‘Netaji Wanted Free India to Be Secular State’: A Note From His Daughter

Anita Bose Pfaff

[Below is the full text of a press statement released on the eve of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s 126th birth anniversary (23 January) by his daughter Anita Bose Pfaff.]

22 January 2023: Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was born 126 years ago.

Even though he died in a foreign country more than 77 years ago and his remains still rest in a foreign land, many of his countrymen and his countrywomen have not forgotten him.

They remember him not only in a detached manner as a person who played a role in the struggle for India’s independence. Members of all parties, across the entire political spectrum, parties who share his ideas and his ideology and those who do not, pay tribute to him and thank him for his sacrifice for India.

With their respect and love they repay him for his sacrifice for their country.

Netaji should be remembered for what he stood for and envisaged for independent India:

• India was to become a modern state, respected by other countries. Education for all men and women was therefore of utmost importance to him.
• He believed in equal rights, opportunities and duties for men and women, for members of all religions, castes and all social strata. This meant the empowerment and emancipation of all disadvantaged people.
• As an individual he was a religious person. However, he wanted free India to be a secular state where members of all religions would live together peacefully and with mutual respect. These values were practiced in the Indian National Army and in his own actions.
• He was a politician inspired by socialism who envisioned India to become a modern, socialist – or in today’s terms social-democratic – state, with equal opportunities for the wellbeing of all. In his struggle for India’s independence he saw himself forced to seek the cooperation and support of fascist countries who did not share his ideology and his political agenda: At that time, they were the only countries willing to support this struggle against a common adversary.

Men and women who love and admire Netaji can honour him best by upholding his values in their political and personal actions – and by welcoming his remains back in India.

Let us bring Netaji’s remains back home!

(Anita Bose Pfaff is an economist. She is the daughter of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.)

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Bose Pfaff’s above statement comes two days after she said that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s planned celebrations of her father’s birthday is to “partially exploit” her father’s legacy. Her comments have been published in the Outlook under the heading, “RSS Commemoration Of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s Birth Anniversary Is To ‘Partially Exploit’ His Legacy: Daughter Anita Bose”. We give this article below:

21 January 2023: Amidst the fanfare over RSS’ plans to celebrate Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s birth anniversary in the city on January 23, his daughter Anita Bose-Pfaff has said that it is being done to “partially exploit” her father’s legacy.

RSS’s ideology and the nationalist leader’s ideas of securlarism and inclusiveness are “poles apart and do not coincide”, she said.

As far as ideology is concerned, the Congress has lot more in common with Netaji than any other party in the country, Bose-Pfaff said.

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat will address a public programme at Shahid Minar ground in the city to commemorate Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s birth anniversary.

Bose-Pfaff said the BJP and RSS do not reflect the idea of respecting all religions as preached by Netaji, who was a devout Hindu but believed in respecting other faiths. He was in favour of a productive cooperation between members of different religions, she said.

“RSS and BJP do not necessarily reflect this attitude … If you want to put a simple label, they are rightists, and Netaji was a leftist,” she told PTI over phone from Germany where she lives.

“From what I hear about the RSS ideology, I would agree that it and Netaji’s ideology are poles apart. The two value systems do not coincide. It will certainly be good if the RSS felt it wanted to embrace Netaji’s ideals and ideas. Many different groups want to celebrate Netaji’s birthday in different ways and a number of them necessarily agree with his ideas,” Bose-Pfaff told PTI in a telephonic interview from Germany, where she lives.

She agreed that the fanfare over the celebration of her father’s birth anniversary is to “partially exploit his legacy”.

Asked whether Netaji was a critic of the RSS, she said “I don’t know any quote (of Netaji) which I can give you. He may have made critical statements about RSS members. I know what his (Netaji’s) views are and about RSS. The two value systems do not coincide. RSS and Netaji’s ideology of secularism do not coincide with each other,” she said.

Speaking on the recent pomp and fanfare over Netaji’s birth anniversary celebrations, she lauded the BJP-led government at the Centre for taking a “lot of initiatives” to honour him.

“This has two aspects. After Independence, the official Congress stand on Netaji was reserved and not shared by all Congressmen. It wanted to keep the narrative that it was only the civil disobedience movement that led to the country’s freedom. But after Netaji files were declassified we came to know that Indian National Army (INA) played a very key role in it,” she said.

On the second aspect, Pfaff wondered whether BJP would have honoured Netaji if he had held divergent views from that of the present-day government.

“The BJP has made a lot of effort to honour Netaji. With any politician you have first to allow them to look at his/her interest. If Netaji was alive today and held a different view from that of the government, then the BJP would not have honoured him. So (in this case) it is their interest that is served,” she said.

The Trinamool Congress and BJP had locked horns to appropriate Netaji’s legacy on his 125th birth anniversary ahead of the assembly polls in 2021.

In 2015, the West Bengal government released 64 files on the leader held by the home department. The Narendra Modi government at the Centre released 100 files on him the next year.

After Independence, the Centre had formed three inquiry commissions to unravel the mystery of Netaji’s disappearance.

Two of them – the Shah Nawaz Commission and Khosla Commission were formed by the Congress governments and concluded that Bose died in an air crash on August 18, 1945, soon after taking off from Taihoku airport in Taiwan.

The third one – the Mukherjee Commission formed by the BJP-led NDA government said he did not.

(Courtesy: www.outlookindia.com.)

