Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Read online

  I met a man who wasn’t there.

  He wasn’t there again today.

  I do wish he’d go away.’

  AJP Taylor, in War for Danzig, Origin of Second World War

  ‘Who is the third who walks always besides you?

  When I count, there are only you and I together

  But when I look ahead up the white road

  There is always another one walking beside you’

  T S Eliot, What Thunder Said

  It was 1945. For a destroyed but victorious Britain, India seemed calm, as Quit India enthusiasm had gradually died down by then. And it was time for Viceroy Linlithgow to get replaced by Lord Wavell.

  A little before, it was also the time when the tide began to turn against the Axis powers, though Germany and Italy in Europe, and Japan in South East Asia were a little aggressive.

  But whom then did the British have to fear in a victory that had destroyed them and their political calm, in a deceptive and indifferent India?

  We will probe for an answer.

  After Wavell took over, ‘The British government no longer seriously considered the possibility of a political settlement with the Congress and, with the Japanese now on India’s north-east frontier, it was determined to concentrate on immediate problems... In May 1944, Gandhi was released... on grounds of ill health, although the government was still not prepared to release other Congress leaders… The Last Years of British India, pp 96-98

  After his release, Gandhi offered Jinnah a solution, but was turned down, as his formula on the Partition was rejected... Gandhi failed and the government was not prepared to cooperate any further. It did not even bother to re-arrest him. Ibid p 98.

  However, ‘In order to convince the British that violence was still possible, the Congress needed a second spokesman to play another role which Gandhi could not... Just as the British had not feared Gandhi, the reducer of violence, they no longer feared Nehru, who was rapidly assuming the lineaments of civilised statesmanship – even elder statesmanship – in response to a changed situation. The British, however, still feared Subhas Bose, or rather the violence he represented.’’ Ibid 104.

  Unfortunately, for the Congress and the Muslim League, there was no immediate issue which could excite now indifferent people of the country to get them to renew any independent movement, though both parties kept tossing their ideas, regarding how the British should leave India.

  And as the war ended in 1945, both in Europe in the month of May, and in South East Asia in July, and while the Congress and the British were trying to strategize, they didn’t want Bose to be back at any cost.

  Like A J P Taylor said, he, by then, became the ‘man in the stair’ whom none, including the British and Americans, wanted to see up there. Yet, he was there, and rather his shadow became TS Eliot’s third man, moving among his army men (and forces who actually wanted to get rid of the British rule) with his countrymen and the Indian Army.

  The INA men, now returning to their country as prisoners of war, both from Europe and Asia, turned the heat on the British. The British government decided to try three top INA officers at the Red Fort to strengthen the morale of the Indian army.

  However, now the ‘thunder spoke’, and both Bose’s and INA’s exploits became known to all Indians. It was a turning point even for the Indian army whose morale the rulers wanted to boost by prosecuting the men from INA.

  A few years back, commenting on Bose’s expansive Presidential speech in 1938 and his plan for creating a dedicated partymen, Arthur Herman, an unfailing critic of Bose and biographer of Gandhi and Churchill wrote: ‘It was a forlorn hope; Bose would be disappointed by the sheer normality of his fellow Congressmen as Gandhi was, and for some for the same reason. Congress politicians were no more interested in Bose’s version of mass party discipline than they had been in Gandhi’s. They desired office and influence. They are getting both under the new constitution.’ Ibid.

  On this, which went for decades under the leadership of Gandhi, and as Bose was forced out of the Congress in 1939, he was also prophetic, as he summed up: ‘Its (Congress) outrage on democracy... is sickening. One wonders which is a greater menace to India’s future – the British bureaucracy or Gandhian hierarchy.’

  And unlike the Bourbons (who, according to French historians, forgot nothing as they learned nothing), none of the three – the British government, the Congressmen, or the Muslim League leaders – forgot what they learnt from history.

  The Congress and Muslim League leaders began to have second thoughts and reversed their earlier decision to back the British move to try INA officers.

