India will always remain grateful to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose for his bravery and indelible contribution to resisting colonialism. He stood up for the progress and well-being of his fellow Indians.
Bose left India for Europe on 15 September 1919, after passing his BA in philosophy from the University of Calcutta and entered the register of the university on 19 November 1919. He chose the Mental and Moral Sciences Tripos and simultaneously set about preparing for the Civil Service exams. He came fourth in the ICS examination and was selected, but he did not want to work under an alien government which would mean serving the British. As he stood on the verge of taking the plunge by resigning from the Indian Civil Service in 1921, he wrote to his elder brother Sarat Chandra Bose: "Only on the soil of sacrifice and suffering can we raise our national edifice." He resigned from his civil service job on 23 April 1921 and returned to India.
In the book, 'The Great Indian Story' linking current political scenario to our epic Mahabharata; Shashi Tharoor, has referred Subhas Chandra Bose to Pandu and Nehru to Dhritarashtra.
Bose had been a leader of the younger, radical, wing of the Indian National Congress in the late 1920s and 1930s, rising to become Congress President in 1938 and 1939. Bose advocated complete unconditional independence for India, whereas the All-India Congress Committee wanted it in phases, through Dominion status. Finally at the historic Lahore Congress convention, the Congress adopted Purna Swaraj (complete independence) as its motto. Gandhi was given rousing receptions wherever he went after Gandhi-Irwin pact. Subhas Chandra Bose, travelling with Gandhi in these endeavours, later wrote that the great enthusiasm he saw among the people enthused him tremendously and that he doubted if any other leader anywhere in the world received such a reception as Gandhi did during these travels across the country. Subhas Chandra Bose believed that the Bhagavad Gita was a great source of inspiration for the struggle against the British. Swami Vivekananda's teachings on universalism, his nationalist thoughts and his emphasis on social service and reform had all inspired Subhas Chandra Bose from his very young days. Subhas who called himself a socialist, believed that socialism in India owed its origins to Swami Vivekananda.
However, he was ousted from Congress leadership positions in 1939 following differences with Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress high command. He was subsequently placed under house arrest by the British before escaping from India in 1940. Bose's arrest and subsequent release sets the scene for his escape to Germany, via Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. A few days before his escape, he sought solitude and, on this pretext, avoided meeting British guards and grew a beard. On the night of his escape, he dresses himself as a Pathan to avoid being identified. Bose escapes from under British surveillance at his house in Calcutta on 19 January 1941, accompanied by his nephew Sisir K. Bose in a car. Bose arrived in Germany in April 1941, where the leadership offered unexpected, if sometimes ambivalent, sympathy for the cause of India's independence, contrasting starkly with its attitudes towards other colonised peoples and ethnic communities. In November 1941, with German funds, a Free India Centre was set up in Berlin, and soon a Free India Radio, on which Bose broadcast nightly. A 3,000-strong Free India Legion, comprising Indians captured by Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps, was also formed to aid in a possible future German land invasion of India.
Anita Bose Pfaff born in 1942 is the only child of Emilie Schenkl and Subhas Chandra Bose, who—with a view to attempting an armed attack on the British Raj with the help of Imperial Japan—left Schenkl and Pfaff in Europe, and moved to southeast Asia, when Pfaff was four months old. Since Schenkl could take shorthand and her English and typing skills were good, she was hired by Bose, who was writing his book, 'The Indian Struggle'.They soon fell in love and were married in a secret Hindu ceremony in 1937. Pfaff was raised by her mother, who worked shifts in the trunk office during the postwar years to support the family, which included Pfaff's maternal grandmother.Pfaff was not given her father's last name at birth, and grew up as Anita Schenkl. Her father was not there with her as he was busy with his army Azad Hind Fauj and was brought up by her mother Emilie Schenkl.
The honorific Netaji (Hindustani: "Respected Leader"), first applied in early 1942 to Bose in Germany by the Indian soldiers of the Indische Legion and by the German and Indian officials in the Special Bureau for India in Berlin, was later used throughout India.
On 21st October, 1943, at the Cathay Theater in Singapore, Netaji did proclaim the establishment of the Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind (The Provisional Government of Free India) and, three days later, declared war on the British Empire and the USA. The broad details of the efforts by this provisional government and its military wing, the Azad Hind Fauj (Indian National Army, INA), in the last stage of the anti-colonial struggle remain one of India’s most admired facts. It has been officially commemorated in the original volume of the Constitution , by release of stamps and by the recent raising of the tricolor on its 75thanniversary. It is reverentially recalled by millions of citizens to this day.
