NETAJI WAS, TO MY MIND, MORE NON-VIOLENT THAN GANDHIJI

NETAJI WAS, TO MY MIND, MORE NON-VIOLENT THAN GANDHIJI

I have a strange notion that Netaji was far more non-violent a person than Gandhiji. This is based on my personal assessment of the two personalities, though, and would obviously require validation of some sort in terms of hard facts. But a personal opinion need not go through such stricture and, yet, is not to be discarded as baseless, idle assumption of the hyper-imaginative either, for it, after all, is based on reflection on events and episodes as also, in this case here, on impressions formed about the two seminal figures as they have seemed to emerge from their photographic prints and audio-visual recordings.

Gandhiji's gory death at the hands of Nathuram Godse, a calamitous event no doubt, raised doubts about the Mahatma's perfected attitude of non-violence in Swami Shankarananda's mind, for according to the Hindu scriptures, noted the then Vice President of the Ramakrishna Order -- later to become the seventh President of the same -- a perfectly non-violent person would have a wild tiger sit tamely at his feet, it having forgotten for the while its ferocity. In other words, a violent person or, to rephrase it, a person intent on violence would as well, as per the scriptures, be sublimated of his violent tendency in the proximity of the perfectly non-violent person. But this did not happen in Gandhiji's case as the assassin's bullets felled him thrice to his death. And this intrigued Shankaranandaji who could himself, in all probability, on account of his exalted spiritual status, vouch for the validity of the scriptural principle. The matter that day ended there at Belur Math and this has remained a unique observation among worldwide mourning and the sending of condolence messages post the Mahatma's tragic death.

As I study the photographs and the video footage of the two greats, I clearly come to the conclusion that Netaji was the more spiritual of the two and, in consequence, purer and more non-violent despite his association with war. The simple, noble, sublime smile of Netaji is so much in contrast with the, call it, mischievous smile that Gandhiji was often seen to don on his face. The Mahatma's voice also was harsh and heavy in his earlier years in the twenties and the thirties of the 20th century but became in the late forties quite sweet and sonorous. Netaji's voice, in sharp contrast, was always musical and became almost prophetic in authority in the war years when he addressed the nation from overseas, retaining all the while its musicality, though. The voice is an important feature in one's spiritual make-up and hence the comparison. According to Swami Vivekananda, a spiritual person will necessarily have a sweet and harmonic voice with no rough edges to it.

Gandhiji adopted the principle of non-violent passive resistance to achieve his political goals but, I guess, the movement ought to be called, instead, 'unarmed struggle' for political reform in South Africa and dominion status and independence in India, for it cannot be vouched that the mass struggle, unarmed though it was, was in spiritual terms non-violent. As Gandhiji publicly averred his being a votary of truth temporal in practice and Truth transcendental in his life's aspiration of attainment, such erroneous nomenclature ought not to be ascribed to his movement and, by default, to him.

On the contrary, Netaji has been always deemed a votary of violent revolution, although he did participate in the politics of Gandhian passive resistance for two decades. Here again the term 'violent revolution' ought to be altered to calling it 'armed struggle for independence' for that would be more accurate a description of it in scientific terms, for who can plumb the depths of an individual to arrive at the hidden motivations that impel a man unto a course of action, especially when it concerns the sublime task of liberating one's motherland from unlawful foreign occupation of centuries.

Next in line comes conduct, personal conduct that would determine their relative violence or non-violence. Gandhiji's attitude in politics, despite copious pretensions at saintly fortitude, was one of dictatorial setting of terms for his unaffiliated unilateral direction of the course of the Congress. He never became a member of this national platform for the struggle for independence but as an extra-constitutional authority wielded absolute power over it, crushing all opposition by persuasion of the bulk of the members of the Congress and, should he somehow fail to achieve his end thus, by threatening to quit his association with this premier organisation which the Congress, on account of Gandhi's superb mass appeal, could ill-afford to let him do. So, Gandhi always had his way. And this was no non-violence by the way. No truly peaceful person who practises non-violence will ever threaten quitting connection with his associate body whenever his will was denied nor would such a one threaten fasting to get his way at any cost.

Such emotional blackmailing Netaji never resorted to. His was politics purely based on pragmatic considerations geared towards the great ideal of national liberation and for this he could go to any length, even making bargain with the Devil incarnate who was bent upon exterminating an entire people from the face of the earth. Netaji's balancing act in politics was based on realpolitik but his personal demeanour or action was ever above reproach and ethically totally sound, that is, non-violent to the core. No jealousy, hatred, ill-will or malefic motive ever claimed him for an instant to allow his critics -- copious as they were among his colleagues and competitors within the Congress -- to pull him down from his superb personal status in terms of character attributes. No one did he ever contest with except on grounds of political exigency and that too in perfect fairness and transparency, his single motivation in all his alliances and enmities being ruled by his preeminent desire to liberate his motherland from colonial consequence. There was neither rancour nor revenge in his dealings nor ill-will borne to any after the battle was lost and won, for Netaji himself had said that his was the boxer's mentality which limited its fight to the boxing ring and then all was forgotten in a common camaraderie. This was the non-violent streak in depth in Netaji.

