There is a saying that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Few figures personify this contradiction more than Subhash Chandra Bose, fondly addressed by Indians as ‘Netaji’. On the 23rd of January 2022, India will be observing his 125th birth anniversary. During his lifetime, Bose would take the fight against British colonialism from India to foreign shores, making a controversial alliance with the Axis powers, and raising an army of liberation from POWs in Singapore, called the Indian National Army, or Azad Hind Fauj in Hindi and Urdu. At the decisive moment of India’s struggle for independence, it was the trial of these captured soldiers from the INA that sparked a movement in India, which ultimately culminated in the Naval mutiny and uprising of 1946. Before the second world war, Bose was extremely active in the fight against British imperialism, adopting a militant position in contrast to Gandhi’s defeatist and pacifist position post-1930.
By Mazdoor Inquilab
It would not be an exaggeration, that Subhash Chandra Bose’s movement was the decisive cause for India’s independence. One can speculate had the INA not existed, had Bose not conducted this movement, it is likely the uprising of 1946 would not have happened, and it was anybody’s guess if Britain would grant India independence, nor is it certain what manner of independence it would be. It is not unsurprising then, that Bose was a hated figure in the British imperial establishment, and his alliance with the Axis powers is often used to cast him as a ‘Quisling’. Outside of South Asia, this is the only view of Subhash Bose, and all popular media depictions of him, conform to this fundamentally wrong depiction, ignoring his ideas, his politics within India and the legacy he left behind.
Bose in India
Within India Bose was a very popular leader in the decades of the 1930s and 40s, and his popularity still endures. He rivals Gandhi in popularity, oftentimes the two are juxtaposed against each other. Bose’s militant nationalism is contrasted to Gandhi’s pacifism. Bose had been aligned with Nehru within the Indian Congress and consolidated the leftist faction of the congress in the Forward Bloc. This bloc within the Congress pushed the party towards the left, bringing in many radical elements into the party, and directing it towards socialism. In this task, he had to contend with Gandhi and his hegemony over the party. The election for the Congress presidency was a decisive moment which showed the split in the Congress party, Gandhi’s moderate candidate Pattabi Sitaramaiah ran against Bose to be the president of the Congress and lost.
As president of the Indian Congress, he presided over a turn towards more radical ideas, leaning hard towards socialism, and adopting a plan for developing India along with the model of the Soviet Union with five-year plans. The turn towards the left caused alarm within the British establishment who were most concerned in snuffing out any form of socialism from India before it could become a threat. They did not hide their viciousness in dealing with revolutionaries, such as when they tortured and killed Surya Sen, the mastermind of the Chittagong armoury raid, one of India’s forgotten socialist leaders. With the second world war on the horizon the British stepped up their surveillance on militant nationalist leaders, during his presidency Bose pushed for a militant anti-imperialist position where the Congress would start a mass movement against the British if they did not leave India, he timed this deliberately with the coming of the second world war, calling it a golden opportunity for India to gain independence. This brought the ire of the British establishment, who subsequently arrested Bose.
During his time in prison, he would start a hunger strike, against the conditions in prison. This caused him to fall sick, and be shifted to house arrest. Throughout this time, he was kept under strict surveillance by the British secret service. Despite that Bose managed to escape. With his prior record of arrest for ‘seditious’ activity, and the strict surveillance of the British secret service, it was impossible for him to continue work within India, it was at this point, that Bose made the fateful decision to escape to the Soviet Union through Afghanistan.
At this point, it is important to explore Bose’s own ideological convictions. Not much is usually said about Bose’s ideology, the official narratives which most Indians are fed, try to obfuscate or avoid talking about his Thought. From his life and work, one conclusion is undeniable, that Subash Chandra Bose, was firmly in the left, and had accepted the socialist model as the desired path for an independent India. Early on, however, his ideas were less clear. In the book authored by him, the Indian struggle, he had talked of India forming a path of its own by borrowing elements from fascism, as it had appeared in Italy, and the Socialist economy of the Soviet Union, he coined this union as ‘samyavad’. He would disown this idea during his presidency in Congress in 1938.
