Subhas Chandra Bose: A tragic destiny

I’m not sure how many people outside India know of Subhas Chandra Bose, a major leader of this country’s independence movement who, after escaping from The British Raj at the onset of WWII, set up the Provisional Government of Free India as well as the India National Army (INA) in the shadow of Japan. He died in an airplane accident on 17 August 1945 (see His Majesty’s Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle against Empire by Sugata Bose).

His international standing suffered terminally from the charge of being a Quisling. In India, he was perceived as a socialist radical, and an unwelcome challenge to Gandhi. The accommodationists who struck a quick and dirty deal with Lord Mountbatten for independence (at the price of partition) never really forgave Bose his proactive and principled stance. He has remained the great ‘what if’ question of India’s counter-history (see An Indian Ideology by Perry Anderson).

The Irish context

One cannot understand, I think, Bose’s choices in his struggle for independence without reference to the earlier Irish experience. It had taken the Irish people 100 years to achieve Home Rule (in 1912 and 1914, but it had been postponed until the end of the war). The 1916 Easter Revolt, though a failure, was politically successful: it swung the sentiment of the Irish in favour of independence and helped make independence (and partition) inevitable.

As a subject country, India was in a far worse negotiating position than the Irish people. It had no representation at Westminster. Split between ‘British India’ and 565 princely states, it encompassed communities with different languages, cultures, and a caste system that hampered joint action (the British Crown’s suzerainty over 175 princely states, generally the largest and most important, was exercised in the name of the British Crown by the central government of British India under the Viceroy, and the remaining approximately 400 states were influenced by agents answerable to the provincial governments of British India under a governor, lieutenant-governor, or chief commissioner). The Gandhian approach of ‘shaming the British into quitting’ reflected a minimum common denominator on which everyone could agree. It did, however, reduce the Indian Congress to the role of ‘loyal opposition’ – and this in a situation where constitutional process for change was unavailable (Gandhi was well aware of this difficulty, but counted on his personal religiosity to overcome all difficulties: ‘When I am a perfect being, I have simply to say the word and the nation will listen; see Gandhi: A Political and Spiritual Life by Kathryn Tidrick).

A proactive stance, including a revolutionary option – becoming His Majesty’s opponent – was understandable. In addition, necessity made for strange bedfellows during WWII (Winston Churchill famously opined: ‘If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons’). It is in this light that Bose’s alliance of convenience with Japan may best be viewed. He sought and received public assurances, furthermore, of Japan supporting Indian independence. As for Hitler, Bose did criticise Hitler’s racist remarks in 1936, and had no love for fascism, so the invective that he was a crypto-fascist is unfounded.

Inclusiveness

Bose’s most radical aspect, in my view, was his quest for inclusiveness: this in a society where exclusion had, over time, become an organising principle. In Bengal, which the British had cleaved along rough religious lines, early on he strove to overcome religious sectarianism. In 1939, he broke with Gandhi over the issue of ‘homogeneity’ of the leadership, proposing a ‘composite’ cabinet drawn from the various strands of nationalist politics. His government in exile, the INA, but also his personal entourage, reflected his view that the experience of nationalism could transcend the many cleavages. His personal magnetism and example were the basis of his success.

Particularly interesting was his attention to the empowerment of women as a driver of change. Though personally shy with them (he married late and secretly), he organised and personally monitored the Rani of Jhansi Regiment – Indian women from the South Asian diaspora in arms.

Bose warned his fellow Indians against becoming ‘a queer mixture of political democrats and social conservatives,’ and called for the elimination of privileges based on birth, caste, or creed. Did Bose fully realise the extent of the subtle and pervasive character of caste divisions? (see Religion, Caste and Politics in India by Christophe Jaffrelot).

Nehru too was against caste, which he viewed as irrelevant in the modern world. But his communist leanings at the time led him to view statism, and ‘enlightened’ leadership along Leninist lines as the best way forward, thus allowing him implicitly to conflate the brahmanic core of Hinduism and the need for paternalistic enlightened leadership (‘there is no middle road between Fascism and Communism; one has to choose between the two, and I chose the Communist ideal’; see Understanding Caste: From Buddha to Ambedkar and Beyond by Gail Omvedt).

Addressing economic and social divisions

Transcending cultural and social divisiveness has its flip side: it challenges institutionalised economic divisions as well; in particular, it protected property rights (the rule of law does not do away with unequal distribution of wealth and power, but reinforces that inequality with the authority of law; see A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn). Bose had called for land reform to empower the peasants and destroy the money lenders; equally, he saw education and public health as the basis of inclusive empowerment of the poor. Industrialisation would absorb the growing population. Would he have been able to move forth on this front?

This social view contrasted, of course, with Gandhi’s strange mix of atavism (the village as the social unit) and benevolent paternalism of the ruling classes (bordering on feudalism). Nehru’s centrally planned socialism was a costly and inefficient adjunct to the existing social structures, and therefore doomed to failure.

I am more confident that Bose would have made health, education, and empowerment of women core objectives of his policies.

An inheritance of exclusion

The dream of inclusiveness died with him. The hurried departure of the British left an inheritance of divisions: independence was an unseemly scramble for the spoils. Fatefully, it also left most legal and administrative structures of the Raj in place. The mental habits of divisiveness and exclusion were safely transshipped to the new republic (almost from the moment India became a sovereign nation, it turned into a colonial power, annexing territory, waging war; it has never used military interventions to address political problems; see Walking with Comrades by Arundhati Roy). Corruption thrives on ‘states of exception’ and discretionary powers. That the country did not break up is a dark and numinous mystery (see India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy by Ramachandra Guha and In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India by Edward Luce).

Bose’s deepest tragedy may have been that he chose to become an ‘opponent’ at a moment when this move was necessary. By doing so he negated whatever chance he may have had to transform his country as it moved to independence and modernity.

The post was first published on DeepDip.

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