Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast A Review

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Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast

Marjoleine Kars

New York: The New Press

2020

This years Cundill Prize has this surprise nomination. A book based on primary sources and one that by and large eschews the sordid pieties of identity politics and ideological posturing. Based on archival material found in the Hague and London, this book deals with the Slave Revolt in 1763 that convulsed the Dutch plantation of Berbice in South America. The entire narrative is derived from the Judicial proceedings instituted against the rebels who were captured after the rebellion had been militarily suppressed.

Extracting historically accurate information from evidence that was generated during the course of a highly charged trial in which the witnesses were facing charges that could lead to the imposition of the death penalty, is a challenging task in that the "re-enslaved had every incentive to lie distort and omit". The Slave who rebelled and risked his life for freedom from enslavement oppression and systemic violence according to the author was scripting his own history by acting out a praxis of negation of his existing social and political reality and striving to recreate an alternate society whose inchoate shape and contour is only fleetingly captured by the sources of the period. Dr Kars has situated the Slave Revolt in a framework that is partly Historical and partly Anthropological and thus a thick description of the events from a Geertzian perspective.

The records are all imperial records, regnant with the implied superiority of white rule and the illegitimacy of the cause of the rebels. The right to use extreme was assumed to be beyond debate and the testimonies gathered in large folios like the one illustrated below contain the records of over 900 witnesses. The rebels could not speak Dutch and 

so their statements had to be translated by an interpreter who in turn made sense of the statement and conveyed the meaning in contemporary Dutch. This  double translation affords opportunities for mistranslation and error. Ranajit Guha has drawn attention to this feature of Official Records in his pioneering paper, "The Prose of Counter Insurgency".

The Slave Revolt began in April 1763 and lasted a whole year. The slow communication across the Atlantic Ocean and the absence of adequate  military support resulted in an early collapse of the Dutch Administration headed by a young Governor Simon van Hoogenheim. The military contingent sent from Netherlands reached Surimane only in April 1764 and with the arrival of nearly 1000 well trained and armed soldiers, the Rebellion was all but over. Unlike the English East India Company which possessed a strong army, the Dutch Company did not have its own dedicated military and essentially outsourced defence and protection to mercenaries. The rule of trading companies like the VOC and the EIC which were both in transoceanic commerce and slaving required a reliable supply of armed men capable of inflicting extreme violence and in the post Hapsburg Low Countries, violence was privatized to maximize profit.

The Rebellion began in the with the rather ironic name, Goed Land Goed Fortun or Good Land and Good Fortune Plantation owned by Laurens Kunker and the rebel leader Cojii or Kofi was enslaved on that Plantation. The Slaves had a  number of grievances but the most important was their extreme anguish at the horrific punishments meted out to them by their Bomba and the Plantation Manager. The Plantation economy rested on a foundation of racial violence and fear that it engendered. Like Conrad's character, Kurtz in the Heart of Darkness the plantations all over the Atlantic world were populated by men driven by lust, power and an insatiable appetite for violence. It is no wonder then that the first thing that the rebels did was to murder the Planters, their families and in some cases the loyal slaves and the bomba.

The author is particularly good in teasing out strands of ideology and motives from the garbled accounts of the Rebellion provided by the rebels during their trial. The leadership for the movement was provided by the Amina a group of elite Africans from the Gold Coast. Coiiji and his "general" Accara were both from this ethnic group and so too was Atta, the man who deposed Coiiji and drove him to suicide. The leaders seem to have replicated the hierarchy on the Plantation while the overall ideological matrix was derived from West Africa. After the suicide of the rebel leader, nearly 5 human beings were killed so that their blood could by spread on the grave. By situating the events of the rebellion in a cultural context, the author has provided us insight into rebel culture and behaviour.

The Rebellion was crushed as the Dutch were able to muster a much larger force against the Rebels and also because the Amerindian tribes supported the colonial administration by cutting off all routes of escape. Does this make the indigenous people an accomplice of the enslavers. This question, a troubling one, confronts the reader. The author leaves us with little doubt about what she thinks. But we have to see the collaboration of Amerindians in colonial anti slave insurgency in the context of what they experienced at the hands of the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the English and the French.

