In his first Mann Ki Baat of 2025 Prime Minister Narendra Modi made inspiring references to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. He described Netaji’s daring escape from the clutches of the British and his drive and flight into the pantheon of India’s immortals, as a leader of global proportion and acceptance. Prime Minister Modi urged everyone to read more on Netaji’s life and contributions. To many of our generations and to the generations of our parents and grandparents, the story of Subhas Chandra’s great escape always gave rise to intense emotions and thrill.

In independent India Narendra Modi is the only Prime Minister who has openly and unstintingly expressed his profound admiration for Netaji.  He has taken, in a continuous stream, a number of historic initiatives to reinstate his legacy. In doing this he has fulfilled the hopes of the masses who wanted a string of befitting tribute conferred on Netaji. The designation of Netaji’s birth anniversary as ‘Parakram Divas’, was a singular act of gratitude to the iconic leader’s legacy.

In a personal reminiscences of Subhas Chandra Bose, one of India’s greatest linguists and cultural-philosopher, Suniti Kumar Chatterji, movingly writes of him as one who ‘for the spirituality of his outlook, the depth of his love for his motherland and the greatness of his achievement, can without travesty be hailed as a Patriot Saint of India.’ Few would be those who would differ with Chatterji’s description.

In 1935, while on a long tour of Europe, Chatterji, who had known Subhas as a student in London in the 1920s, records a moving account of his meetings with Subhas, then convalescing in Vienna. Chatterji speaks of the vast network of intellectuals, thought-leaders, scholars and opinion makers sympathetic to India’s cause, that Subhas had weaved across Europe. ‘I could see that Subhas’s was a name to conjure with among the Indians in Vienna,’ recollected Chatterji, ‘Subhas was just out of hospital and was still convalescing, and yet he was very much on the move. He was treated with great deference by all cultured people and men of position in Vienna who had any remote connection with or interest in India and the East; and he was also held in esteem by important members of the Austrian government…’

Faraway in Europe, broken in health and recuperating, India ceaselessly throbbed in Subhas’s heart. When he heard that Chatterji had brought with him to Europe a hundred lantern slides on Indian Art, with the ‘idea of giving talks on the history of art in India and on the rise of the Indian National School of Painting at the commencement of this century,’ Subhas jumped at the opportunity. ‘He forthwith arranged a lecture on this subject by myself,’ recollected Chatterji, ‘under the auspices of the Indian Central European Association, and he himself presided over it. The lecture was advertised in the local papers’ and was extremely well-attended. ‘Most of the members of the Austrian part of the audience were professors and teachers, and artists and art-students.’ The audience stood through the one-and-a-half-hour lecture on a ‘very hot summer evening’, Subhas had mobilised the erudite group. To Chatterji’s desire to appear in a ‘cool lounge suit’ Subhas ‘proved to be a great stickler for appearance and formality.’ Remembered Chatterji, ‘The lecture was to be held in a hall of the Hotel de France where I was putting up. Shortly before time, Subhas came up to my room, and insisted upon my putting on my black sherwani or tunic of warm Cashmere cloth with a cap shaped like the Gandhi cap to match, and my white Indian trousers tight-fitting below knee.’ Chatterji found the dress uncomfortable especially for a warm and sultry evening, in a crowded hall, and with people in Central Europe, who knew ‘nothing of Indian punkhas and electric fans.’ But he had to submit to Subhas’s ‘sartorial dictatorship.’ He was right, ‘for I was speaking on an important expression on Indian culture, and it was in the fitness of things that I should be dressed a l’indienne.’

Legendary freedom fighter and parliamentarian, the intrepid H.V. Kamath, penning a moving and eloquent reminiscences of Subhas Chandra, speaks of his effervescent and driving spiritual sense. Kamath saw in Subhas, a ‘spiritual quality, indefinable and intangible’ that ‘pervaded all his actions. Like unto an ocean he was always restless, yet ever at peace, which flowed from the poise and tranquility of his inner being. This was reflected in the invincible calm of his face and his disarming smile; to know him was to love him.’ To Kamath, Subhas seemed to regard ‘his entire life as a spiritual mission in the highest and the noblest sense of the word.’ Kamath saw Subhas achieving ‘the difficult and rare synthesis of the saint and the warrior – a Kshatra (warrior) Sadhu. It was this that enabled him to preserve a stoic tranquility, even while engaged in a ceaseless action and struggle.’

The historic Subhas-Savarkar tete-a-tete led to the former undertaking the arduous and epic journey leading to the inspiring INA struggle. Deprecated by a section, this meeting between the two on June 22, 1940, tells us the historian Uma Mukherjee, saw Savarkar proffering the suggestion to Subhas ‘to leave the country and go to Europe to organize the Indian forces fallen at the hands of Germany and Italy, and as soon as Japan declared war, to attack British India from the Bay of Bengal or through Burma and declare independence of Hindusthan.’ This meeting, in a sense, confirmed the line of action that Subhas was perhaps already contemplating.

