How can it be forgotten that Netaji was the only Indian to head a government of united India.
Nehru headed the government of divided India as an outcome of British Parliament's Indian Independence Act 1947 which received Royal Assent on 18th July 1947. There is evidence to suggest that Nehru was reporting to Winston Churchill even after independence. The seeds of Indo-China war might be latent in this relationship. This aspect merits probe.
Inder Malhotra, the veteran journalist revealed it in an article dated 18 Oct 2010 saying, "Nehru wrote the top-secret note on his visit to China on November 11, 1954, yet it never saw the light of day until the 1990s when it was published first in Nehru's Letters to Chief Ministers first and then in the Selected Works. But I read it in 1987 in Britain's Public Records Office. How did it get there? Well, Nehru had sent a copy to Winston Churchill while the latter was still Prime Minister. At the expiry of 30 years Downing Street had duly declassified it. I published a gist of it in my column. Mercifully nobody prosecuted me for violating the Official Secrets Act." (Source: http://www.indianexpress.com/olympics/news/laying-out-the-red-carpet/698932/0)
British Parliament got the right to pass India Partition Act (named a India Independence Act) because Bengal was sold to British East India Company in 1757. British Parliament controlled the East India Company by extending its charter for only twenty years at a time.
Clones of East India Company are land grabbing in Africa and within India with implicit and explicit from most of the political parties who depend on their funds for fighting elections.
Gopal Krishna
There are several questions unanswered about Netaji's death. Why did the governments of Free India suppress all news about his disappearance. Often, one hears many non-Bengalis poke fun at Bengali ire on this issue( without really bothering to know the composition of the INA-which was truly representative of the Indian UNION) . It is time that Netaji's unbiased love for his country, and his respect for all Indians, irrespective of their faith, is acknowledged and strived for. It will make us a better nation, and a better people.There ought to be some thought spared for the INA martyrs too; one hears of how their contribution was totally ignored. They never received the respect due to freedom fighters, nor the minimum privileges. They fought in the most difficult terrain, braved enemy bullets and jungles to bring India closer to freedom.The Andamans were freed by the INA much before most of India became free. Yet, Netaji's contribution remains largely unsung!Rina MukherjiKolkataOn Sat, Jan 26, 2013 at 8:23 PM, Ravindran P M <raviforjustice@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks for sharing this immensely readable piece and a pertinent question to ponder.
regards n bw
raviOn Sat, Jan 26, 2013 at 6:38 PM, Sarbajit Roy <sroy.mb@gmail.com> wrote:
Byline for 27 January 2013
Why was Bose diminished on Republic Day?
M.J. Akbar
We measure power through size. Check any political poster. The boss gets the biggest face. Others in the pecking order descend till the miniature at the end.
Why was Subhas Chandra Bose struggling among the also-rans in the Bengal Republic Day tableau? Swami Vivekananda, understandably, had pride of place. But it might have been better to keep Bose out of the jumble rather than literally reduce his stature. If Bengal forgets, how long will India remember the only Indian to head a government of united India?
Bose declared independence before the British gave it in 1947. His government in exile did not have Gandhi's sanction. It fought on the wrong side of the Second World War: but it was a proud and free government whose contribution to our freedom has been reduced by the domestic political forces he challenged.
Bose is an embarrassment to Congress because he challenged Gandhi, and was a powerful parallel icon to Nehru. Bose asked Indians to give him their blood, and he would give them freedom. Gandhi promised freedom without violence. Gandhi refused to join the British war effort in 1939; Bose went a step further, and led Indian troops on the side of the Germany-Italy-Japan axis. However, their horizon, freedom, was the same.
More than six decades later the argument might seem pedantic, and yet it is worth revisiting. Invaluable Indian blood and treasure helped Britain win the First World War. After victory, Britain reneged on its commitment to Indian self-rule within the empire without batting an eyelid. Instead of dominion status, Indians got vicious brutality at Jallianwala Bagh and the pernicious Rowlatt Act.
It is not generally known that Gandhi was not a pacifist: he served on British frontlines in the Boer and Zulu wars in South Africa, and was very eager to lead a medical unit to the killing fields of France in 1914, at the onset of the First World War. In 1918, Gandhi worked so hard as a recruiting agent for the British army, urging Gujaratis to prove they were not "effeminate" by picking up a gun, that he almost died of exhaustion. Farewell bhajans began to be sung before he recovered. Gandhi lost hope in Britain only when he felt betrayed.
Britain had as much to protect in 1945 as in 1918. London knew that its empire would unravel at the point where it had begun, in India, once India became independent. What pushed Britain towards the exit gate? Of course there was the irresistible momentum of Gandhi's nationwide struggle. But the British had faced this challenge before, in the non-cooperation movement 25 years before. The significant difference was the nationalist sentiment unleashed by Bose among Indians in uniform. Bose's Indian National Army [INA] showed them where their national loyalties should lie. Bose's war also inspired the young to surge beyond the confines of Congress.
Even Gandhi, who only had faint praise for Bose in a 1945 obituary ["Subhas Bose has died well. He was undoubtedly a patriot though misguided"], had to admit in an article published on 15 February 1946, "The hypnotism of the Indian National Army has cast its spell on us... [Netaji's] patriotism is second to none... He aimed high but failed. Who has not failed?... The lesson that Netaji and his army brings to us is one of self-sacrifice, unity irrespective of class and community, and discipline..." When the British put three INA officers — Shah Nawaz, a Muslim, Sahgal, a Hindu, and Dhillon, a Sikh — on trial for sedition, India exploded in wrath. Nehru said on 24 December 1945, "The INA trial has created a mass upheaval."
Bose broke the backbone of British rule when he destroyed trust between the British Raj and its armed forces. The eminently sensible Sir Claude Auchinleck, commander in chief, accepted that any extreme punishment for INA officers would make governance impossible, because Indians adored them as national heroes. This, he said, was the "general opinion held in India, not only by the public, but ... by quite a considerable part of the Indian Army as well".
Subhas Bose's contribution to the formation of a Republic of India was no less than that of the very greatest of our founding fathers. Bose proved in practice what an Indian secular state would be. At a time when the Muslim League was in ascendant, he had the love and trust of Muslims. He lived his dream of gender equality when he set up the Rani of Jhansi regiment, under the fiery and beautiful Lakshmi Swaminathan. When Bose told the Japanese he was setting up a women's-only force, they thought he was joking. I do not believe Bose could have fought alongside Hitler, who advised the British to shoot Gandhi dead, and resented the Japanese advance because he thought Asia was being lost to white Europeans. Hitler was an undisguised racist, as were all Nazis.
Perhaps India can survive without Bose. But such amnesia will only diminish India.
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