01-29-2006, 02:49 AM
Subhash Chandra Bose
Subhash Chandra Bose (Bangla: সà§à¦à¦¾à¦· à¦à¦¨à§à¦¦à§à¦° বসà§) (January 23, 1897âAugust 18, 1945note) also known as Netaji, was a prominent leader of the Indian independence movement against the authoritarian British Raj. Bose helped to organize and later led the Indian National Army, put together with Indian prisoners-of-war and plantation workers from Singapore and other parts of Southeast Asia, against British and Raj forces during the Second World War.
Early life
Subhash Chandra Bose was born to an affluent Bengali family in Cuttack, Orissa. His father, Janakinath Bose, was a public prosecutor who believed in orthodox nationalism and later became a member of the Bengal Legislative Council. With eight brothers and six sisters, Bose's family was large, but disciplined. He loved to read and was fascinated with religion, discipline, and self-control. As a youth, he did volunteer work for the community and after reading Vivekananda's writings, "selfless service" became the motto guiding his life.
Recognizing his son's intellect, Bose's father was determined that Bose should become a high-ranking civil servant. He attended the Protestant European School and the Ravenshaw Collegiate School in Cuttack and later graduated with honours from the Scottish Church College, Calcutta. He was placed second in his university examinations and participated as a member of the India Defence Corps, then a newly-formed military training unit at the University of Calcutta. Afterwards he travelled to England and attended Fitzwilliam Hall at the University of Cambridge.
In 1920, Bose took the Indian Civil Service entrance examination and was ranked second. However, he resigned from the prestigious Indian Civil Service in April 1921 despite his high ranking in the merit list, and went ahead to join the freedom movement. After returning to India, he joined the Congress party and was particularly active in its youth wing. Bose's ideas did not match with that of Gandhi's belief in non-violence. So he returned to Calcutta to work under Chittaranjan Das, the Bengali freedom fighter and co-founder (with Motilal Nehru) of the Swaraj Party. In 1921, Bose organised a boycott of the celebrations to mark the Prince of Wales' visit to India. This led to his being imprisoned. In April 1924, Bose was elected the Chief Executive Officer of the newly constituted Calcutta Corporation. Later, in October that year, Bose was arrested as a suspected terrorist. First, he was in Alipore jail and later he was exiled to Mandalay in Burma.
In June 1925, Bose was deeply struck by the sudden loss of his mentor Chittaranjan Das. At the end of 1926 he was nominated in absentia as a candidate for the Bengal Legislative Assembly. On May 16 1927 he was released from jail due to ill-health. The two years in Mandalay increased his confidence and strength. By December 1927, Bose with Jawaharlal Nehru became the General Secretary of the Congress. On January 23 1930, Bose was once again arrested for leading an "Independence" procession, protesting against British rule in India. After being released from jail on September 25, he was elected as the Mayor of the City of Calcutta. He was incarcerated eleven times by the British over a span of twenty years, either in India or in Rangoon. He spent many years in various capacities as the Chief Executive Officer of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (where Chittaranjan Das had previously been Mayor), and later as Mayor himself. With Jawaharlal Nehru he was one of the radical Left wing leaders of the Congress Party. He was exiled from India, during the mid 1930s to Europe, where he stated India's cause for self-rule before gatherings and conferences (like the Second Communist International). After his father's death the British authorities allowed him to land at Calcutta's airport only for the religious rites, which would be followed by his swift departure. During this time he traveled extensively in India and in Europe before stating his political opposition to Gandhi. He became the president of the Haripura Indian National Congress in 1938, against Gandhi's wishes. He was elected for a second term in 1939 in Tripura Congress Session; Gandhi had supported Pattabhi Sitaramayya and commented "Pattavi's defeat is my defeat" after learning the election results. Although Bose won the election, Gandhi's continued opposition led to the resignation of the Working Committee. In the face of this gesture of no-confidence Bose himself resigned. Bose then formed an independent party, the All India Forward Bloc.