  It frightened the Muslim League more for another reason, as once again like during the 1857 mutiny, Hindus and Muslims seemed to be getting united.

  And British bosses, including top White Army leaders, who by then had understood the psychological impact of the INA soldiers on the Indian army, who began feeling that they were wrong in fighting for the British.

  Auchinleck, a British general in South East Asia, wrote to Wavell, remorsefully: ‘The evidence reaching us now increasingly goes to show that the general opinion in the Army... is in favour of leniency… (because the) accused were carrying out what they believed to be their duty.’ Jinnha, by Stanley Wolpart.

  By writing a frank letter, ‘“Auk’’ did not mean to oblige Bose and his men, did a little plain-speaking, like Bose’s last erroneous decision...’ to escape to Russia.

  By then, Home Member Mudie had also informed the Viceroy and London that Bose had escaped to Russia.

  Mudie advised his top bosses not to insist on Bose’s surrender, as without him, issues regarding the INA could eventually be quelled.

  An honest soldier by heart, unlike his prejudiced boss Winston Churchill in London, Wavell understood ‘Auck’s message well as government insistence on punishment of INA men had the potential of a violent end for the British rule, which he will not preside over.’

  In his book In Quest of Freedom, in the chapter ‘Netaji’, NG Jog regretted: ‘If, by a miracle, Bose was resurrected in India, he would have carried out everything, like Napoleon did after his return from Elba...’

  And yet again, thunder spoke. Soon after the INA trials, Naval mutinies in Bombay and Karachi confirmed the worst fears of the British, the Congress and the Muslim League.

  Moreover, as the trial set off mass upheavals which threatened to snowball, the Congress and Muslim League decided to defend them.

  Though a greater game plan was also hatched by the three afore-mentioned forces to sabotage the INA’s message fetched for Indians with their leader talking it out in Russia., realised that Bose’s blow was irreversible even in his absentia and the fear it inspired was equally phenomenal.

  ‘The arrival of Bose (in South East Asia) could not change the course of the war, but like the Bengal famine (which, according to this author, was a British-engineered event), it signalled the severing of India’s last ties of loyalty to Britain. It also signalled the doom of Gandhi’s and Churchill’s plan for India’s future,’ writes A Herman.

  Though Herman did not elaborate on the ‘why’, Bose’s arrival in South East Asia spelt doom for Gandhi and Churchill’s dreams. Certainly, once in Stalin’s hand, Bose could not defeat the men who plotted with the British. He was desperately negotiating with the Russian Fagin.

  In India, the pace hastened up with the British, who either conspired to divide the nation or reached an understanding of dividing the nation and then leaving the booty to men who would enjoy the gift over the dead bodies of millions, who would become like a dried up memory with Indians after 70 years.

  However, not all Congress men knew that Bose was in Russia. Only Gandhi and Nehru, now left without another leader of pan-Indian stature for the Prime Ministerial post, had known it, and decided to take absolute decisions which gave an impression to British that Nehru could help the unnerved British.

  And so did Britain and America, whom Bose later recognised as grea
ter emerging imperialist threats in the post-war scenario.

  Sankar Ray, an old CPI leader, wrote in Point Counter Point, an English magazine which later wound up: ‘In an interview with me at the Great Eastern Hotel, Calcutta, where her boarding and lodging was arranged by the Reception Committee for the CPI (M) party Congress in 1985, Lakshmi Sahgal told me, “Netaji warned us in Singapore that the US imperialism is to emerge as a bigger threat than the British.” Even the CPSU was late in realising this.’ Ray had been a CPI leader and secretary to the party’s politburo member, Ronen Sen.

  The departing Britishers had already begun to choose their men from the Congress as they were fortifying themselves during the second-most vulnerable point of the Empire in India. Nehru was one such all-season man. After the departure of Wavell, Nehru’s new found royal friend Mountbatten and his wife Lady Mountbatten were to play a far greater and dubious role. Mountbatten happened to have properly briefed an ‘English Left Nehru’ about the danger he faced if Russia played the mischief of allowing Bose to re-enter India. Mudie had also explained in his letter that trying Bose as a war criminal may not be possible in a legal and conventional sense of the term and would only complicate the Indian situation further.

