Subhas Chandra Bose and the

Alternative Politics in India

 Political scenarios after election
• The Congress victory in the 1937 election and the consequent
formation of popular ministries changed the balance of power
within the country vis-a-vis the colonial authorities.

• The growth of left-wing parties and ideas led to a growing militancy

within the nationalist ranks.

• The stage seemed to be set for another resurgence of the

nationalist movement.

• Just at this time, the Congress had to undergo a crisis at the top —
an occurrence which plagued the Congress every few years.
 Way of the crisis within Congress
• Subhas Bose had been a unanimous choice as the President of the
Congress in 1938.

• In 1939, he decided to stand again — this time as the spokesperson of

militant politics and radical groups.

• Putting forward his candidature on 21 January 1939, Bose said that he

represented the ‘new ideas, ideologies, problems and programmes’ that
had emerged with ‘the progressive sharpening of the anti-imperialist
struggle in India.’

• On 24 January, Sardar Patel, Rajendra Prasad, J.B. Kripalani and four other
members of the Congress Working Committee issued a counter statement,
declaring that the talk of ideologies, programmes and policies was
irrelevant in the elections of a Congress president
 Result of the election
• With the blessings of Gandhiji, Sardar Patel,
Rajendra Prasad, J.B. Kripalani other leaders put
up Pattabhi Sitaramayya as a candidate for the
post.

• Subhas Bose was elected on 29 January by 1580

votes against 1377.

• Gandhiji declared that Sitaramayya’s defeat was

‘more mine than his.’
 Apex of the crisis
• But the election of Bose resolved nothing, it only brought the
brewing crisis to a head at the Tripuri session of the Congress.

• There were two major reasons for the crisis.

1. One was the line of propaganda adopted by Bose against Sardar

Patel and the majority of the top Congress leadership whom he
branded as rightists.

2. He openly accused them of working for a compromise with the

Government on the question of federation, of having even drawn
up a list of prospective central’ ministers

3. therefore of not wanting a leftist as the president of the Congress

• He had, therefore, appealed to Congressmen to vote for a leftist

and ‘a genuine antifederationist.’
 Bose vs Rightists Leaders
• The Congress leaders, labelled as compromisers, resented such
charges and branded them as a slander.

• They pointed out in a statement: ‘Subhas Babu has mentioned his

opposition to the federation. This is shared by all the members of
the Working Committee. It is the Congress policy.’

• After Subhas’s election, they felt that they could not work with a
president who had publicly cast aspersions on their nationalist
bonafides.

• Earlier, Gandhiji had issued a statement on 31 January saying: ‘I

rejoice in this defeat’ because ‘Subhas Babu, instead of being
President on the sufferance of those whom he calls rightists, is now
President elected in a contested election. This enables him to
choose a homogeneous cabinet and enforce his programme
without let or hindrance.’
 Bose vs Nehru

• Jawaharlal Nehru did not resign along with the twelve

other Working Committee members

• He did not like the idea of confronting Bose publicly.

But he did not agree with Bose either.

• Before the elections, he had said that in the election no

principles or programmes were at stake.

• He had been unhappy with Bose’s aspersions on his

colleagues.

• Nor did he agree that the fight was between the Left
and the Right.
• His letter to Subhas on 4 February 1939 would bear a long
quotation:

‘I do not know who you consider a leftist and who a rightist.

The way these words were used by you in your statements
during the presidential contest seemed to imply that Gandhiji
and those who are considered as his group in the Working
Committee are the rightist leaders. Their opponents, whoever
they might be, are the leftists. That seems to me an entirely
wrong description. It seems to me that many of the so-called
leftists are more right than the so-called rightists. Strong
language and a capacity to criticize and attack the old
Congress leadership is not a test of leftism in politics... I think
the use of the words left and right has been generally wholly
wrong and confusing. If, instead of these words we talked
about policies it would be far better. What policies do you
stand for? Anti-federation, well and good. I think that the
great majority of the members of the Working Committee
stand for that and it is not fair to hint at their weakness in this
respect.’
• Differences of policy and tactics were involved in the
underlying Bose-Gandhian debate.

• Subhas Bose believed that the Congress was strong enough

to bunch an immediate struggle that the masses were
ready for such struggle.

• He was convinced, as he wrote later, ‘that the country was

internally more ripe for a revolution than ever before and
that the coming international crisis would give India an
opportunity for achieving her emancipation, which is rare
in human history.’

• He, therefore, argued in his presidential address at Tripuri

for a programme of immediately giving the British
Government a six-months ultimatum to grant the national
demand for independence and of launching a mass civil
disobedience movement if it failed to do so.’
• Gandhiji’s perceptions were very different.

• He, too, believed that another round for mass struggle was
necessary to win freedom, for Indians were facing ‘an impossible
situation.’