Actions during the Second World War
Bose advocated the approach that the political instability of war-time Britain should be taken advantage ofârather than simply wait for the British to grant independence after the end of the war (which was the view of Gandhi, Nehru and a section of the Congress leadership) at the time. In this he was influenced by the examples of Italian statesmen Giuseppe Garibaldi and Giuseppe Mazzini. During his stay in Europe from 1933 to 1936, he met several European leaders and thinkers, including Benito Mussolini, Edvard BeneÅ¡, Karl Seitz, Eamon De Valera, Romain Rolland, and Alfred Rosenberg. He came to believe that India could achieve political freedom only if it had political, military and diplomatic support from outside and that an independent nation necessitated the creation of a national army to secure its sovereignty. His correspondence reveals that despite his sheer dislike for British subjugation, he was deeply impressed by their methodical and systematic approach and their steadfastedly disciplinarian outlook towards life. In England, he exchanged ideas with British Labour Party leaders and political thinkers like Lord Halifax, George Lansbury, Clement Attlee, Arthur Greenwood, Harold Laski, J.B.S. Haldane, Ivor Jennings, G.D.H. Cole, Gilbert Murray and Sir Stafford Cripps on the future of India. He came to accept the view that a free India needed Socialist authoritarianism, on the lines of Turkey's Kemal Atatürk for at least two decades.
"The Great Escape"
At the beginning of the Second World War Bose was released from jail following a hunger strike, but was kept under a watchful eye by the British. With two court cases pending, he felt sure the British would not let him out before the end of the War. This inevitably set the scene for Bose's "Great Escape", immortalized in the recent film about Bose's life. Bose had never been through Afghanistan, and could not speak Pashto, the language spoken in the tribal territories. For this reason he enlisted the help of Mian Akbar Shah, then a Forwad Bloc leader in the North West Frontier Province. Shah had been out of India before en route to the Soviet Union, and suggested a novel disguise for Bose to assume. In particular, Bose didn't speak Pashto, the language of the Pathan tribesmen, which would cause him to be easily identitified by Pashto speakers working for the British. For this reason, Shah suggested that Bose act deaf and dumb, and let his beard grow to mimic those of the tribesmen.
On January 19th, 1941, Bose journeyed to Peshawar where he was met at Peshawar Cantonment station by Shah, Mohammed Shah and Bhagat Ram. Bose was taken to the house of Abad Khan, a trusted friend of Akbar Shah's. On the 26th January, 1941 Bose began his journey to reach Europe.
In Germany
Having escaped his incarceration at home by taking the guise of a Pathan insurance agent ("Ziaudddin") to Afghanistan, Bose travelled to Moscow with the passport of an Italian nobleman "Count Orlando Mazzotta". From Moscow he reached Rome and from there he traveled to Germany where he instituted the Special Bureau for India under Adam von Trott zu Solz, broadcasting on the German-sponsored Azad Hind Radio. He founded the Free India Centre in Berlin and created the Indian Legion (consisting of some 4500 soldiers) out of Indian prisoners of war who had previously fought for the British in North Africa, but had been captured by Axis forces. The Azad Hind legion was attached to the Waffen SS, and they swore their allegiance to Hitler and Bose to secure India's independence.
Bose became disillusioned with Hitler after the German invasion of the Soviet Union and decided to leave Nazi Germany. The lack of interest Hitler had shown for the cause of Indian independence had frustrated Bose. He travelled by German submarine U-180 around the Cape of Good Hope to Imperial Japan (via Japanese submarine I-29), which helped him raise his army in Singapore. This was the only civilian-transfer across two different submarines of two different navies in World War II.
