BJP Has a New ‘Idol’
Netaji is top of the pops in the party’s bid to discover Bengali nationalist icons
Subhas Chandra Bose is the latest icon the BJP has appropriated in its aggressive campaign to wrest Bengal from the ruling Trinamool Congress. The party is projecting Netaji as the only nationalist hero to have demanded “unconditional and absolute freedom from British imperialism”.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent act of hoisting the tricolour at the Red Fort on the 75th anniversary of Bose’s declaration of the Azad Hind Sarkar, has rekindled Bengali sentiments for the freedom fighter. Many Bengalis still see Bose as the son of the soil who was given a raw deal by Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru.
Former Presidency University social scientist Prasanta Kumar Ray, says, “Modi’s outpourings for Netaji couldn’t have been timed better. Netaji is a darling of Bengal.” By provoking a debate on whether Netaji’s declaration of an independent government on October 21, 1943, shouldn’t be celebrated as India’s Independence Day, Ray says, the PM and the BJP are trying to stir an old controversy. Other political parties, including the Congress, are already treading cautiously in reacting to the move. “Why would we be against it? We have never disrespected Netaji. It was the BJP that had very little contribution to India’s freedom struggle and little respect for national heroes like Gandhi and Nehru,” says TMC minister Partha Chatterjee, adding that the party would celebrate Netaji’s birth anniversary with pomp, as in previous years.
The TMC is also preparing a counter-strategy that includes posters and leaflets with excerpts from Bose’s speech sharply criticising the Hindu Mahasabha (from a public rally at Jhargram in May 1940). Syama Prasad Mookerjee,
the revered founder of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, was then president of the Hindu Mahasabha.
BJP general secretary Debashree Choudhury says such campaigns will not hold water. “There was a confusion in Netaji’s mind about the Hindu Mahasabha initially, but he obviously realised he was wrong,” she says, citing Bose’s subsequent decision to make the “Hindutvawadi” leader Rash Behari Bose advisor to the Azad Hind Fauj. Spinning a new narrative, Choudhury suggests that Independence was deliberately delayed for four years after 1943 only to benefit Nehru and partition the country. She also questioned Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s silence on Netaji. The BJP is digging through the archives to prove that Bose was strongly opposed to the infighting and politicking within the Congress that led to his ouster as the party president.
The BJP’s new-found passion for
THE TMC IS WAVING EXCERPTS FROM BOSE’S SPEECH BLASTING THE HINDU MAHASABHA
the great sons of Bengal isn’t restricted to Bose. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya, Rammohun Roy, Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, Khudiram Bose and Aurobindo, they are all being promoted out as Hindu nationalist icons.
Netaji’s kin, the former TMC MP Krishna Bose, and her son Sugata Bose, who is an incumbent MP, are unhappy with the fresh controversy being stirred around Bose. “The PM hoisting the flag at Red Fort was a good gesture. But his controversial political jibes were not befitting of a national event. Netaji is above all such controversies. Political point-scoring has taken precedence, instead of remembering Netaji’s sacrifice,” says Krishna Bose.