NETAJI SUBHASH CHANDRA BOSE & THE I.N.A

NETAJI SUBHASH CHANDRA BOSE & THE INDIAN NATIONAL ARMY (INA)

(The Key Catalysts to India's Freedom)

Maj Gen (Dr) G D Bakshi SM, VSM (Retd)

"He was certainly always a nationalist. For him, the In dian Nation was an idea, the very antithesis of the princel y states and the caste system and linguistic conflicts, and above all, the very antithesis of Jinnah's theory of two nations."

- Anton  Pelinka on Netaji Subhash -

"The British no longer feared Gandhi o; Nehru, but they feared Bose and the violence he represented, and his suddenl y amplified figure overawed the conferences that were to lead to independence.11

- Michael Edwards

"The contribution made by Netaji S C Bose towards the achievement of freedom in 1945 was no less and perha ps more important than that of M ahatma Gandhi."

- R.C. Majumdar, Historian

"The Sikhs may try & set up a separate regime and that will only be the su-,rt of a general decentralization and breakup of the idea that Ind ia is a country, whereas it is a subcont inent as varied as Europe . The Punjabi is as different Fom a M adrasi, as a Scdt from an ftalian. The British tried to consolidate it but achieved nothing permanent. No one can make a nation out of the Eq«ator."

- Field Marshal Claude Auchinlek

 

Strategic Direction of Freedom Struggle

Where a nation state is going, depends a great deal on where it has come from. What were its origins? How did it gain its freedom? How were its seminal institutions formed? What was its national narrative on formation? Who were its heroes? 68 years  after independence, the time has come to take a dispassionate view of our recent history and reassess the role of the key dramatis personae. This is not an exercise in digging up graves, but an essential exercise about recognizing who we are and what do we stand for. The Indian Freedom struggle had thrown up a galaxy of great leaders who were talented men of great vision and stature. In retrospect one of the tallest amongst them perhaps was Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.

"There was, in Bose's perception, a linkage between how India gained independence and what India would do after independence. How India gained independence would determine if India would be able to surmount the powerful efforts being made to undermine her unity. At this stage

{1942} , Bose's mind was not only on the ensuing struggle, he also gave much attention to the question of the cohesion and modernization of Indian society. Without these, he felt, India's political unitywould remain vulnerable."

- Sitanshu Das, Subhash Bose: A Political Biography

The Use of Force: The key question about the freedom struggle is basically what actually worked? What was the relative contribution of the use of force versus the Non-violent Agitational approach towards India achieving her independence. In terms of violence - there are two landmark events - the 1857 Mutiny and the first war of independence that it unleashed.

There is also the much lesser known 1946 Naval Mutiny - that actually forced the British decision to leave so quickly in the wake of World War-II. What is even more important however, is the fact that Bose and the INA had tried to fashion a pan Indian identity and promote a militant nationalism. That was the core of the Nationalist project per se .

The 1857 Mutiny: The revolt of 1857 started as a mutiny in the Presidency Armies of the East India Company and soon mutated into a popular uprising spreading across much of North India. At various times, 80,000 Indian soldiers rose up against the British. Had they all rebelled together or had better leadership - the British Rule in India would . have come to a swift and inglorious end then. The British were truly shaken by this massive revolt. It brought home to them that significant parts of the Indian population, though seemingly hostile to each other, were capable of uniting against the colonial government. The British crushed this revolt with great brutality but were forced to think long and hard about how to safeguard their empire in India. Very meticulously, the British set about trying to fragment and divide the Indian population in such a manner that it would never be able to unite again to oppose tt,e British Rule. To do this, the British did two things:-

1.               Faultlines: First they exploited every single existing faultline in Indian society, based on caste, creed, ethnicity, language and religion to thoroughly divide and fragment Indian society. No other country in the world has quite been subject to such a concerted assault to destroy its unity and the very idea of India as a nation state.

2.               The Discourse of/ mperial Justice: Dr. Mithi Mukherjee writes , "To justify their colonial rule, they invented the discourse of Imperial Justice. This was to overcome the foreignness of British Rule as a source of provocation for new uprisings and also to dismantle all sources of Indian national unity and identity - cultural, political and historical. The aim was to thus render the very idea of India as meaningless." India, they said, was torn by internal conflict (due to its perpetually warring ·castes and creeds). India was in turmoil and hence needed a neutral and impartial foreign power at its helm to secure both cohesion justice and order. Given that 1.ndian society was divided into communities in endless conflict with each other - only an alien foreign power could be trusted to be neutral and impartial. In other words, for India to have any order and unity, the state would have to be exterior to the civil society or the nation. This was the basis of the colonial discourse of Imperial Justice started to justify British Rule in India.

