inevitable.

Sugata Bose has quite rightly pointed out that Bose did not envisage a long term alliance with Germany as he was fully aware of the implications of German Nazi ideology. In fact Germany hardly gave any help to Bose except arranging his transport via submarine to Japan. However, SubashhCharda Bose's alliance with Imperial Japan did result in untold suffering when war crimes were comitted by the Japanese forces on the Islands. Subash Chandra Bose being the head of the Interim Government cannot be absolved from the blame for the massacres in Port Blair. Sugata Bose unfortunately does not deal with this painful chapter.

The book under review is very good and scholarly and deserves to be read by all serious student sof modern Indian history.