Netaji : an overrated failure?

Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers."

(Il ne faut pas toucher aux idoles: la dorure en reste aux mains.)”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

The year was 1996, that was the first time I had visited Boi Mela (Book Fair). The only book I bought was a graphical novel about Netaji's life. I can't recollect what made me like him so much at the age of five, but I think it must be his rebellious attitude.  I even remember hoisting the National flag on 23rd January on the terrace of our new house next year and singing "kadam kadam badhae ja" with my dad.

Let's fast forward to 2004. I was in my eighth standard. Our history curriculum had at last scraped its way through boring medieval history to modern history. Although I was  branding my history classes to be boring when I was with my friends, I seemed to have found a new love for the subject. And I was back to worshiping the hero I had found eight years back. Being a lover of mystery stories, I decided to dig into the story of Netaji's death. I found a book in the library called Netaji: Dead or Alive by Samar Guha. I seemed to have found the story of an unsung hero, the story of a hero who deserved much more. As I read the book there was an irrational anger that was born in me.   The incompetence of ShahNawaz Committee and Khosla Committee, the reluctance of both Nehru and Indira just drove me crazy. I was unaware of the Mukherjee Commission at that point of time. When the Commission released the report in 2005 I was elated like a child. I think I even kept that day's newspaper with me for quite some time. Till now I hadn't even peeked into Netaji's ideologies.  I
was just blindly worshipping him for his courage, passion, and patriotism.

In my ninth standard, the movie Bose: The Forgotten Hero was released. I indulged myself into digging up some historical facts from our history books before going to the theaters with my father. Our curriculum had a chapter about the emergence of leftist ideas during the Indian freedom struggle. Netaji and Nehru were portrayed as the two pioneers of this trend during the thirties. From our childhood, we had heard praises about leftist ideologies, thanks to the democratically elected communist government. But we were witnessing the cracks of the leftist ideologies in our society. From an academic point of view, socialism seemed a practical and morally just ideology. At that age, I was unaware of the practical problems of this system. Netaji's efforts within INC was quite well received. His motives were very naive and passionate, a quality that let him down quite some times.  This was followed by the famous incident of 1939 Haripura Congress where Netaji was elected the president of INC. Gandhiji made sure that Netaji can't function by making the whole Congress Working Committee resign. When I first read about this my feelings about Gandhiji became more bitter (The cancellation of Non-Cooperation movement, failure of Civil disobedience had already made me anti-Gandhi). Until recent years, I always thought that Gandhiji had vested political motives behind this action but now I feel  that this was his dire attempt to stop Congress being headed by a staunch socialist. Consequently, I started to discuss the further events in Netaji's life (Fleeing India, Formation of INA, the war, his death and so on) with my dad. My father, being more of a Gandhian, in no time did the discussion turn into a heated debate on the functioning of Netaji, Gandhiji, and other political leaders. I won't go into the details of the debate, but three hours later I had settled on a statement from my dad, "Netaji was a victim of an international conspiracy, whereas Gandhiji was a victim of a national conspiracy."

The word "conspiracy" may have been inappropriate, but I still believe that both of them were victims of political games. But Gandhiji was a success whereas Netaji was a failure. International historians portray Gandhiji as a political great and Netaji as India's militant nationalist. In earlier years, I used to feel that is as an instance of grave injustice. Nowadays, I blame that on some of my misunderstandings I had about Gandhiji. I never acknowledged the philosophical greatness of Gandhiji. For Gandhiji, the means were more important whereas Netaji regarded the end as more crucial. Ideologically Netaji was a supporter of economic freedom, but in the final days of his life all his actions were directed towards achieving political freedom.

Now when I break down the policies of my childhood idol the gilding really sticks to my fingers.
Netaji's idea of fighting the Raj with the help of Axis powers seemed pragmatic from a purely academic point of view. Neither Japan nor Germany had any interests in India. Netaji started the war from 1943, the Allies had already started getting the upper hand by that time. And the help Japan provided him was not that of best quality. The association of any individual with the Axis powers is frowned upon (given their history of war crimes) and Netaji shouldn't be an exception. Some may argue that Netaji didn't care about these things, his main aim was winning the war. There are too many contradicting historical facts regarding this matter. So I can't decide which side to support. Netaji's love for an authoritarian rule is well documented. Our chaiwala PM can curse Nehru as much as he wants, but the fact that a chaiwala can become a PM is the result of a strong democratic foundation which was laid down by Nehru. If Subhash Bose was the first PM of India we could have developed more, we could have had a less corrupt political system but I doubt if we would have been a democracy.

After all these years of hero-worshipping Netaji, the cynic in me thinks that Netaji was a brave soldier, a passionate leader, but an overrated failure. I still salute him for giving India the first 150 miles of free land, but his policies and ideologies are something I cannot support. There is  no doubt that he should have been treated with more respect, but I think his ideologies had little place in free India.