During his presidency, Bose leaned far closer to the model of the Soviet Union, admiring its rapid industrialization and social transformation. He was not alone in this, Nehru too admired the Soviet model and the two would work together during this time, to frame a plan for India’s economic future. His political positions, advocating propaganda in support of Indian independence in foreign shores, taking an uncompromising and militant stance against British imperialism, and challenging colonial narratives, such as the exaggerations of the Blackhole of Calcutta (used to justify imperialist war against the Nawab of Bengal), suggest he was a leftist nationalist. There is nothing to suggest anywhere that he had any learning of Marxism, or leaned towards a Marxist party, nor believed in a communist revolution in India.
On the question of the caste system, Bose’s position is even more uncertain, as he had not spoken openly of eradicating caste. However, in the Indian National Army that he led, Bose did not discriminate on the basis of caste, religion and creed. During the Red Fort Trials of INA prisoners, a Sikh, a Muslim and Hindu were put on trial, showing an example of unity in struggle, overcoming the barrier of religion. Despite this, neither Bose nor the Forward Bloc put forward a program to combat the caste system, during the decisive elections of 1946, Ambedkar stood from the province of Jessore in united Bengal and won. Against him, stood Subhash Bose’s brother, and in many ways his political successor, Sarat Chandra Bose, standing on behalf of the Congress Party. Ambedkar’s victory marked a high point in the political history of Dalits of Bengal, while Bose’s camp was on the wrong side of history.
Bose’s relation with various Communist and Socialist currents was just as unclear. The Stalinist led Communist Party had taken the historically disastrous position in 1942, to oppose the Quit India movement and support British Imperialism, in service of the bureaucracy of the Soviet Union. Jettisoning the independence struggle in favour of common cause with imperialism, the Communist Party played the role of the fifth column of British imperialism, against freedom fighters, and revolutionaries. It was at this time that the BLPI (the Bolshevik Leninist Party of India – Indian section of the IV International) was attacked by the British police, working on the intelligence given by the Communist Party. In return for this shameless service to imperialism, the Communist party was given legal recognition by the British establishment. On the contrary, the BLPI found shelter with activists of the Forward Bloc, which made common cause against British imperialism. The Communist Party spoke harshly against Bose, calling him ‘Tojo’s dog’. Before this, Bose’s only interaction with the Communist party was in the form of letters to M.N Roy, which were cordial, and show Bose’s leanings and sympathies towards the Soviet Union. He made clear this fact to Hitler when he was in Germany, stating that the sympathies of the Indian masses lay with the Soviet Union.
Bose on foreign shores
Bose shares the pantheon of nationalist leaders such as Aung San of Burma, and Soekarno of Indonesia, both of whom aligned with the Japanese to fight European imperialism. To understand them, we must understand the context in which this decision was taken. The second world war ‘officially’ started with Germany going to war with Poland, but the conflict had already begun in China with the Japanese invasion of China in 1937 following the Marco Polo bridge incident. When the war reached Europe’s shores, France and Britain sought to mobilize the vast resources of their respective empires in the fight against German fascist imperialism, Japan’s war on China was not yet a concern for the European empires, nor the lives of Chinese suffering from Japanese aggression.
Britain’s colonies had contributed greatly to Europe’s war effort in the first world war, both in men and material. Many who had experienced the hardships caused by India’s entry into world war 1 were still alive on the eve of world war 2, and the period was fresh in everyone’s minds. There was a mood against the war, and joining another European war, and suffering a war for colonial masters when they were themselves suffering from imperialism. However, the British Empire could not wage war against Germany without the colonies, especially India which was essential as a source of resources and manpower. India was dragged into war despite the desires of the Indian people, the British Vice-royalty declared against Germany and Italy, ignoring the wishes of the newly elected ministers that were set up in 1937. Bose called for a boycott of the ministries in protest and planned for mass mobilization against joining the war.
