21 OCT., 1943 -- 21 OCT., 2018 --- 75 YEARS IN THE WILDERNESS ... 3

21 OCT., 1943 -- 21 OCT., 2018 --- 75 YEARS IN THE WILDERNESS ... 3

We are standing on the eve of a historic day. Tomorrow is the 21st of October, 2018, exactly 75 years after Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose declared his intentions of absolute independence from the British when he formed on this day, the 21st of October, 1943, the Provisional Government of Free India in Singapore. It was dubbed in Urdu Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind which means the same as in the English version. Tomorrow, the nation for the first time since 15 August, 1947 when India became a Dominion of the British Empire, will be officially celebrating this day to lend it whatever significance it deserves. The Prime Minister of India will unveil a plaque to mark the occasion and the prospective construction of an INA Museum inside the Red Fort where the INA Trials of 1946 had been held. But what will be an unprecedented event tomorrow in the history of independent India will be the hoisting of the National Flag from the ramparts of the Red Fort, an exercise that has thus far been undertaken only on the Independence Day annually. What transpires thereafter is a matter of conjecture but it is a significant departure from the official apathy thus far shown to India’s greatest patriot and his seminal achievements for our motherland’s freedom.

After the collision of political course with Gandhi in 1938 and 1939, Netaji was forced to leave the shores of India to seek foreign help for India’s freedom. He full well understood the inadequacy of the Gandhian method in winning independence from the mightiest imperial power of the world. He had proposed a more radical programme of civil disobedience which Gandhi had flatly rejected and thereafter contrived to have Bose ousted from both his Presidency at the Tripuri Congress and his membership of the Congress altogether. Left with no alternative, Bose now having with his trusted lieutenants founded his new political party, the All India Forward Bloc, planned to secretly leave India in his bid to seek foreign help for India’s independence.

Bose’s plans for securing foreign help had been brewing up in his mind since the 1920s when he started building up foreign contacts, especially in the Soviet Union. Now when times were calling for such an eventuality, Bose renewed efforts to escape from British India which he finally did past midnight on 17 January, 1941 in a daring mission from house arrest at Elgin Road, Calcutta.

Bose was impelled in his action not merely by intense patriotism but by pragmatic considerations as well. He used the dictum, ‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend’, to good advantage and sought the help he needed successively from the Soviet Union and then the Axis Powers of Germany, Italy and Japan. After an arduous and often dangerous trek through mountainous terrain across the Himalayas Bose reached Kabul where he stayed for a couple of months in his bid to secure entry into Russia where he would seek support from Stalin. But by the time he reached Moscow the war situation had so dramatically changed that Stalin was reticent to help him against the British whose armed assistance he construed he might need in case of a German invasion of the Soviet Union which he feared was imminent. The Soviet Union was then still bound by the Soviet-German Non-aggression Pact and, accordingly, Stalin allowed Bose a Transit Visa to Germany.

Bose arrived in Berlin in mid 1941 but failed to meet Hitler for over a year. Following Operation Barbarossa the Nazis were at war with the Soviets and this complicated matters for Bose’s intended entry into India via the Soviet Union and Afghanistan. Hitler kept Bose at bay while watching his activities through the Gestapo even though he had arranged for Bose’s other amenities for conducting anti-British activities and propaganda. General Rommel had inflicted severe defeats on the British forces in Africa and had captured British Indian soldiers by the thousands which Bose was now handed over by the Nazi Government to form his Free India Legion. These soldiers were given elite training in military affairs by German army personnel and Bose was made their co-administrative head along with Hitler. But the year-long delay caused by Hitler and the changing war situation with fortunes gradually plummeting for Germany made matters worse for Bose’s intended final assault on the borders of British India.

Sensing that Bose could significantly damage British interests in Asia in alliance with imperial Japan and considering the fact that Japan was scoring a string of military victories in Asia against the British, Hitler arranged for Bose’s departure to Asia by means of a German U-boat. Bose embarked for his 90-day submarine journey across the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean to reach the shores of Madagascar where he was transferred to a Japanese submarine in the high seas for further travel to Sumatra. He then flew to Tokyo to hold conference with the Japanese Prime Minister General Hideki Tojo and discuss future plans.

End of Part 3

To be continued...

Written by Sugata Bose