It is impossible not to note the pan-India inclusive ideals of the Azad Hind. Of course, it was not exactly new from Bose. From his earliest days as a young lieutenant of Chittaranjan Das, he had shown concern for recognizing the aspirations of various Indian communities. In the 1920s-30s, he had always resisted the imposition of one community over the other, much to the anger of communal organizations. And, now with the Provisional Government under his command, Bose's plans for 'inclusive patriotism' would include a) the Tricolour and Charka - a flag that freedom-fighters had identified with for two decades, b) the reliance on 'old' Hindustani in the names and motto, rather contrasting to the present re-naming, c) veteran Rash Behari Bose, as representative of the old armed-revolutionary order, d) brigades named after Gandhi, Nehru and Azad - the three top-notch leaders of the struggle at home, e) the anti-British symbolism of Tipu Sultan and Rani of Jhansi and f) the use of both North and South Indian languages in correspondence (the idea of using the Roman script must have been an influence of Turkey's founding father Kemal Ataturk, whom Bose had admired and hoped to emulate !) .
Netaji’s concluding words at the proclamation of the Azad Hind government – “….The Provisional Government is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Indian. It guarantees religious liberty, as well as equal rights and equal opportunities to its citizens. It declares its firm resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation equally and transcending all the differences cunningly fostered by an alien government in the past.”
When the Japanese were defeated at the battles of Kohima and Imphal, the Provisional Government's aim of establishing a base in mainland India was lost forever. The INA was forced to pull back, along with the retreating Japanese army, and fought in key battles against the British Indian Army in its Burma campaign, notable in Meiktilla, Mandalay, Pegu, Nyangyu and Mount Popa. However, with the fall of Rangoon, Bose's government ceases to be an effective political entity. A large proportion of the INA troops surrenders under Lt Col Loganathan. The remaining troops retreated with Bose towards Malaya or made for Thailand. Japan's surrender at the end of the war also leads to the eventual surrender of the Indian National Army, when the troops of the British Indian Army were repatriated to India. On 17 August 1945, Bose leaves from Saigon to Tourane, French Indo-China in the Mitsubishi Ki-21 twin-engine heavy bomber. Subsequently, on 23 August 1945, Reuters announces the death of Bose and General Tsunamasa Shidei of the Japanese Kwantung Army in Japanese-occupied Manchuria.
Bose: An Indian Samurai-by Netaji scholar and military historian General GD Bakshi claims that former British prime minister Clement Atlee said the role played by Netaji's Indian National Army was paramount in India being granted Independence, while the non-violent movement led by Gandhi was dismissed as having had minimal effect. The mutinies in British Empire caused by 19 apprising from 1942 to 1946 had a key role and terrified the British. In 1943-44, soon after the world war II, the Allied, i.e. the British, wanted to put restrictions on the AXIS including Bose's Indian National army, the first happened in Red Fort Trial - Col. Prem Sahgal, GS Dillon & Major Gen Shahnawaz khan were charged. There was immense anger by the soldiers. Negotiations had started in 1945. Shyam Lal Jain, before the Kosla Commission said, in 1970, that Nehru had signed a letter from memory after 30 years, a treachery evidence, calling Subhas Chandra Bose a traitor of British.
The 'first' Indian government
Interestingly, Azad Hind was not India’s first provisional government either. The credit for establishing that – formally known as the ''Hukumat-i-Moktar-i-Hind" – in Kabul on 1st Dec, 1915, goes to Raja Mahendra Pratap and Maulana Barkatullah who served as its President and Prime Minister respectively. Others members included Ubaid al Sindhi as Minister for India, Maulavi Bashir as War Minister and Champakaran Pillai as Foreign Minister. Its purpose was to enroll support from the Afghan Emir as well as Tsarist (and later Bolshevik) Russia, Turkey and Japan for the Indian freedom struggle.
The prime mover of this (forgotten) enterprise was Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh (1886 – 1979) prince of the native state of Hatras and alumnus of the Aligarh Muslim University (where his portrait adorns the library wall).
In 1919, British diplomacy succeeded in shutting down the provisional government. Pratap - a true internationalist - escaped to Japan and continued his travels through China, Mongolia and South Asia. A sincere believer in universal fraternity, he addressed himself as 'servant of mankind' , founded the 'World Federation Center' in Tokyo and strove for a 'happiness society'. His efforts earned him a Nobel nomination in the 1930s. Nehru, who met him in Switzerland, has written, '' ... a Don Quixote who had strayed into the twentieth century. But he was absolutely straight and thoroughly earnest''. Although settled in Japan in the 1940s, Pratap could never bring himself to accept Japan's imperialist arrogance and stayed away from the Azad Hind. He returned to India in 1946, composed his enjoyable (although rather haphazard) memoirs and won the 1957 Lok Sabha seat from Mathura defeating Jan Sangh's AB Vajpayee.
1 comment:
Very good website, thank you.
Odia Book Yajnaseni
Order Odia Books
Odia Books Online
Post a Comment