The unfurling of the Tricolour at Red Fort yesterday to mark 75 years of the formation of #AzadHindGovernment was a sorry spectacle of political opportunism. Half-truths, falsehoods were used to tar the memory of national icons. So I want to say a few things about Netaji & INA.
It's a patently false charge that Netaji or INA have been forgotten or that they were never treated kindly or honoured. In all our schools, colleges and universities, we read laudatory accounts of Bose and INA. We read hagiographies. There was no criticism, only hero worship.
Unlike what Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed, Netaji and INA were lionised by successive Congress governments and the party. It was actually nationalist propaganda peddled by the Congress that Netaji and INA were understood as the truest patriots and not the old Indian Army.
None of our textbooks ever criticised Bose for allying with the Third Reich and Empire of Japan. None of our textbooks ever analysed his admiration for Benito Mussolini or his parleys with Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler and other prominent Nazis. We were shown a rosy picture only
The history of Bose as Netaji and of the INA or #AzadHindFauj is a chequered tale. Bose was so impressed with Mussolini that he went to Italy to present a copy of his book to the Il Duce. He wanted a mix of communism and fascism for India and dictatorship. #AzadHindGovernment
So, clearly, those who love to fantasise about an alternative reality where Bose is the first leader of free India don't understand that Netaji didn't quite envision a free India with a parliamentary democracy. And what kind of a free India would we have got under the fascists?
Netaji was a charismatic leader. A great organiser. A great patriot. But he also loved a good show. He was fond of militarism. He had a grand vision for himself. But looks like he had a poor sense of history and a poor understanding of the Nazis, Fascists and Imperial Japanese.
It is foolish to say that Netaji had no inkling of what the Nazis were doing to the Jews, Gypsies, Poles, and the people of the Soviet Union. It is foolish to say that he had no idea about the atrocities of the Imperial Japanese Army on the Chinese and other conquered peoples.
Captain Mohan Singh, who had founded the first INA, was arrested by the imperial Japanese who also disbanded his army. Why? Because he had refused to be a stooge of the Japanese Empire. Netaji was more successful in dealing with the Japanese, but the INA men continued to complain
The INA men also feared what might happen if they managed to enter India and the Imperial Japanese Army refused to cede control of the country to them. A rather impractical solution was imagined: that Netaji and his troops would incite the Indians to revolt against the Japanese.
And they seriously believed that! That the all-powerful Empire of Japan that would destroy the British Raj would then chicken out at the sight of the INA and their leader and submit. This absurdity shows how far removed from ground reality was Netaji and his INA.
The INA, to many Indian POWs, was an escape route. They could escape torture and inhuman treatment that were meted out to them in the Japanese concentration camps. Scores of them crossed over to the British lines whenever they got the chance. Desertion was a big issue for the INA
And there were many other Indian POWs who refused to join a Japanese-sponsored force. They were tortured by both the Japanese and INA men. There were thousands of Indian Army men who refused to break their oaths or wear Japanese uniforms, even putties. They were forgotten.
These men of the old Indian Army were forgotten because they were traitors and British stooges in the nationalist propaganda that shaped up long after India became free. The morally bigger crime of siding with the most evil regimes in history was made out as a patriotic act.
