I have some questions on the article I am posting here, but will write on the issue later.
The ruckus over 'Netaji' is about a hero being mistreated; real historians should look elsewhere
By By Benjamin Zachariah 16 Apr 15 (http://blogs.economictimes.indiatimes.com/et-commentary/the-ruckus-over-netaji-is-about-a-hero-being-mistreated-real-historians-should-look-elsewhere/)
These are unheroic times. The need for national heroes has never been so great, and perceived injury to dishonoured national heroes meets a heartfelt need. But the outrage cooked up over the surveillance of the family of the once and future king 'Netaji' Subhas Chandra Bose by the independent Indian state, misses a number of important points.
It was standard practice for the Indian police to continue their surveillance of persons of interest after Independence. Historians have known this for some years. The starting date on the file is the year surveillance began, but the file could run well into the years after Independence. Ram Manohar Lohia, Muzaffar Ahmad, Saumyendranath Tagore and many others have had the honour of their Intelligence Bureau (IB) files being updated well into the 1950s and 1960s.
The Ex-Files
In the case of Bose's family, however, these early files are missing. At some point, they were deliberately removed, and the index suggests they were destroyed. What's peculiar is that the disappearance of many files on Bose and family protect them from public scrutiny, a fate that is not granted to several others. It is not known upon whose orders the Bose files were moved from the IB or destroyed. What is clear is that a whole history of Bose's unsavoury political dealings is not accessible to Indian researchers.
And this might have remained so, had it not been for the release of British intelligence files of the Indian Political Intelligence Office (IPIO) towards the end of the 1990s. These files record, sometimes in relentless detail, the activities of persons of interest to British intelligence. In many cases, they merely record these activities, unable to contextualise or assess what they were doing.
Historians in search of a hero have deliberately avoided looking here. Or they have looked, and then looked away. They might well need to explain why Bose, before he called himself 'Netaji' — or before he called in his book, The Indian Struggle, for a synthesis of fascism and socialism to create an Indian national socialism called 'samyavad' — already had contacts with the Nazi Party in 1933. For, it was Bose who rescued his friend A C N Nambiar from imprisonment by the Nazi Party, even ensuring that Nambiar was paid compensation for his troubles.
Nambiar was then a self-proclaimed socialist. He reappeared in Nazi Germany at Bose's request, going on to take charge of the Indian Legion of the German Army. He later became Indian ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany).
Many of Nambiar's German advisers and associates, who were also associates of Bose, were old Nazis. The official version we have been taught is that Bose made a pact with the Nazis as an opportunist who used the 'enemy's enemy is my friend' principle in 1941. This story does not hold. Bose's connections with fascism are wider and deeper. We know, of course, that Bose visited Italy and Germany, and that in 1931, Bose accepted an invitation to fascist Italy to address groups of Indian students. We know less about the Vienna circles of right-wing Indian students with whom Bose was involved during his exile in Vienna.
Faltis, the Shredder
One Otto Faltis, who was Bose's associate in Vienna in what was allegedly an Indo-Austrian trade promotion organisation, was invited by Bose to Berlin in 1941-42. Faltis obligingly went along. He was a part of Bose's activities in Berlin, and when the war was lost, Faltis obligingly destroyed most incriminating documents as the Allies sought evidence of collaboration with the Nazis. Faltis records this incident in his own statements to the National Archives of India with some pleasure, believing he had protected his ally, and believing that Indian audiences would be sympathetic to his daring deed.
There are many more stories to be told. Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Germany earlier this week reportedly assured Bose's grandnephew in Berlin to look into the declassification of files concerning Bose. And those interested in them will tell them from other sources one day. Meanwhile, the tales that occupy the media are those of outraged journalists or amateur historians, convinced that their hero is being mistreated by history, and by those who usurped his throne. Perhaps Bose is a suitable hero for Hindutva conditions.
He believed in a strong leadership principle, and his inability to get worked up about fascist methods and ideology demonstrates, at the very least, a moral flexibility on his part. And perhaps he is alive and well, waiting to appear at the right moment. This is again something upon which we need not speculate. We could, indeed, find out quite easily. The ashes of the man who ought to have been Subhas Chandra Bose, had he indeed been the man who died in the plane crash in Formosa in 1945, lie in the Renkoji Temple in Tokyo, awaiting collection by his heirs.
However, if the ashes are collected, this would be acknowledgement that they are, indeed, the ashes of 'Netaji' and, therefore, the sadhu at Jawaharlal Nehru's funeral could not have been the said 'Netaji'. Or perhaps he could — sadhus, as we know, can do some amazing things.
(The writer is a historian at the University of Heidelberg, Germany)
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