Review: His Majesty’s Opponent

In the vaunted story of India’s independence as scripted by the Congress Party – the mise en scène of the Gandhis, Nehrus and bad boy Jinnahs – the shade of Netaji Subhas stalks like an embarrassment that cannot be wished away, the ghost of Banquo at the table. Disavowal by God (read Gandhi), excommunication, the fortuitous hand of fate in the rebel’s exile, his corporeal annihilation in a land conveniently distant, and six decades of carefully crafted institutional effacement have done little to keep his spirit or his story safely buried.

The latest resurrection – Prof. Sugata Bose’s splendidly researched biography (“His Majesty’s Opponent”) – is by far the most compelling, the most lifelike: and certainly (for this reviewer at least) the first flesh-and-blood sculpture of the legend that was Netaji Subhas.

The beginnings are told with economy: Bose’s birth in Cuttack to a well to do Bengali family, the initial solid foundation of the English language, Latin and the classics (to the inevitable neglect of the mother tongue), his discovery of Vivekananda’s pragmatic, rational and egalitarian Hinduism, the first stirrings of discontent at the country’s enslavement and penury, the gradual shift to radicalism as the means to liberation; the stormy Presidency College years, the falling foul of the Establishment. And then the Scottish Church years where he honed his philosophical and dialectical skills – for, without question, he was the finest of all the brains in that nascent political scene, cutting his teeth on the intellectual rigour of the German masters. Next, a brilliant stint at Cambridge, followed by his spectacular success at the ICS examination (he stood fourth in the list), and his immediate resignation from the coveted heaven-born service against all counsels. For he was clear in his mind that he would be no part of an instrument of colonial endeavour, when his mission was nothing less than its overthrow.

Given the fact that the only unified organization fighting the British at the time was the Congress Party it was inevitable that Bose would join it sooner or later, although he apprenticed himself to Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das rather than to its presiding deity Gandhi. It was just as inevitable that his temperament – an all or nothing intractability – couldn’t quite allow him to spin ‘charkhas’ fatuously and to little practical use: the spinning wheel was hardly a potent weapon (whatever its proponents might delude themselves with) against colonialism, and as far as he was concerned Gandhian non-violence was at best of limited utility; and even this was blunted when Gandhi unaccountably called off his civil disobedience movement.

His tenure in the Congress was accordingly tenuous at best: it was foregone that he would soon part ways with Gandhi, the latter’s protégé Nehru and the other lights of the Party. The (in)famous 1939 Congress Party presidential election – which Bose won handsomely – and its sordid aftermath of machinations by Gandhi and his lieutenants made short work of whatever vestigial illusions he might have had. For it soon became apparent that Gandhi, for all his saintly garb, had taken the defeat of his own candidate as a blow to his ego; and (if it needed spelling out), saw Bose as an alarmingly potent threat to himself and his primacy. Using ‘non-cooperation’ and subtle emotional blackmail with a wiliness that would have done Machiavelli credit Gandhi successfully eased Bose out: and the power vultures heaved a sigh when Bose resigned his presidency. One is tempted to speculate on what might have happened had Bose stood his ground and called Gandhi’s bluff: but Bose was far too transparent, far too noble to sully himself in those impure waters – despite spirited encouragement from an unlikely quarter, viz. Rabindranath Tagore, who had been his constant ally in his radical endeavours.

Bose’s quietly spectacular escape in 1940 from his brother Sarat Bose’s house and out of the country, a fugitive now, wanted for waging war against the King Emperor; and under various disguises, across Afghanistan, Central Asia, Russia and finally to Europe to the chancelleries of Mussolini and Hitler read like something out of John Buchan.

Detractors (both domestic and western) have been quick (and tiresomely repetitive) to pounce on Netaji’s gravitation to the fascist regimes of Europe, and later Japan and hold it up as evidence of his own tendencies. However, Prof. Sugata Bose’s book makes it amply clear that where Netaji was concerned, his primary and supreme goal, viz. the ridding of India of the British justified any means, however dubious. He was prepared to sup with the Devil if the payoff was independence for his country – and for those who cry ‘fascist’, it may be mentioned here that Netaji’s one (telling) comment on Hitler after his meeting with him, made in Bengali, was “boddo paagol” (stark mad). Further, his dissatisfaction with the Hitler regime was sufficiently manifest: the Reich’s ambivalence towards India’s independence and Bose’s plans for achieving it left no room for any illusions, although the Bose charisma certainly elicited the gift of a German submarine to transport him back to the East.

And thus from the hero ascendant to the hero in eclipse. The Japanese alliance, the INA years, were Bose’s greatest trial of will. It was true that thousands flocked to his banner; his soldier’s image, his exemplary leadership, his enviable ability to carry people of every faith and calling, his common touch were irresistibly seductive charms. But it was just as true that hundreds deserted to the same British ranks once forsaken by them – saying much thereby probably for the pull of regimental traditions of old and established armies, to say nothing of fickleness of individual character.

Besides, what Bose failed to realize, doubtless on account of an excess of idealism and revolutionary zeal was the near impossibility of raising a rebel army from scratch. That he succeeded even to the extent that he did was a testimonial to him and the nobility of his cause.

Netaji’s dream of “Chalo Dilli” finally foundered on the shoals of betrayal: betrayal by his people, betrayal by the Japanese (although many in the exalted ranks of the Imperial Japanese Army held him in great regard), and in the last analysis, betrayal by his compatriots at home.

Prof. Bose’s book is scrupulously objective, and it is evident that he took more than ordinary pains to ensure this: after all, he was family, and emotionally close to the subject, being Netaji’s grand-nephew. It would be well to bear this fact firmly in mind when one reads the passages outlining Netaji’s relations with Nehru. Long before Nehru’s starry prime ministerial destiny Subhas Bose had seen through the former’s weaknesses: his chronic fatal indecision (“…When a crisis comes you often do not succeed in making up your mind one way or the other – with the result that to the public you appear as if you are riding two horses”), his views on international affairs (“nebulous”), his complete lack of a concept of foreign policy (“Frothy sentiments and pious platitudes do not make foreign policy”). That these assessments seem prophetic today is not half as remarkable as the fact that Bose conveyed them to Nehru in writing. What Bose did not adumbrate was Nehru’s arrogance; but he was acutely made aware of it when he went to Jinnah on a last ditch mission to bring about a conciliation between the Muslim League and the Congress. He was dismayed when Jinnah firmly shut the door on any compromise in the light of Nehru’s irresponsible statement made after the 1937 provincial elections, to the effect that there were only two parties in India, viz. the British and the Congress. Partition was foreshadowed then: only a hopelessly deluded optimist could have believed otherwise. It was the first, though far from last instance of Nehru’s notorious kiss of death.

When Bose escaped from the country in 1940 the Congress Party must have been greatly relieved, murmurs of polite concern notwithstanding. When the news of his death in August 1945 in faraway Taipei reached it, only considerations of form must have prevented celebrations in its ranks. Even Gandhi, for all his pious proclamations of grief, must have sighed secretly in relief. He knew, better than anyone else, that Bose’s presence on Indian soil was lethal to his own ambitions: in many ways, Gandhi reminds one of Becket in “Murder in the Cathedral” – albeit a Becket succumbing to the blandishments of the Fourth Tempter. Nathuram Godse merely hastened a self-willed martyrdom.

Except that Gandhi, canny as always, knew that a saint’s halo, however incandescent, was no match for a soldier hero’s resplendent armour. The Prodigal’s death was briefly grieved, but only briefly. And there were no fatted calves waiting.