• But, he believed, the time was not yet ripe for an ultimatum
because neither the Congress nor the masses were yet ready for
struggle.

• Making his position clear in an interview on 5 May 1939, Gandhiji

declared:

‘He (Subhas Bose) holds that we possess enough resources for a fight. I
am totally opposed to his views. Today we possess no resources for a
fight. . . There is no limit to communal strife. . . We do not have the
same hold among the peasants of Bihar as we used to... If today I am
asked to start the “Dandi March,” I have not the courage to do so. How
can we do anything without the workers and peasants? The country
belongs only to them. I am not equipped to issue an ultimatum to the
Government. The country would only be exposed to ridicule.”
 Bose’s Misjudgment
• The internal strife reached its climax at the Tripuri session of the Congress,
held from 8 to 12 March 1939.

• Bose had completely misjudged his support and the meaning of his
majority in the presidential election.

• Congressmen had voted for him for diverse reasons, and above all because
he stood for militant politics, and not because they wanted to have him as
the supreme leader of the national movement.

• They were not willing to reject Gandhiji’s leadership or that of other

older leaders who decided to bring this home to Subhas.

• Govind Ballabh Pant moved a resolution at Tripuri expressing lull

confidence in the old Working Committee, reiterating full faith in
Gandhiji’s leadership of the movement and the Congress policies of the
previous twenty years, and asking Subhas to nominate his Working
Committee ‘in accordance with the wishes of Gandhiji.’

• The resolution was passed by a big majority, but Gandhiji did not approve
of the resolution and refused to impose a Working Committee on Subhas
• Subhas Bose refused to take up the challenge.

• He had placed himself in an impossible situation.

• He knew that he could not lead the organization on his

own, but he was also not willing to accept the leadership of
the majority.

• To place the best construction on his policy, he wanted

Gandhiji to be the leader of the coming struggle but he
wanted Gandhiji to follow the strategy and tactics laid
down by him and the left-wing parties and groups.

• Gandhiji, on the other hand, would either lead the

Congress on the basis of his own strategy and style of
politics or surrender the position of the leader.
• Bose could see no other way out but to resign from the
presidentship.

• Nehru tried to mediate between the two sides and

persuade Bose not to resign, while asking Gandhiji and the
older leaders to be more accommodative.

• But Bose would not resign from his position.

• On the one hand, he insisted that the Working Committee

should be representative of the new radical trends and
groups which had elected him,

• on the other, he would not nominate his own Working

Committee. He preferred to press his resignation.

• This led to the election of Rajendra Prasad in his place.

• Bose could also not get the support of the
Congress Socialists and the Communists at
Tripuri or after for they were not willing to
divide the national movement and felt that its
unity must be preserved at all costs.

• Explaining its position, the CPI declared after

Tripuri that the interests of the anti-imperialist
struggle demanded not the exclusive
leadership of one wing but a united leadership
under the guidance of Gandhiji.
 Formation of Forward Bloc
• Subsequently, on 3 May 1939 , Subhas Bose
and his followers formed the Forward Bloc as
a new party within the Congress.

• When he gave a call for an All-India protest on

9 July against an AICC resolution, the Working
Committee took disciplinary action against
him, removing him from the presidentship of
the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee and
debarring him from holding any Congress
office for three years.
 Formation of INA and Subhas Chandra Bose

• War time period and Congress posture

• Visions of Subhas Bose- Indians were losing a rare

opportunity - they must take advantage of the empire’s
weakest moment

• Hesitation of Congress to initiate a mass movement

against the Raj – right-wing leaders who were out of
touch with the new forces and new elements

• Subhas travelled alone across India to stir a movement

but did not get much enthusiastic response
 Some attempts of Subhas Bose and its results
• Subhas formed a link with the Muslim League and decided to launch a civil
disobedience movement to destroy the Holwell monument

• Subhas was arrested by the British on July 1940 under the Defence of
India act

• He was then released unconditionally, but kept under constant

surveillance.

• In the meanwhile, war progressed in Europe, and Bose believed that

Germany was going to win.

• Although he did not like their totalitarianism or racism, he began to

nurture the idea that the cause of Indian independence could be
furthered with the help of the Axis powers and started exploring various
possibilities.

• Finally, in the midnight of 16-17 January 1941 he fled from his Elgin Road
residence in Calcutta incognito as an upcountry Muslim.

• He travelled to Kabul and then through Russia on an Italian passport; by

the end of March he reached Berlin.
• Subhas Bose met Goebbels and Hitler in Berlin,
but did not receive much help from them.

• He was allowed to start his Azad Hind Radio and

was handed over the Indian POWs(Prisoner of
War) captured in North Africa to start an Indian
Legion, but nothing beyond that.