I enjoyed reading this book and though it is not in the same league as The Black Jacobins by C L R James it is an important contribution.

Imperial Nostalgia, Race and Class in EmpireLand: A look at current "intellectual" fashion in Britain

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The cartoon by Low published more than sixty years ago sums up the state of play in Britain over its imperial past. Dragging statues of long dead slavers, writing trashy tomes about "Insurgent Empire" putting on an air of moral superiority by strutting about as enlightened or in the current usage "woke" activists on call to shore up the street mobs that validate the transition to a "post colonial" state of being are the latest excesses of the white academia both in Britain or USA. Shriller the noise of virtue signaling the greater the rewards in an a academic world where group think is more in demand than scholarship or independent thought. It is very nearly the end of Humanities as a field of knowledge and its displacement by Cultural Studies which claims to represent all the identify categories that are fashionable today. 

Imperial Nostalgia How the British Conquered themselves by Peter Mitchell, a journalist, is one of several boos that essays a bold analysis of cultural and intellectual climate in what is being recognized as the disruptive post-Brexit Era. It is amusing to read that the British are now reevaluating their post imperial standing in the world today. Having benefited by the plunder of Asia's wealth for over 250 years, we in Asia are only amused by the antics, both intellectual and academic, of those who claim that they are free of the taint of colonialism as they have embraced a vision of a pluralist, multi cultural,  inclusive Britain. Writing toxic polemic against Nigel Biggar, an Oxford academic, the author caricatures and misrepresents the highly nuanced and reasonable arguments of Biggar as if they represent an apologia for  an Imperial Past. It is only the victims of imperialism who have the right to assess it and  study it in much the same way as Germans cannot and ought not to study the Holocaust as any such study would either by compromised by political loyalty or directed towards an abject ideological goal. And this is really the heart of the matter. Imperial Nostalgia is mere chimera and is whipped up to re-inscribe  white Christian moral and intellectual hegemony. The non white human cannot represent himself.  He must be represented. And who better to do this than the white Liberal with Oxford and Cambridge pedigree. 

Akala, a British rapper has written an honest book, Natives Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire,  and is well worth reading. There is no great sense of wonder and bewilderment at the demise of the Empire and Akala looks at the social setting of Britain today which is multi racial, particularly after the process of decolonization that set in after the Suez Crisis of 1956. White privilege is a reality and knee jerk genuflection towards Wokery is likely to hide that reality. Racism as an ideology was not a mere idle by product Imperialism as Akala argues. Its roots go deep into European History. The imperial tradition and its concomitant theory of History whether in the works of J R Seeley or in the more practical exuberance of Cecil Rhodes was fashioned over a period of time and Poets, Writers, Journalists and Explorers were all complicit in this task. Akala is certainly worth reading.

EmpireLand How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain by Sathnan Sanghera is a disappointing read.  It more or less traverses the same territory as Imperial Nostalgia but it also suggests that contemporary British society has become more sensitive to the presence of immigrants from the colonies. Can am Asian immigrant identify himself as a member of the British society. Gratuitous use of personal pronoun we us etc does not mean that the Asian immigrant is accepted as an equal member of White society. 

Sir Sidney Wadsworth ICS A Life in History and Memory

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A Judge in Madras: Sir Sidney Wadsworth and the Indian Civil Service, 1913 - 47.

Caroline Keen

New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2021.

Sir Sidney Wadsworth, ICS retired to the Isle of Man after he retired in 1947 and spent some of his retired life writing his "memoirs" which in the classic western sense was to remain a personal record of service, reflection and memory. However, his grandson, Simon Wadsworth took upon himself the task of rescuing the manuscript from the archives and getting Caroline Keen to flesh out the life and career of Sidney Wadsworth within the broader context of both Indian History and the administrative and judicial institutions of the Madras Presidency , where Wadsworth spent his entire official career. The result is a book rich in detail and is a significant addition to the growing literature of "Colonial Life and Careers". 