In Japan
The Indian National Army (INA) consisted of some 85,000 regular troops, including a separate women's army unit named after Rani Lakshmi Bai (in a regular army, the women's combat army unit was the first of its kind in Asia), who gave her life in the First War of Indian Independence of 1857, fighting colonial British forces. These were under the aegis of a provisional government, with its own currency, court and civil code, named the "Provisional Government of Free India" (or the Arzi Hukumate Azad Hind) and recognised by nine Axis states: Germany, Japan, Italy, the Independent State of Croatia, Reformed Government of the Republic of China, Thailand, a provisional government of Burma, Manchukuo and a Japanese-controlled Philippines. Of those countries, excluding Japan, 5 of them were states established by Axis occupation. This government participated as a delegate or observer in the so-called Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. En route to India, some of Bose's troops assisted in the Japanese victory over the British in the battles of Arakan and Meiktila, along with the Burmese National Army led by Ba Maw and Aung San. The Provisional Government and the INA were established in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal, part of the British Indian Empire under Japanese occupation. On the Indian mainland, an Indian Tricolour, modeled after that of the Indian National Congress, was raised for the first time in the town in Moirang, in Manipur, in northeastern India. The other towns of Kohima and Imphal, were placed under siege by divisions of the Japanese, the Burmese and the Gandhi and Nehru Brigades of I.N.A.. At the time of the Great Bengal Famine of 1943, during which millions died of starvation, Bose had offered (through radio) Burmese rice to the victims of the famine. The British authorities in India (and in the UK) refused the offer.
When the Japanese were defeated at the battles of Kohima and Imphal, the Provisional Government's aim of establishing a base in mainland India was lost forever and the INA was forced to pull-back along with the defeated Japanese Imperial Army. Japan's surrender after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki also led to the eventual surrender of the Indian National Army.
Political views
Even though Bose and Gandhi had differing ideologies, the latter called Bose the "Patriot of Patriots" (Bose had called Gandhi "Father of the Nation"). He has been given belated recognition in India, and especially in West Bengal; Kolkata's civil airport and a university have been named after him. Many of the symbols of Bose's provisional government, which were also associated with the Congress, have been adopted in independent India: Rabindranath Tagore's "Jana Gana Mana", which was the national song of the Provisional Government of Azad Hind is independent India's National Anthem, and the tricolour as India's national flag.
His alliance with the Axis continues to be controversial; the generally accepted view in India is that he was a hero for his forceful stance against British rule in India and for Indian independence. In working with the Japanese he was however fighting his own countrymen, who defended India within the unpoliticised British Indian Army against the Japanese invasion.
At the time of the start of the Second World War, great divisions existed in the Indian independence movement about whether to exploit the weakness of the British to achieve independence. Some felt that any distinctions between the political allegiances and ideologies of the warring factions of Europe were inconsequential in the face of the possibility of Indian independence, and that it was hypocritical of the British to condemn pro-democracy Indians for allying themselves with anti-democratic Axis forces when the British themselves showed so little respect for democracy or democratic reforms in India. Others felt that it was inappropriate to seek concessions when Britain itself was in peril, and found their distaste for Nazi Germany outweighed their concerns about Independence.
Bose, in particular, was accused of 'collaborating' with the Axis; he criticized the British during World War-II, saying that while Britain was fighting for the freedom of the European nations under Nazi control, it did not grant its own colonies, including India their independence. It may be observed that along with Nehru, Bose had organized and led protest marches against the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, and of China itself in 1938, when he was Congress president. During that period, Chinese leader Chiang Kai Shek was feted in India and medical aid and food supplies were sent to Chinese areas which suffered the worst brunt of Japanese imperialism. That he eventually abandoned his political stance (which initially was that of Gandhi and Nehru) reflects his deep discontent with the nature of the British rule, and a growing belief that the formation of an Indian free state was nowhere on the British political roadmap. At the Tripuri [1] Congress session, he made his views quite explicit: Britain had forced a war on India, without bothering to consult Indians and in the (then largely Conservative Party dominated) British world view, the opinions and aspirations of people of non white "subject races" did not count.