• Particularly, he could not get an Axis declaration

in favour of Indian independence, and after
German reverses at Stalingrad, that became even
more difficult.
• A new stage of action was being prepared for him in Southeast Asia,
where the Japanese were taking real interest in the cause of Indian
independence.

• India originally did not figure in the Japanese policy of Greater East
Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, under which the Japanese proposed to
help Asians gain independence from Western imperialism.

• But by 1940 Japan had developed an India policy and the following
year sent Major Fuziwara to Southeast Asia to contact expatriate
Indians who were organising themselves into the Indian
Independence Leagues under the leadership of men like Pritam
Singh.

• Then in December 1941, Captain Mohan Singh, a young officer of

the Punjab Regiment of the British Indian Army who had
surrendered to the Japanese in the jungles of Malaya, agreed to
cooperate with Fuziwara to raise an Indian army with POWs to
march alongside the Japanese to liberate India
• In June 1942, a united Indian Independence League,
representing all Indians in Southeast.

• Asia, was born as a civilian political body having controlling

authority over the army.

• To chair this body, Rash Behari Bose, a veteran Bengali

revolutionary then living in Japan, was flown in.

• By September, the INA was formally in existence.

• But its relationship with the Japanese was still far from
satisfactory, as "Japanese duplicity" now became more than
apparent.
• General Tojo, the Japanese prime minister, made a
declaration in the Diet supporting Indian
independence.

• But beyond that, the Japanese were only prepared to

treat INA as a subsidiary force, rather than an allied
army.

• As Mohan Singh insisted on autonomy and allied

status, he was removed from command and put under
arrest.

• Rash Behari Bose tried to hold the banner for some

time, but he was then too aged for the task.

• By the beginning of 1943 the first INA experiment

virtually collapsed.
• As Mohan Singh had often mentioned to the
Japanese, the INA movement needed a new
leader and outside India only one person could
provide that leadership, and that was Subhas
Chandra Bose.

• The Japanese now seriously considered the

proposition and negotiated with the Germans to
bring him to Asia.

• At last, after a long and arduous submarine

voyage, in May 1943 Bose arrived in Southeast
Asia and immediately took control of the
situation, with Japanese assurance of help and
equal treatment.
• In October, he established a Provisional Government of Free India, which was immediately
recognised by Japan and later by eight other governments, including Germany and Fascist
Italy.

• And he became the supreme commander of its army, the Azad Hind Fauj (Free India Army) or
the Indian National Army, which recruited around forty thousand men by 1945 and had a
women's regiment named after the legendary Rani of Jhansi of 1857 fame

• The Provisional Government declared war on Great Britain and its chief ambition was to
march-as an allied army with the Japanese-through Burma to Imphal {in Manipur) and then
to Assam, where the Indian people were expected to join them in an open rebellion to
liberate their mother-country.
•
• But the ill-fated Imphal campaign, which was finally launched on 8 March 1944 by Japan's
Southern Army accompanied by two INA regiments, ended in a disaster.

• The reasons were many, as Joyce Lebra enumerates them:

1. the lack of air power

2. breakdown in the chain of command
3. disruption of the supply line
4. the strength of Allied offensive
5. finally for the INA, lack of cooperation from the Japanese.
• The retreat was even more devastating, finally ending
the dream of liberating India through military
campaign.

• But Bose still remained optimistic, thought of

regrouping, and after Japanese surrender,
contemplated seeking help from Soviet Russia.

• The Japanese agreed to provide him transport up to

Manchuria from where he could travel to Russia.

• But on his way, on 18 August 1945 at Taihoku airport

in Taiwan, he died in an air crash, which many Indians
still believe never happened
• But if INA's military campaign was over after a last valiant engagement at
Mount Popa in Burma, its political impact on India was yet to unfold itself.

• After their surrender, the twenty thousand INA soldiers were interrogated
and transported back to India.

• Those who appeared to have been persuaded or misled by Japanese or

INA propaganda- classified as "Whites" and "Greys"-were either released
or rehabilitated in the army.

• But a few of them at least-the most committed and categorised as

"Blacks"-were to be court martialled.

• Not to try them would be to give indication of weakness; and to tolerate

'treason, would be to put the loyalty of the Indian army at risk.

• So altogether ten trials took place, and in the first and most celebrated
one at Red Fort in Delhi, three officers-P.K. Sahgal, G.S. Dhillon and Shah
Nawaz Khan-were charged of treason, murder and abetment of murder.
• The trial would take place in public, as this was expected to
reveal the horrors that these INA men had perpetrated and
that, the government hoped, would swerve public opinion
against them.

• But as the events subsequently unfolded, the government,

it seemed, had completely miscalculated the political
fallout of the INA trials.