For the next 50 years, the Indian nation and society was subjected to an all out assault of the colonial administration, designed to deepen and expand every faultline in society and destroy the Idea of India. The tragedy is that the British succeeded so well and so thoroughly divided India that we still have not been able to undo the faultlines they exacerbated so badly.

The Caste Faultline: The first faultline that the British went all out to exploit was the caste faultline of Hindu society. The historian, Samson Burly says, "It was after 1857 that the British constructed caste as the most important category by which to govern Indian society . They refined caste by means of various colonial instruments such as district manuals and gazettes, Imperial Surveys and finally, the Census of 1872 - which made Varna, Jati or Caste the central idea for the classification of Indian society . This census administration was driven by the ideological need to naturalise the absence of national unity and identity in India ." Risley was one of the greatest proponents of caste-based censuses and separate electorates based on religion and caste to divide Indian society. "So long-as a regime of caste persists - Indian will not have the capacity to develop an idea of nationality - let alone rule themselves", he said.

Negating the Idea of India: British Measures. The British had tried to negate the very idea of India and done their best to fracture the polity into a splinter of diverse identities.

Colonial Accentuation  of Identities :

1.               1 872 Caste Based Census: The British started the first caste-based census in 1872 and  before that institutionalized caste through various colonial instruments l.ik· district manuals,  district gazettes , imperial surveys and finally, the census of 1872.

2.                Morley  Minto  Reforms  (1909) - Separate electorate granted to Muslims; Group  representation provision introduced in central legislature

3.                        The Govt of India Act (1919) - Extended separate electorates to Sikhs, Indian Christians and Europeans.

4.                        Reservation  in Govt Appointments  for  Muslims  (1925) - Policy subsequently extended to other communities

5.                        Govt  of  India  Act  (1935)  - A  total  of  13 communal  and  functional  groups  granted  social representation .

The Freedom Movement and Nation State Formation

The entire thrust of our Freedom Movement therefore was to restore the sense of nationhood in India and try and craft a pan-Indian identity beyond the divisions of caste ,creed and language. It was against this backdrop that the Indian Nationa l Congress (INC) was born as the first representative organization of Indians in 1885. It was then primarily comprised of wealthy and well to do lawyers and acquired a basically juridical or law-based approach to the freedom struggle . Its mode of politics took the form of pleading and petitioning the British monarch by a small group of the educated elite led by the lawyers. They hoped to receive freedom as a gift or privilege and not a right and there was no question of an armed struggle or even unarmed resistance . The best that they hoped was for Home Rule or Dominion Status.

However, what is not realized is that how thorough and effective the British methods of divide and rule were. This was shown in World ,War-I,when contrary to nationalist expectations, there was no revolt or trouble in India when the British Indian Army was sent overseas to fight. In fact, India raised and sent an Army of 1.4 million volunteers to fight in Europe, Africa and the Middle East for the Empire. It was a mammoth British Indian Army that fought on the slogans of Liberty, Fraternity and Equality. Our men were lionized and saw the plight of their colonial masters in the trenches. The raising of this vast Army itself had the unintended impact of deepening the Idea of India - for all these men fought ultimately as 'Indians'. 72,000 Indian soldiers were killed in this war and 11got the Victoria Cross. The Indians expected gratitude and perhaps - rewards like Home rule or Dominion Status. What they got instead , was the Massacre of Jalianwala Bagh. This came as a great shock and was a ajor turning point in the Freedom Movement.

The Mahatma Gandhi Phase: It was at this stage that Mahatma Gandhi transformed the Indian Freedom Struggle into a mass-based movement  that reached out beyond cities and towns to the peasantry of India. He was highly effective at media mobilization and lending a national character to this civil disobedience movement of non-cooperation. Only with the emergence of Gandhi did a political breakthrough occur, both in form of a demand for Complete National Independence instead of Imperial

Justice; and in the launching of a mass-movement as opposed to the politics of elite pleading and petitioning. Gandhiji in fact banned practicing lawyers from assuming leadership positions in the Congress . To him knowledge of law is one thing but legalizing politics is an entirely different matter.

