A CONFERENCE CRITICAL

A CONFERENCE CRITICAL 

In conference about the future of the nation, a critical point in the nation's history. Personalities do count. Who knows whether India would at all have been partitioned if Gandhiji had listened to Subhas Chandra Bose's suggestion and launched mass movement against the British six months before the Second World War began when the British were at their weakest? Instead Bose was outmanouvred and isolated within the Congress, then expelled to seal his political doom. Indomitable tiger that he was, he sought fresh fighting ground abroad after a daring escape from house arrest, then traversing terrible terrain across Afghanistan en route to Berlin via Moscow. Bose's subsequent circumstantially enforced alliance with Germany, Italy and Japan, the enemies of Britain, his leading the Indian National Army II against British India which helped precipitate India's freedom is a tale of epic proportions and is now staple to the common discourse on India's independence movement but downplayed as yet officially owing to, perhaps, international pressure. But the discord with Gandhiji over the Tripuri Congress Presidency continues to haunt Indians as it changed for good the political future of India and the history of the subcontinent with it.

Written by Sugata Bose