Finding the 'lost' leader
While historian Sugata Bose draws on previously unused family archives to produce a great piece of historical reconstruction, independent researcher Romain Hayes focuses on the dangerous and inexplicable alliance Bose tried to forge with Nazi Germany,
Here are two books on one of the most fascinating figures of the Indian national movement, with different emphases. Sugata Bose's is a meticulous biography of Subhas Chandra Bose, while Hayes focuses on the dangerous and inexplicable alliance Bose tried to forge with Nazi Germany, and therefore with Italy and Japan, the Axis powers, in the midst of the Second World War.
Sugata Bose, who teaches history at Harvard and is a grandnephew of Subhas Chandra Bose, offers rare and compelling insights into the stalwart leader's life. Starting with the (in)famous incident at Presidency College where an English professor was beaten up by students — Subhas might have been involved in the planning or even in the execution — and Subhas' subsequent rustication, Bose offers us a wealth of detail in mapping Subhas' politicisation.
Starting off as a protégé of Chittaranjan Das, Subhas was active in Calcutta politics and the freedom movement in the city. He tasted British prison air for the first time in 1921, and would go to prison a total of 11 times in his career. Moving on to the national stage, supported emotionally and financially by his elder brother, Sisir, Subhas made his presence felt in the Congress with his fierce patriotism and uncompromising stance on the modes of revolution. Bose's heroic escape from Calcutta, disguised as a Pathan, in 1941 and his travels in Europe and Germany make for fascinating reading.
Sugata Bose also gives us a peep into the personal life of this fiery nationalist — documenting his secret marriage to Emilie Schenkl, their travels through war-torn Europe in 1942, her pregnancy and delivery of a son without Subhas by her side, and Subhas' total commitment to the Indian freedom struggle despite his passion for his 'first love' for Emilie.
Sugata Bose makes visible Subhas' political allegiances: his preference for Nehru, whom he saw as a 'progressive', rather than Gandhi; his controversial friendship with Italian fascists, and the problematic alliance he sought with Nazi Germany despite his clear discomfort with its racist propaganda.
The final days, where Subhas' life was under serious threat in Singapore and later in Bangkok, saw him continually courageous and willing to put himself through enormous strain and risk, notes the biographer. Persuaded to leave, Subhas took the risky route out of Singapore, and the Japanese plane that took off from Saigon, carrying India's most charismatic leader after Gandhi, crashed near Taiwan, according to Sugata Bose's account. Habibur Rahman, who was on the plane with Netaji, survived (Rahman was one of the officers prosecuted at the historic trial in the Red Fort in 1945). The "flaming sword forever unsheathed in defense of the land he worshipped," as Sarojini Naidu put it, stayed inspirational, though the life was spent. Burnt and badly injured, battling for life in the hands of Japanese doctors, he asked Rahman to take his word to Indians: that they should continue to fight for freedom. (It must be noted here that the Mukherjee Commission appointed to probe the death concluded in 2006 that Netaji didn't die in the plane crash and may have escaped to the USSR: a report Sugata Bose and family have rejected, and the controversy still isn't over, as evidenced by Mission Netaji, an organisation researching the death of Subhas.)
Hayes' work, less a biography than the elaboration of a political moment in Subhas' career, seeks an explanation for Subhas' strange attempts to ally with the Axis powers and Hitler. Though Hitler offered Subhas only one meeting, in 1942, the two were more than aware of each other, with Hitler okaying a draft declaration, written by Subhas for Germany's Foreign Office, in which Germany promised total support to India's anti-British struggle, so that "the goal of liberty may be reached without delay." Hayes begins by noting Subhas' anxiety over the anti-Indian attitudes of Germany's civil society — the Indian students in Germany had been harassed and Subhas himself had been called a 'negro' on the Berlin streets — and his rather hesitant steps towards a political alliance with what was clearly a racist state. Japan, Italy and Germany coordinated a policy on India in 1941-42, with Subhas sitting on the German side at the meeting of December 1941, as a prime mover in bringing to the tripartite table the anti-colonial struggle in India. Hayes notes that Subhas might have been "naive" in believing that "Germany was out to destroy the British Empire." His recruitment of the Azad Hind army was motivated, even nervously so, by news of Japanese military successes in south east Asia, notes Hayes.
Valuable documents constitute the appendix in Hayes' racy book: the 9 April 1941 'Plan for Co-operation between the Axis Powers and India', the Minutes of the Bose-Ribbentrop Conference of 29 November 1941, and others reveal Subhas' strategic alliance-making in the troubled years of World War II. Hayes defends what, in retrospect, but surely even during the tumultuous years of 1939-1942, seems a bewildering Subhas fascination for Nazi Germany. Hayes argues that Subhas was "bothered with little more than India throughout his life", and concludes with: "had he been exposed to German atrocities, there is no doubt he would have reacted with revulsion and that all of his former reservations regarding Nazi ideology and racism would have come to the fore." It was also easy, Hayes suggests, for Subhas to focus on the death of Indians rather than on the "fate of unknown peoples [the Jews] in Europe."