Before discussing the book we must address a particularly gross and intellectually vapid trend in "Imperial" and "Post Colonial" studies. White scholars seem to think that by aligning themselves with Black Lives Matter and ranting against the excesses of colonialism they rid themselves of both the guilt of their inherited past and the privileges which their colour has bestowed by virtue of colonialism, conquest and domination. Historical analysis based on empirical evidence rooted in a methodology that foregrounds reconstruction of the past is certainly more humane and enriching than the  ideological virtue signaling as represented by Priyamvada Gopal's Insurgent Empire.

The book under review fortunately avoids this trap of sliding into the quagmire of post colonial "discourse" by remaining focused on the life and the times in which Wadsworth lived. It makes no attempt at providing a Balance Sheet for the British Empire nor does it meander into the dead dreary sand of the "Idea of India" exposition so beloved of later day imperialists. It is perhaps a given that a young man in the late nineteenth century sent to the Colonies as a covenanted officer of the Crown would carry a sense of awareness of the immense power he wielded and towards the end of his life become a tad bit embarrassed over it as he approached the twilight of his life. And this indeed was the case with Sidney Wadsworth. "He was conscious of his own importance; but that very consciousness, while it may have given rise to a certain superiority of manner, also led him to put his work first and make it the paramount interest in life" (240). 

Sidney Wadsworth was born in 1888 and died in 1976, a life long enough to see the High Noon of Empire and the fading twilight into which Britain had descended by the early 1970s. He was educated in Sorbonne, Paris and he qualified for appointment to the Indian Civil Service in 1912 and was assigned to work in the Madras Presidency.  This Presidency for some reason was considered less desirable than the other two Presidencies and the sprawling provisions and commissionaires of British India. Having learnt Tamil he arrived in Madras just before the outbreak of World War I in 1913. Wadsworth's first posting was as sub collector of Vellore where he was trained by Sir Norman Majoribanks, the Collector. As the designation implies the first responsibility of the "Collector" was revenue assessment and collection, the Jamabandhi as it was termed in English revenue parlance. World War I saw him work as an army censor and later he was the sub collector of Gudur in Nellore District. Fort Galeria built near Lake Pulicat by the VOC, the Dutch East India Company was not merely a trading post for innocent trade goods like Textiles and Rice but was also a notorious Slaving Port on the Coromandel Coast. The Dutch raided the coastal areas fr slaves whom they sent to Batavia. It is unfortunate that Caroline Keen, a trained Historian, has missed this vital fact.

After the war ended, Wadsworth was posted to the Board of Revenue. But soon he decided that he would like to serve on the Judiciary and went to London for six months in order to qualify for judicial appointment. He was admitted to the Middle Temple, the same one that Gandhi, the self styled "father of the Nation" had entered. Presiding over murder trials involving local women and medically challenged accused must have been quite instructive. As the district judge of Chingleput, Wadsworth has perforce to adjudicate disputes over water and water rights as the area was essentially irrigated by rain fed water stored in tanks and reservoirs. He succeeded in settling a serious dispute over the sharing of the Swarnamuki river waters by making the litigants agree to arbitration rather than judicial judgement and it is said that his decision is still in force in the region. After a stint  in Madura, Sidney Wadsworth was posted to Madurai and later became a Judge in the High Court of Madras. 

 As the High Court Justice he presided over the Sir Raja Annamali Chettiyar Case and several important cases. In 1947 he retired just after India became "Independent" and after the Partition of the country. 

This biography based on the personal memoirs of an ICS Officer in Madras during the years of British rule is an interesting book and an important one in that it provides us insight into the mind of an officer during the heyday of Empire.