Now we have come to the final act of the Mahatma in regard to Netaji. In 1939 was enacted the treachery at Tripuri which was violent to the very core by the Mahatma's vouched standards of non-violence, an episode that had catastrophic consequences for the subcontinent and for geopolitics in South Asia whose pernicious effects we are still digesting and God alone knows how long it will take the poison to be fully swallowed and expelled from the system of the motherland.

Netaji had become so popular by the mid-thirties as one of the two leaders of the left wing within the Congress -- the other one being Jawaharlal Nehru who the Mahatma had managed to tame with relative ease --, and with Ambedkar threatening a schism within the Hindu support-base for Gandhiji and Jinnah beginning to assert his claims with increasing vehemence which the British made fullest factional use of, it was considered expedient by the Mahatma to promote Subhas Chandra Bose to the premier position of President of Congress in 1938 at Haripura. Bose was now the undisputed leader of the youth and the leftists and had strong sympathies for a curious blend of socialism and fascism, his ideal mix of the two ideologies resembling Turkey's Mustafa Kemal Pasha's authoritarian regime whose modified form of some sort, Bose envisaged, would be good for independent India's first two decades in governance. This became all the more apparent in his Presidential Address at Haripura when Bose emphasised the need for Congress to refashion itself into a disciplined party of cadres who could be better relied upon for bringing about the Indian revolution along the non-violent way, which Bose added for good measure to assuage undue fears of the Congress leadership under Gandhi. But the alarm bell had been rung and Gandhi was petrified of the possible direction of the Congress hereon as he sensed his loss of control over its proceedings and Bose's increasing presence in the Indian polity with his personal charisma now matching the Mahatma on equal terms and more. Gandhi reacted and did so in a most violent way.

Haripura over, Bose was relieved that another Surat Congress was not repeated but his worst fears were about to come true as the Mahatma and his cronies plotted the downfall of Bose through the year even as Bose made radical reforms in the Congress that facilitated its non-communal free functioning better, and he also drew up plans for the future governance of independent India, a task he had hoped would have been the Mahatma's topmost priority in 1921 when he had announced that he would achieve India independence within a year. Bose then, fresh from England and his renouncing of the coveted Indian Civil Service impending appointment, had disembarked at Bombay and gone straight to see the Mahatma. To his query as to what Gandhiji had planned about independent India's governance after the lapse of the proposed year of struggle, the Mahatma had said that such plans were unnecessary then when the focus was only on gaining independence and that things would work out automatically once freedom was attained at the end of the year. Bose was horrified at the prospects of such an unplanned movement whose destiny was not known by its leader. Now, when he became 'Rashtrapati', as the Congress President was called in those days, he immersed himself in working out a detailed pan of governance, economic in especial as he charted out his programme of planned economy which later independent India for seven decades used by way of the Five Year Plans and even now uses in its Neeti Aayog. And as Bose planned out India's prosperous and secure future, the Mahatma spent the year in his machinations to oust him from power once and for all. And this was violence.

Then followed Tripuri and what transpired was a treachery the like of which had not been seen in the annals of the Congress till then. Bose, after a successful year as President in which he brought about significant changes in the attitude and functioning of the Congress, was ready for a second term as President when the Mahatma asked him to step down and not run for it. The year was 1939 and Europe was on the verge of war. Bose sensed the grand opportunity now to free India when Britain, under terrible Nazi pressure, was at its weakest and could ill-afford to contain rising India in revolution against its tyranny. But for this, Bose, with all his radical revolutionary programmes ready for implementation, had to continue as Congress President to give direction to the movement. Consequently, Bose refused to abide by Gandhi's dictum and decided to run for a second Presidential term.

Written by Sugata Bose

Sugata Bose Maj Gen Gagandeep Bakshi You are making an essential error in terminology. A samurai is not violent when he takes to arms in defence of virtue. He merely practises supreme non-violence in his armed action for the upholding of virtue. Violence and non-violence are not physical acts in exercise and abstinence of armed action. They are mental attributes in the professed lack of mental restraint or the exercise of supreme self-restraint even while in the armed act of combat. This is the message of the Geeta in essence and is the code of conduct for the Japanese samurais, too.

Sugata Bose Bhaskar Sen Sharma Alas, Bhaskar ! It takes your excellent brain and erudition to come to comprehension of what I have been painting in print for the past several hours, a radically new way of looking at things, a diametrically altered understanding of violence and non-violence from in-depth apprehension of the message of the Master, our supreme Lord of the Geeta.

Sugata Bose Bhaskar Sen Sharma But read it to fullness as the essay ever fills up to brim and delineates its meandering exposure of principles, thus far understood in an alien light to what truly the Geeta teaches. My heartiest commendations to you if you care to go through the essay and reflect well on it. This is a novel method of viewing the principles of resistance, quite apart from contemporary perspectives on it but very much in kinship with the text of the Song Celestial.