Gandhiji however, insisted on keeping the Freedom Movement entirely non-violent and guided by the principles of 'Ahimsa' and 'Satyagraha'. This is where Bose and the Revolutionaries strongly differed with Gandhiji. Non- violence ,they said was entirely within the British tolerance threshold. In 1939, the Second World War had started. This time, a record number of 2.5 million Indians had volunteered for service with the British Indian Army. The war forced the British to take in over 28,000 Indians as officers. It was the raising of the vast Indian Army that once again deepened the Idea of an overarching Indian identity . Bose the pragmatist said it was now or never. India must take the help of the enemies of the British to free itself. Gandhiji found this idea morally abhorrent and completely maginalised Bose from the congress .

The Quit India Movement was launched in 1942. The British responded strongly by throwing into prison the entire Indian nationalist leadership. Draconian wartime censorship deprived the movement the Oxygen of media coverage and it seemed to wither on the vine. By 1945 it had largely petered out. Contrary to popular perception, Non-violence actually had failed to deliver freedom. It had largely been contained and had petered out by the end of the Second World War . Why then did the British leave in such a tearing hurry just two years later?

Clement Atlee – Justice P B Chakraborty Dialoguel

One of The most critical decision-makers on India's Freedom was the post-war British Prime Ministe'r Lord Clement Atlee . What prompted the British decision to Quit India unexpected ly in 1947 ? Justice PB Chakraborty, the first Governor of West- Bengal had posed this question to former British Prime Minister Clement Atlee in 1956 during the Later's Stay in Raj bhavan.. Atlee was forth right in his response "It was Subhash Bose and his INA."

"What was the role of Non-Violent struggle in shaping the British decision to leave?' the Governor queried.  

 “Minimal" was Atlee's abrupt but emphatic reply.  (Ranjan Bora in "Subhash Bose, the INA and the War of India's Liberation", Journal of Historical.Review, No3 1982.)

Testimony of Sir Stafford Cripps2

The army in India is not obeying the British Officers. We have recruited our workers for the war; they have been demobilsed after the war. They are required to repair the factories damaged by Hilter's bombers. M oreover, they want tojoin their kith and kin after five and a half years of war and separation . Their kith and kin want to join them. In these conditions if we have to rule India for a long time, we have to keep a permanent British Arm y in a vast country of 400 millions. We have no such army. "

( Sir Stafford Cripps, in the debate on the motion to grant India independence in the British House of Commons 1947).

 

German Interlude

 

Marginalised by Gandhi, Bose struck out on his own to put his vision of freeing India by force into actual practice. Bose's accomplishments border on the miraculous . Unfortunately because of ideological slants, these have very deliberately been undervalued and unrecognized. His life is the stuff of legends. He escaped from India to Afghanistan dressed as a Maulvi first  and  then  as  a  deaf  &  dumb Pathan. Later, disguised as an Italian - Count Orlando Mozzatta, he reached Italy and thence to Germany . He met Herman Goering and Hitler himself and raised the Brigade strong Indian Legion from the Indian Prisoners of War. However Hitler's racist outlook kept him lukewarm to the idea of Indian freedom. Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, put an end to any hypothetical invasion of India from the West.

The Bose Strategy: Military Pressure

Unfazed, in 1943 Bose travelled in a German Submarine (U-180) from Kiel, around the Cape of Good Hope to off the coast of Madagascar.

A Japanese Submarine (1-29) had come to pick him up. It was sea state five and huge waves lashed the two submarines. Bose had to transfer in a flimsy rubber dinghy. The German captain (Capt Verner Musenberg) advised him to go back to Germany. Bose looked at the raging sea and said calmly "I did not come all this way just to go back".

The Submarine Voyage of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose

He reached Japan and met Gen Tojo and the Japanese leadership . He formed the Provisional Government of Azad Hind at Singapore and declared war on Great Britain. He assumed Supreme Command of the Indian National Army and expanded it to a sizeable force of three Divisions (some 60,000 soldiers).

