WHERE GANDHI FOLLOWED BOSE
Bose preceded Gandhi in campaigning within the Congress for the launching of the 'Quit India' movement in 1939. But Gandhi refused then which led to Bose's expulsion from the Congress. Later, Gandhi understood the imperatives of the times and followed Bose's earlier exhortations with him and launched the Quit India Movement in 1942. The movement, though, miserably failed owing to the inordinate delay in its launching. The opportunity had been missed and would never come again. Gandhi and his non-violent brigade rotted in jail through the World War as Bose carried on with his crusade for the liberation of the motherland from abroad. With German and Japanese help he arrived on the north-eastern frontier of India with his army of liberation and launched an offensive which in total terms with the Nipponese thrust has been hailed as the toughest battle the British have faced in their chequered colonial history. The Imphal Campaign was lost owing to inclement weather conditions and consequent loss of logistic support. But the ball had been set rolling as the domino effect of revolts and uprisings in the British Indian Armed Forces and among the awakened masses led to freedom.
The pertinent point here is this. Bose's political foresight Gandhi lacked. And this cost us three years of unnecessary delay in action which in effect strengthened the arms of British wartime control in India and aborted the late-launched Quit India Movement. Had Gandhi acted on Bose's suggestion in 1939 and given the British the ultimatum of leaving India in the stipulated six months, freedom, integrated and not partitioned, could have been won there and then with the British themselves struggling for survival against an increasingly aggressive Nazi Germany pushing Europe into a cataclysmic war. That Gandhi later relented and moved along the path shown by Bose was in effect his becoming Bose's follower, albeit not admitted, for how could the leader turn follower? Was it not a preposterous proposition given Gandhi's total rejection and repudiation of Bose's violent methods of achieving political ends? But Gandhi did fall in line with Bose's suggestion and history bears testimony to it in ample terms.
Written by Sugata Bose
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