It is interesting to note that Bose's earlier correspondences (prior to 1939) reflect his deep disapproval of the racist practices of and annulment of democratic institutions in Nazi Germany. Though Bose did ally himself with the Axis powers, there is little to suggest he shared any of their doctrines of racial superiority; instead it appears he was motivated to join them largely out of political pragmatism. It may be noted that his tenure as Congress Party president (1938-39) hardly reflected any anti-democratic or authoritarian attributes. Rather his role then was more that of a negotiator, and a consensus-builder within the ranks of the senior Congress leadership (led by Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru and others) on the one hand, and the Muslim League (led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah) on the other. Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Anton Pelinka and Leonard Gordon have remarked that Bose's skills and were best illustrated at the negotiating table than at the battlefield.
Though he had expressed his belief that India would require a period after independence under a benevolent dictatorship similar to that imposed in Turkey, he also expressed his belief that democracy for India was the best option for her people to live, and his authoritarian tendencies were based, similarly, out of political pragmatism and post-colonial recovery doctrine rather than any anti-democratic belief.
Assassination Attempts
<b>
In 1941, when the British learnt that Bose had sought the support of the Axis Powers, they ordered their agents to assassinate Bose. This remarkable claim comes from Irish historian Dr. Eunan O'Halpin, who is the author of several books on British intelligence and teaches at Trinity College, Dublin.
British agents were instructed to intercept and kill Bose before he reached Germany via the Middle East, according to Professor O'Halpin. According to him, a recently declassified intelligence document refers to a top-secret instruction to the Special Operations Executive (SOE) of British intelligence to murder Bose.
Initially thought to be in the Far East, Bose's whereabouts were discovered from an Italian diplomatic communication, and the British came to know Bose was in Kabul, planning to reach Germany through the Middle East. Two SOE operatives in Turkey were instructed by their headquarters in London to intercept Bose and kill him before he reached Germany. They failed because Bose reached Germany through Central Asia and the Soviet Union. Every time the operatives checked back, headquarters told them the orders were intact and Bose must be killed if found.
According to Mr O'Halpin, the decision was extraordinary, unusual and rare, and it seemed that the British took Bose much more seriously than many thought. In fact the plan to liquidate Bose has few parallels, and appears to be a last desperate measure against someone who had thrown the British Empire in complete panic.</b>
(so much for gandhi - the man who broke the back of an ampire with his dandi marches and beggary)
Subhash Chandra Bose (Bangla: সà§à¦à¦¾à¦· à¦à¦¨à§à¦¦à§à¦° বসà§) (January 23, 1897âAugust 18, 1945note) also known as Netaji, was a prominent leader of the Indian independence movement against the authoritarian British Raj. Bose helped to organize and later led the Indian National Army, put together with Indian prisoners-of-war and plantation workers from Singapore and other parts of Southeast Asia, against British and Raj forces during the Second World War.
Early life
Subhash Chandra Bose was born to an affluent Bengali family in Cuttack, Orissa. His father, Janakinath Bose, was a public prosecutor who believed in orthodox nationalism and later became a member of the Bengal Legislative Council. With eight brothers and six sisters, Bose's family was large, but disciplined. He loved to read and was fascinated with religion, discipline, and self-control. As a youth, he did volunteer work for the community and after reading Vivekananda's writings, "selfless service" became the motto guiding his life.
Recognizing his son's intellect, Bose's father was determined that Bose should become a high-ranking civil servant. He attended the Protestant European School and the Ravenshaw Collegiate School in Cuttack and later graduated with honours from the Scottish Church College, Calcutta. He was placed second in his university examinations and participated as a member of the India Defence Corps, then a newly-formed military training unit at the University of Calcutta. Afterwards he travelled to England and attended Fitzwilliam Hall at the University of Cambridge.
In 1920, Bose took the Indian Civil Service entrance examination and was ranked second. However, he resigned from the prestigious Indian Civil Service in April 1921 despite his high ranking in the merit list, and went ahead to join the freedom movement. After returning to India, he joined the Congress party and was particularly active in its youth wing. Bose's ideas did not match with that of Gandhi's belief in non-violence. So he returned to Calcutta to work under Chittaranjan Das, the Bengali freedom fighter and co-founder (with Motilal Nehru) of the Swaraj Party. In 1921, Bose organised a boycott of the celebrations to mark the Prince of Wales' visit to India. This led to his being imprisoned. In April 1924, Bose was elected the Chief Executive Officer of the newly constituted Calcutta Corporation. Later, in October that year, Bose was arrested as a suspected terrorist. First, he was in Alipore jail and later he was exiled to Mandalay in Burma.