The Great Game all Over Again: Durand Line and India's Diplomacy

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The disgraceful exit of USA from its 20 year involvement in Afghanistan, has presented India with an unenviable plight. Having backed the Northern Alliance and having spent 3 billion US dollars in various social and economic projects for the improvement of the Afghan people, India stares at two distinct  possibilities. First, the possibility of increased militancy in Kashmir is something that the Indian Security Establishment will have to consider. Second, the rise of Taliban as the ruling political hegemon in Afghanistan raises the possibility of a revival of the internal strife, the Stasis, as Thucydides termed it. Given the complex ethnic mosaic of Afghanistan the civil war may lead to certain unforeseen outcomes. The disintegration of Afghanistan as a Nation State with the Tajik and Uzbeg territories joining their ethnic cohorts across the border. More likely the Durand Line will once more become the bone of contention between the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the state of Afghanistan.

Sir Mortimer Durand 

Lord George Curzon who had a deep and profound insight into the strategic requirements of the Indian frontier maintained that the Durand Line came close to being a "scientific frontier" for the Indian Empire. The Treaty of Gandamak, 1879 had established British control over the hyber Pass and the Amir of Afghanistan surrendered the right to conduct an independent foreign policy making the kingdom a satellite in the orbit of the British Indian Empire. As can be imagined this Treaty was highly umpopular with the Aghans and Sir Louis Cavagnari who was appointed Minister was assassinated in Kabul by an exited mob.

The response of the British was swift and ruthless. Three Armies were fielded against Afghanistan. General Roberts was to lead a force to Kabul, General Stewart was to occupy Kandahar and General Bright was to march to Jalalabad.  The forces of Amir Abdul Rehman were defeated and Afghanistan was forced to accept British demands and make territorial concessions. 

In November 1893 the Amir appended his signature to a one page document in English and he did not sign the accompanying map. Sir Mortimer Durand and his compatriot Sir Salter Sykes had succeeded in making the Amir sign away more than half the Pashtun territories of his Kingdom. Chitral, Bajour, Swat and Waziristan were essentially annexed and became the North West Frontier Province and till this day form part of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Kafiristan, an indigenous non Islamic territory was handed over to the Amir as concession and he promptly set about Islamizing the area. 

The Duran Line introduced a highly volatile element in the relationship between Afghanistan and the British Empire in India and after the War in 1919 Afghanistan was forced to accept the Durand Line as the border. The present Taliban rulers of Afghanistan have already said that they do not accept the Durand Line a nd have laid claim to the entire Pashtun speaking areas of Pakistan and this would also include Peshawar. The establishment of a unified Pashtun Homeland by combining the territories on both sides of the Durand Line is a possibility that India may have to confront. Iran has already stated that they do not recognize the Taliban and have asked it to gain democratic legitimacy. Herat, Kandahar, Mazar i Sharif and Kabul have all been part of Safavid territories before Ahmed Shah Abdali seized these cities. It is quite likely that Iran may seek to gain territory at the expense of a faltering and failing Afghan state.

India has to deal with this situation.  What will India do? It is time to enter the Great Game and the stakes are high. If played well India can achieve its long cherished goal of reclaiming the parts of Kashmir that are now occupied by the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. And of of course Gilgit and Baltistan can also be regained. There are opportunities for India if the game is played well And dangers if  India does not seize the opportunities.

  

Woke,Inc : Inside America's Social Justice Scam A Review of Vivek Ramaswamy's expose

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Woke,Inc Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam

Vivek Ramaswamy

Center Street, 2021

In Biden's and Kamala's America public discourse is around three ideological tenets: Systemic Racism, White Privilege and Equity. Together they constitute the foundations of Wokeism, a new political and cultural movement based on Identity Politics of Race Gender and Sexual Orientation. Vivek Ramaswamy has studied the ramifications of these ideological shibboleths  both in the larger context of American public life and the institutional carapace within which these ideologies are impacting both policies and culture. 

Vive Ramaswamy, is the son of Indian immigrants from South India and grew up in Ohio. He graduated from Harvard and went on to earn a JD from Yale University. He founded a Biotech Company, Roivant which raised venture capital funds of nearly a billion US dollars and remained a highly profitable venture. He was chose  to resign following the pronounced drift to Woke culture within the American Corporate World.

