Netaji's sword and Subhas Bose's tears

Editor’s Note: On August 1, 1943, Subhas Bose who had given the British the slip in Calcutta, was an honoured guest at the independence day celebrations for Burma. Ba Maw and Aung San were the heads of the new government. Bose gave a rousing speech about freedom and “breathing the atmosphere of that liberated country.” He gave a gift of 250,000 rupees, raised by Indians in Southeast Asia for the newly independent Burmese nation. It was another example of how the mystique of Bose crossed national borders. And it continues to inspire many from Nelson Mandela to militant separatist movements. They all have their own vision of Bose. But in a new biography, Bose’s grand-nephew and Harvard professor Sugata Bose writes that Netaji was too complex to fit into any simple box. In this excerpt from His Majesty’s Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle Against Empire_, Sugata Bose explores the legend and the myth that grew around Bose._ Bose was an uncompromising anti-imperialist, but by no means an uncritical nationalist. He recognised the Janus-faced character of nationalism, favouring its benign aspect that inspired creativity and instilled an ethic of service, and condemning the malignant obverse that transmuted into imperialistic arrogance, aggression, and hubris. He denounced the racism of Nazi Germany and the militarism of 1930s Japan, but allied with them in the 1940s in his single-minded pursuit of Indian freedom from British colonial rule. Always keen to articulate an ethical conception of human affairs, he could put on blinkers to ignore horrific outrages committed by the enemies of Britain if these did not directly affect his own people. His pragmatic analyses of international relations sat uneasily with the fiery idealism that inspired the mission of his life. He believed in his ability to lead India to freedom, and therefore set in motion the processes of planning for its social and economic reconstruction. He envisioned free India as a modern industrial power breaking the shackles of poverty and illiteracy to be able to make creative contributions, material and spiritual, to the world. A brave man, he was prone to taking enormous risks, such as his daring escape from India in 1941, his submarine voyage from Europe and Asia in 1943, and his final decision to board a Japanese bomber to try to reach a new battlefield in 1945. His complete disregard for his safety meant that he was lost to India when his country perhaps needed him most. He was sorely missed when the calamity of partition overtook the subcontinent at the moment of decolonization. He was not present at the famous midnight hour of Indian freedom. “Only now, fifty years on”, historians Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper wrote in 2004, “has Subhas Chandra Bose begun to claim his still deeply controversial legacy as the greatest military hero of India’s modern history.” [caption id=“attachment_51569” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“The Bose family. Subhas standing on the extreme right. Photo courtesy: Netaji Research Bureau”] ![The Bose family. Subhas standing on the extreme right. Photo courtesy: Netaji Research Bureau ](https://images.firstpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/The-Bose-Family-croppedsmall.jpg "The Bose Family croppedsmall") [/caption] On August 15, 1997, the fiftieth anniversary of India’s independence, three voices were played at a special midnight session of India’s Parliament— those of Gandhi, Nehru, and Bose—and it was Bose who drew the loudest and longest applause. Untarnished by the disappointments and disenchantments of the postcolonial era, Bose lives in popular memory as an alternative beacon of hope. What perpetuates the Bose legend is that his appeal cuts across religious, linguistic, and national boundaries. All those who see themselves as fighting for freedom—political, social, and economic—claim his mantle, including those who battle against the Indian state. Many Kashmiri and Naga militants seeking independence from India, for instance, believe Bose would have understood the justness of their cause. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangladesh, spoke eloquently of Bose’s “ideal of sacrifice and suffering,” which would serve as an undying inspiration to aspirants for liberty in all places and times. Nelson Mandela, on his first visit to India after his release from prison in 1990, paid tribute to the iconic leaders of India’s struggle against empire. “Your heroes of those days,” he told his Indian audience, “became our heroes. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was amongst the great persons of the world whom we black students regarded as being as much our leader as yours. Indeed, Netaji united all militant youth of all the colonially oppressed world. We followed with pride his great contributions, as we did that of the Mahatma and Pandit Nehru.” [fpgallery id=127] Soon after he proclaimed the Provisional Government of Free India in October 1943, Bose was presented with a ceremonial Japanese sword bearing the inscription, “Destroy evil, establish justice.” Twenty years after independence, that sword was brought to India by General Fujiwara Iwaichi, who as a major during the Second World War had worked closely with the Indian National Army. As the sword was welcomed in Calcutta, an astute observer noted a not uncommon paradox in South Asian history: that “men of spiritual yearnings with the strain of mysticism” were often associated with “the cult of the sword.” Continues on the next page Netaji’s sword then made a journey from Calcutta to Delhi. At the crowded Howrah railway station, heart- rending cries asking the leader to return reverberated as the train moved off. Huge numbers of people gathered at Mughalsarai, Allahabad, Kanpur, Ghaziabad, and smaller wayside stations as the relic traveled across the Gangetic Plain. From Delhi station the sword was taken in a gigantic procession to the Red Fort, with thousands of people lining the streets and showering flowers from balconies and treetops along the way. “So many of us who knew Netaji have assembled here today,” Prime Minister Indira Gandhi said at the Red Fort, “with hearts laden with emotion. His slogan was ‘Onward to Delhi.’ He himself could not reach Delhi. But his sword has come here today and we welcome it warmly. Netaji was an example of India’s courage. I can still remember when we were young and we looked into his inspired eyes, our hearts also filled up with fervor. We can therefore well understand how and with what fervour he organised the Azad Hind Fauj (Indian National Army).” [caption id=“attachment_51571” align=“alignright” width=“200” caption=“Netaji taking salute at the INA parade in Singapore in 1943 with Mohammed Zaman Kiani to his left. Photo courtesy: Netaji Research Bureau”] ![Netaji taking salute at the INA parade in Singapore in 1943 with Mohammed Zaman Kiani to his left. Photo courtesy: Netaji Research Bureau ](https://images.firstpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/INAcropped.jpg "INAcropped") [/caption] The symbolism of the sword has sometimes led people to make easy assumptions about the muscular quality of Bose’s nationalism, and to ignore the tender aspects of his personality. In a chapter titled “My Faith—Philosophical” in his unfinished autobiography, he identified love as “the essential principle in human life.” A model of leadership, he inspired awe among his followers, but did not instill fear. It was through expressions of unbounded love that he elicited devotion and a fierce loyalty that remained with those whose lives he touched de cades after he had passed from the scene. Mehboob Ahmed, Bose’s young military secretary in 1945, had the good fortune of working with Gandhi and Nehru later in his career. He acknowledged the greatness of the Mahatma and the Pandit, but there was only one man at whose call he was prepared to lay down his life, and that was Netaji. Bose wept when he sent his soldiers into battle and did not restrain his tears when he witnessed and shared their suffering. One could speak of Bose in the words that Carl Sandburg used to describe the heartbroken Abraham Lincoln: “on occasions he was seen to weep in a way that made weeping appropriate, decent, majestic.” Many in India coped with the tragedy of Subhas Chandra Bose by denying his death. As he became shrouded in myth and mystery, a great deal was lost—namely, a genuine understanding of who he was as a human being and of his place in history. Yet the life was, in important ways, greater than the legend and certainly as fascinating. The more rationally minded accepted the reality of his mortal end, but they understandably chose to concentrate on celebrating the birth of this deathless hero. During his lifetime, Bose himself was apt to forget his own birthday. He was not permitted to do so on January 23, 1945, his forty- eighth, when much to his embarrassment he had to acquiesce in using the occasion to raise funds for the Indian National Army. He had told the organisers that he was “frankly against the celebration of his own birthday” and urged them to “concentrate on and popularise ideas and ideals and not personalities.” Yet he was not present after the war to prevent his own deification by devotees who cast his image according to their own fancies. His human qualities and the forces that impelled his mission became immersed in the mystical haze created around him. The tradition of observing his birth anniversary in India as a popular festival began in his absence in 1946 and continues to this day, with the blowing of conch shells and the bursting of firecrackers minutes after midday to mark the moment of his arrival. Seven days before being assassinated on January 30, 1948, Gandhi had been “very glad” to take note of Subhas’s birthday, even though he “generally did not remember such dates” and “the deceased patriot believed in violence,” while Gandhi himself was wedded to nonviolence. Subhas, according to the Mahatma, “knew no provincialism nor communal differences” and “had in his brave army men and women drawn from all over India without distinction and evoked affection and loyalty, which very few have been able to evoke.” Bose was born on January 23, in the year 1897—the high noon of the Raj. He would devote his life to ensuring that the sun finally did set on the British Empire. Excerpted with permission from Penguin Books India from His Majesty’s Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle against Empire by Sugata Bose. Allen Lane, Rs.699.

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Netaji's sword and Subhas Bose's tears

Subhas Bose has become the stuff of legend, a source of inspiration to people as diverse as Naga militants and Nelson Mandela. A new biography by his grand-nephew Sugata Bose tries to make sense of a hero’s life that often outstripped his legend.

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