Sugata Bose's book on Netaji

Arthur J Pais

The following interview was conducted mostly in the Harvard University office of
Professor Bose, with a few follow-up questions answered through e-mail from
Harvard and the city of London where Bose was giving a lecture.

Sugata Bose, author of freedom fighter Subhas

Chandra Bose's biography His Majesty's Opponent,
talks to Arthur J Pais about his grand uncle, one of the
freedom movement's most intriguing figures. The first
of a four-part interview:

A few pages into His Majesty's Opponent, and you may forget
that this book is written is by a renowned Harvard University
academic Sugata Bose. For here is a biography of one of the
most intriguing and powerful men in 20th century India,
Subhas Chandra Bose, written with energy and without
sacrificing the historical details.

Netaji was an uncle of Sugata Bose's father, Sisir Kumar Bose, a distinguished
pediatrician and a freedom fighter. The Harvard historian does not hesitate to
execute his duty as a historian. For instance, he thoroughly examines Netaji's
alliance with the military rulers of Japan and asks the question whether Netaji had
embraced rightwing military ideology. He revisits the records that show that Netaji
did indeed die in an accidental plane-crash. And in the following interview, Professor
Bose thinks over why many people refused to believe in the air-crash account and
why some perpetuated the myth of a 'deathless hero' many decades after the plane-
crash.

In parts the book, published by Harvard University Press, reads like a thriller,
especially when dealing with Netaji's daring escapes from British clutches. There is a
spirited account of a secret submarine escape, and riveting material on Netaji's
complex political strategies. But above everything else, the book offers an intimate
portrait of Netaji not only as a revolutionary leader but also a loving husband, a man
of letters, and an untiring believer in communal amity. It is also a great account of a
love story and the story of an Austrian wife who never remarried and brought up her
daughter -- Netaji's only child -- single-handedly, despite having to endure many
hardships. The book also reveals how the Bose family reacted when they came to
know of Bose's secret marriage.

Several academics including the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen have praised the book.
'Larger than life, more profoundly intriguing than the myths that surround him,
Subhas Chandra Bose was India's greatest 'lost' leader,' writes Homi K Bhabha,
Harvard professor, in a blurb. 'In a remarkable narrative that pairs political passion
with historical precision, Sugata Bose has beautifully explored the character and
charisma of the man, while providing an elegant and incisive account of one of the
most important phases of the struggle for Indian independence.'

Sen muses: 'Subhas Chandra Bose was perhaps the most enigmatic of the great
Indian leaders fighting for independence in the twentieth century. This wonderful
book makes a major contribution to the understanding of the political, social and
moral commitments of Netaji, the great leader, as he was called by his
contemporaries.' And New York University professor Arjun Appadurai applauds the
biography, calling it 'remarkable.' It 'places Subhas Chandra Bose fully in the context
of Indian and world history. It should be read by everyone interested in the end of
the British Empire.'

This is the kind of book that you read in about two days and wonder, was it really
448 pages long?

You have a fine reputation as a historian for more than

two and a half decades. What is the reason you took
so long to write this book?

One reason was that, even though Netaji always said that his
family was coterminous with his country, I was aware that by
an accident of birth I was a member of the family. So I kept
putting off writing his life. But there was another reason. I
felt that I could only do justice to what I have described as
the global odyssey of Subhas Chandra Bose after I had really
gained mastery over global history, European history, Asian
history and Indian Ocean history. I have told the life of
Netaji as very much a part of world history in the first half of
the 20th century. So I think it was only appropriate that after I had published my
book A Hundred Horizons that I should do a full-fledged biography of Netaji.

I always knew that I could do a book when I was jointly editing the Collected Works
of Netaji with my father Sisir Kumar Bose from 1992 onwards. But I wanted to do a
very major and significant book. It was intuitive. I really felt that the time had come
for me to write this book a few years ago. I could have done a book on Netaji many
years ago, but this kind of a book is what I felt impelled to do and I really wrote it
during my year of sabbatical leave in 2009-10.

This book has many layers. Deep scholarship and historical revelations
apart, it also reads in part like a good thriller. Not to forget an emotional
story.

