Recent allegations about a newly independent India under Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru snooping on the kin of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose is what conspiracy theorists and spin doctors needed to push their agenda — that Netaji was a greater patriot than Pandit Nehru. The “see-I-told-you” band of people, some of them public intellectuals, have kept the media and political circles abuzz with all sorts of activity ever since.
Every day, someone or the other claims to know what really happened to Bose and blames Pandit Nehru and the Congress for it. Any narrative or opinion that runs contrary to this new perception is immediately denounced as a work of traitors. However, Bose’s admirers conveniently ignore his Faustian treaty with Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan.
Netaji Bose, by his own admission in his book, “Indian Struggle” (published in 1935 in London), believed India needed a political system that was a mix of fascism and communism — something that he called samyavad. Netaji made a special trip to Rome in 1935 to present a copy of his book to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, whom he greatly admired and whose ideals he would follow for the rest of his life. Bose’s reactionary views naturally brought him into conflict with the pacifist leaders of Congress, most notably Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru. But the friction didn’t happen in 1935, it happened much earlier.
Bose had organized the annual session of the Indian National Congress in 1928 in Calcutta. There, he organized a guard of honour in full military style—over 2,000 volunteers were drilled in military fashion and organized into battalions; half of them wore military uniforms with “officers” wearing metal epaulettes. For himself, Bose got a senior British military officer’s dress tailored by Calcutta-based British firm, Harman’s, complemented by an aiguillette and a field marshal’s baton; he also assumed the title of general officer commanding, much to the chagrin of Gandhi, who described the whole thing as ‘Bertram Mills circus’. But Bose’s love for militarism continued just like his love for a good show.
In 1938, at the 51st session of the Congress at Haripura, Bose was the president. He organized for himself a grand ceremony that was no less than a victory march of a triumphant ancient Indian king returning from digvijaya. He supposedly entered the venue in a chariot drawn by 51 bullocks, accompanied by 51 girls in saffron saris, after a two-hour procession through 51 gates that also had 51 brass bands playing. He would do similar shows in Southeast Asia when he came to the helm of Indian National Army and Indian Independence League.
In October 1943, Bose announced the formation of the Provisional Government of Free India (Arzi Hukumat-i-Azad Hind). He arbitrarily assumed the titles of head of state, prime minister, and minister for war and foreign affairs — the first he intended to keep when India was liberated. He demanded total submission and fealty from Indians everywhere; anybody who opposed him, his army or government could be executed (some accounts suggest many were indeed tortured or executed on orders of Bose or with his knowledge).
The INA’s proclamation put this into writing: “If any person fails to understand the intentions of the Provisional Government of Azad Hind and the Indian National Army, or of our Ally, the Nippon Army, and dares to commit such acts as are itemized hereunder which would hamper the sacred task of emancipating India, he shall be executed or severely punished in accordance with the Criminal Law of the Provisional Government of Azad Hind and the Indian National Army or with the Martial Law of the Nippon Army.”
In a speech the same year in Singapore, Bose spoke about India needing a ruthless dictator for 20 years after liberation. Then Singapore daily, Sunday Express (now defunct), printed his speech where he said, “So long as there is a third party, ie the British, these dissensions will not end. These will go on growing. They will disappear only when an iron dictator rules over India for 20 years. For a few years at least, after the end of British rule in India, there must be a dictatorship…No other constitution can flourish in this country and it is so to India’s good that she shall be ruled by a dictator, to begin with …”
By this time, Netaji seems to have liked Nazism more than Fascism. In a speech to students of Tokyo University in 1944, Netaji said India needs to have a philosophy that “should be a synthesis between national socialism (Nazism) and communism”. Around this time, of course, any form of cordiality that existed between Bose and Pandit Nehru had evaporated.
While Bose fancied himself as a world leader like Hitler and Mussolini, Pandit Nehru despised both individuals and their ideologies. He expressed his “intense dislike” for Fascism and said there can be no middle path between fascism and communism, the former being a “crude and brutal effort of the capitalist order”.
Nevertheless, after Bose “died” in that mysterious air crash in August 1945, Pandit Nehru paid a tribute to his former colleague, “In the struggle for the cause of India’s independence he has given his life and has escaped all those troubles which brave soldiers like him have to face in the end. He was not only brave but had deep love for freedom. He believed, rightly or wrongly, that whatever he did was for the independence of India … Although I personally did not agree with him in many respects, and he left us and formed the Forward Bloc, nobody can doubt his sincerity. He struggled throughout his life for the independence of India, in his own way.”
Anwar Alikhan: What if Netaji had returned to India…
Disclaimer: A favourite grand-uncle of mine was one of Netaji’s closest associates. He, Abid Hasan Safrani, was the man who had accompanied Netaji on his historic submarine journey from Germany to Japan, and he was supposed to have been on that final, fateful flight to Tokyo. Thus he was one of the last people to see Netaji alive. Thanks to him, I grew up on legends of Netaji, and later went on to study the man, his strengths and his contradictions.
What is surprising is that with all the recent media chatter about Netaji, nobody has asked one very basic question: So what would have happened if Netaji had indeed come back to India? How might it have altered the course of Indian history?