As early as 1937-38, Uma Mukherjee records in this early opus, ‘Two Great Indian Revolutionaries’,(1966) one J.C.Das, then Managing Director to the Ballygunge Central Bank in Kolkata had returned from a tour of Japan carrying a letter from Rash Behari Bose in which the veteran freedom fighter, also president of the Japan wing of the Hindu Mahasabha, who had described Savarkar as one of his ‘elderly comrades-in-arms’, had ‘urged upon the Indian revolutionaries to send an important leader to Japan, preferably Subhas Chandra Bose.’ The 1950 edition of Dhananjay Keer’s ‘Savarkar and his Times’ cites Netaji’s radio broadcast on June 25, 1944 from Singapore, in which Subhas lauds Savarkar’s exhortation to Indian youth to enlist in the Armed forces. ‘It is heartening to know,’ Subhas told his listeners from Singapore, that a time when ‘due to misguided political whims and lack of vision almost all the leaders of the Congress party are decrying all the soldiers in the Indian Army as mercenaries’, ‘Veer Savarkar is fearlessly exhorting the youths of India to enlist in the Armed Forces. These enlisted youths themselves provide us with trained men from which we draw the soldiers of our Indian National Army.’

A leading historian of Bengal’s renaissance Nemai Sadhan Bose has conferred the honorific of ‘Deshanayak’ on Subhas. In a moving Bengali biography of that name, Bose argues that both Deshanayak Subhas Chandra and Netaji Subhas Chandra are two chapters of a life of epic proportions. Both of which have contributed to shaping and defining Subhas Chandra Bose. Numerous such inspiring and illuminating assessments of Subhas continue to inspire.

Many who now sing reluctant paeans to Netaji, have always harboured ill-will towards him however disguised these may now be. When Netaji was engaged in one of the most difficult struggles of his career, communist leader S.G. Sardesai, writing in the People’s War in September 1942, denounced Subhas Chandra Bose as being in the ‘contemptible and miserable position of a marionette in Axis hand.’ Sardesai spewed venom asking how this ‘puppet has the temerity to insult our patriotism and intelligence by attempting to persuade us from the Berlin radio! We are asked to assist the arrival of the great Deshbaurab at the Gateway of India.’ Sardesai sarcastically termed Subhas as a ‘hangman at the head of a life-saving mission.’ Subhas’s party, Forward Bloc’s workers were dubbed, ‘Boseite traitors,’ while Subhas himself was denounced as ‘traitor Bose’, in the pages of the British sponsored People’s War.

EMS Namboodiripad, writing from Kerala for the People’s War termed the slogan ‘Subhas Bose ki Jai’ as a ‘treacherous slogan.’ The arch-propagandist B.T. Ranadive of the CPI writing in the December 6, 1942 issue of the People’s War, declared Subhas Bose as the ‘henchmen of Japanese imperialism’ and a ‘future dictator.’ Terming the INA as a mercenary army of ‘rapine, loot and, murder’, Ranadive styled communists as ‘honest patriots’ and Subhas and his followers as ‘traitors and Quislings.’

When Netaji surfaced in Singapore, the Indian communists were unnerved. The communist ‘patriot’ P.C.Joshi, writing in the People’s War of July 18, 1943, described him as the ‘arch-traitor to India’s freedom and independence.’ Joshi called for resisting the attempt of Subhas’s followers to observe the anniversary of 9 August Quit India movement, ‘it will be suicidal blindness to celebrate August 9,’ he argued. Opposing the celebration of August 9, Joshi argued that it would ​be handing over the initiative to the fifth-column.’ Hurling innuendos and vituperation, Joshi wrote, ‘If any widespread demonstrations take place or any serious disturbance start,’ after the celebrations, ‘ ‘Marshal’ Bose will report to Tojo, his master, that India is rotten ripe for invasion. There is no time to lose. Last August Bose was in Berlin. This time he is much nearer, at Singapore. The traitor Bose will never touch the golden soil of Bengal if we make up our mind about August 9.’ Communist theoretician and ideologue, Gangadhar Adhikari, writing in the People’s War of July 25, 1942, termed Netaji’s INA as a ‘fifth-column army’ of the Japanese and his assuming the position of the Commander-in-Chief of that army as ‘dangerous.’ The peoples’ back-clash, however, to this abuse was also severe and the communists had to sell their propaganda paper, People’s War, under police protection.

The list of abuse and slander that Indian communists hurled on Netaji is a near unending one. An aberration among communists, Hiren Mukherjee, in his study of Subhas Chandra Bose tries to make amends and admits that during 1942-45 ‘there seemed no love lost between Subhas and the communists.’ The communists, writes Mukherjee, ‘felt for Subhas Chandra Bose and his doing abroad a fundamental, even a furious, antipathy’ and ‘used expressions which, in retrospect, seem ill-advised and even baseless.’ But an official regret or recant never came.

Every occasion to commemorate Subhas Chandra Bose’s legacy thus, must also be an occasion to recall these denunciations. Those who speak of the Constitution being in danger today and of a slide of democracy in India, belong to the same genealogy which had denounced Subhas Chandra Bose as a traitor and fifth-columnist. Must we taken them seriously, while we celebrate Subhas Chandra Bose’s life and legacy and reaffirm our faith in the vision of a new and emerging India.

References

Ram Sharma edited, Netaji: His Life & Work, 1948

Dhananjay Keer, Savarkar and His Times, 1950

Sita Ram Goel, Netaji and the CPI, 1955

Uma Mukherjee, Two Great Indian Revolutionaries: Rash Behari Bose & Jyotindra Nath Mukherjee, 1966

Hiren Mukherjee, Bow of Burning Gold: a Study of Subhas Chandra Bose, 1976

Nemai Sadhan Bose, Deshanayak Subhas Chandra, 1997