NETAJI IN RETROSPECT ... 2

It is not what we, the followers of Netaji, believe that matters but what stands out from the pages of history as a fact and it is this that Gandhiji plotted the downfall of Subhas Chandra Bose in Tripuri and was the mastermind behind his resignation from the Congress Presidency followed by his expulsion from the Congress itself. Such an uncivil act on the part of the Mahatma, to put it euphemistically, was highly undemocratic and in real terms, considering the impact it was to have on subsequent developments of the nation's history beginning with the partitioning of its landmass and the creation of the enemy State of Pakistan ever plotting the destruction of India, was an act of betrayal of national interest to serve his own self-interest, however cloaked in ideological sublimity it may have been. That Gandhi did not still manage to sideline Bose from national politics for good, as is borne out by Bose's subsequent seminal career overseas and its liberating influence on the nation, is proof of the fact that there was in Bose a fire which the patriarch of Indian politics had not the means to extinguish. Steeled in love for the motherland, armed in innate intellectual brilliance and shielded by his devotion to Ramakrishna-Vivekananda, Bose emerged a mighty lion or the springing tiger of Bengal who circuited the wide world to garner support for the cause of his motherland's liberation from British imperialism. He shook hands with the devil, so to say, to free his countrymen from the clutches of a more diabolic dispensation, more malicious and cunning, that operated in a more surreptitious way to drain the lifeblood of its colonised peoples, and he had no ideological cobwebs in his brain that could prevent him from seeking any sort of alliance to uproot the evil that was the British Raj once he was convinced that British imperialism was the most nefarious system of political domination, nay, damnation of subjugated peoples. And when the hero in his epic march to India with his army of liberation had started the downfall of the British Raj in India, he had set in the domino effect that spread to the rest of Asia and Africa where subjugated peoples, taking the cue from India, extricated themselves from the tentacles of colonists. In this lies the global significance of Netaji's war on the British Empire during World War II. While such a deduction may sound facile to many, in essence it is true. But for the INA thrust, India would not have been free, and the British, entrenched, enriched and empowered by subjugated India would be too potent a force for smaller countries to combat with and attain liberation. And this element of the armed revolution led by Netaji must be emphasised as we comprehend the capitulation of the colonial powers the world over.