There are certain chapters or sections of the book, which probably read like a thriller
because Netaji's life was a thrilling adventure. As he prepared to resign from the
Indian Civil Service in 1921, the response from the innermost corner of his heart that
he heard was: "The way to your happiness lies in your dancing around with the
surging waves of the ocean."

So when I was writing about his escape from India in January 1941 -- it was my
father Sisir Kumar Bose who drove the car in which he left his home on Elgin Road in
Calcutta -- or when I was describing the perilous 90-day submarine voyage between
February and May of 1943, I simply had to do the research and tell the story well.
What emerged then is, I hope, a gripping narrative. But there are other parts of the
book, which are either more reflective or analytical, and in some parts there is a
good bit of emotion.

What had you heard from your father about the 1941 escape and what more
did you discover when you were researching this book?
I heard the story of the great escape from my father as a child. But while
researching the book I also consulted fascinating British documents in London. The
governor of Bengal, John Herbert, had thought he would deploy a "cat and mouse"
policy in relation to Subhas Chandra Bose and re-arrest him as soon as he recovered
his health following his hunger strike in prison. "If he resorts to hunger strike again,"
Herbert wrote to Viceroy Linlithgow, "the present cat and mouse policy will be
continued, and its employment will serve both to render him innocuous and to make
him realise that nothing is to be gained from a series of fasts."

The British files show there were at least 14 secret police agents keeping watch on
Netaji; they were numbered AS95, C207, etc. Netaji told my father that they had to
work out a foolproof escape plan. In the end, the British intelligence officers were left
shame-faced and bewildered. Herbert was sharply rebuked by Linlithgow. One police
officer named Janvrin realized that Bose would never "cease to strive his utmost to
achieve what has been his life's aim -- the complete independence of India".

What did you get from your mother

Krishna Bose for this book?

My mother had supported my father in

preserving the best traditions of the
freedom movement ever since he set up
the Netaji Research Bureau in 1957. She
accompanied my father on two important
research trips through Europe in 1971
and across Asia in 1979. She wrote two
books in Bengali based on what she
found during these travels -- Itihaser
Sandhane (In Search of History) and
Charanarekha Taba (In Your Footsteps). She is an authority on Netaji's overseas
activities and her vast knowledge was of great help to me in writing my book.

Tell us a few important things about the submarine journey and the new
things you came across about it during your research.

Netaji's sole Indian companion on the submarine voyage, Abid Hasan, used to visit
and stay in our home as I was growing up. On one of his visits my parents and I
taped a very detailed interview with him on his time with Netaji in Europe, on the
perilous 90-day submarine voyage, and finally in Japan and Southeast Asia. On the
submarine Netaji used to dictate speeches to Abid Hasan that he planned to deliver
in Southeast Asia, including one to the women's regiment of his dreams. One day
when they were up on the bridge of the vessel, Hasan asked Netaji to name the
worst fate he might suffer. Netaji answered: "To be in exile."

I also found interesting German and Japanese documents. Netaji had written to the
German foreign minister: "There is a certain amount of risk undoubtedly in this
undertaking, but so is there in every undertaking. At the same time, I believe in my
destiny and I therefore believe this endeavor will succeed." His transfer on a rubber
raft in the Indian Ocean from a German to a Japanese submarine was a military feat
unique in the annals of the Second World War. The Japanese submarine, I-29, in
which he was taken to Sabang in Sumatra was later sunk by the Americans in July
1944.
What are some of the things that surprised you most about Netaji during
your research and editing of his works?

Netaji is popularly regarded as the great warrior hero. I found while editing his
collected works that he was a farsighted thinker with a philosophical bent of mind.
He was writing about the future social and economic reconstruction of free India in
his essays and speeches. He was also someone who was introspective, constantly
analyzing himself, particularly when he was in prison or in home internment. And I
found he was dealing with his long years of imprisonment with a balance of stoicism
and humor. He wrote beautiful letters to his sister-in-law about life in jail or and to
his elder brother, Sarat Chandra Bose.

I found it fascinating that most of the letters to Bengali women were in Bengali and
the letters to his brother (until his 1941 escape) were in English. I also found he was
reading voraciously whenever he was in prison or exile (he went to prison 11 times
and nearly 11 years of his life were spent in prison or exile) or in home internment,
making copious notes on books he read. For example, I write about how he was
fascinated by Irish history and literature, writing down in his Mandalay prison
notebook beautiful poems by PH Pearse who was killed after the Easter Uprising
against the British in 1916.

