Though Nehru and Indira Gandhi were great leaders and patriots, they gave scant recognition to Netaji’s role in, and contribution to, the Indian freedom movement. Netaji’s name was omitted from the ‘Time Capsule’ composed during the Emergency.
Bengaluru: When a great man passes from politics to history and then legend, it takes time to make an accurate and judicious assessment of that man’s place in the life of a nation. Sometimes it happens immediately and sometimes it takes decades—as with Subhas Chandra Bose.
Millions of Indians will therefore be happy with the Prime Minister’s announcement to install a statue of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose within the canopy on the Central Vista. This honour has both historical irony and poetic justice. That a man who stood defiantly—and possibly violently—against the British Raj should occupy the place once occupied by King Emperor George V, (who refused to condemn the massacre of Jallianwala Bagh) gladdens anti-colonial hearts.
It would certainly gladden the soul of my father, Dr Moni Moulik, who was an associate of Netaji, who accompanied him on his armament-gathering projects in Germany, Italy and Czechoslovakia and who (fluent in Italian, French and German) acted as interpreter for Netaji during these sombre and dangerous negotiations. This is briefly mentioned in Dr Sisir Bose’s book, “My Uncle Netaji”.
It is lamentable that one of greatest sons of modern India, who served his country with reckless dedication, did not figure prominently in historical narratives composed by post-Independence chroniclers. They have not fully acknowledged the significance of the Azad Hind Fauj in attaining India’s freedom. Intellectuals and ideologues called Netaji “fascist” for negotiating with the Axis powers to raise arms for his future army of liberation.
Ironically, the most definitive and brilliant biography of Netaji and his elder brother Sarat Chandra Bose—Brothers Against the Raj—has been published by an American historian, Dr Leonard A. Gordon of Harvard University. Such a book (in English) could have been written by Indian historians after Indian Independence to offer a holistic picture of the Indian freedom struggle and of the unsung heroes of our land.
When Jawaharlal Nehru criticised Netaji for seeking the help of Germany and Italy, Subhas Bose replied that all 19th century freedom movements relied on adversarial nations of the oppressor to get arms—be it Giuseppe Garibaldi of Italy, Alexander Ypsilanti of Greece and Lajos Kossuth of Hungary. India, he said, had to do the same. Gandhiji’s exhortation to satyagrahis to meekly receive pummelling by the police (during the Salt March) was distasteful to Netaji, who declared “give me blood and I will give you freedom”.
So the foundations were laid for establishing the Azad Hind Fauj for a war of liberation to free India of British rule. The motto was “Chalo Dilli” and the greeting was “Jai Hind”. Had India been freed by a war of liberation, the history of the country might have been different. The Partition of India might have been avoided because Muslims trusted Subhas Bose’s impartiality and genuine secularism. His close colleagues in the Azad Hind Fauj were Muslims like Shah Nawaz Khan.
But fate had planned a tragic finale. Netaji was reported to have died in a mysterious plane crash in August 1945.
Millions of Indians considered this as a calamity. Many refused to accept his death. Many of them had forsaken careers and security to follow him.
When my father landed in Bombay after returning from Europe in late 1938, he was interrogated by British police officers. They questioned him interminably about Netaji’s meetings with the armament manufacturers—Krupps, Grottanellis and Skoda. Finally losing patience, he told his astonished inquisitors, “I am a journalist and have seen the scene in Europe. It is you, the British, who have appeased Hitler. I saw and reported what your Prime Minister did in Munich. But war is coming. It is matter of time.”
The Bombay police did not arrest him. They let him proceed to Calcutta where he married my mother Leela. The Calcutta police was instructed to keep him under strict surveillance, especially after war broke out. The Statesman newspaper, which had published his dispatches from Rome, refused to employ him. Commercial firms closed their doors to him. My father supported his wife and two infant daughters by writing for Bengali newspapers and journals which refused to be cowed. Like millions of Indians, they lived through the man-made famine, communal riots and the Partition—waiting for a new dawn.
But the man who had inspired many of them had gone.
When posted at the Indian Embassy in Tokyo, my father and Justice Radha Binod Pal (who gave a powerful note of dissent at the Tokyo War Trials) tried to find clues to the real story of Netaji’s death. Father’s journalist friend, Mr Tabayashi, tried to help, but every time they found a clue, the trail ran cold. With an American Army of Occupation in Japan no Japanese wanted to speak about the event, though “Bose-San” was deeply revered and remembered.