In June 1925, Bose was deeply struck by the sudden loss of his mentor Chittaranjan Das. At the end of 1926 he was nominated in absentia as a candidate for the Bengal Legislative Assembly. On May 16 1927 he was released from jail due to ill-health. The two years in Mandalay increased his confidence and strength. By December 1927, Bose with Jawaharlal Nehru became the General Secretary of the Congress. On January 23 1930, Bose was once again arrested for leading an "Independence" procession, protesting against British rule in India. After being released from jail on September 25, he was elected as the Mayor of the City of Calcutta. He was incarcerated eleven times by the British over a span of twenty years, either in India or in Rangoon. He spent many years in various capacities as the Chief Executive Officer of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (where Chittaranjan Das had previously been Mayor), and later as Mayor himself. With Jawaharlal Nehru he was one of the radical Left wing leaders of the Congress Party. He was exiled from India, during the mid 1930s to Europe, where he stated India's cause for self-rule before gatherings and conferences (like the Second Communist International). After his father's death the British authorities allowed him to land at Calcutta's airport only for the religious rites, which would be followed by his swift departure. During this time he traveled extensively in India and in Europe before stating his political opposition to Gandhi. He became the president of the Haripura Indian National Congress in 1938, against Gandhi's wishes. He was elected for a second term in 1939 in Tripura Congress Session; Gandhi had supported Pattabhi Sitaramayya and commented "Pattavi's defeat is my defeat" after learning the election results. Although Bose won the election, Gandhi's continued opposition led to the resignation of the Working Committee. In the face of this gesture of no-confidence Bose himself resigned. Bose then formed an independent party, the All India Forward Bloc.
Actions during the Second World War
Bose advocated the approach that the political instability of war-time Britain should be taken advantage ofârather than simply wait for the British to grant independence after the end of the war (which was the view of Gandhi, Nehru and a section of the Congress leadership) at the time. In this he was influenced by the examples of Italian statesmen Giuseppe Garibaldi and Giuseppe Mazzini. During his stay in Europe from 1933 to 1936, he met several European leaders and thinkers, including Benito Mussolini, Edvard BeneÅ¡, Karl Seitz, Eamon De Valera, Romain Rolland, and Alfred Rosenberg. He came to believe that India could achieve political freedom only if it had political, military and diplomatic support from outside and that an independent nation necessitated the creation of a national army to secure its sovereignty. His correspondence reveals that despite his sheer dislike for British subjugation, he was deeply impressed by their methodical and systematic approach and their steadfastedly disciplinarian outlook towards life. In England, he exchanged ideas with British Labour Party leaders and political thinkers like Lord Halifax, George Lansbury, Clement Attlee, Arthur Greenwood, Harold Laski, J.B.S. Haldane, Ivor Jennings, G.D.H. Cole, Gilbert Murray and Sir Stafford Cripps on the future of India. He came to accept the view that a free India needed Socialist authoritarianism, on the lines of Turkey's Kemal Atatürk for at least two decades.
"The Great Escape"
At the beginning of the Second World War Bose was released from jail following a hunger strike, but was kept under a watchful eye by the British. With two court cases pending, he felt sure the British would not let him out before the end of the War. This inevitably set the scene for Bose's "Great Escape", immortalized in the recent film about Bose's life. Bose had never been through Afghanistan, and could not speak Pashto, the language spoken in the tribal territories. For this reason he enlisted the help of Mian Akbar Shah, then a Forwad Bloc leader in the North West Frontier Province. Shah had been out of India before en route to the Soviet Union, and suggested a novel disguise for Bose to assume. In particular, Bose didn't speak Pashto, the language of the Pathan tribesmen, which would cause him to be easily identitified by Pashto speakers working for the British. For this reason, Shah suggested that Bose act deaf and dumb, and let his beard grow to mimic those of the tribesmen.
