Bose's legacy

A statue offers a reminder of his secularism and egalitarian outlook

The National Democratic Alliance government’s decision to place a statue of Subhas Chandra Bose at India Gate, predictably, generated controversy across the political spectrum. But the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) latest attempt to harness its political ideology to yet another non-Hindutva icon of the national movement —Vallabhbhai Patel, B R Ambedkar, and Bhagat Singh being others — could turn out to be a salutary decision after all. The India Gate C Hexagon complex in which the statue will be placed is one of the city’s busiest traffic roundabouts, being at the intersection of west, east, south, and north Delhi, and occupying a prominent place in the upcoming administrative complex including a new prime ministerial residence. Therefore, when it is finally installed, it will offer the National Capital Region’s commuting public and any ruling dispensation a daily reminder of Bose’s core political beliefs. Many of those principles are embedded in the Indian constitution but may offer the citizens a reminder of an authentic idea of India in both outlook and praxis.

The BJP, which follows a robustly muscular brand of patriotism, may have been attracted by Bose’s predilection for the military and for authoritarian governance. There is no doubt that Bose was attracted to military spectacle. At the 1928 session of the Indian National Congress in Calcutta, he organised a display replete with military pageantry, dressing up in the uniform of a senior officer in the British army and styling himself General Officer Commanding, moves that left the moderate wing of the Congress unamused. But these naïve displays of an ambitious young man’s illusions were incidental to his broader vision for independent India that could not have been more different from the ruling party’s. For one, Bose was viscerally non-communal and deeply secular, appointing many Muslims to senior positions in the Indian National Army (INA). For another, despite serious political differences with Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, he accorded them a respect that is practically non-existent in the political discourse in modern India.

It was Bose who first referred to Gandhi as Father of the Nation, in a radio speech, and he named two of the four INA regiments for Gandhi and Nehru (and Nehru, likewise, defended returning INA soldiers in court). There is speculation that Bose was attracted to fascism. Though it is true that Mussolini’s militarism held a superficial attraction for him, he did not subscribe to Hitler’s racism. In fact, like many liberals of his generation, it was Marxism that attracted Bose and his ambition for post-independent Indian society was strongly egalitarian, a world away from the exclusionary non-equality that is 21st century India. Also noteworthy is Bose’s commitment to gender equality. The famed Rani of Jhansi regiment he set up under the aegis of the INA remains a unique experiment in women’s empowerment in Southeast Asia to this day. All told, therefore, whether in hologram format or as a statue on his 125th birth anniversary, the image of Bose would be an educative addition to the Central Vista.