Bose, Barkatullah, a history of Indian governments before freedom

ACTOR KANGANA Ranaut, the BJP candidate from Mandi, has claimed that Subhas Chandra Bose, not Jawaharlal Nehru, was the first Prime Minister of India, citing the provisional government of “free India” declared by Bose in Singapore during World War II.

Azad Hind government

Bosetravelledtogermanyin1941hoping for a collaboration to overthrow the British in India, and then to Japan in 1943, from where he arrived in Singapore. There, on October 21, 1943, he proclaimed the Provisional Government of Azad Hind (Free India).

“In the name of God, in the name of bygone generations who have welded the Indian people into one nation, and in the name of the dead heroes who have bequeathedtousatraditionofheroismandselfsacrifice — we call upon the Indian people to rally round our banner and strike for India’s freedom,”bosesaid.(quotedinsugatabose’s His Majesty’s Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle Against Empire, 2011).

Bose was head of state of Azad Hind, and also held the foreign affairs and war portfolios. A C Chatterjee was in charge of finance, S A Ayer was minister of publicity and propaganda, and Lakshmi Swaminathan

had the ministry of women’s affairs.

The Azad Hind government claimed authority over all Indian civilian and military personnel in Britain’s Southeast Asian colonies (primarily Burma, Singapore, and Malaya) which had fallen into Japanese hands during the War. It also claimed prospective authority over all Indian territory that would be taken by Japanese forces and the Azad Hind Fauj as they attacked British India from its Northeastern frontier.

Bose obtained legal control over the Andamans, which established the legitimacy of the provisional government — much like Charles de Gaulle’s declaration of sovereignty of the Free France government over some islands in the Atlantic after the fall of France.

“It (the Azad Hind government) obtained de jure control over a piece of Indian territory when the Japanese handed over the Andaman and Nicobar islands in late December 1943, though de facto military control was not relinquished by the Japanese admiralty,” Sugata Bose wrote.

Theprovisionalgovernmentalsogavecitizenship to Indians living in Southeast Asia; Sugatabosewrotethat30,000indianspledged allegiance to Azad Hind in Malaya alone.

The Azad Hind government was recognised by the Axis powers and their satellites: Germany, Japan, Italy, as well as Nazi and Japanese puppet states in Croatia, China, Thailand, Burma, Manchuria, and the Philippines.

Immediately after its formation, it joined the Axis powers and declared war on Britain and the United States.

But Bose wasn’t the first

Twenty eight years before the Azad Hind government came into existence, a Provisional Government of India had been formed in Kabul by a group known as the Indian Independence Committee (IIC).

During World War I, Indian nationalists based mainly in Germany and the US, as well as revolutionaries and pan-islamists from India,attemptedtofurtherthecauseofindian independence with aid from the Central Powers — the alliance of Germany, Austriahungary,

Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire.

The IIC, with the help of the Ottoman Caliph and the German Kaiser, tried to foment an insurrection in India, mainly among Muslim tribes in Kashmir and the northwestern frontier of British India. On December 1, 1915, the IIC established a government-in-exile in Kabul under the presidency of Raja Mahendra Pratap and the prime ministership of Maulana Barkatullah, revolutionary freedom fighters who spent decades outside India trying to gather international support for Indian independence.

Barkatullah was also one of the founders of the Ghadar Movement, which began in California in 1913 with the aim of overthrowing British rule in India. Lala Har Dayal, one of the movement’s leaders, put forth the following plan of action for Ghadarites:

“...Use the freedom that is available in the US to fight the British... British rule must be overthrown, not by petitions but by armed revolt... Carry this message to the masses and to the soldiers in the Indian Army... Enlist their support.”

While the movement was crushed in India by the end of the War, the Ghadarites left a powerful and lasting impression on both Indians and the British. “If success and failure are to be measured in terms of the deepening of nationalist consciousness, the evolution and testing of new strategies and methods of struggle, the creation of tradition of resistance, of secularism, of democracy, and of egalitarianism, then, the Ghadarites certainly contributed their share to the struggle for India’s freedom,” Bipan Chandra and others wrote in India’s Struggle for Independence (1988).

The Kabul Provisional Government was one of many moves by revolutionaries with links to the Ghadar movement and the San Francisco-based Ghadar Party.

Acts of defiance, patriotism

Setting up provisional governments and governments-in-exile has long been a way for resistance movements to claim political legitimacy. These are not actual governments, even though they are powerful symbols of hope for the people they represent.

Both the 1915 and 1943 provisional governments were, more than anything else, symbolic acts of defiance against British rule in India. In the present time, a major purpose of the Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamshala is to keep the symbolic flame of resistance of the Tibetan people burning outside Tibet.

By proclaiming the Azad Hind government, Bose gave his army legitimacy in international law. The oaths of allegiance taken by officers of the Azad Hind Fauj were produced during the 1945-46 Red Fort trials as evidence of the legality of their actions.

That said, neither of the two provisional governments can in any seriousness be called the “Government of India”. This is for two reasons.

First, neither of these governments gained wide international recognition. While some countries did recognise and support them, they did so for their own motives. After the wars, this support vanished.

Second, these governments never controlled Indian territory. Even as Bose held the Andamans, the islands were effectively under Japanese occupation. So was all the territory in the Northeast captured briefly by the combined Indian and Japanese armies. The Kabul government never set foot on Indian soil.

(From left) Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose, and Barkatullah.