Pearse's lines about a rebel who came of 'the seed of the people that sorrow' must
have seemed especially poignant to Netaji:
I say to my people that they are holy,
That they are august despite their chains,
That they are greater than those that
Hold them, and stronger and purer...

He also had a notebook in which he transcribed his favourite songs, several of them
composed by Rabindranath Tagore.

We are marking the birth

anniversary of Tagore. What kind
of relationship did he have with
Netaji?

Even before Tagore won the Nobel

Prize in 1913, the 15-year old
Subhas wrote to his elder brother
Sara "how indifferent Bengal had
been in showering laurels upon him"
while foreigners "extolled him as the
greatest poet the world has
produced". In 1921 Subhas traveled
back from England to India on the
same ship with Rabindranath and discussed Gandhi's movement of non-cooperation.
Nearly two decades later, Tagore provided solid support to Subhas Chandra Bose
during his conflict with the Gandhian high command of the Indian National Congress
in 1939.

Rabindranath hailed Subhas Chandra as "Deshnayak" ("Leader of the Country") in

January 1939. He confessed that he had felt "misgivings" in the uncertain dawn of
Subhas Chandra's "Political Sadhana (quest)". But now that he was revealed in the
"pure light of midday sun", there was no room for any doubt. "When misfortune from
all directions swarms to attack the living spirit of the nation," Tagore declared, "its
anguished cry calls forth from its own being the liberator to its rescue." "I may not
join him in the fight that is to come," the 78-year-old poet wrote. "I can only bless
him and take my leave knowing that he has made his country's burden of sorrow his
own, that his final reward is fast coming as his country's freedom."

We seem to know more about Gandhi and Nehru as writers and

correspondents than Subhas Chandra Bose.

Yes, even though Netaji wrote quite as much in prison in the form of letters and he
wrote his two major books while in exile in Europe between 1933 and 1937, The
Indian Struggle was written by him in 1934 when he was in European exile and I
have shown in my book how well it was received by the British press and the
European literati. A few British reviewers obviously had difficulty with the point of
view he was expressing, though they admired his clarity of vision. When you think of
his unfinished autobiography An Indian Pilgrim, he wrote 10 chapters in 10 days
while he was in Badgarstein in Austria in December of 1937 and I think it is a
beautiful, analytical and introspective autobiography.

There is only historian, as far as I know, and a great one at that, Ranajit Guha, who
actually appreciated how beautiful that incomplete autobiography is and even in
comparison to Nehru's really great autobiography. I do have a lot to say comparing
Subhas Chandra Bose and Jawaharlal Nehru. They were very good friends in the late
1920s and the 1930s. What I do also point out in the book is that Subhas's discovery
of India took place very early in his life when he was a teenager, while Nehru's
discovery of India took place when he was much older once he found himself among
the peasants of Uttar Pradesh at the time of the Non-Cooperation Movement.

So the similarities and differences between the two young radicals and left-leaning
leaders form an important theme in the book. I was hugely and very pleasantly
surprised as a historian when, in 1993, my grand aunt Emilie (Subhas Chandra
Bose's wife whom he secretly married in Austria) made available some 165 letters
written by Subhas to her. The last major biography of Netaji was published in 1990.
Brothers Against the Raj by Leonard Gordon is a very good book but unfortunately
he did not have access to the correspondence between Subhas and Emilie.

While a lot has been said about Netaji

Subhas Chandra Bose's 1941 escape
from British India and his perilous 90-
day submarine voyage, his marriage
continues to remain a secret. In the
second part of his four-part interview to
Arthur Pais, biographer Sugata Bose
talks about Netaji's love story.

It was in 1993 that a historian handed over to

the author some 165 letters written by
Subhas Chandra Bose to his wife Emilie,
whom he secretly married in Austria. This
came as a huge and pleasant surprise to Sugata Bose, he admits. "The last major
biography of Netaji was published in 1990. Brothers Against the Raj by Leonard
Gordon is a very good book but unfortunately he did not have access to the
correspondence between Netaji and Emilie," the author said.

