Historical
documents establish that Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose opposed the Hindu
Mahasabha as well as the Muslim League as communal and acted to prevent their
growth and membership in the Congress. This is contradictory to the attempts of
contemporary right wingers to appropriate his legacy.
Like Subhas Bose, Deshbandhu Das was a very religious Hindu in
his personal life; his mansion in Calcutta always resounding with Kirtans of
vaishnava mandali in which he used to actively participate. As a spiritual
retreat, in the June of 1923, C R Das travelled to Pondicherry to briefly stay
with Shri Aurobindo whom as his attorney he had eloquently and successfully
defended in the Alipore Bombing case about fifteen years back. Aurobindo also
tried to enlighten Deshbandhu Das about futility of his policy of making the so
called Hindu Muslim unity as a prerequisite for the national movement. Das held
on to his opinion and went on to say so much that unless the so called communal
questions were settled, in his view he would not even like the British to
leave! (So records a letter of Shri Aurobindo to Mother that month.)
Thus, in Bose’s estimation, Hindu Mahasabha was ‘Communal’ and to be placed in same brackets as Muslim League. Indeed, he mentioned Hindu Mahasabha before Muslim League every time he referred to Communal Organizations.
But Netaji would have certainly not associated with BJP if he was alive today.
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Thanks & Vande Mataram!! Saroop Chattopadhyay.
Netaji was the champion of secularism without promoting the word
secular.
Netaji's army comprised of people from all communities. He put
all the minority communities at ease by allowing them larger autonomy.
The cabinet of provincial Govt of India by INA was having people from all religions.
The cabinet of provincial Govt of India by INA was having people from all religions.
For quite
some time now, there have been attempts by Right Wing Hindu Organizations to
portray people like Subhash Chandra Bose and Sardar Patel in different lights
to destroy the image of Jawaharlal Nehru and the legacy of Indian Secularism.
The
BJP-minded ones go so far as to even claim Bose as an icon of Hindutva, placing
him alongside Shyama Prasad Mookerjee and Savarkar. Although they have mastered the art of
rewriting false history, there are some things that cannot be changed. One of
them is the relationship Subhash Chandra Bose had with Hindu Mahasabha.
Subhash Bose, no doubt, had a thorough Hindu outlook in life and
was a religious Hindu, as is evident in his unfinished autobiography. To the impact of
Aurobindo on his early life also he openly admits. Towards his last days in
Singapore and Burma it is said that he would often go to the temples wearing
traditional Hindu attire and spend hours in meditation at night. It is also
said that he used to carry a pocketbook edition of Bhagavad-Gita in the chest
of his uniform during the day and while sleeping keep it under his pillow.
All of this seems true enough, and would widely separate Bose
from the garden variety of Nehruvian Secularists and Marxists who are, by
design, hostile to the Hindu dharma without many exceptions.
And still, when it came to understanding Islam and its
objectives, as a thinker and as a leader, it must be said that Bose was not
very different from the other Hindu-Secularists.
Means Netaji believes in Hindu Dharma but fully secular like
Swami Vivekananda & his Guru Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansha Dev.
Irony is nowadays when Mamata Banerjee follows the same BJP
& Sanghi people call her as Jihadi Begum.
Netaji’s beliefs in secularism were can be summed up as follows:
a) Without Muslim approval neither can Swaraj be won, and what more
is, nor was it worth winning without their support;
b) The onus of Hindu-Muslim unity lied mostly on the shoulders
of the Hindus,
c) Only by adjusting to the Muslim sensibilities and removing
their ‘misgivings’ was it possible to achieve that unity; and therefore
d) Appeasing Muslims should be made a core and visible part of
any program, which is what he conscientiously belabored to do throughout his
political career. In his hostility to Hindutva also he was quite virulent just
like the other Hindu-secularists.
In
justification of the rationale of generally aligning with the pan-Islamists,
and using Islamic sentiments in Congress policy, Subhash Bose later wrote,
“…Moplah Rebellion in Malabar in South India intensified the crisis…
Afghanistan had entered into a treaty with Mustafa Kamal Pasha and this was
followed by a treaty between Persia and Soviet Russia. In Egypt the nationalist
Wafd Party of Syed Zaghlul Pasha was strong and active. Thus it was apparent
that the entire Moslem world was combining against Great Britain and this had
an inevitable reaction on Muslims of India…Government would be eager to
compromise with Congress.”
Netaji was not against the principle of taking up Khilafat
agitation, even in hindsight he only went so far as to regret its operating
format. He wrote, “The real mistake in my opinion did not lie in connecting the
Khilafat issue with the other national issues, but in allowing the Khilafat
Committee to be set up as an independent organization throughout the country,
quite apart from the Indian National Congress…. If no separate Khilafat
Committees had been organized and all Khilafatist Muslims had been persuaded to
join the ranks of the Indian National Congress, they would probably have been
absorbed by the latter when the Khilafat issue became a dead one.” And again at
another place, “…the introduction of the Khilafat question into Indian politics
was unfortunate. As has already been pointed out, if the Khilafatist Muslims
had not started a separate organization but had joined the Indian National
Congress, the consequences would not have been so undesirable.”
