THE ETERNAL LEGEND
The man who raised the Azad Hind Fauj and whose death remains a mystery till date
Subhas Chandra Bose was a legend in his lifetime. He is a myth after death, revered for what imagination wants him to be, his memory kept alive by those who batten on his name. The irony is that reality offers so much to admire and emulate there is no need for fantasy. Bose was the ultimate Indian, refusing to attend a religious ceremony at Singapore’s Chettiar temple until the priests agreed to accommodate all castes and communities. He insisted on Hindustani (written in the Roman script) as India’s unifying national language. British India’s commanderin-chief, Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, probably hoped to expose what he saw as Bose’s comprehensive treason by selecting a Hindu (Prem Kumar Sahgal), a Muslim (Shah Nawaz Khan) and a Sikh (Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon) from Indian National Army (INA) prisoners to be tried for waging war against the King Emperor. Instead, the trio proclaimed the secular solidarity of a movement driven by a single shared purpose. Mahatma Gandhi praised the communal amity that characterised the INA and Azad Hind government. Bose cooperated with the Muslim League in Calcutta Corporation, and proposed coalition governments for Bengal, Punjab and Sind.
This commitment to a non-sectarian future, which alone can ensure India’s vigorous survival, is Bose’s most significant contribution to the national cause. Other virtues held greater populist appeal. He had spurned that dream of every careerist youth, the hallowed Indian Civil Service. Indians had twice elected him to the highest political office of Congress party president. He had dramatically escaped house arrest, left India in disguise for Germany via Afghanistan, travelled romantically to Japan by submarine and raised an army in Singapore.
All this emphatically gave the lie to canards about Bengali timidity. Bose’s rivalry with Nehru and differences with Gandhi further endeared him to Bengalis craving their lost place in the sun. The prospect of how Indians might fare if Japan won the war didn’t worry too many people—only a few, like Arthur Moore (editor of The Statesman of Calcutta), who despite courting Bose thought the Indian leader’s claim that “there is nothing to choose between what he calls British imperialism and what Germany and Japan have to offer”, dangerous. Moore had read Bose’s book The Indian Struggle and considered it important, but as an Indian Mein Kampf: “It is of course more modest and cultured, or shall we say less vulgar, but the mould is evident and the view of life much the same... There is nothing Indian about it.” But not many Indians were worried about fascistic or authoritarian tendencies.
Official indecisiveness may reflect controversy over the August 18, 1945, crash in Taiwan. Numerous conspiracy theories and many reported sightings testify to the undying hope that it was not the end. But the reluctance of successive governments to erect a major monument could also mask discomfort with the alternatives Bose presented to the political struggle for independence and India’s post-independence governance. The public clings to his memory precisely because of those alternatives he symbolised: the might-have-been is always more attractive. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose remains the adored Indian who never was, custodian of a future that will never be.