Tell us about the letters.

We all knew about the

relationship and the marriage
when we were growing up
but the fact that there were
so many letters was
something of a surprise. I
jointly edited these letters
with my father and the book
was published in 1994. When
we went to see my grand
aunt Emilie and her
daughter, my aunt Anita, in
Augsburg, Germany, and
gave her the book, we had a
little celebration in 1994. She
said she was celebrating the
60th anniversary of her first
meeting with Subhas
Chandra Bose in 1934, but
then she suddenly said, you
know there are three letters I
did not give you last year,
and particularly one. Then
she turned to my mother and
said, "This is for you. It is a
love letter." And it was the
most beautiful letter.

The romantic, deeply

emotional side of Subhas
Chandra Bose, and the kind
of lyricism reflected in the
letter that he was writing to
the woman he loved, was I
think a surprise even for me
even though I knew about
the depth of their relationship. It also underscored the personal sacrifice that both of
them made because of Netaji's first love -- his country. He was constantly having to
leave Emilie and go back to India in 1936 and then again in January 1938. And then,
when you think of it, their daughter Anita was born on November 29, 1942 and on
February 8 the next year, he was embarking on his submarine voyage. After 1943,
he never saw his wife or daughter again because he had gone to Southeast Asia to
fight his final battle for India's freedom.

Why was his marriage a secret?

Emilie, who had worked as a secretary to Netaji in Austria, got married to him in
December 1937. They chose to keep it a secret. In fact, it was when I was putting
together their correspondence that I asked her despite the obvious anguish -- Why
did you decide to keep it a secret? She said that it would have caused unnecessary
"upheaval". She never fully explained; but I think she felt that he was completely
absorbed by India's freedom struggle. Everyone around him expected him to be
almost single-mindedly devoted to that struggle for freedom and she thought that it
was sufficient that he was making a private commitment to her, which he could
redeem only once India was free. She once said that he was about to become the
president of the Indian National Congress and there was work to be done and so on.

Again, one could have many different interpretations. With hindsight, on one hand, I
could say that maybe it wouldn't have been as much of an upheaval as they had
thought. On the other hand, India's freedom was this man's mission and they both
agreed to keep mum on the relationship. We also have to give them their right of
choice to do what they wanted.

When did people learn about their

marriage?

Those who were around them between 1941 and

1943 knew about the marriage because they
were staying together at their Sophienstrasse
home in Berlin. Then of course Netaji wrote a
letter to his older brother Sarat Chandra Bose.
Those who were very close to him in Southeast
Asia also knew about the marriage. The family at
large and the rest of the country came to know
about it when the letter was in fact sent to Sarat
Chandra Bose. He eventually went to meet Emilie
with his wife Bivabati, his son, my father Sisir
Kumar Bose and his two sisters (my aunts). They
welcomed Emilie into the family. She then went
Vienna in 1948. From then on, of course, the
family kept in touch.

Emilie brought up Anita all by herself in Vienna. They had a very hard time in 1945.
But Emilie was a woman of enormous dignity. She had an independent spirit and she
would not ask for help. She was very knowledgeable when it came to India; she
never visited India but she knew everything about India. I had seen her and my aunt
Anita as small child. I met them first when I was about three years old in 1959 and
then my aunt Anita came to India in 1960. She stayed with us. I used to meet them
very frequently when I was a student at Cambridge University in the late '70s and
early '80s. That's when I talked at length with my grand aunt. Emilie remained
completely devoted to Subhas throughout her life. Even in absentia he really
dominated her life. She brought up my aunt, Anita, who became an economist and
statistician in the field of economics of health.

My aunt married and took her married last name Pfaff. Her husband, my uncle
Martin, for quite a few years, was a Social Democratic Party member of parliament in
Germany. Sometimes, when my mother was chairperson of the parliamentary
standing committee on external affairs in India, she would hold meetings with her
German counterparts and there would be my uncle Martin on the other side, the
German side. Both Aunt Anita and Uncle Martin were professors at Augsburg
University for many, many years and live in Augsburg now. In fact, I have driven
from Cambridge on the road along the Rhine Valley to visit my aunt and then driven
from Augsburg to Vienna to visit my grand aunt. This was until the early 1980s.
When my grand aunt Emilie grew older she moved from Vienna and lived with my
aunt Anita. So, in the last decade of her life she lived in Augsburg. She passed away
in 1996.