On January 19th, 1941, Bose journeyed to Peshawar where he was met at Peshawar Cantonment station by Shah, Mohammed Shah and Bhagat Ram. Bose was taken to the house of Abad Khan, a trusted friend of Akbar Shah's. On the 26th January, 1941 Bose began his journey to reach Europe.
In Germany
Having escaped his incarceration at home by taking the guise of a Pathan insurance agent ("Ziaudddin") to Afghanistan, Bose travelled to Moscow with the passport of an Italian nobleman "Count Orlando Mazzotta". From Moscow he reached Rome and from there he traveled to Germany where he instituted the Special Bureau for India under Adam von Trott zu Solz, broadcasting on the German-sponsored Azad Hind Radio. He founded the Free India Centre in Berlin and created the Indian Legion (consisting of some 4500 soldiers) out of Indian prisoners of war who had previously fought for the British in North Africa, but had been captured by Axis forces. The Azad Hind legion was attached to the Waffen SS, and they swore their allegiance to Hitler and Bose to secure India's independence.
Bose became disillusioned with Hitler after the German invasion of the Soviet Union and decided to leave Nazi Germany. The lack of interest Hitler had shown for the cause of Indian independence had frustrated Bose. He travelled by German submarine U-180 around the Cape of Good Hope to Imperial Japan (via Japanese submarine I-29), which helped him raise his army in Singapore. This was the only civilian-transfer across two different submarines of two different navies in World War II.
In Japan
The Indian National Army (INA) consisted of some 85,000 regular troops, including a separate women's army unit named after Rani Lakshmi Bai (in a regular army, the women's combat army unit was the first of its kind in Asia), who gave her life in the First War of Indian Independence of 1857, fighting colonial British forces. These were under the aegis of a provisional government, with its own currency, court and civil code, named the "Provisional Government of Free India" (or the Arzi Hukumate Azad Hind) and recognised by nine Axis states: Germany, Japan, Italy, the Independent State of Croatia, Reformed Government of the Republic of China, Thailand, a provisional government of Burma, Manchukuo and a Japanese-controlled Philippines. Of those countries, excluding Japan, 5 of them were states established by Axis occupation. This government participated as a delegate or observer in the so-called Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. En route to India, some of Bose's troops assisted in the Japanese victory over the British in the battles of Arakan and Meiktila, along with the Burmese National Army led by Ba Maw and Aung San. The Provisional Government and the INA were established in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal, part of the British Indian Empire under Japanese occupation. On the Indian mainland, an Indian Tricolour, modeled after that of the Indian National Congress, was raised for the first time in the town in Moirang, in Manipur, in northeastern India. The other towns of Kohima and Imphal, were placed under siege by divisions of the Japanese, the Burmese and the Gandhi and Nehru Brigades of I.N.A.. At the time of the Great Bengal Famine of 1943, during which millions died of starvation, Bose had offered (through radio) Burmese rice to the victims of the famine. The British authorities in India (and in the UK) refused the offer.
When the Japanese were defeated at the battles of Kohima and Imphal, the Provisional Government's aim of establishing a base in mainland India was lost forever and the INA was forced to pull-back along with the defeated Japanese Imperial Army. Japan's surrender after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki also led to the eventual surrender of the Indian National Army.
Political views
Even though Bose and Gandhi had differing ideologies, the latter called Bose the "Patriot of Patriots" (Bose had called Gandhi "Father of the Nation"). He has been given belated recognition in India, and especially in West Bengal; Kolkata's civil airport and a university have been named after him. Many of the symbols of Bose's provisional government, which were also associated with the Congress, have been adopted in independent India: Rabindranath Tagore's "Jana Gana Mana", which was the national song of the Provisional Government of Azad Hind is independent India's National Anthem, and the tricolour as India's national flag.
His alliance with the Axis continues to be controversial; the generally accepted view in India is that he was a hero for his forceful stance against British rule in India and for Indian independence. In working with the Japanese he was however fighting his own countrymen, who defended India within the unpoliticised British Indian Army against the Japanese invasion.