Let us start this counter-factual history at the very beginning, in 1946 — because being a man of honour Netaji would have surely returned to India when his INA officers were being put on trial. Surely he would not have allowed them to be punished, without offering himself to the British as their Supreme Commander, and therefore the one ultimately responsible for their actions. For the British, it would have been a devilish political problem. On the one hand, they’d have wanted to hang Netaji as a war criminal (as they did, vindictively, with various Japanese leaders — many of them decent, honorable men). But, given the prospect of a violent national backlash, they’d have had to resort to some face-saving device (as indeed they finally did in the case of the INA officers), and gotten on with the job of wrapping up the Raj as quickly as possible Thus Netaji would have been in India when the fractious discussions were going on between the Congress and the Muslim League in the run up to Independence, and he would have surely played a role in the negotiations. Many people believe that, given his views on communalism, his force of personality and his relationship with Jinnah, Netaji might have been able to persuade the Muslim League leader not to insist on Partition. And thus the great tragedy of 1947 might have been avoided.
But the larger question is, what role would Netaji have played in post-Independence Indian politics? That would have depended on a variety of factors, but mainly on his relationship with the Congress Party, and with Nehru himself. That relationship, once highly synergistic, had become complicated, despite Netaji’s efforts to heal the fissures. Ultimately, however, Netaji and Nehru had differing views on key issues, and their two personalities were simply too strong for either to give in to the other. Sooner or later a parting of ways was inevitable. When we look at what might have happened, there are three possible alternative scenarios (with perhaps some measure of overlap between them)…
Scenario #1 is that Netaji, with his radical socialist views — much farther to the Left than Nehru’s — splits the Congress, and launches a rival party, occupying a space to the left of the Congress, thereby squeezing the CPI. Thus in the 1950s India would have had two strong rival political parties, both with left-of-centre positions, competing for the popular vote. So who would win? It seems likely that, over time, Netaji’s party would edge out Nehru’s Congress — especially since Netaji himself was a vigorous 10 years younger than Nehru. And, by the way, Netaji would not have shared Nehru’s squeamishly idealistic vision of a non-aligned foreign policy: Netaji’s India would have clearly been a member of the Soviet Bloc.
Scenario#2 hinges around the feeling at the time of Independence that India was not yet ready for democracy: there was a school of thought that believed that the country needed at least 10 years of what was called “Ataturkism” — after Kemal Ataturk, the legendary autocrat — to enable a process of accelerated national development, which would prepare the country for full democracy. Nehru, too, briefly considered this option, but was too much of a liberal (not to mention idealist) to go down that path. Netaji, on the other hand, had a strong streak of authoritarianism, so he’d have probably used all his considerable energies towards pushing India towards such a pragmatic, quasi-fascist model. And there’s no doubt that Netaji would have been outstanding in the role of an Indian Kemal Ataturk — an architect of the nation in every detail, shaping it according to his own benevolent dictatorial vision. He would, as Ataturk did in Turkey, tower over the nation like a colossus.
Scenario#3 is related to Scenario#2, except that here, instead of being a tough, paternalistic autocrat like Ataturk, Netaji tips over the edge to become India’s Mao Tse-Tung, or even India’s Kim Il Sung. (OK, these characterizations sound hurtful, so let’s just say he becomes India’s Fidel Castro, a well-loved leader taking his country down the battered leftist socialist road to ruination.)
By the 1980s, Netaji would be in his 80s, and would still continue to be at the helm (authoritarian leaders never know when to step aside). Years of radical left wing socialist policies would have reduced the country to an economic shambles. And as things continued downhill, it is likely that Netaji himself would have finally died, leaving his Forward Bloc party rudderless and ineffectual. Meanwhile, at some point along the way — perhaps the early 1960s — a disillusioned Nehru would have probably have conceded the game, and retired to Cambridge to teach (and perhaps to write a masterly series on the history of civilization). Indira Gandhi would fulfill the dream she once told her friend Dorothy Norman about, of buying a little cottage in Kensington, London, and keeping a paying guest to help pay the bills. And Rajiv Gandhi would be a successful pilot with Alitalia.
But in the1980s India would face an existential national crisis. Thanks to a sustained Saudi-funded Wahabi missionary program since 1973, the western wing of united India would be swept by waves of religious fundamentalism and strife, and the old demand for a separate Pakistan would be raised once again — coinciding, unfortunately, with the political vacuum at the Centre. And so, the western wing would break away to form a new fundamentalist Islamic state (although the Muslim-majority eastern wing in Bengal would remain a part of India because of old loyalties to Netaji).
Thus by the time the old Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, India would, thanks mainly to years of Netaji’s ruinous socialist policies, be on the brink of bankruptcy. Netaji himself would be long dead, and his Forward Bloc party would be in disarray. But in the wings hope was stirring. There was a renascent Congress Party, led by a canny politician named Narasimha Rao. And there was a resurgent Jan Sangh, long suppressed by Netaji, led by another shrewd politician named Atal Behari Vajpayee. The two parties were girding themselves for the elections of 1991, both speaking of bold economic reforms. History, as it often does, had reverted to the mean.