Deshbandhu
Das around this time made with the moderate Muslim leaders like Hakim Ajmal
Khan what is known as the Bengal Hindu-Muslim Pact of 1923, which besides other
things, for the first time anywhere in India, committed to providing
reservations in the government jobs on a communal basis. In Bengal as many as
55% to 60% public jobs were agreed to be reserved for the Moslem candidates
alone. This Bengal Pact although rejected by the national body of Congress in
Kakinada that year from being adopted as an India-wide program, still
established a policy direction in Congress for the time to come. Subhas Bose, a
part of this program as a lieutenant of Chittaranjan Das, records, “Deshabandhu
had drawn up an agreement between Hindus and Moslems, covering religious as
well as political questions, but it had been rejected by the Coconada Congress
in December 1923, on the ground that it conceded too much to the Moslems… There
was a stormy debate and the political opponents of the Deshabandhu, joined by
some reactionary Hindus, put up a formidable opposition.”
But such
ideology within Bengal Congress only got amplified with Subhas Bose and his
elder brother Sarat Bose after the death of C R Das in 1925.
As the
CEO of Calcutta Corporation, Subhas Bose outdid C R Das, who had only proposed
55% communal reservation that too in Moslem-majority districts which Calcutta
was not. Subhas Bose appointed in Calcutta Corporation, 25 Mohammedans out of
33 vacant posts, not on the grounds of any merit, but for their creed. He said,
“In (the) past Hindus have enjoyed what maybe regarded monopoly in matters of
appointments. The claims of Mohammedans, Christians and Depressed Classes have
to be favorably considered, though it is sure to give rise to a certain amount
of heart-burning among the Hindu candidates.” So he left 8 seats for these
Hindus of both “depressed class” and otherwise, and the Anglo-Indians.
·
Subhash Bose during imprisoned in Burma wrote, “…the distinction between
Hindu and Muslim of which we hear so much nowadays is largely an artificial
creation, a kind of Catholic-Protestant controversy in Ireland, in which our
present-day rulers have had a hand. History will bear me out when I say that it
is a misnomer to talk of Muslim rule when describing the political order in
India prior to the advent of the British. Whether we talk of the Moghul
Emperors at Delhi, or of the Muslim Kings of Bengal, we shall find that in
either case the administration was run by Hindus and Muslims together, many of
the prominent Cabinet Ministers and Generals being Hindus. Further, the
consolidation of the Moghul Empire in India was effected with the help of Hindu
commanders-in-chief.”
Throughout Bose’s writings and speeches, he referred to congress
Hindus as the nationalist Hindus and the likes of Hindu Mahasabha as communal,
and every time equated them with the Muslim league. In fact, it was during the
presidency of Subhash Chandra Bose that the congress banned the dual membership
of Congress and Mahasabha.
Bose wrote an editorial in his forward bloc weekly on May 4,
1940 under the title of ‘Congress and Communal Organizations’.
‘That was a long time ago’, he wrote, ‘when prominent leaders of
the congress could be members of the communal organizations like Hindu
Mahasabha and Muslim League. But in recent times, the circumstances have
changed. These communal organizations have become more communal than before. As
a reaction to this, the Indian National Congress has put into its constitution
a clause to the effect that no member of a communal organization like Hindu
Mahasabha and Muslim League can be a member of an elective committee of
Congress.’
Thus, in Bose’s estimation, Hindu Mahasabha was ‘Communal’ and to be placed in same brackets as Muslim League. Indeed, he mentioned Hindu Mahasabha before Muslim League every time he referred to Communal Organizations.
When
Syama Prasad Mookerjee joined Hindu Mahasabha, Dr Mookerjee wrote in his diary
that Bose met him and told him if he went about building Hindu Mahasabha as a
political body in Bengal, “He ( Subhash Chandra Bose) would see to it, BY FORCE
IF NEED BE, THAT IT WAS BROKEN BEFORE IT WAS REALLY BORN.”
Later,
Bose came true on his words that he was not adverse to using force and
intimidation to put Mahasabha down. In the words of Balraj Madhok, a leader of
Mahasabha at that time, ‘Subhash Chandra Bose with help of his supporters,
decided to intimidate the Mahasabha by use of force. His men would break-up all
Mahasabha meetings and beat up the candidates. Dr Mookerjee would not tolerate
it. He got a meeting announced, to be addressed by him. As soon as he rose to
speak, a stone hit him in his head, and he began to bleed profusely.’
When Subhash Chandra Bose was forming INA. ‘Hindu nationalists’,
instead of helping him were hand in gloves with British. Hindu Mahasabha, under
Savarkar’s leadership organized recruitment camps for British armed forces. As
Savarkar said, ‘Whether we like it or not, we shall have to defend our own
hearth and home against the ravages of war and this can only be done by
intensifying the government’s war efforts to defend India. Hindu Mahasabhaites
must, therefore, rouses Hindus ESPECIALLY IN THE PROVINCES OF BENGAL AND ASSAM
as effectively as possible to enter the military forces of all arms without
losing a single minute.
The above material suggests that Netaji Bose considered these so
called Hindu Extremist Organizations as Communal, and this was only till 1945.
If Bose was alive to see the later activities of these organizations, I wonder
what Netaji would have said or done.
Thanks & Vande Mataram!! Saroop Chattopadhyay.