Paradoxically, by the law of unintended consequences, the pivotal role of the INA in gaining Independence was acknowledged by the then British Viceroy. He informed the British government immediately after World War II that the large-scale defection of soldiers and officers of the British-Indian Army to the Indian National Army was a signal that British rule was no longer possible without the support of the British-Indian Army. The East India Company had seized vast swathes of Indian territories through the collaboration of its Indian officers and sepahis.
A war devastated Britain accepted this grim reality. Soon after, the Stafford Cripps Mission came to negotiate a flawed and fractured freedom. Many believe that had Subhas Bose participated in the negotiations, the tragic partition of India and the carnage and demographic disruption that followed might not have happened.
Though Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi were great leaders and patriots, they gave scant recognition to Netaji’s role in, and contribution to, the Indian freedom movement. Netaji’s name was omitted from the “Time Capsule” composed during the Emergency. That bureaucrats and intellectuals collaborated in this travesty is lamentable. Vallabhbhai Patel, another great Indian leader, opposed Netaji during his lifetime and withheld recognition to him after his death. More wounding was former friend Bidhan Chandra Roy distancing himself from Netaji. Bizarre still was the attitude of Indian communists, who by incomprehensible logic, felt Netaji was anti-Russian because he had sought the help of Germany for arms. They ignored the fact that their patron saint Stalin had approved the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, to buy time to fortify the Soviet army. Stalin hinted this in his address to the Frunze Military Academy on the eve of Nazi invasion.
In 1995, there was a belated acknowledgement given by Prime Minister Narasimha Rao who directed the establishment of a Martyrs Memorial and an INA memorial at Red Fort. The Archaeological Survey of India was entrusted with the task. I was then DG, ASI. The museum for the Indian National Army was close to the place where the infamous INA trials had taken place. We were all moved by the enthusiasm of the surviving soldiers of the INA and Netaji’s associates such as Colonel Dhillon, who helped us to recapture a sad but soul-stirring episode in Indian history.
In 1997, on the birth centenary of Netaji, Professor Martin Pfaff and his wife Dr Anita Bose Pfaff, daughter of Netaji, visited Bangalore where they had first met. I was then posted in Bangalore. The then Chief Minister, Mr J.H. Patel, hosted a dinner party for the Pfaffs. There I met the modest and charming Anita and discussed Netaji’s contribution to India’s freedom. When Mr Patel asked Anita if she would consider a political career in India, she replied, “My father did what he could for his beloved land. And then he went his way.” Next day Mr Patel decided that a statue of Netaji should be erected fronting Vidhan Soudha. This was done that year.
In a recent interview to Vishnu Som of NDV 24X7, Dr Anita Bose Pfaff spoke poignantly of her father. She was happy that Netaji’s statue would be installed at the Central Vista and hoped that in her lifetime Netaji’s mortal remains now in Tokyo’s Renkoji Temple would find final rest in India. She paused, perhaps to halt her tears, and then wished the people of India well in the midst of the pandemic. Anita did namashkar and concluded with the words coined by her father—Jai Hind.
I conclude with my father’s homage to Netaji in his published poem “A Song of Singapore.”
Then another Singapore rises from the past
which saw the spark lit by a son of India
on the debris of an empire,
who redeemed his nation’s imprisoned soul.
A soldier in peace, an exile in war,
Disowned by his leader,
betrayed by his friends,
Undaunted, unbeaten,
he raised the flag of free India
on this emerald island
before the flag was unfurled
at the Red Fort in Delhi.
The long march to Kohima and Imphal
began here, echoing Garibaldi’s cry
“Delhi or Death” (Roma o morte).
A courage so incandescent,
a sacrifice so total
have not been written
in water but in blood.
Periclean Athens and Augustan Rome
would have been proud of such a man.
Dr Moni Moulik obtained his doctorate, summa can laude, from Rome University, on “British Politics and Finance in India”. This indictment of British rule in India brought him into trouble with the British government in 1939.
In 1948, Moni Moulik joined the Indian Foreign Service, where he dealt with information and media matters. He served in the Indian Embassies in Washington, Tokyo and London. In 1951, he established the India Information Centre in New York. In 1959, he was invited to join the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, in Rome, for assisting in the formulation and launching of the Freedom From Hunger Campaign. He wrote widely on politics and development economics. After retirement he and his wife Leela settled in Shantiniketan.
Achala Moulik is a former civil servant. She has authored numerous books on political and cultural history and four novels. She is recipient of the Pushkin Medal and Yesenin Prize.