How Modi has dishonoured Netaji
In his quest for a naya daur PM Modi has shaken an institution which has its roots in the soil of Gujarat. The deceased Planning Commission was not a legacy of Jawaharlal Nehru. The blueprint was outlined by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in his address at the Haripura session of the Indian National Congress on February 19, 1938.
Bose envisaged the first task of the government of free India would be to set up a “National Planning Commission”. He constituted a National Planning Committee under the aegis of the Congress in December 1938 and appointed Jawaharlal Nehru as its chairman. As freedom dawned, in pursuance of the Haripura resolution, an advisory planning board was set up by the Nehru-led interim government in 1946. In 1952, the Planning Commission came into being. Neither in 1946, nor in 1952, did anyone recall the role of Bose.
Central Government
NITI Aayog is not contrary to the thought process of Bose, who had advocated a strong Central government backed up by regional autonomy. Cooperative federalism was the principle of his Haripura address. In January 23, 1997, which coincided with the birth centenary of Bose and the 50th anniversary of India’s independence, the Planning Commission published a book, Subhas Chandra Bose: Pioneer of Indian Planning. This compilation is a rare tribute paid to Netaji in free India.
In his university days, Bose had not been averse to non-violent means — the incident involving Professor Oatten got him rusticated from Calcutta’s Presidency College. Sir Aushutosh Mukherjee (father of the founder of the Jana Sangh, Shyamaprosad Mukherjee) later lifted the ban and Bose went on to top the University as a student of Scottish Church College (as Presidency wouldn’t have him back). In college he was part of the college infantry (predecessor of today’s NCC) and loved wearing his uniform. In his vision of India, therefore, he had difficulty in accepting non-violent thinking, but he also showed that he could accept other points of view.
On the eve of World War II, in 1937-38, Bose found 57 per cent of the British Indian government’s expenditure was on maintenance of the army in India. Thus during the War he said, “England’s necessity is India’s opportunity”. It was this thinking which guided him to raise the free India legion from among the Indians fighting for the British who were held as POWs by Germans. The North Africa campaign of Rommel had filled German camps with Indian POWs. Later when Bose, disappointed with Hitler, went away to Southeast Asia to raise the Indian National Army (INA) the soldiers of the free India legion fought on the German side. Many were captured and sent back home to be cashiered post-war.
Free India
The INA became a legend as it had participated in the Imphal and Moirang Kangla missions, which had seen Indian territory in Manipur freed from British rule. The Red Fort trial of INA heroes in 1945-46 electrified the atmosphere in postwar India. Inspired by Bose’s doctrine, mutiny broke out among Indian soldiers in the British Indian Army. Ratings of the Royal Indian Navy (RIN) revolted in Bombay, Karachi, Calcutta and Vishakhapatnam. Indian havildars (NCOs) refused to obey British officers in many cantonments — in Jabalpur the stand off lasted a fortnight in 1946; Poona and Madras also saw acts of defiance. Revolt was put down but the message went out that to rule India, the British would have to spend more in 1945 than what they did in 1938. Post-war Britain could ill afford this luxury. British PM Clement Attlee, who moved India’s freedom resolution in Westminster, acknowledged Bose’s role, while stating the reasons for the British having to leave India.
But what happened to the Netaji? In a recent blog, Kingshuk Nag, author of a biography of Modi, quoted Russian intelligence sources who said Netaji had not perished in the air crash in Taihoku, in Taiwan, but found his way to the USSR, where he found himself on the wrong side of Joseph Stalin and was packed off to Yakutsk in Siberia. Nag claims that Netaji perished in the minus 50 degree Celsius environs of the Kolyama Highway in the Stalinist era. While the Netaji’s death remains a mystery, attempts were also on to erase his memory and that of the INA. Lord Mountbatten, as commander-in-chief of the Allied forces in South East Asia, ordered the demolition of the monument built in Singapore’s Esplanade Park for the INA-martyrs. Later, as viceroy of India, he made it a precondition for India’s independence that no soldier of the INA would be reinducted into the Indian Army. Nehru accepted this. In 1951, when told about reports that Bose was in the USSR, Nehru had brushed it aside as “American propaganda”.
Righting History
The truth is while the Indian Embassy in Tokyo pays for the upkeep of the Renkoji shrine in Japan where what is purported to be the ashes of Netaji (assumed dead in the Taihoku air crash) are kept; all moves to bring the purported ashes back to India are thwarted by New Delhi. Beginning with Jawaharlal Nehru and Dr Rajendra Prasad, dignitaries from India have visited Renkoji. When President Pranab Mukherjee went to Japan as external affairs minister in the PV Narasimha Rao regime, Japanese war veterans with an INA background requested that the ashes be taken to India: “Our generation knows Netaji, modern Japan knows little”, they pleaded.
This writer was in Singapore last month. The local authorities have not only marked the spot where the INA Monument stood (till its destruction by Mountbatten in 1945) but have declared it a heritage site of the Republic of Singapore since 1995. A signboard is put in the Esplanade Park to guide tourists to “Site of the Former INA Monument”. Singapore will celebrate its 50th anniversary of its independence on August 9, 2015. Modi, who is trying to import many good practices of Singapore, may like to lay some flowers at this site when he visits Singapore and signal the process of blanking out Netaji from India’s history books, is coming to an end.
(The article commemorates the 118th birth anniversary of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose on January 23rd.)