The story was not too different in Britain’s other colonies, where the people’s first desire was for freedom from their colonial oppressors rather than fighting fascism. The empires would eventually reveal their hypocrisy in fighting the imperialism of Germany, Japan and Italy, when they practised fascist-style repression at home, shown most clearly in the suppression of the Quit India movement, and the scorched earth policy in Bengal, which led to a famine. In such a context, nationalists like Bose, Aung San and Sukarno sought, first and foremost, a way to rid themselves of their immediate enemy at home rather than fight a distant enemy abroad.
This was the context in which we must understand his decision to align with the Axis powers. It must also be remembered, that Bose at first sought to align with the Soviet Union, but Stalin refused, the struggles of colonial people were of secondary importance to his own political interests and of the bureaucracy he lorded over. It was only after this refusal to help, that Bose went to Italy and Germany and started his infamous alliance with Germany. Very little would come out of it, as the distance between India and Germany, and Britain’s crushing dominance at sea made any meaningful cooperation untenable. Moreover, ideological divisions between Hitler and Bose soon started to emerge which made any cooperation if at all quite distant. In the end, a small force of about sixteen hundred soldiers recruited from Indian POWs captured in North Africa was raised for the Indian Legion, whose purpose was to liberate India. This force would not see India till after the war ended.
Frustrated by the lack of progress in Germany, Bose responded to an invitation to Singapore to take the leadership of the newly formed Indian National Army, with Captain Mohan Singh at the helm, and Rash Behari Bose as leader of the Indian Independence League. After Bose’s coming the disorganized Indian National Army was re-energized. In addition to the thirty thousand or so Indian POWs captured during Japan’s Malayan campaign, thousands of Tamil plantation workers and Indians of various walks joined the army as volunteers. Many others gave their family’s possessions for Bose’s war efforts. Bose’s INA joined the Japanese, and the Burma Independence Army of Aung San in the Burma campaign, and fought by their side in India. No doubt, as was seen in Indonesia, and Burma (now Myanmar), there were dire consequences for the Faustian alliance with Japan.
Sukarno was in the most unenviable position of all the wartime anti-colonial leaders, as he was forced to cooperate with Japan to supply Romusha labour, the practise of conscripting forced labour for building military infrastructure was in a sense a cruel version of bonded labour. Hundreds of thousands died in forced labour projects throughout South East Asia, but Sukarno was helpless to stop it. Aung San, who had aligned with Japan to fight Britain, switched sides and joined the allies, after seeing the treatment of his people at the hands of Japanese occupiers. Compared to Burma and Indonesia, India had escaped the worst of Japanese atrocities, but we see one of Bose’s greatest failings in the Japanese massacre of Indians in the Andaman Islands.
It is still debated whether Bose knew of what was happening, as news of Japanese atrocities on the archipelago was heavily censored by the Japanese military. Regardless, this and such incidents were an unavoidable price of working with one imperialist against another. About a quarter of a million Indians would lose their lives to forced labour projects under Romusha, and two thousand or so Andamanese would die under Japanese misrule. At the same time, over three million would perish to the Bengal famine, which was a direct result of British colonial policy. India was stuck between two vicious oppressors, and the only means to freedom was an independent revolutionary struggle. Bose’s choice was difficult, and not ideal, while we may speculate what could have happened had the Japanese won (as extremely unlikely as that is), the consequences of Bose’s actions are there for us to see, and recorded.
In the end, India was freed, and it was in great measure thanks to Bose and the INA. The INA movement had the effect that Bose predicted it would. Seeing their countrymen mobilized for armed struggle against imperialism inspired the masses of India, who had suffered almost two centuries of abuses at the hands of the British, and had just suffered another horrible famine. The uprising which started with a mutiny of naval ratings in Bombay, in February of 1946 was the culmination of a long period of oppression and exploitation.
