A sea-change has taken place in Indian and global politics in the decade since His Majesty’s Opponent was first published in 2011.

Among all the launches of the book in different continents, the most poignant for me was the one by President S.R. Nathan of Singapore on 5 July 2011, at a venue overlooking the padang where Netaji had announced sixty-eight years ago in 1943 that India’s army of liberation had come into being. It was for him the proudest day in his life.

The Indian National Army of which he became the Supreme Commander was truly national, transcending the divisions between so-called martial and non-martial races, not to mention religious communities, cunningly fostered by an alien colonial power. Netaji successfully united Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians in the struggle for freedom based on his commitment to equal rights and respect for all as well as his enlightened philosophy of cultural intimacy among India’s diverse communities. He won the implicit trust of the minorities as no one else had, not even Mahatma Gandhi.

During a decade that has witnessed the global rise of right-wing democratically elected authoritarianism, India has seen two electoral victories of the forces of Hindu religious majoritarianism in 2014 and 2019.

Lacking icons of their own, India’s ruling party and government have attempted to appropriate leaders of the freedom struggle other than Jawaharlal Nehru. However, it is not as easy to lay false claim to the political legacy of Subhas Chandra Bose as it is to that of Vallabhbhai Patel. Confusing majoritarianism with democracy and uniformity with unity, the contemporary Indian state runs the risk of turning its back on the best traditions of Indian anti-colonial nationalism as it behaves more and more like its colonial predecessor, drawing upon and on occasion re-enacting lawless laws of the colonial era.

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It seeks to extract the allegiance of India’s diverse populace through coercive control from the centre, thereby provoking greater alienation instead of nurturing a sense of belonging to the Indian Union. It is in this context of an erosion of political ethics that life as message of both Mahatma Gandhi and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose acquires renewed salience.

Just as Gandhian values cannot be reduced to a cleanliness campaign, extolling Netaji’s military heroism sounds hollow if divorced from his unequivocal commitment to religious harmony. Both exemplary lives need to be rescued from vacuous state propaganda and the distortions of fake history.

What had spurred me to write His Majesty’s Opponent was my conviction that Netaji’s life was greater than the legend. During my tenure as a Member of Parliament in India’s sixteenth Lok Sabha from 2014 to 2019, Subhas Chandra Bose figured in every major debate on growing ‘intolerance’ in 2015, the crisis in India’s universities in 2016, and the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Quit India movement in 2017.

On the question of intolerance, I presented Netaji’s call for cultivating ‘cultural intimacy’ among India’s different communities and building a federal republic as a much grander vision of India than one that merely preached tolerance.

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The debate on the grave situation in India’s leading universities where student leaders were being charged with sedition provided an occasion to revisit the finest elements of Indian anti-colonial nationalism. Subhas Chandra Bose believed in a nationalism that instilled a spirit of selfless service in our people and inspired their creative efforts. He steadfastly opposed the brand of nationalism that was narrow, selfish and arrogant.

The 1942 movement showed how close the Mahatma and Netaji had come in their aims and ideology and how temporary, if not fleeting, had been the parting of their ways in 1939. Every statement they made about each other from 1942 onwards was infused with deep respect.

Bose and Gandhi had their last face-to-face meeting and ‘long conversation’ in June 1940 before Subhas’s imprisonment and daring escape. Subhas made ‘a passionate appeal to Mahatma to come forward and launch his campaign of passive resistance’.

Gandhi was ‘still non-committal’ because he felt ‘the country was not prepared for a fight’. However, ‘at the end of a long and hearty talk’, Gandhi told Bose that if the latter’s ‘efforts to win freedom for India succeeded’, Gandhi’s ‘telegram of congratulation would be the first’ his rebellious son would receive.

The same month Bose also had ‘long talks’ with two other key leaders — M.A. Jinnah, president of the Muslim League, and V.D. Savarkar, president of the Hindu Mahasabha. Bose was unable to bring around Jinnah to the ‘idea of putting up a joint fight with the Congress, for Indian independence’ even though Bose ‘suggested that in the event of such a united struggle taking place, Mr. Jinnah would be the first Prime Minister of Free India’.

Bose was deeply disappointed with Savarkar who ‘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’. Netaji’s aim was radically different. He wanted to subvert the loyalty of Indian soldiers to the British King-Emperor and replace it with a new allegiance to the cause of India’s freedom. In that goal he succeeded by uniting Hindus and Muslims in his armed struggle for liberation.

Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was the only front-rank leader of the Indian independence movement who laid down his life for his country’s freedom on 18 August 1945. The younger generation in India today could learn from Mahatma Gandhi how to come to terms with the mortal end of a deathless hero. Gandhi had initially hoped that Netaji had made another great escape and that he would return to join him in the work for freedom and unity.

On March 30, 1946, he wrote categorically on the matter for his journal Harijan. When faced with the contradiction between ‘unsupported feeling’ that he was alive and ‘strong evidence’ that he had perished, he had no qualms about choosing the latter. He appealed to everyone to ‘reconcile themselves to the fact that Netaji has left us’.

Also read: The Netaji Files Reveal a Tale of Nehru’s Warmth – Not Sinister Conspiracy

Netaji’s absent presence was powerfully felt when freedom finally came to India. In his first address from the ramparts of the Red Fort in August 1947 India’s prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru mentioned only two leaders of India’s struggle for independence by name. One was naturally the man whom Netaji had been the first to hail as the ‘Father of Our Nation’. Nehru said in his tribute:

The country has achieved freedom under the brilliant leadership and guidance of Mahatma Gandhi. Our technique of fighting was different from that of other countries. Sometimes we had faltered and stumbled but finally we reached our goal. If credit is due to any man today it is to Gandhiji.

The homage to Netaji was offered in the context of remembering the suffering and sacrifices of freedom fighters:

On this day we must remember those who have made sacrifices and suffered for the cause of independence. It is needless for me to name all of them, but I cannot help mentioning Subhas Chandra Bose who left this country and formed the Indian National Army abroad and fought bravely for the freedom of the country. He hoisted this flag in foreign countries and when the day came for hoisting it on the Red Fort, he was not to see his dream fulfilled. This should have been the day of his return, but alas he is no longer in this world.

Netaji had left us, but he left us a rich inheritance of ideas, ideals and dreams. The most precious item in that legacy is his generous and imaginative approach towards achieving unity by respecting difference.

Exactly a week before his assassination on January 30, 1948, Gandhi had happily taken note of Subhas’s birthday. In his final eulogy to the departed leader the Mahatma pointed out that Subhas ‘knew no provincialism nor communal differences’ and ‘had in his brave army men and women drawn from all over India without distinction and evoked affection and loyalty, which very few have been able to evoke’.

Gandhi had been asked that day by a lawyer friend for a good definition of Hinduism. He did not offer one, but simply said that ‘Hinduism regarded all religions as worthy of all respect’. Netaji, the Mahatma believed, was ‘such a Hindu’ and, therefore, ‘in memory of that great patriot’, he called upon Indians to ‘cleanse their hearts of all communal bitterness’.

To truly honour Netaji today, it is essential to heed the Mahatma’s call.

Sugata Bose is a historian, a former member of parliament from the Trinamool Congress, and the grandnephew of Subhas Chandra Bose.