At the time of the start of the Second World War, great divisions existed in the Indian independence movement about whether to exploit the weakness of the British to achieve independence. Some felt that any distinctions between the political allegiances and ideologies of the warring factions of Europe were inconsequential in the face of the possibility of Indian independence, and that it was hypocritical of the British to condemn pro-democracy Indians for allying themselves with anti-democratic Axis forces when the British themselves showed so little respect for democracy or democratic reforms in India. Others felt that it was inappropriate to seek concessions when Britain itself was in peril, and found their distaste for Nazi Germany outweighed their concerns about Independence.
Bose, in particular, was accused of 'collaborating' with the Axis; he criticized the British during World War-II, saying that while Britain was fighting for the freedom of the European nations under Nazi control, it did not grant its own colonies, including India their independence. It may be observed that along with Nehru, Bose had organized and led protest marches against the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, and of China itself in 1938, when he was Congress president. During that period, Chinese leader Chiang Kai Shek was feted in India and medical aid and food supplies were sent to Chinese areas which suffered the worst brunt of Japanese imperialism. That he eventually abandoned his political stance (which initially was that of Gandhi and Nehru) reflects his deep discontent with the nature of the British rule, and a growing belief that the formation of an Indian free state was nowhere on the British political roadmap. At the Tripuri [1] Congress session, he made his views quite explicit: Britain had forced a war on India, without bothering to consult Indians and in the (then largely Conservative Party dominated) British world view, the opinions and aspirations of people of non white "subject races" did not count.
It is interesting to note that Bose's earlier correspondences (prior to 1939) reflect his deep disapproval of the racist practices of and annulment of democratic institutions in Nazi Germany. Though Bose did ally himself with the Axis powers, there is little to suggest he shared any of their doctrines of racial superiority; instead it appears he was motivated to join them largely out of political pragmatism. It may be noted that his tenure as Congress Party president (1938-39) hardly reflected any anti-democratic or authoritarian attributes. Rather his role then was more that of a negotiator, and a consensus-builder within the ranks of the senior Congress leadership (led by Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru and others) on the one hand, and the Muslim League (led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah) on the other. Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Anton Pelinka and Leonard Gordon have remarked that Bose's skills and were best illustrated at the negotiating table than at the battlefield.
Though he had expressed his belief that India would require a period after independence under a benevolent dictatorship similar to that imposed in Turkey, he also expressed his belief that democracy for India was the best option for her people to live, and his authoritarian tendencies were based, similarly, out of political pragmatism and post-colonial recovery doctrine rather than any anti-democratic belief.
Assassination Attempts
<b>
In 1941, when the British learnt that Bose had sought the support of the Axis Powers, they ordered their agents to assassinate Bose. This remarkable claim comes from Irish historian Dr. Eunan O'Halpin, who is the author of several books on British intelligence and teaches at Trinity College, Dublin.
British agents were instructed to intercept and kill Bose before he reached Germany via the Middle East, according to Professor O'Halpin. According to him, a recently declassified intelligence document refers to a top-secret instruction to the Special Operations Executive (SOE) of British intelligence to murder Bose.
Initially thought to be in the Far East, Bose's whereabouts were discovered from an Italian diplomatic communication, and the British came to know Bose was in Kabul, planning to reach Germany through the Middle East. Two SOE operatives in Turkey were instructed by their headquarters in London to intercept Bose and kill him before he reached Germany. They failed because Bose reached Germany through Central Asia and the Soviet Union. Every time the operatives checked back, headquarters told them the orders were intact and Bose must be killed if found.
According to Mr O'Halpin, the decision was extraordinary, unusual and rare, and it seemed that the British took Bose much more seriously than many thought. In fact the plan to liquidate Bose has few parallels, and appears to be a last desperate measure against someone who had thrown the British Empire in complete panic.</b>
(so much for gandhi - the man who broke the back of an ampire with his dandi marches and beggary)