The book is a scathing indictment of Corporate America at least in its Woke avatar. This ideology argues Vivek is pernicious in that it robs the citizens not only of their money and wealth but their voice in the Public Square and their identity as well. The huge and unaccountable power in the hands of Corporate Mughals like Jack Dorsey of Twitter, Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Mark Zuckerberg of FaceBook has led to distortions in the information available to the citizens for making informed political judgement. The manner in which all these three Mega Tech Companies censored dissenting views on the Origin of COVID 19 and blindsided any discussion on the possible origins of the Virus in the Wuhan Virology Lab suggests a degree of coordination in pushing forth a scripted line. And Vivek rightly compares this with the Soviet style censorship of the 1930s. The de-platforming of President Trump by Twitter constitutes a violation of fundamental rights of a citizen to express himself. The flip side of this is that if the State or the agencies of the State acted in such a dictatorial or high handed manner the Judiciary would have intervened. But these Mega Tech Companies are private  players protected by an Act of Congress that limit their liability. He, unlike other critics who want to use the Anti Trust Laws to break up and discipline these entities, suggests that it is better to make Corporate America aware of its obligations to its shareholders leaving stakeholder concerns to the politicians

Vivek Ramaswamy is a crusader and like every crusader is armed with moral indignation which bristles on every page. The very companies that promote Black Live Matter and its agenda in USA are often extremely callous in other parts of the world. Nike which retained Kaepernick as its "brand ambassador" was hailed as a hero for kneeling when the US National Anthem was played and the Company gave a large donation to the Black Lives Matter Inc. However the fact that Nike shoes are made by Uygar slave labour in Communist China is of little moment for the awakened "woe" souls of the liberal world. Self interest passes off as morality in the Brave New World of Wokedom. Jeff Bezos who had several minority employees fired for speaking about the terrible working conditions in Amazon facilities, gave a donation of 10 Million US dollars to the Black Lives Matter and ensured that there is no adverse reaction. There is obviously a disconnect between the professed objectives of Social Justice and the actual practices of the Corporates. The fixation with BLM seems to be so overwhelming that outward expressions of fealty covers up great malfeasance. Volkswagen  which was hailed as a game changer in conforming to the demands of rigorous environmental norms was exposed as a cheat which beat the tests by installing a software that generated fake results. Such examples can be multiplied but the basic argument is that Wokeism is only an ideological cover for corporate greed and an alibi for gross violations of law, regulations and even Constitutional mandates. The example of Unilever is most instructive. The UN has several times commended the organization for "fempowering" women, Unilever speak for Female Empowerment. Women working in a Tea estate in Kenya were attacked and several of them assaulted and around 11 of them even killed. Unilever which was hailed as a great liberal upholder of Women's Rights did not pay any compensation and when the affected party appealed to the UN, strategic  contributions to NGOs  ensured  suppression and soon the matter was forgotten. Vivek rightly says, the "cloak of wokeness hides wrongdoing". 

Woke Corporate America's sins seem to be many. Airbnb shared personal data with the Communist Party of China a major player in the woke world. McKinsey, an Accounting Firm, prepared a Report for the Saudi Government in which it identified 3 major critics of the regime who posted o Twitter. The result they were arrested. Authoritarian regimes like those of China and Saudi Arabia seem to have close ties with Corporates subscribing to Woke ideology.  And China as a consummate player in this game has learnt to co opt woke methods to serve its own ends. The reason for this support is not hard to find: the immense wealth of China makes it inviting and New York Times and Washington Post carry full page advertisements issued by China and this is one way of funneling money into the American Ideological Apparatus. 

Interspersed in the book are interesting insights into the evolution of corporate structures in USA. Corporations enjoyed the benefits of limited liability in return for a Social Contract based on maximizing profits to the shareholder and serving the Nation's needs. Over the years Corporates have been able to expand their footprint in USA by claiming to represent the stakeholders, a catchall phrase for citizens, professional groups, church goers etc. By claiming to represent stakeholders  corporate USA has moved to the dangerous territory in which it is virtually accountable to no one.