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And in another article on the same theme, “Netaji’s Secular Outlook, and Why He was Disappointed With Jinnah, Savarkar”, the noted intellectual S.N. Sahu writes:

Today, while celebrating the 126th birth anniversary of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, one recalls the lesser-known fact that he, before leaving India for Europe incognito in 1941 to launch a war against the British regime in India for the freedom of our country, met several leaders. They included Mahatma Gandhi, Mohammed Ali Jinnah and VD Savarkar. He gave an account of those meetings in his book Indian Struggle: 1920-1942, first published in 1997, and that account is of contemporary significance.

Meeting Between Bose and Gandhi in 1941

During his meeting with Gandhi, Bose stated that the Forward Bloc had launched a Civil Disobedience Movement, and many of the leaders of the Bloc were in prison. He also gave his assessment of the British Empire’s predicament to Gandhi and believed that the Empire would be overthrown. He then requested Gandhi to start passive resistance and allow India to play her part in the second World War. Gandhi said that people were not prepared for a fight and that any step to aggravate and hasten it would be counterproductive.

Bose said his interaction with Gandhi lasted for a long time, and the talks were hearty. He wrote in the aforesaid book that Gandhi wished him success in his “passionate endeavour” to free India from British rule. In the event of India attaining liberation on account of Bose’s struggle, he would be the first to receive a telegram of congratulation from Gandhi.

Bose’s Meetings with Jinnah and Savarkar were Disappointing

While Bose’s talks with Gandhi concerning India’s independence were hearty and cordial, his meeting with Jinnah, President of the Indian Muslim League, and Savarkar, President of Hindu Mahasabha, was disappointing. He made a passionate appeal to Jinnah to join the united struggle of people for the independence of India. He told him he would be the first Prime Minister after the country’s liberation.

So far, we only knew that Gandhi persuaded Congress leaders to make Jinnah the Prime Minister of India to avoid the country’s partition. But a peep into the book reveals that in his quest for making India free and keeping it undivided, he made relentless efforts to dissuade those whose actions polarised the freedom struggle and aimed at partitioning the country. Therefore, while his meeting with Gandhi was centred around the idea of making India free through a struggle of people regardless of their faith, his meetings with Jinnah and Savarkar were primarily to keep the country united by persuading them to join the common struggle for freedom and independence.

Despite his fervent pleas to Jinnah that he would become the first Prime Minister of free India, the latter remained hell-bent on his demand for the creation of Pakistan by dividing India based on religion.

Bose wrote: “Jinnah was then thinking only of how to realise his plan of Pakistan (a division of India) with the help of the British.”

About Savarkar, he wrote: “Savarkar seemed to be oblivious of the international situation and was only thinking how Hindus could secure military training by entering Britain’s army in India.”

He concluded that “…nothing could be expected from either the Muslim League or the Hindu Mahasabha.”

PM Modi Should Read Bose’s Views on Savarkar

Bose’s writings in the book show that he was unsparing of any communalism, be it of the Muslim League or Hindu Mahasabha headed by Savarkar. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is the only Prime Minister of our country to have invoked the name of Savarkar along with Gandhi, Bose and Nehru on more than one occasion in his addresses to the nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort on the occasion of Independence day, should be mindful of Bose’s articulations that Savarkar was only persuading Hindus to join the British army.

Bose’s leadership and the role the Indian National Army played in its war against the British Army for the liberation of our country upheld our secular ethos as it united people of all faiths for the cause of India and set an example of harmony and reconciliation, which is being demolished by the distortion of history and polarisation process unleashed by divisive narratives of the ruling leaders of the Union government.

Bose’s Secular Outlook Determined His Understanding of History

In this context, Bose’s understanding of Indian history by eschewing a religious approach to understanding our past is of immense and contemporary significance. In his book, An Indian Pilgrim, he outlined the composite culture of both communities who shared a common destiny for thousands of years and shaped their future together in the face of all sorts of challenges. In the book, he described the Battle of Plassey as a joint Hindu-Muslim endeavour to confront an adversary which had caused an existential crisis.

He said, “History will bear me out when I say that it is a misnomer to talk of Muslim rule when describing the political order in India before the advent of the British. Whether we talk of the Moghul Emperors at Delhi, or of the Muslim Kings of Bengal, we shall find that in either case, the administration was run by Hindus and Muslims together, many of the prominent Cabinet Ministers and Generals being Hindus. Further, the consolidation of the Moghul Empire in India was affected by the help of Hindu commanders-in-chief. The Commander-in-chief of Nawab Sirajudowla, whom the British fought at Plassey in 1757 and defeated, was a Hindu and the rebellion of 1857 against the British, in which Hindus and Muslims were found side by side, was fought under the flag of a Muslim, Bahadur Shah.”

Such an understanding of our history, free from communal bias, is the need of the hour. It constitutes an antidote to RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) chief Mohan Bhagwat’s reiteration of his predecessor Golwalkar’s manufactured formulation that Hindus are at war with both an external and internal enemy for a thousand years.

It is of immense significance to recall Bose’s secular outlook and correct understanding and interpretation of our past and defeat the communal interpretation of our history reminiscent of James Mill’s two-nation theory – the Hindu nation and Muslim Nation. Historian Romila Thapar, in her recent lecture, “Our History, Your History, Whose History,” stated that such an approach to history based on religion reduced every cause to a single one – religious difference – and ignored and minimised other causes.

Bose’s approach to history discarded the religious approach; therefore, when India is witnessing the replay of the colonial approach to history writing, it is important to revisit Bose’s worldview rooted in our shared heritage and composite culture. In doing so, we would serve the cause of the idea of India and pay fitting tribute to Bose.

(S.N. Sahu served as Officer on Special Duty to the late President of India, KR Narayanan. Courtesy: Newsclick.)