  What, however, kept bothering Nehru and Mountbatten was Gandhi occasionally telling people that ‘My inner voice says Subhas didn’t die.’ Nehru may seem to have been on the side of the people, but Gandhi’s credibility was much higher with them, and Gandhi’s inner voice only added to the trauma of Nehru and his royal English friend.

  Thus, despite fortifying their fort, they had to be extremely cautious.

  In fact, the British were so cautious that Mountbatten arranged to send Nehru to South East Asia to inquire about the INA fund that Bose had not been able to take along with him to Russia.

  ‘But Nehru with his arrogant, uncivilised behaviour with South East Asian Indians, could not make any success, though later Mountbatten and Nehru looted it (the fund),’ says Prof. Samar Guha in Netaji Dead or Alive.

  Another worrying factor for the British after Wavell left was that Gandhi’s role was getting gradually reduced. Herman wrote that as days wore off to reach to a climax, ‘Churchill’s nemesis (Gandhi) was reduced to a cipher.’ Gandhi and Churchill by Arthur Herman.

  However, the former British Prime Minister would not give up hope on the division of India on the basis of religion.’ Ibid.

  The British, by then, had chosen a more nebulous and ambitious Nehru as his English training was perfect, and barring his hatred towards Jinnah, ‘a communal demagogue’ (as he would call the League leader).

  This included his tactical mistakes in tackling a man like Jinnah (though many doubted that Nehru also did want Partition so that he got rewards for his....) and could now replace Gandhi, his great political master at this point of crisis.

  Jinnah, who considered Nehru an equally vague man, hated him fiercely, but with his Stalin-like ‘realism’ he thought that the Partition might be a safer option in a rapidly changing situation. At least it would ensure his personal success. Ironically, the tragedy for Indian people was that actually both were demagogues.

  By then, however, the average Congress and League man had understood that the British clearly wanted to quit India as it would not be possible for the British to carry on with the administration with aggressive nationalist forces looking for an avenue to explode.

  As for example, a changed Indian Army was the biggest headache, not only for Britain but also for the Congress, the League, and especially Nehru.

  Thus, a plot was hatched, as helpless Britishers saw its years of divide and rule policy revisiting it with bitter harvest on the eve of the ‘transfer of power.’ The outcome for the Congress was equally fraught with great dangers.

  It was also the time for Britishers of all shades to probe the outcome of their Ideological Foreign Direct Investment and how strong it ran among the people they thought they could trust in troubled times, especially within the Congress.

  In this regard, Bose had warned, like a prophet, in 1938 as Congress President, that a transfer of power would leave India divided. As such, it might cut loose anarchy and butchery, and may ‘lead another foreign nation intervening for a takeover, and which could it be other than Russia?’

  British historian, Michael Edwardes, not often quoted by his Indian counterparts, gave us a rare insight (as by then the Gandhian influence was on the wane) into British mind and its dilemmas: ‘Would there be a civil war, if Britain left, having handed over power to a Congress-dominated Centre? If there was a civil war, there were men and nations who might take advantage of it… Britain’s wartime honeymoon with Russia was over and the old fears had returned… In Tsarist days, Russia had always been the main threat to India, and only the strength and unity that Britain had imposed had protected the country from an invasion from the north… The Soviet Union, which had revived a good deal of Tsarist legend to boost the morale during the war, might also revive the Tsarist dream of conquering India… Even if this thought was a nightmare, a civil war would be sure to affect British interests in India just when they were needed to bolster the tottering economy of a war-exhausted Britain.’ Michael Edwardes, Last Years of British India, pp 114.

  Edwardes was an early writer on the issue, who claimed that his book was an outcome of not only extensive research but also discussions with men in power. The revelation of the fear of both a civil war and a Russian expansionist intervention was not to be trifled with as the British government had already had their input from the Intelligence that Bose was in Russia without knowing what exactly Kremlin’s real plan was. Thus, unlike what Edwardes described as a threat, it was perhaps a little too real for the informed British.