How much does Anita know of her father?

Anita has no memories of her father. What she

knows of her father is, of course, what her mother
had told her to begin with. Later, she read everything
that her father wrote, and works on her father. I
think, like everyone in South Asia and like everyone
who knows Subhas Chandra Bose, she admires her
father greatly. But I know that she missed a father
figure in her life.

When my father was training in medicine (this was

after the end of the war in the late '40s), he was, for
about six months, in Vienna. They developed a very
special bond. So, for the first time when she was
about seven or eight years old, and my father was in
Vienna, there was an older male member of the
family. Aunt Anita and my father kept in touch until my father passed away just over
10 years ago.

What did Anita call your father?

You know, in those days, she, in very European fashion, called my father by his first
name, Sisir. In her early letters she addressed him as my dear brother Sisir. It is
only after she grew up that she referred to my father as Lal-da or Lal-dada, which is
what all the other younger siblings called him. You know, I traveled everywhere for
this book -- to Kolkata, Delhi, London, Singapore, Tokyo, Berlin and so on. But of all
the trips that I took, as part of the field research for this book, the most fascinating
one was when I traveled with my mother Krishna, my younger brother Sumantra
(who is professor of international and comparative politics at the London School of
Economics), my aunt Anita and my uncle Martin.

I drove from their home in Augsburg towards Salzburg in Austria and then we turned
towards Badgastein. While writing this book, I felt the need to visit Badgastein
because so many of the letters of Subhas and Emilie referred to that mountain town.
It was their favorite hill resort. And, we actually found the Kurhaus where they used
to stay. We went and had coffee at Grunerbaum where they used to go and have
coffee.

You were asking what my aunt Anita remembers. This is not something I found in
letters. But, you know my grand aunt had told her that they used to go for very long
walks from the Kurhaus where they were staying to Grunerbaum for coffee. It was
quite a long distance to walk. We were able to drive to the same place and have
coffee. Badgastein is a beautiful idyllic place. I can understand why Netaji found the
magic mountains around Badgastain so enchanting. There are also thermal hot
springs there. I met my aunt Anita in December last year. I had gone to give a
lecture in Cologne and made a flying visit to see her in Augsburg.
 In 1941, at the height of the Second World War,
Subhas Chandra Bose went to Germany to seek
Adolf Hitler's help in organizing an Indian army to
fight their common enemy, England. In the third
part of his four-part interview to Arthur Pais,
biographer Sugata Bose talks about Netaji’s time
in Europe.

Let us talk about Netaji in Europe, and his outlook

towards people of different religious and ethnic
backgrounds.

In the 1940s, Subhas Chandra Bose gave up his earlier

inhibitions about meat and other food restrictions and so
on, but remained essentially the same man in terms of
his values. His biggest achievement in public life was to
bring about the unity all of the religious communities of India: Hindus, Muslims,
Sikhs and Christians. Mahatma Gandhi also brought about unity among Hindus and
Muslims; but Subhas actually believed in the possibility of what he described as
cultural intimacy among the different religious communities of India.

That is why he was very keen that the members of different religious communities
should learn more about the religious faiths and practices of other communities; and
on ceremonial occasions take part in the celebrations. He felt that on Muslim
festivals, Muslims may actually invite Hindus and vice versa.

Actually, I found it very moving to write the small passage that I have on the
construction of a memorial to the fallen heroes of Indian National Army. It was
designed and built by Cyril John Stracey, an Anglo-Indian officer of the INA. Subhas
Chandra Bose met him on August 15, 1945, and examined the designs for the
memorial. He asked Stracey if the memorial could be completed before the British
landed in Singapore. "Certainly, Sir," Stracey replied, and with a salute and 'Jai Hind'
marched off to build the edifice in record time. It would bear the INA motto Itmad
(Faith), Ittefaq (Unity), and Qurbani (Sacrifice).

Subhas was really a very broad-minded man. He himself had been deeply influenced
by Vivekananda. He himself was a devotee of the Mother Goddess. But he never
made a display of it. And in my book I have quoted SA Ayer, who said that Netaji
never spoke his God, he lived Him. He married someone who was a Christian, a
Catholic.

When he was going on his submarine voyage, the one companion he chose was a
Muslim. When the INA Memorial had to be built, it was a Christian officer who was
given the task. So, he was someone who was able to both respect and transcend
religious differences. And, when he writes to Emilie in March 1936, he says that he
has forgotten all these differences of Indian and European and what I love is really
the woman in you, the soul in you.

When Shyam Benegal's film Netaji, the Forgotten Hero was released, some
people did not like the title.
Shyam's initial idea was to call the film The Last Hero. Bose hasn't quite been
forgotten. He became a legend. But I felt his actual life and work were sometimes
genuinely forgotten. I wrote this book because I felt that the life was more
fascinating than the legend. There was a little too much of myth-making around him
and I felt that his actual life story narrated well would present the real Netaji Subhas
Chandra Bose to a younger generation. The myth-making consisted of simply
worshipping him as a warrior hero, leaving aside all of the other important facets of
his life and personality.

But, to return to the question that you asked about the leftists
and their attitude towards Bose and how they came to dislike
him for many decades. In fact, the Communists had more or less
worked with him reasonably well even in the late 1930s, when
they were trying to bring about left consolidation within the
Indian National Congress. The communists in those days were
operating under the label National Front. But then the
communists decided overnight that the Imperialist War had been
turned into a Peoples' War when Germany invaded the Soviet
Union.

Once Netaji allied with the Japanese, he was denounced as a Japanese stooge by the
then communists who took a very hard stand against him. I think they recognized
over the decades that this man had such a great popular appeal that they undercut
themselves if they continued to criticize him. And, I remember the first time that
Jyoti Basu made a speech in January 1978 on his birthday and said the time had
come for the left to reassess Subhas Chandra Bose.

Among those who really know what Netaji was all about from the letters that he
wrote; it became clear that sitting in wartime Germany he was writing to the German
foreign minister, criticizing in the strongest terms Germany's invasion of the Soviet
Union. We have all the correspondence and the transcripts of the speeches he made
criticizing Nazi Germany in the 1930s and the 1940s. So here was a man who had
real courage to criticize Nazi policies while in Germany. His letters and speeches
show that he never compromised on India's dignity and India's interests. So, once all
this began to come out, the leftists had to accept the facts. And now with my book
these facts will, hopefully, become even more widely known.

Did Bose spend sleepless nights thinking that in spite

of his alliance with the Japanese, there could be a
time when the Japanese would add India to its
conquests?

What is fascinating is that just as he criticised Germany in

the mid-1930s, he had in a letter to Kitty Kurti described the
Japanese, way back in 1934, as "the British of the East".
When Japan invaded mainland China in 1937, he was very
critical of Japan, and as Congress president, he sent a
medical mission to help the Chinese in the face of the
Japanese invasion. He had hoped for Asian unity; for some
sort of an Asian universalism to be realized and he felt
dismayed two of these Asian powers -- Japan and China --
were falling victim to the same kind of nationalist rivalry that had torn apart Europe
during World War I.
He admired Japan for its achievement until the early twentieth century. But he was
opposed to this kind of nationalistic imperialism and the humiliation of another proud
Asian country. Now, during Second World War, of course, he was taking advantage
of the international war crisis. Again, he was able to do in Southeast Asia in a much
bigger way what he had attempted to do in the first instance in Europe.

This was because there was a much larger number of Indian soldiers that had
surrendered to the Japanese, and the Japanese had said that if you fight for India's
freedom then you will not be prisoners of war, even though there were tensions
between the Japanese and the Indians. And the other advantage of being in
Southeast Asia was that there was much larger social base of civilian support, a
much larger Indian expatriate community in Singapore, Malaya, Thailand, and Burma
who rallied in very large numbers to the cause of India's freedom.

Subhas Chandra Bose was in some ways allied to Japan but he was also asserting
the independence of his movement. He had quite serious arguments with some
lower-ranking Japanese officers who could be arrogant, but he felt, I think, that the
Indian independence movement that he was leading was strong enough to take a
stand against Japan if necessary. But the first task was to expel the British power
from India. If you look at what happened in the Battle of Imphal, at first he had
wanted the Japanese to let the British retreat because he was desperate to come
into Assam and Bengal and he felt he would have a very large civilian uprising in his
support.