The Composite Culture of INA Awards

a)        Shaheed-e -Bharat

b)      Sher-e- Hind

c)   Tagma-e-Shatrunash

d)       Tagma-e-Bahaduri

e)     Sardar-e-Jung

f)       Shaheed-e-Bharat

g)      Veer-e-Hind

The Invasion of British India

He prevailed upon the Japanese to invade India. Two INA Divisions later joined the 15th Japanese Corps led by Lt Gen Mutaguchi in the assault on Kohima and Imphal. They marched over 240 kms through the dense Jungles and crossed the Chi'ndwin . They helped the Japanese to capture Kohima and besiege Imphal. Had the Japanese struck out for the rail head of Dimapur, victory would  have crowned this offensive . Air power and artillery however tilted the scales.  The tide of  war had turned and the combined Japanese-INA force was forced to retreated across Burma . The INA troops fought fiercely at Mount Popa on the lrawady River. Some 26,000 (over one third) ( Almost 50 percent) of the 60,000 strong INA force laid down their lives in these battles in North Eastern India and Burma . With this scale of casualties, the Indian War of Independence could hardly be called non- violent. India paid for its freedom with the Blood of 26000 Indians.

It was a hopeless battle but Bose (as the head of the Provisional Govt) personally led the retreat. The atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki forced Japan to surrender. What was Netaji's response? In a display of amazing tenacity he boarded a Japanese bomber flying to Manchuria . He wanted to contact the Russian forces and take their help to resume the Freedom struggle! Japanese accounts indicate that this bomber crashed in Taiwan but the legend of Bose endures to this day. This is not the Japanese account. They told Mukherjee  Comm ision that they have No Record of such a crash.

The  Mitsubishi Ki-21 twin-engine  heavy  bomber  that  Netaji Subhash  Chandra  Bose  and  Col Habibur Rahman boarded at Saigon airport around  2 PM on 17 August 1945

Red Fort: The Final Victory

The British were terrified of the INA. They were extremely worried that if the news of the INA reached the Indian masses, the British Indian Army would revolt. The INA was therefore one of the best kept secrets of the War . After the war, the British felt emboldened enough to hold the trial of three INA

officers (a Hindu, a Sikh and a Muslim) at the Red Fort. This triumphalist gesture back fired badly. The news of the INA broke out and galvanized the entire country with a Tsunami sized wave of nationalist emotion. 20,000 sailors of The Royal Indian Navy on 78 ships mutinied and some units of the Indian Army and Airforce rebelled . Shaken, the British saw the writing on the wall. Despite the fact that the Non-violent Quit India Movement had largely petered out by then, they decided to leave in a tearing hurry. Two years later the Empire was history.

The key catalysts for the British decision to leave therefore were not as much our non-violent freedom struggle but the specter of Bose and his INA. We owe our freedom therefore to this man. But for him, freedom would not have come when it did. His strategic judgment that only an armed struggle would force the British to leave stands vindicated in historical hindsight.

Hard  versus Soft Power Legacy

Post independence, a myth was fostered that nonviolence alone had won India its freedom. As a result the Indian nation state continued to under resource and under value "Hard or Military power" and laid inordinate emphasis on soft power. Nehru told the British Indian Army Chief that India did not need armed forces and only police forces would do. It refused to grant adequate funds to the armed forces and starved them of resources and weapons . They were marginalized from all decision making. The Chinese deflated India's soft power balloon in 1962. This led to the onset of a phase of realism in the Indian Foreign and security policies that culminated in the magnificent victory of Bangladesh in 1971. However of late, the Soft power school is reasserting itself in the new Avtar of Economic power by itself as the sole criterion of Comprehensive National Power. India must translate economic power into hard and usable military power to safeguard itself. Otherwise it runs the risk of becoming an effete economic giant like post-war Germany or Japan that have failed to translate economic power into military power. India's timid response to Pakistani sub conventional provocation (Post-Mumbai Mayhem) is an example of this pacifist mindset, which only invites more attacks. Post Nuclearisation an impression has gained currency that conventional military force is no longer a usable option. This is dangerous and could invite more Mumbais and Kargils.