Sugata Bose's is an exhaustive work, and will surely be the definitive biography of an enigmatic and mesmerising leader. Hayes' book, while limited in scope, is no less compelling for the attempt to reconstruct Subhas' true political inclinations. The former is a great piece of historical reconstruction, while Hayes' is a drier if quicker narrative.
Pramod K Nayar teaches English at the University of Hyderabad
While historian Sugata Bose draws on previously unused family archives to produce a great piece of historical reconstruction, independent researcher Romain Hayes focuses on the dangerous and inexplicable alliance Bose tried to forge with Nazi Germany,
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Sugata Bose, who teaches history at Harvard and is a grandnephew of Subhas Chandra Bose, offers rare and compelling insights into the stalwart leader's life. Starting with the (in)famous incident at Presidency College where an English professor was beaten up by students — Subhas might have been involved in the planning or even in the execution — and Subhas' subsequent rustication, Bose offers us a wealth of detail in mapping Subhas' politicisation.
Starting off as a protégé of Chittaranjan Das, Subhas was active in Calcutta politics and the freedom movement in the city. He tasted British prison air for the first time in 1921, and would go to prison a total of 11 times in his career. Moving on to the national stage, supported emotionally and financially by his elder brother, Sisir, Subhas made his presence felt in the Congress with his fierce patriotism and uncompromising stance on the modes of revolution. Bose's heroic escape from Calcutta, disguised as a Pathan, in 1941 and his travels in Europe and Germany make for fascinating reading.
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The final days, where Subhas' life was under serious threat in Singapore and later in Bangkok, saw him continually courageous and willing to put himself through enormous strain and risk, notes the biographer. Persuaded to leave, Subhas took the risky route out of Singapore, and the Japanese plane that took off from Saigon, carrying India's most charismatic leader after Gandhi, crashed near Taiwan, according to Sugata Bose's account. Habibur Rahman, who was on the plane with Netaji, survived (Rahman was one of the officers prosecuted at the historic trial in the Red Fort in 1945). The "flaming sword forever unsheathed in defense of the land he worshipped," as Sarojini Naidu put it, stayed inspirational, though the life was spent. Burnt and badly injured, battling for life in the hands of Japanese doctors, he asked Rahman to take his word to Indians: that they should continue to fight for freedom. (It must be noted here that the Mukherjee Commission appointed to probe the death concluded in 2006 that Netaji didn't die in the plane crash and may have escaped to the USSR: a report Sugata Bose and family have rejected, and the controversy still isn't over, as evidenced by Mission Netaji, an organisation researching the death of Subhas.)
Hayes' work, less a biography than the elaboration of a political moment in Subhas' career, seeks an explanation for Subhas' strange attempts to ally with the Axis powers and Hitler. Though Hitler offered Subhas only one meeting, in 1942, the two were more than aware of each other, with Hitler okaying a draft declaration, written by Subhas for Germany's Foreign Office, in which Germany promised total support to India's anti-British struggle, so that "the goal of liberty may be reached without delay." Hayes begins by noting Subhas' anxiety over the anti-Indian attitudes of Germany's civil society — the Indian students in Germany had been harassed and Subhas himself had been called a 'negro' on the Berlin streets — and his rather hesitant steps towards a political alliance with what was clearly a racist state. Japan, Italy and Germany coordinated a policy on India in 1941-42, with Subhas sitting on the German side at the meeting of December 1941, as a prime mover in bringing to the tripartite table the anti-colonial struggle in India. Hayes notes that Subhas might have been "naive" in believing that "Germany was out to destroy the British Empire." His recruitment of the Azad Hind army was motivated, even nervously so, by news of Japanese military successes in south east Asia, notes Hayes.
Valuable documents constitute the appendix in Hayes' racy book: the 9 April 1941 'Plan for Co-operation between the Axis Powers and India', the Minutes of the Bose-Ribbentrop Conference of 29 November 1941, and others reveal Subhas' strategic alliance-making in the troubled years of World War II. Hayes defends what, in retrospect, but surely even during the tumultuous years of 1939-1942, seems a bewildering Subhas fascination for Nazi Germany. Hayes argues that Subhas was "bothered with little more than India throughout his life", and concludes with: "had he been exposed to German atrocities, there is no doubt he would have reacted with revulsion and that all of his former reservations regarding Nazi ideology and racism would have come to the fore." It was also easy, Hayes suggests, for Subhas to focus on the death of Indians rather than on the "fate of unknown peoples [the Jews] in Europe."
Sugata Bose's is an exhaustive work, and will surely be the definitive biography of an enigmatic and mesmerising leader. Hayes' book, while limited in scope, is no less compelling for the attempt to reconstruct Subhas' true political inclinations. The former is a great piece of historical reconstruction, while Hayes' is a drier if quicker narrative.
Pramod K Nayar teaches English at the University of Hyderabad
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