Bose was seen by the Indian people as a hero of independence, despite British efforts at painting him as nothing but a quisling, and a puppet of the Japanese. This is a view that still remains to this day. However, his failings are either overlooked or avoided mention. There is no effort to memorialize the immense sufferings of the people of Andaman and Nicobar islands, Bose gave no leadership on the caste question. Though he held no ill will for the Chinese, and the people of Malaysia and Indonesia, the INA were mere spectators when the Japanese initiated their massacres of Chinese and Malays in Singapore and Malaysia. Neither could Bose stop the use of Indians in Romusha labour, though he managed to secure operational and political independence of the INA, he could not take a principled stance against the Japanese. For this reason, Bose is not seen as anything more than a collaborator by the nations who were victims of Japanese imperialism.
Conclusions
Bose, Castro, and others like him, are typical of petty-bourgeois nationalist leaders. Under certain historical conditions, they can play a progressive role. However, we must not be swayed by the romantic vision they stir up, as Marxists we must proceed to analyze history scientifically, and understand the role individual leaders play in the wider context of class struggle.
Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose was undoubtedly a progressive force in Indian history, having paved the way for a sovereign national economy and socialistic welfare measures, which lifted up millions from abject poverty. The state corporations of India today, can be said to be a legacy of Bose and his leadership of the Congress Party. The commitment to communal harmony and unity over sectarian divisions was one of the hallmarks of Bose’s politics, and his call for unity still resonates today, as the country is faced with the menace of religious and sectarian violence. However, we cannot be blind to his failings. Bose did not base his actions or programme on Marxist analysis, he based his decision on realpolitik, and a superficial study of the merits of socialism, as was seen quite clearly in the rapid progress of the Soviet Union.
For us, Bose stands above Gandhi to the extent that he was uncompromising in his fight against British imperialism, his commitment to communal unity between Hindus and Muslims, and a far more genuine commitment to women’s empowerment through the establishment of the Rani Jhansi Battalions, formed entirely with women (a feat unthinkable in the India of the 1940s). Bose was equally committed to fighting reactionary forces like the RSS, and the Hindu Mahasabha. Bose’s vision for a modernized India led by a strong centrally planned economy, with a nationalised economy at its core was far more in line with socialism than Gandhi’s rural centric vision of a decentralized economy. However, revolutionaries desire more than what either would be willing to offer.
Our aim is nothing short of the overthrow of the capitalist order, and its replacement with the dictatorship of the proletariat. We seek to achieve socialism, which isn’t merely government control over the economy, it would make no actual difference to the position of the working class in a capitalist society, if the bosses organize themselves in a state capitalist nation, as long as the capitalists have power, they will keep the workers exploited, and when the time comes, all the state-owned enterprises will get privatized, sold either to foreign capitalists or to the local capitalists.
In the best-case scenario, if Bose’s India went down the path of Cuba, and became a deformed worker’s state, following the pattern of many anti-colonial movements of the time, such as Yugoslavia, China and Vietnam. In that case, we can fully expect that the leadership of the INA and Bose would impose themselves on the people, and run India as a Bonapartist dictatorship, albeit one where capitalism is expropriated. In such a situation, workers’ democracy would not exist, and there would be every possibility, the new state would partially or fully restore capitalism when the pressure of imperialism becomes unbearable.
The working class cannot hope for emancipation at the hands of an external force, no great hero may come down to save the class. It is the working class themselves who must organize under the leadership of the revolutionary party, to emancipate itself from capitalism. In such a revolution, it is the working class that must lead, this history of the last one hundred and five years tells us this. Our task now is the same as it has been since the days of Bose, to build a revolutionary party and a revolutionary Fourth International on the path shown to us by Leon Trotsky!
LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION!
DOWN WITH IMPERIALISM!
BUILD THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL!
BUILD THE REVOLUTIONARY PARTY!
Further reading:
Our View of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose
