Democracy Indian Style

Subhas Chandra Bose and the Creation of India's Political Culture

Anton Pelinka

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781412854887
• eBook ISBN: 9781351522847
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Democracy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Democracy Indian Style explores the social and cultural factors underlying India's successful democracy by describing and analyzing the life of Subhas Chandra Bose and his impact on India before and after independence. As a nation India is very old. Its political culture has deep roots in India's pre-colonial history, but it is also a product of Western-style democracy, which has shaped and even created the nation.

The analysis is balanced between chapters that explain Bose's life and career and those that describe the Indian political system. Anton Pelinka explains India's stable democracy as a mixture of British and American patterns—Westminster parliamentary rule plus federalism—and a specific set of power-sharing arrangements among religions, linguistic groups, and castes.

Democracy Indian Style offers one answer to the enigma of how Indian democracy succeeds, by describing the working of India's constitution, the weaknesses of its party system, and the specifics of Indian elections. The focus on Bose provides a second explanation for India's political success. Democracy Indian Style is a timely exploration of the roots of Indian democracy, and will be of interest to political scientists, historians, and students of Indian politics.

1

Why Bose?

His life reads as though written for Hollywood. False passports play a role. A cloak-and-dagger tale leads our hero across Asia and half of Europe, by train, by car, and by mule. This hero undertakes a complicated journey halfway around the world with two submarines in the middle of World War II. He meets Hitler and Tojo, Mussolini and Lord Halifax, Attlee and Benes and de Valera and, of course, again and again, Mahatma Gandhi, the Übervater; and Pandit Nehru, the rival who is so like him and yet so different; and Muhammed Ali Jinnah, who works toward the creation of Pakistan—against Gandhi and Nehru and Bose. Moments of triumph: tens of thousands cheer him on; moments of recognition: he negotiates with other Asian leaders as an equal among equals, yet always overshadowed by the fact that all of this is possible only by the grace of Japan. And a bittersweet love story—in transnational, transcontinental, and transcultural terms. Finally, the tragic element: an airplane catastrophe.

What a life, what a script, what a film. But it is more than a film—it is a legend whose consequences can be seen in India at the outset of the twenty-first century. Bose is dead. But he cannot be allowed to die. His legend lives on.

In the 1920s, Subhas Chandra Bose, born in the east of British India in 1897, a Bengal by language, becomes the hope of the Left-wing radicals in the Indian National Congress. He speaks of socialism and, early on, enjoys appearing in uniform. To the British he soon seems dangerous. He is taken into custody and placed under house arrest. He is said to sympathize with the Communists. While in Vienna in the 1930s, Subhas Chandra Bose organizes a network of contacts with the goal of making a decisive impact on British rule over India. At this time he becomes one of the most significant opponents within the Indian National Congress to Gandhi’s doctrine of nonviolence. Not Mahatma Gandhi, but Ireland’s Eamon de Valera is his model. Following Ireland’s example, he wants to drive out the British. British newspapers call him “India’s de Valera” (Gordon 1990: 348).

Bose is India’s de Valera, but also India’s Kemal Pasha Atatürk, a nationalist and modernizer; someone who takes the West at its word, who emulates the West in order to suppress and overcome its rule. He is the “young Turk” among India’s freedom fighters. This is the one constant in Subhas Chandra Bose’s life: an Indian nationalist who builds on the foundation of British colonial rule, as well as on the notion of India’s unity. This unity is a concept that is actually a product of this same British rule, this Raj. It is a rule that Bose wants to overcome as quickly as possible and, if need be, with violence, and in any case, completely and totally.

Bose’s tale is the tale of a politics of impatience. Waiting, letting matters develop and counting on the end of colonial rule coming almost by itself: this is not Bose’s cup of tea. In the 1930s, Bose rejects the compromise with which the British seek to canalize Indian nationalism. Self-determination in individual provinces, elections, governments; an all-Indian parliament that was supposed to share power with the British government, but no end to the rule of His Majesty’s government over India as a whole. Showing his colors as a student of de Valera, Bose rejects the notion, otherwise widely accepted in the Congress, that India could attain Dominion status within the framework of the British Commonwealth. For Bose, this is a poor compromise: for India, he wants everything.

Was Bose a Fascist? He often speaks of Fascism with great sympathy. His predilection for military gestures seems to underline this tendency. But wasn’t Bose, at the same time, also a Communist? Bose prefers to speak of himself as a Socialist. Yet his admiration for the Soviet experiment is clear. At the end of his life, the Soviet Union is the only country in which he can still place hope. Yet, for India’s Communist Party, which had, until that time, viewed him as a potential partner, he becomes, from the moment of Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union, a collaborator, an agent, in fact, a Fascist (Seth 1946). Yet after his death, Communists—and feminists—sympathize with him (Sahgal 1997). Is Bose the man for all movements, for all party divisions in modern India?

One thing is clear, and that is that Bose was not a National Socialist. And he was not a liberal democrat. His lack of understanding for the racial doctrine is what separates him from National Socialism. In Berlin he will also experience the degree to which the doctrine of the superior people and the superior race prohibits a pragmatic foreign policy and effective strategy. The fact that he lacks a connection with the moderate Left of Europe, in particular with the Labour Party, is what separates him from Democrats such as Nehru. Bose never truly feels at home in the milieu of the Fabian Society and the intellectual Left of Britain and Europe.

Bose does not really fit into the political labels of the twentieth century, if the latter are viewed from the European perspective. But he was certainly always a nationalist. For him, the Indian nation was, as an idea, the antithesis of prince states and the caste system, the religious struggles and linguistic conflicts. The Indian nation was, above all, the antithesis of Jinnah’s theory of “two nations.” Bose’s India (also Gandhi’s and Nehru’s) could not accept the idea of a Pakistan, a state founded on religious clarity. Bose’s India was ambiguous. It was a nation of contradictions.

Bose was above all a nationalist because he was willing to join forces with anyone and anything that brought him closer to his goal: an independent, secular, united India.

Calcutta and Vienna, Berlin and Tokyo

Between the years 1933 and 1938 Bose spends much of his time in Vienna, and Austria in general. He comes to the Viennese Medical School to be cured of a lung ailment. And he remains because he attempts, from within Vienna, to win over Indians in exile for his goal of an aggressive, active campaign against the colonial rulers. From Vienna, he travels to Prague and Dublin, to Rome and Berlin, to Paris and Warsaw. The British secret service observes his actions. For the most part, their Austrian counterparts leave him alone. At first he cannot travel to London. The British government does not allow him to enter the country until 1937. This was the same man who had studied in Cambridge immediately following World War I, although, unlike Nehru, he had not been influenced by the atmosphere of British politics.

In Vienna, Bose meets Emilie Schenkl. At first, she helps him as a private secretary. By the end of 1937, the two are married. In 1942, when they are living in Berlin, their daughter, Anita, is born. In India, Bose keeps his relationship with Emilie Schenkl secret, also in Southeast Asia from 1943–1945. As “Netaji,” as a leader, he has no personal relationships, no wife, and certainly not a wife who is not Indian.

With Gandhi he is now in open conflict. Bose’s theory of the necessity of military force is not compatible with Gandhi’s teachings. However, he remains loyal to Mahatma—the differences of opinion do not change the fact that, until the end of his life, Bose continues to show Gandhi the deepest respect. In Southeast Asia he will name a regiment for Gandhi. And Gandhi reacts in a similar fashion: in spite of the intensity of their disagreements, Gandhi does not stop viewing Bose as one of his own.

For that reason, or perhaps in spite of it, Bose is elected president of the National Congress in Haripura in 1938. Bose, like Nehru, is regarded as a man of the Left wing. Unlike Nehru, however, he is prepared to oppose Gandhi openly. After his highly controversial reelection in 1939, Gandhi sees to it that Bose, increasingly isolated in the independence movement, resigns (Toy 1984: 51–54). Now, having openly declared his opposition to Gandhi, he wants to force the Congress to a more radical line vis-à-vis the colonial rulers, using his “forward bloc.”

With the outbreak of war in Europe, his conflict with Gandhi and the British intensifies. Bose sees a great opportunity for India’s independence in a defeat of Great Britain, that is, in a victory by the Axis powers. Britain’s weakness—whoever may have caused it—is, for Bose, India’s strength. Gandhi and Nehru do not and can not go so far. Nehru, above all, is too strongly associated with the thinking of the European Left and too strongly connected with the British Labour Party to think that Hitler could win. The National Congress advocates noncommittal formulations as a sort of neutrality, later replaced by the demand that London “Quit India.” The British, who, of course, had been suspicious of Bose for a long time, and with whose prisons he had frequently become acquainted, place him under house arrest in Calcutta. Today, the Bose Archive and Museum is located in the “Netaji Bahwan” there.

In January of 1941, he escapes the non-too-effective British guards. Traveling first by train to Peshawar via Delhi, the Hindu Bose, wearing traditional Muslim clothing, crosses the border to Afghanistan near the Khyber Pass. In Kabul, the embassy of Fascist Italy procures a passport for him. As “Orlando Mazzotta” he travels to Moscow in March, and from there, to his destination—Berlin (Chand 1946).

Several weeks later, Bose’s plan of a broad German, Italian, Soviet, and Japanese alliance against Great Britain is destroyed by the German attack on the Soviet Union. The overland route to India is now blocked. And in National Socialist Germany he does not always experience support.

To be sure, he can establish his Free Indian Centre and recruit Indian soldiers for an “Indian Legion” from those who had fallen into German hands while in British uniform. He even prepares anti-British broadcasts for the Greater German Radio, destined for India. One of his opponents is George Orwell, who, at the same time, is preparing the BBC’s “Indian Program” in London. Yet, the pragmatic powers in the German government do not really prevail. The vulgar racism and Eurocentrism entrenched there, particularly Hitler’s brand thereof, prevent the Axis powers from fully believing in the Indian independence movement—which also reflected Mussolini’s ideas. The “realists” in the Foreign Office do not prevail against the “ideologists,” whose world view allows no place for an Indian Revolution. Among the latter is Adam von Trott zur Solz, who will play a particularly active role on July 20, 1944 (MacDonogh 1989: 184– 206).

The Indian Legion in Europe remained doomed to a shadow existence, quite unlike the Indian National Army that Bose will raise in Singapore and Rangoon. In 1942, the Foreign Office suggests deploying the Indian Legion in Rommel’s next offensive in North Africa. This idea is not solely a military one. A great number of Indian soldiers are fighting in Africa on the British side. Bose and his pragmatic friends in Berlin are hoping for the propaganda effect that will occur when these troops suddenly see themselves opposite Indian units who are fighting for India’s independence. Rommel refuses, and “Hitler, of course, thought the Legion as a joke” [sic] (Bose M. 1982: 200).

Bose’s maxim, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” does not apply to the NS regime: Hitler holds fast to the myth of the superiority of the “white man” and shies away from allying himself with the non-whites against the “white” Albion. Bose’s mission in Germany fails. It fails because the basis for imagining cooperation between Berlin and Moscow against London has disappeared; it fails because there is no mutual understanding between Bose’s pragmatic nationalism and the ideological nationalism of the NS regime. Just as Germany does not know how to make use of the forces of Russian nationalism against Stalin, so does Hitler not understand how to deploy Indian nationalism against London and, thus, against the Allies.

The Japanese perspective is different. Japan also defines the war that it started in December against the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands as a war of liberation against the European– American hegemony in Asia (Lebra 1975). Early in 1943, Bose transfers from Germany to Japan. Before he leaves, he has one audience with Hitler and receives a silver case with a personal inscription. But Bose’s energies are in chains in Germany. He escapes these chains by leaving for Asia. His wife and child remain behind in Europe.

On an adventurous voyage that takes him across the Atlantic and the southwestern part of the Indian Ocean in a German U-boat, Bose reaches a meeting point near Madagascar. A Japanese submarine is waiting there to take him to East Asia. This trip takes three months. But now Bose has reached his goal: for the Japanese strategy—both politically and militarily—Bose is a welcome instrument. The Japanese leadership can use him to further their anti-colonial tactics. As previously in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Burma, emotions will also be used as tools in India, if Japan is to be seen as the liberator from the yoke of colonialism. It should not be a disturbing factor that this same Japan plays quite a different role in Korea and China.

Bose founds an Indian exile government in Singapore and establishes an army, the Indian National Army (INA). The soldiers of this army are recruited largely from the ranks of those Indians who, as soldiers of the British Army, had fallen into the hands of the Japanese and been prisoners of war in Burma, Malaysia, and, particularly, Singapore. For this army, Bose also appeals to women—not as office workers, but as members of fighting units, the “Rani of Jhansi Regiment,” named for a female independence fighter of the nineteenth century. This tactic meets with resistance, particularly on the part of Bose’s Japanese allies (Sahgal 1997: 47–68). His government is recognized by the Axis powers and promptly declares war on Great Britain and the United States.

Bose represents India at the summit meeting of the Asian nations allied with Japan that tales place in Tokyo in November of 1943. This conference, which is meant to underscore Japan’s right to leadership in the Asian Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, sees Bose together with General Tojo and the representatives of Burma and Manchukuo, Thailand, the Philippines, and the satellite regime in China, itself dependent on the grace of Japan. The official photograph of the summit shows Bose in uniform, standing off to the side somewhat, but still on equal footing with the leaders of the countries in Japan’s sphere of influence, who appeared both in uniform and in civilian clothing (Gordon 1990: 310 f.).

Bose has finally alligned his fate with that of the Axis powers. Like Cortes, he has burned his ships behind him. But unlike Cortes, the story does not end well for him: in the final Japanese attack along the Burmese-Indian border in early summer, 1944, the INA plays a not insignificant military role. But Japan’s situation is already hopeless. The siege of Imphal, the most easterly provincial capital of British India, fails. This is where Bose wanted to raise the flag as a signal for an all-Indian revolt against the British. And from here there is only retreat—for Japan, for the INA, and for Bose (Fay 1993: 273–304).

During the process of the continual retreat that lasts from the summer of 1944 to the summer of 1945, the INA undergoes a partial disintegration. When Japan surrenders in 1945, Bose flies in a Japanese military aircraft to Taipei, via Bangkok and Saigon. After this brief stop, the airplane crashes directly after take-off. It is the 18th of August. A few hours later, Bose dies in a Japanese military hospital. He is forty-nine-years old (Bose M. 1982: 250–252).

The Legend that Will Not Die

In accordance with the beliefs of Hinduism, Bose’s body is burned. The ashes are brought to Tokyo. On September 14, 1945, a memorial service is held. The cease-fire is almost two weeks old and American troops are already in Tokyo. Nevertheless, representatives of the Japanese Foreign Office and the Japanese Ministry of War attend—and Indians; among them are those who have been sent by Bose’s exile government to be educated in Japan. Finally, Bose’s ashes are given to a temple of the militant nationalist sect of the “Nichiren” Buddhists (Bose M. 1982: 252 f.).

Bose is dead, but he cannot be allowed to die. Myths immediately begin to develop. They begin with the question of where the “Netaji,” the head of the Indian exile government, had meant to flee in August of 1945. His government found itself at war with Great Britain and the United States—not with the Soviet Union. That country’s declaration of war on Japan, a few days before the Japanese surrender, made no reference at all to the collapsing INA. And Bose still represented a direction within the National Congress that was friendly toward the Soviets. What should we assume but that Bose had as his goal the Soviet armies who were rapidly gaining ground in Manchuria and Korea; it seems clear that he sought ways and means to continue India’s struggle for independence with the support of the Soviet Union.

This assumption is not without a basis in fact. Admittedly, Bose’s precise destination from Taipei is not known. Above all, we do not know what his plans for the future might have been, after the enemy of his enemy—his friend—had surrendered to his, Bose’s, enemy. Bose had reached the end of an illusion. Did he have another one?

The existence of yet another perspective is suggested by the fact that he did not simply want to wait for the advancing British troops in Rangoon or Singapore; nor did he abandon the seat of his exile government and army. Clearly, Bose was not thinking of surrender, and he thereby saved the British Labour government some degree of embarrassment. This government, in turn, was soon to demonstrate a wild decisiveness to release India to independence. What else should the British government have done with Bose? Should they have tried him, as they had done with the leading officers of his INA, who were then found guilty at the end of 1945 in the “Red Fort” trial in Delhi, only to be released from prison soon thereafter (Bose M. 1982: 259–265)? Should they have executed him? The Labour government had no need to create an Indian martyr. Bose died at the right time, at least with regard to the interests of the parting colonial powers (Chaudhuri, 1987: 798).

Bose did not want to be tried. Probably due to the idiosyncracies of his personality, he wanted to continue the fight. It was clear that he kept possible Soviet interests in mind, realizing that they might not always wish to support the India policy of their British allies. On the other hand, it was not realistic to assume that, at this time in 1945, admission to the Soviet Union would have been possible.

Bose had always shown great respect for the Soviet Union. To be sure, he was no Marxist. He was, however, a sort of non-Marxist Leninist. That is to say, his brand of socialism was a combination of national independence and forced modernization, even, or rather, especially, in the form of industrialization. He shared this line of thinking with Nehru and distinguished himself greatly from Gandhi, who represented the rural and rustic India.

The notion of an alliance with the Soviet Union had always played an important role in Bose’s global orientation. Since the late 1930s he had always tried to bring about a relationship with official places. As “Netaji” he wanted to contact the Soviet embassy in Tokyo—the embassy of a country that was, to be sure, at war with the German empire and Italy, but not with Japan. But the Soviet ambassador refused all communications as part of the Soviet policy at the time, which showed great respect for the Allies’ spheres of influence (Gordon 1990: 538).

Whatever Bose had in mind when his plane crashed on August 18, 1945, he could no longer realize it. But in the imaginations of millions of people in India (and likely also in Pakistan and Bangladesh), Bose lived on. There were many circumstances that did not meet nationalist expectations in India after 1945, particularly the division of British India into India and Pakistan, but also the cautious foreign policy of Nehru’s government. Above all, there remained the fact that independence did not come to mean a high standard of living for the many but rather expulsion and death for millions and then the still unsolved problem of mass poverty. In the face of all these disappointments, Bose embodied the hope that remained unfulfilled.

And for that reason, he was not allowed to die. The Bose mythos begins with the doubt that Subhas Chandra Bose actually perished in the plane crash of August 18, 1945 in Taipei. Many people were willing to believe in a cover-up of mass proportions, regardless of who might have carried it...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Tables
• Preface to the Paperback Edition
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Why Bose?
• 2. Why India?
• 3. The Rise of a Nationalist
• 4. The Roots of Modern India
• 5. Interlude in Vienna
• 6. Indian Democracy: Constitution, Parliament, Federalism
• 7. Gandhi’s Friend and Foe
• 8. No Parties—Or Too Many Parties?
• 9. Interlude in Berlin
• 10. India—One, Two, or Many Nations?
• 11. At the Right Place—At the Wrong Time
• 12. A World Power Waiting in the Wings
• 13. Bose—The Myth Lives On
• Sources and Bibliography
• Index