Failure to Consolidate a Pan Indian  Identity

The greatest danger however, is our abject failure to consolidate a pan- Indian identity. Post 1991 however identity based politics has been strik ing at the very Idea of India. Today, courtesy identity based politics; we are doing to ourselves what the British had tried to do to us. A host of apologists of sub national, ethnic, caste and creed based identities are busy celebrating the destruction of a pan­ Indian identity. Globalism is ushering back the colonial mind set. We need to reverse this trend of identity based politics before it unravels the very fabric of our nationhood . It is not too late as yet. More than ever before, we need Bose and his pan- Indian vision- we need his intense patriotism and deep

commitment . 26,000 personnel of the INA laid down their lives to win us our freedom. Bose had taken the men of the INA totally beyond the confines of caste and creed. They were Indians - first and last. Some 34,000 men of the Indian Armed forces have since sacrificed themselves to safeguard this liberty ? Let us not fritter it away in fractured and petty politicking. Let us remember Bose and his INA and the nationalist project of fashioning a pan-Indian identity. Today we need to rediscover that nationalist identity . Hence the very great relevance of Bose and his INA to the India of today .

The Bose Mystery

Disappearance of Bose : Even as the World War-II was over, Bose had decided to go to Manchuria and contact the Soviet Red A rmy to continue his war for the freedom of India.  It was an amazing act of tenacity and commitment to the cause .The three hypothesis about his disappearance are:-

(a)                  Bose took a Japanese Ki-21 heavy bomber flight to Machuria  to  contact  the  advancing  Red Army. The plane crashed enroute at Taiwan and he died on 18 Aug 1945.

(b)                 The Justice Mukherjee Commission had rejected this hypothesis as there are no records of a plane crash on that date in Taiwan and cremation records of Taipei do not match the hypothesis.

(c)                  The second hypothesis is that Bose did reach Russia and was imprisoned by the Soviet NKVD. He was kept in Yakutsk Prison Camp Siberia, possibly tortured and then done to death at the behest of the British. It is noteworthy that the British and Russian Secret Services had signed two Agreements for Cooperation in clandestine operations - first on 20 Dec 1941 (pact signed in Murmansk) and a second protocol on 03 March 1944. With these protocols in place - the chances of Soviet ill­treatment of Bose in 1945 are high because Stalin then saw him in the "enemy "  camp.

(d)               A third hypothesis says, Bose was freed by the Russians subsequently and returned to live incognito in Faizabad in India, as a Sadhu (Gum-nami Baba). There is substantial evidence to support this thesis. However, it is totally out of character with Bose to stay incognito in India for all these decades - once the British had gone away from India.

The INA War Chest : The Indian Diaspora in South East Asia had contributed liberally to the INA's War Chest . The Indians had given their gold ornaments, family jewellery and cash. On Netaji's birthday in 1943, he was weighed in gold and jewellery .That one day's contribution by itself would have been some 70-80 kgs of Gold.  Where did this War chest vanish after the war ? Were some quislings and traitors in the INA, who had sold themselves to the British Intelligence - permitted to steal this treasure? It rightfully belonged to India and should become a part of our National Defence Fund.

Bose's Place in History :  Bose was a strong advocate of the use of force in India's fight for freedom. In hindsight, he stands vindicated. Even Gandhi ji had veered round to accept his view in the end. Had the INA attacked in 1942 along with the Japanese - it may have won. It narrowly lost the battles of lmphal­ Kohima, but won the War for Indian Independence. The INA Trials and the subsequent  1946 Naval Mutiny it inspired, forced the British to leave. Yet, Bipin Chandra, in his 600 page magnum opus on India's Freedom Struggle, accords him and the INA just one and a ha1f pages. That mindset and spin­ doctor ing needs urgent correction. Bipin Chandra However had realized his Weakness and on a suggest ion by this Trust he had agreed to write to then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that this part of history relating to Subhash Chandra Bose is coloured and hence needs to be revisited.

Recognising Bose: India truly owes its freedom to Bose. We must now give him the recognition he so richly deserves. The following could be done:-

(a)                      Currency Notes: Bose could be put on currency notes of Rs. 100 and Rs. 50 denominations.

(b)                      Statue:   Statue of Bose along with Memorial for INA Martyrs must be erected on Rajpath.

(c)                      Memorial Institute: A Memorial Institute and An University that will archive the writings and exploits of Netaji and study his thoughts on geo-politics, economics and cultural and other motivational issues.

Neta Ji Bose: A Tribute -

"The way of the Samurai is found in death. When it comes to either or, there is only the quick choice of death... We all want to live and in a large part, we make our logic according to what we like. By setting his heart right every morning and evening, the Samurai is able 'to live as though his body were already dead, he gains freedom in the way."

- Yamamoto Tsunetomo Hagakure (The Book of The Samurai)

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