• As the press censorship was lifted after the war, the details
of the INA campaign were revealed every day before the
Indian public and these officers appeared as patriots of the
highest order-not by any means traitors-and the demand
for discontinuing the trials grew stronger by the day.

• The Congress leaders, many of them just released after

long incarceration since the Quit India days, could hardly
ignore this issue that so profoundly touched popular
emotions.
• The election was round the corner and the INA trials
could be an excellent issue.

• Subhas Bose might have been a renegade leader who

had challenged the authority of the Congress
leadership and their principles.

• But in death he was a martyred patriot whose memory

could be an ideal tool for political mobilisation.

• So the AICC meeting in September 1945 decided to

defend the accused in the INA trial-the "misguided
pattiots"-and announced the formation of a Defence
Committee, consisting of some legal luminaries of the
day, like Tej Bahadur Sapru, Bhulabhai Desai, Asaf Ali,
and also Jawaharlal Nehru, donning the barrister's
gown after about a quarter of a century.
• In the subsequent days, as the election
campaign set in, Nehru and other Congress
leaders addressed numerous public meetings
with large gatherings.

• And there two issues figured prominently:

1. One was the government excesses
2. The martyrs of 1942 and the other was INA
trial
• The first trial opened on 5 November and continued for
two months, and in course of that time India erupted
into "a mass upheaval", as Nehru later described it.
"Never before in Indian history", he admitted, "had
such unified sentiments been manifested by various
divergent sections of the population. "There were
many factors that led to this mass upsurge.

• The trial took place at Red Fort, which appeared to be

the most authentic symbol of British imperial
domination,

• Furthermore, as trial progressed, its reports appeared

in the press, leading to more awareness and to some
extent more emotionalisation of the sacrifices made by
the INA soldiers.
• All political parties, like the Congress Socialists, Akali Dal, Unionist
Party, Justice Party, Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh, Hindu
Mahasabha and even the Muslim League wanted the trials to b
discontinued.

• Individual communists enthusiastically participated in the

demonstrations, although their party vacillated in its response.

• And by a strange coincidence, the three accused belonged to three

different religions: one Hindu, one Sikh and one Muslim! The
demonstrations, therefore, showed signs of remarkable communal
harmony.

• An INA week was celebrated between 5 and 11 November, while

the INA Day was observed on 12 November in cities across the
country.

• People from all walks of life participated in the campaign, attended

protest meetings
• People from all walks of life participated in the campaign, attended protest
meetings, donated money to the lNA relief fund, closed shops and other
commercial institutions and in some places refrained from celebrating diwali

• And the movement touched even the remotest places like Coorg, Baluchistan and
Assam

• Violence erupted first on 7 November when the police opened fire on the crowd
at a protest demonstration in Madura

• Then between 21 and 24 November, rioting broke out in various parts of the
country, starting from Bose's own Calcutta

• Here, first of all, American and British military establishments were attacked; but
then the rioting took a general anti-British tone, with students clashing with the
police and being joined later by the striking taxi drivers and tramway labourers

• They exhibited unprecedented communal harmony, with the demonstrators flying

simultaneously the Congress, League and Communist flags.

• Order could be restored after three days, with 33 people dead and 200 injured.
The Calcutta riot was soon followed by similar demonstrations in Bombay, Karachi,
Patna, Allahabad, Banaras, Rawalpindi and other places, or in other words, all over
the country
• The government's determination now wavered.

• In the trial, the defence tried to argue that people fighting for freedom of their country could not be tried for
treason.

• But despite that, they were found guilty as charged; but the commander-in-chief remitted their sentence and set
them free on 3 January 1946.

• The three officers came out of the Red Fort to a hero's welcome at public meetings in Delhi and Lahore, that
celebrated a moral victory against the British.

• But it was not all over yet. On 4 February, in another trial, Captain Abdur Rashid-who preferred to be defended by
a Muslim League Defence Committee, rather than by the Congress was sentenced to seven years rigorous
imprisonment.

• It sparked off another explosion in Calcutta between 11 and 13 February, this time called initially by the student
wing of the Muslim League, but later joined by the members of the communist-led Student Federation and
industrial workers.

• Once again demonstrations followed, with Congress, League and red flags flying simultaneously, and large
meetings were organised, where League, Communist and Congress leaders addressed the crowd.

• A general anti-British sentiment pervaded the city, which was paralysed by transport strikes, industrial action and
pitched street battles with British troops.

• Order was again restored after three days of brutal repression that had eighty-four people killed and three
hundred injured.

• To a historian who participated in the demonstrations as a student leader, the situation looked like an "Almost
Revolution".

• The fire soon spread to east Bengal and the spirit of revolt affected other parts of the country as well, as
sympathetic protest demonstrations and strikes took place in practically all major cities of India.