But he persuaded himself when the Japanese besieged Imphal and that if Imphal fell,
there would be again a very large number of Indian soldiers who he believed would
come over to the side of the Indian National Army, which would enhance his strength
not only against the British, but also vis-à-vis the Japanese. He felt the Japanese
were not really in any position to have imperialist designs on India. He was a realist
and he could see how far the Japanese were over-extended and in fact by the time
he arrived in Southeast Asia, the Japanese were already losing in the Pacific. All that
he needed was the war to last long enough for his Indian National Army to make a
decisive breakthrough in India. And look at what happened in Burma.

Initially, Aung San came as one of the 30 heroes with the Japanese but in 1945 he
turned against the Japanese. And then in 1946 he turned against the British again.
So all of these Asian nationalists including Sukarno in Indonesia were all trying to
advance their own country's freedom struggles, and their own country's interests by
taking advantage of this international war crisis. Bose described the war as a conflict
between old imperial powers and the new imperial powers. He had no illusions about
the new imperial powers. He simply felt this conflict should be taken advantage of by
the colonially oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.

In seeking this alliance, how much of anxiety did he go through?

I think he overlooked the sins of Britain's enemies because he was completely

absorbed by the cause of India's freedom. One criticism of him that I have expressed
in the book is that he always stood up to the Germans and Japanese when he felt
Indian honor was at stake, but he sometimes put on blinkers when it came to the
brutality of these powers against their victims. He was more concerned about the
suffering of those people who, for long, had been under the British, French, Dutch or
American imperial domination.
 Perhaps he could not realistically do very much for the
victims of German and Japanese oppression, even
though one should also know that he made sure that the
Indians and Burmese would never fight against each
other even when Indians were continuing to fight against
the British and the Burmese were turning against the
Japanese. He also tried to keep the channels of
communication open with the Chinese in Malaya who
happened to be mostly against the Japanese

What I have tried to do in this book is to capture the

greatness of the man. He was a very great man but he
was also a human being who had his flaws and failures.
And, I don't think acknowledging his failures takes away
anything from the greatness of this man or the
greatness of his vision of a world free of imperialist domination. We should retain our
critical faculties in assessing his life and work. I think he was the kind of person who
would have appreciated it. But we need not be overly cynical when we write about
great figures in history. Sometimes scholars have a tendency towards that.

Subhas Chandra Bose needs to be judged by the same standards as one would judge
Franklin D Roosevelt in this country. FDR went and met Stalin in November 1943 and
had actually said to him, "It is good to meet you". Did FDR really believe that it was
good to meet someone who was a totalitarian dictator who probably beats Hitler into
second place as the biggest mass murderer of the 20th century? But from the
perspective of the national interests of the United States, an alliance with the Soviet
Union against Hitler was a strategic necessity. And FDR was the president of the
United States of America, which was then the emerging superpower of the world.

And here was Subhas Chandra Bose, a prominent leader after Gandhi alongside
Jawaharlal Nehru of a country trying to win freedom. And he felt he had to make
certain strategic alliances to pursue the cause of India's freedom. Did Roosevelt
make a big issue of the atrocities that Stalin was perpetrating which he knew of at
that stage? All his writings, all his politics and his entire record suggest that if
anything, in ideological terms Subhas Chandra Bose was a left-leaning socialist. He
was not a communist but a socialist who talked about the ideology of samyavada, of
equality based on harmony.

He wanted a form of socialism that was suited to Indian conditions. He did not want
to copy or imitate some of the experiments in Russia. That he was completely
opposed to the ideology of fascism becomes very clear if we study his life. Simply
because he made an alliance with the Axis powers to fight for India's independence
did not mean he shared their ideology. Stalin and Churchill were on two sides of the
spectrum when it came to their ideological dispositions when they had an alliance
against Nazi Germany. And for Subhas Chandra Bose, it was not a simple matter of
'the enemy's enemy is my friend'.

