A LIFE OF EPIC PROPORTIONS ... 1

A LIFE OF EPIC PROPORTIONS ... 1

It may be my misconception, born out of inconsistent study, but I feel that Gandhiji was never as much respected by all, admired, adored and even loved as Netaji was right from the late 1930s. Gandhi so often thrust himself and his ideas and ideals upon the people of India, but Netaji, never. Never once did he appear to be dictatorial in his approach, even when he was the Prime Minister of the Provisional Government of Free India and the Supreme Commander of the Indian National Army. Even earlier, as twice President of the Indian National Congress in 1938 and 1939, Subhas Chandra Bose, despite severe and perfidious opposition to his plans and programmes by the supporters of Gandhiji within the Congress and their dastardly act of betrayal at Tripuri, did Bose once stray from his sense of personal and national honour to bring self before the country. He sacrificed his political career within the Congress to uphold the interests of the nation to the utmost just as he had as a youth had sacrificed his prospective bright career as an ICS officer. Sacrifice was in his blood and the highest sacrifice of career, comfort and council did he do for the motherland. In return he won the hearts of his people, not by subtle application of force, or induction, or sleight of sacrifice and gimmick resorted to, but by his leading of a life utterly dedicated to the well-being of his people and his professing a patriotism that included all and excluded none, that opposed compromise with injustice and iniquity, that envisioned a future for India, free of colonised slave mentality, and banked on a pragmatic utilisation of every available opportunity in the national and international scenario 'to shake off the curse' of colonial servitude. This single-minded pursuit of real patriotism as opposed to the platitudes and perfidies of the Mahatma and his mean brigade, practised to perfection on the emerging leonine leader in Bose, made him the undisputed heartthrob of the masses, the leader who could be relied upon to deal the enemy the death-blow instead of patching up a perfidious peace treaty with an enemy as vengeful and vicious as Imperial Britain. The people of India may not have understood the subtleties of the advanced policies of national reconstruction chalked up by their Subhas Babu but they were perceptive enough to understand that here was one who would never let them down in a behind-the scenes deal with the Empire that had bled them and their forefathers to death by the tens of millions. As such they gave their hearts to him who stood purely for them like none other before or after, other than the glorious predecessors of this patriot perennial in the early armed revolutionaries. And thus did Subhas Chandra Bose transform into yet another 'condensed India', as Swami Vivekananda before him, and emerge the leader of lustrous attributes in Netaji.

Written by Sugata Bose