By developer On the occasion of Subhash Chandra Bose’s 129th birth anniversary, we republish our writing on Subhash Bose, and our stance towards him. Originally published on 30th January : https://litci.org/en/our-view-of-netaji-subhash-chandra-bose/
There is a saying that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Few figures personify this contradiction more than Subhash Chandra Bose, fondly addressed by Indians as ‘Netaji’. On the 23rd January 2022, India will be observing his 125th birth anniversary. During his lifetime, Bose would take the fight against British colonialism from India to foreign shores, making a controversial alliance with the Axis powers, and raising an army of liberation from POWs in Singapore, called the Indian National Army, or Azad Hind Fauj in hindi and urdu. At the decisive moment of India’s struggle for independence, it was the trial of these captured soldiers from the INA that sparked a movement in India, which ultimately culminated in the Naval mutiny and uprising of 1946. Before the second world war, Bose was extremely active in the fight against British imperialism, adopting a militant position in contrast to Gandhi’s defeatist and pacifist position post 1930.
It would not be an exaggeration, that Subhash Chandra Bose’s movement was the decisive cause for India’s independence. One can speculate had the INA not existed, had Bose not conducted this movement, it is likely the uprising of 1946 would not have happened, and it was anybody’s guess if Britain would grant India independence, nor is it certain what manner of independence it would be. It is not unsurprising then, that Bose was a hated figure in the British imperial establishment, and his alliance with the Axis powers is often used to cast him as a ‘Quisling’. Outside of South Asia this is the only view of Subhash Bose, and all popular media depictions of him, conform to this fundamentally wrong depiction, ignoring his ideas, his politics within India and the legacy he left behind.
Bose in India :
Within India Bose was a very popular leader in the decades of the 1930s and 40s, and his popularity still endures. He rivals Gandhi in popularity, often times the two are juxtaposed against each other. Bose’s militant nationalism is contrasted to Gandhi’s pacifism. Bose had been aligned with Nehru within the Indian Congress, and consolidated the leftist faction of the congress in the forward Bloc. This bloc within the Congress pushed the party towards the left, bringing in many radical elements into the party, and directing it towards socialism. In this task, he had to contend with Gandhi and his hegemony over the party. The election for the Congress presidency was a decisive moment which showed the split in the Congress party, Gandhi’s moderate candidate Pattabi Sitaramaiah went against Bose for the position of the president of the Congress, and lost.
As president of the Indian Congress, he presided over a turn towards more radical ideas, leaning hard towards socialism, and adopting a plan for developing India along the model of the Soviet union with five year plans. The turn towards the left, caused alarm within the British establishment who were most concerned in snuffing out any form of socialism from India before it could become a threat. They did not hide their viciousness in dealing with revolutionaries, such as when they tortured and killed Surya Sen, the mastermind of the Chittagong armoury raid, one of India’s forgotten socialist leaders. With the second world war on the horizon the British stepped up their surveillance on militant nationalist leaders, during his presidency Bose pushed for a militant anti-imperialist position where the Congress would start a mass movement against the British if they did not leave India, he timed this deliberately with the coming of the second world war, calling it a golden opportunity for India to gain independence. This brought the ire of the British establishment, who subsequently arrested Bose.
During his time in prison, he would start a hunger strike, against the conditions in prison. This caused him to fall sick, and be shifted to house arrest. Throughout this time, he was kept under strict surveillance by the British secret service, despite that Bose managed to escape. With his prior record of arrest for ‘seditious’ activity, and the strict surveillance of British secret service, it was impossible for him to continue work within India, it was at this point, that Bose made the fateful decision to escape to the Soviet union, through Afghanistan. At this point, it is important to explore Bose’s own ideological convictions. Not much is usually