He had taken part in the nonviolent movements led by Mahatma Gandhi for two
decades and he had seen that the masses were on the side of India's freedom but
not one Indian soldier fighting for the British had come over to the side of the Indian
freedom movement. They were still employed to put down the rebellions against the
British Empire all across the globe. He really felt at a climactic movement of India's
struggle for freedom the loyalty of these men in arms to the British King-Emperor
had to be replaced by a new loyalty to the cause of India's Independence. And how
could he do it unless he had access to these soldiers who happened to be held by the
enemies of Britain?

In the last piece of this four-part interview to Arthur Pais, biographer

Sugata Bose dispels rumors that Netaji is still alive.

You have had a few book readings. What have the audiences been like?

So far I have spoken on the book in the United States. I had book readings in and in
Cambridge, United Kingdom. I have book events in Japan in late June and Singapore
on July 5 and finally in India between July 10 and 25. I think the audiences in the US
felt they were learning something new about Subhas Chandra Bose as a human
being, and not just an unreal figure whom we worship in South Asia, but someone
who could be understood, somebody for whom you can have a great deal of
sympathy, someone whose choices of allies you might somewhat be troubled by but
at the end of the day someone from whose book of life there is something valuable
to be learned.

The revolutionary Bhagat Singh was a leftist and atheist. But over the years
he has been appropriated by religious Sikhs as well as the Hindu right.
Could you share the thought about the communists and the Hindu right
appropriating Netaji?

I think Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose should not be allowed to be appropriated for the
wrong reasons. And that is why I think it is important to be knowledgeable about his
life. We talked about the communists. While to some extent, there has been a
genuine change of heart, there is also an element of political expediency in the re-
evaluation. About the Hindu right, they will laud his military heroism but completely
ignore all that he did for Hindu-Muslim unity and the deep concern and commitment
that he had for minority rights.

He was one man who was implicitly trusted by the minorities in India. And if the
Hindu right ignores that aspect of Netaji's politics, and simply puts him on a pedestal
as a military hero, that is not doing justice to the man and that is not the right kind
of lesson that we ought to be drawing from his life. So, difficult questions need to be
posed to those who appropriate him. And he should be kept above party politics.

Why did the myth that Netaji never died in the air crash persist for many
decades?

The mass psychological phenomenon of an initial refusal to accept Netaji's death in

the early decades after independence, and the hope that he would one day return as
the deliverer of his country was perfectly understandable. People missed a selfless
and unifying leader.

Who were the people who sought to exploit the myth?

The popular sentiment about Netaji came to be exploited by a handful of people and
fringe political parties. The self-selected group that typically came forward to depose
before judicial commissions on the question of his death did not represent the vast
populace that celebrated the life and work of India's leader.
What kind of the investigation did your own father undertake, and what
convinced him of Netaji's death in the air crash?

He went through all the documentary evidence available, including the testimony of
the survivors of the air crash, the medical personnel who attended on Netaji and the
interpreter who was brought to translate what he was saying. My father visited
Taiwan in 1965 and went to the airfield, the hospital and the crematorium cross-
checking eye-witness accounts with the actual geography of the place.

The same year in Tokyo he met the Buddhist priest, the elder the Reverend
Mochizuki, who accepted Netaji's mortal remains at the Renkoji temple. After
conducting prayers for a whole day, the Rev opened the urn so that my father could
see the mortal remains. He told my father that he had opened the urn only once
before -- for Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru -- during his visit in the late 1950s.

While growing up, did you have any doubts about Netaji's death?? What
convinced you that he had indeed died in the air crash?

I was always more interested in Netaji's life and work than in fruitless controversies
over his death. The basis for my conclusion is a close study of the historical
evidence, especially the testimony of a broad range of eye-witnesses.

What can the young generation of Indians take from Netaji's life, and from
your vivid and mesmerising account?

They can find inspiration in and become heirs to Netaji's life immortal. As Netaji had
said, "In this mortal world, everything perishes and will perish, but ideas, ideals and
dreams do not." Through his life of suffering and sacrifice, he has bequeathed his
ideas, ideals and dreams to the next generation. As for my narrative of his life, I
hope it will reveal to readers what he was like as a human being, and the major role
he played as a beacon of freedom in twentieth-century world history.