Vivek Ramaswamy has stated clearly and argued that unless USA wakes up, democratic space and freedom in USA will be eroded.

Netaji Bose Papers: The Legal issues and the Nehruvian Regime's Prevarications

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Bose inspecting troops 

The declassified records of the Home Ministry, External Affairs Ministry and the Prime Minister's Office make sordid reading. Nehru and his dynastic successors were mortally afraid of Subash Chandra Bose and his legacy as he had the potential of absolutely destabilizing the Congress Regime had he perchance survived the Air Crash and returned to India. It would not be wrong to say that the Congress Government under Nehru and his successors were invested in the Air Crash Theory not just as a hope but as an insurance against the challenge from Netaji. This is made clear from the questions and controversies surrounding Netaji in the months following the defeat of Japan in August 1945. 

In the immediate aftermath of the collapse of Japan in August 1945 Lord Wavell the Viceroy sought to have Netaji Bose declared or at least considered for prosecution for alleged "war crimes". It is not clear from the available records if the UN War Crimes Commission that was constituted by the victorious Allies considered the prosecution of Netaji. What is shocking, however, is the absolute nonchalance with which the possibility was treated by Nehru and his Government.  There is no evidence on hand to suggest that Nehru either protested such a characterization nor did he try to put the facts in a clear and unambiguous manner. Even during the Red Fort Trial the allegations around Netaji were not addressed. There is no doubt that the Imperial Japanese Army did commit war crimes against Indian citizens in Andamans, Singapore and Malaya. However, in the case of Andaman Islands even the British realised that Bose was only "nominally" in charge of the Islands.

The closest parallel we can make with another contemporary personality is Charles de Gaulle. Like de Gaulle, Bose escaped from his country during war time and sought the assistance of states which were opposed to the Government that existed in France. The only difference is that de Gaulle chose the side that emerged victorious and Netaji Bose ended up on the losing side. Charles de Gaulle was able to discredit Pierre Laval to such an extent that not only was the French Premier executed as a "war criminal" after a flawed trial, but also was able to get all the advantages of a victor, though France was a defeated, collaborationist state. 

The Secretary of State for India and the Colonies was reluctant to accept the reports of Bose's death in the crash of 18th August 1945 and this reluctance was taken as grounds to challenge the findings of both the Shah Nawaz Commission and the Justice Khosala Commission. And to the Nehruvian regime this was god sent. Any issue or question regarding Netaji Bose could be avoided or better still horribly confused by stirring it in the pot of the Air Crash theory. And later the repatriation of ashes back to India issue. And there was a constituency which played to the gallery and the charade continues thereby important questions about Netaji and his legacy are evaded.

R F Mudie in his letter to the Viceroy makes it clear that Bose cannot be treated as a  "war criminal" and he does not come within the "extended definition" which came into vogue and adopted by the United Nations. This letter is found in the Transfer of Power Documents and a photocopy is also found in the Netaji Papers. When it is so clear to a British Officer why was Nehru so reluctant to come clean on this issue.

During the course of the INA Trials at the Red Fort Delhi several facts were adduced regarding the torture and beatings to which Indian troops who were reluctant to join the INA were subjected to. And there is evidence to show such instances were not frequent. The INA was not complicit in any of the major war crimes committed by the Japanese forces in China and Southeast Asia. Joyce Lebra is clear on this. 

The controversy over the "war criminal" charge was allowed to fester only because it served the interests of the Nehru establishment and the Congress friendly regime sponsored "historians' lie Bipan Chandra and others have chosen to play along.

