The life of Netaji is so complex that it will need a detailed analytical book on him to clear confusion about him in people's minds. The ever-shifting trajectory of his career makes for a mystifying experience for the ordinary gullible mind whose simplistic patterns of preset thinking can scarce comprehend the historical imperatives that impelled Netaji on to his momentous political decisions often against the grain of his innate nature and against what he would consider as proper and just in circumstances other than those of the Second World War when history afforded his motherland a unique opportunity to seize freedom from the British.
Netaji is often blamed for his alliance with the fascist powers during the Second World War who were by unanimous historical judgement anti-civilisation forces. Thus, he is conveniently branded in some quarters as a fascist, one who through his political indiscretion would have brought ruin upon India had the Axis Powers won the war. Nehru laid the foundation of this thinking, toeing the line that would suit his political masters in Britain and the narrative like an undercurrent of national consciousness continues with men remaining perplexed as to what had prompted Netaji to have sided with the dreadful fascist powers in his bid to free India. After all, our other leaders led by the Mahatma had fought from within to free India. Could Netaji also not have done the same by owing allegiance to our beloved Bapu like sweetness personified Pandit Nehru did? Was it ethically correct for Netaji, being an Indian with such a long tradition of non-violence and peace to back him up and being a follower of the Apostle of Peace, Mahatma Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, to have adopted this toxic political line that potentially could have destroyed India's hopes of liberation? And is it also not true that Netaji through his associations with fascist dictators and generals had become increasingly power-drunk, autocratic and eventually a dictator himself who would brook no opposition and would unleash torture on those that dissented with him?
Questions like these rock the minds of the commoners who depend on hearsay and stray bits of information gleaned from diverse sources for their clouded judgement on the matter, and the well-informed who are befuddled by their diverse currents of thought regarding this complex historical issue. And it is here that clarity is sought from historians who wish to project Netaji in the right light.
There will ever be national perspectives on Hitler and his allies, for the torment of the World War nations have neither forgotten nor forgiven their enemies for having inflicted upon them. And this leads to bias in the analysis and understanding of the players in the political arena of the times. But history has to be objective and cannot subscribe to the prejudices of the afflicted.
The victor writes the history of the war he wins and paints his adversary as a demon despicable while absolving himself of all the ills of war he has been party to. So has Netaji been projected before the world by Britain as a quisling who was up to the act of selling his country's best interests to the enemy of British India in Imperial Japan. Nehru capitalised on this and declared a one-man sword-in-hand war at the borders of India on the advancing Japanese forces led by the INA. This was hilarity at its best but there is a more sinister element to it as well. Nehru spared no means to obliterate Netaji and his INA in person and in ideological terms by way of obscuring their contributions to freedom and helping smash their remnants after the war in alliance with the Machiavellian Mountbatten whose wife he courted. And thereafter he blackmailed the Mahatma into nominating him Prime Minister of Dominion India even though the Congress Working Committee had unanimously (11 out 13 with 2 abstentions) elected Sardar Patel as the would be Prime Minister. Nehru now began to show his fangs to his disillusioned foster father and the Mahatma is reportedly said to have lamented that he had backed the wrong horse in Nehru and by implication rued Subhas' absence from the storm-tossed national scene post 18 August, 1945.
The British were an alien power who claimed inalienable rights to subjugate and govern India. Their governance over 190 years was a systematic despoiling of the wealth of the colony that was 'the Jewel in the Crown'. Against this rapacious order rose the revolutionaries during the Revolt of 1857 when the British were paid back in their own coin by their rebellious sepoys and their dependencies who 'shook off the sterile curse' of colonialism for once. The Revolt was ruthlessly suppressed after the British had suffered significant initial reverses and the East India Company was disbanded in India by the British Crown that now assumed official control of the governance of India with the Queen's Proclamation of 1858. Victoria became Queen Empress of India.
Then began the divisive politics of the British as they attempted pitting the Hindus against the Muslims initially and in later years the Muslims against the Hindus, a move that paid off in the long run as India in independence got partitioned along the preset communal lines.
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