  However, here Edwardes may have gone wrong, as the old-timers of the Communist Party of India suggested to this writer, that ‘a war-exhausted Russia was not at all ready, materially, to intervene directly in India. And it was Bose’s mistake that he was trying to convince Stalin, which earned him no advantage.’

  Jinnah, who had had a comfortable relation with ousted war winner Winston Churchill, was sensitised over threat from Bose, and so was Nehru by his charming, royal, and former British South East Asian naval commander Mountbatten.

  As the Communist Party of India got discredited by abusing the Quit India Movement and painting Bose as a fascist and a fifth columnist, for Kremlin they could no more be trusted at this crucial point of Indian history.

  However, with Bose in Russia, and without a clear picture from Kremlin, it would have been formidable, and the British, the Congress, and the League agreed to Partition, ‘a lesser evil’, which would leave every stakeholders’ share safe, though Muslim and Hindu fundamentalists slaughtered millions who would have had no role to play in the final act of this drama.

  Owing to a lack of a channel of communication with Kremlin, all pro-Partition leaders in Congress and League actually did not know that they had, much like their English and American allies, worked out a deadly plan for Bose – his internment in a Moscow bungalow, and after negotiation broke down, being sent to political isolation until Kremlin rediscovered his importance in Moscow as the Cold War unfolded.

  ‘Bose was in Moscow then and was negotiating with the Russian dictator, a killer of millions since he became the General Secretary of the CPSU.’

  However, ‘dialogues broke down suddenly with Bose refusing to accept Stalin’s proposals, which landed him in cruel isolation,’ said K Ponda, adding, ‘but it took two more years to get things well for Bose (he was referring to the Cold War).”

  And by then, in India, players and stakeholders played out their roles, and got the nation divided for a ‘lesser evil’.

  For ‘leaders of men’, the Partition may have been a lesser evil that they opted for, but for the men on the streets, it was not.

  Especially the Sikhs, Sindhis, and Hindus in Punjab, and the Hindu Bengalis in the eastern part of India, who either dying in carnage or escaping it by just an
inch.

  While both Bengal and Punjab were cut into two states, it was followed up with a great human killings, which the leaders watching from the fences, and a failed British administration, which watched it happening from an uninvolved distance.

  According to British records (it could be more), ‘7,000 men, women, and children were slaughtered, usually under the most bestial circumstances, though the Congress put the actual toll to 2000, the League at 30,000, and with 150,000 refugees...’ Last Years of British India.

  Even the Indian Army had to be divided on communal lines with administrative machineries. Dividing an army which had just about to ‘wake up’ and unite, was a masterstroke on the part of the British.

  In India, the former INA solders were banned from re-entering the army, while the same wasn’t done in Pakistan. That is because Nehru was ‘convinced by the argument given by this royal friend, Viceroy Mountbatten, who said that INA men should not be allowed in the Indian Army, because they would break the discipline.’

  Thus, both Bose’s and Gandhi’s dream for a united India was crushed, despite their best wishes and efforts. Though the latter never wanted to see the former in his scheme of things, both, however, did not want India to get divided.

  However, at the end, Herman, a Gandhi devout and also his biographer, drew a comparison as he wrote about Gandhi’s assassination: ‘Even the closest of Congress followers had heeded direction and advice only when it suited them, and totally disregarded them otherwise… Those followers had joined the elections for India’s legislature in 1924 when Gandhi told them not to (Herman here referred to C R Das’ Swaraj Party, he did not care to know Das wasn’t working under Gandhi. Defeated Gandhi later said that he clung to ‘Swaraj’ as a child clings to his mother)...

  Finally, they had ignored his plea to support the war in 1939. Even on the issue of Partition, he fought against it, and then was forced to surrender. His great campaigns of 1920-21 to quit India, had been failures. It was Bose’s INA officers, and not the Salt March, that broke the backbone of the British rule. It was fear of more violence, not respect for non-violence, that finally made them leave.’ Ibid p 585.