Netaji Bose Papers: The Controversy over the "Bharat Ratna"

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The decision of the Government of India headed by Hon ble Prime Minister Narendra Modi to throw open the records of the Government of India relating to Subash Chandra Bose has evoked considerable interest. The records clearly show that at every step of the way Nehru strove hard to undermine the contributions of Bose and later appropriated them as part of the Congress legacy by inducing prominent lieutenants of the Netaji like Shah Nawaz Khan and Mohan Singh to defect to the Congress. Shah Nawaz rose to be a Minister in the Union Cabinet and presided over the first major Enquiry over the alleged death and disappearance of the great Patriot. 

Throughout the 17 years of Nehru's and the years of his daughter and grandson the Dynasty did not allow the contribution of Netaji to the Freedom Struggle to occupy its rightful place and after the Left took charge of the Ministry of Education after the split in the Congress in 1969, which saw Syed Nurul Hassan being crowned as the Czar of Higher Education, Netaji's stature in Indian History was deliberately slighted. One has only to read the badly crafted sentences in Bipan Chandra's Struggle for Freedom to realize the pathetic depths to which the leftist historians would go to diminish the stature of this towering figure. Throughout those long years Professor Samar Gupta kept raising questions about the disappearance of Netaji but little was done about honouring his memory. It was left to Hon ble Narendra Modi to build a suitable Museum to house the relics of the Indian National Army in New Delhi.

Why was the Nehruvian State hostile to Netaji? This questions goes right to the elephant lurking in the room. How did India get its Freedom. Dynasty friendly historians have chosen to silence the contribution of the INA and treat it as a mere embarrassing interlude in a Glorious Chapter headed by the great Troika--Gandhi, Nehru and Patel. Savarkar was brushed aside as the man who wrote "mercy petitions" thereby undermining his many years of sacrifice and suffering. Bose was made to "disappear" literally and metaphorically and so his legacy remained alien to Indian political life. The Forward Bloc founded by Bose tried to carry the torch but after the advent of the Communist Party of India, the Marxist Faction to prominence under Jyoti Basu swerved leftward leaving Bose behind. 

In 1991 when P V Narashima Rao was the Prime Minister and was running a minority Government with a deft combination of inducement (bribes JMM Bribery Case) and state coercion (the Jain Diary Case), a decision was made to award the Bharat Ratna to Subash Chandra Bose. He was tagged with Abdul Kalam Azad whose standing in India was certainly not of the same stature as Netaji Bose. A shrewd political gambit to link Bose with Azad hoping that it could be sold as "secular" recognition of two outstanding individuals. 

On October 10 1991 the Prime Minister wrote to R Venkataraman, the then President requesting the investiture of the Bharat Ratna on the two individuals, Bose and Azad, in recognition for "public service of the highest order" and "outstanding contribution to the freedom struggle". As far as the dynasty friendly historians were concerned, Bose ceased to struggle for Freedom once he was expelled from the Congress and as I have shown earlier the INA was reduced to an embarrassing footnote. So what exactly was being honoured in 1991--the Bose of the Congress Days or the great Netaji of the INA. 

On 3th February 1992, A K Narayanan, Joint Secretary Ministry of Home Affairs wrote to K N Bakshi the Indian Ambassador to Austria to contact Mrs Emilie Schenkl the widow of Netaji and Dr Mrs Anita Pfaff the daughter of the Great Patriot. On Feb 21 1992 Dr Anita Pfaff wrote to the Ambassador:

           "We are aware, however, the fact that in the past Netaji's achievements and contributions have not been recognized, particularly when it could be avoided comfortably". She went on to say that "Such an honour would have been appropriate in the 1950s."

A stinging rebuke from the daughter of the Patriot. And she went on to say "Whether his achievements were so minor that he had to stand in line for so long or so great that they would be remembered even after such a long time". Obviously the Bharat Ratna to Subash Bose who is a legend in India puts him at par with Nehru, Indira Gandhi Rajiv Gandhi and scores more and hence no patriot of India will ever like to see the legend diminished in this way. She concluded by saying that "One cannot honour Netaji today by awarding the Bharat Ratna.

The Bose Family did not accept the award and the insignia and Sanad as per the procedure are now in the Ministry of Home Affais.

 stinging