More than sixty books on Subhas Chandra Bose exist in English alone, and many more in Hindi, Bengali and other languages. Much of this literature is hagiography, and some of it has been bent to serve political ends. Vidya Bhushan Rawat's new study, "Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, INA and India's Freedom Movement", tries to cut through the fiction using archival records, declassified files and interviews with people who knew Bose or his associates.
Published by Institute of Objective Studies, New Delhi, the book has twenty chapters in three broad parts. The first covers Bose's upbringing and early entry into the freedom movement. The second follows his adventurous wartime career and the Azad Hind Fauj. The third deals with his last journey and its aftermath, followed by an epilogue, endnotes and an index.
Rawat opens by explaining how rumours about "Netaji files" have been circulated by "WhatsApp universities" to smear Jawaharlal Nehru, the Indian National Congress and its secular-socialist wing. His stated aim is to look at Bose's legacy comprehensively: to honour his sacrifice, but also to understand his ideological positions and how he acted on them. To that end he draws on archives, hundreds of books and papers, and conversations with people close to the story. These include Prof. Sugata Bose, Lt. R. Madhavan of the INA in Burma, the family of Abid Hasan Safrani, and the Netaji Research Bureau in Kolkata. Checking written accounts against living witnesses lends the work real credibility.
Bose, Gandhi and the Congress
Rawat resists the popular image of Bose as a conservative factionalist at war with both Gandhi and Nehru. He shows Bose as a member of the Congress Socialist circle that included Nehru, Narendra Deva and Jayaprakash Narayan, and as someone who kept a cordial relationship with Gandhi despite deep ideological differences. Those differences lay chiefly with the Congress's right wing, which included Vallabhbhai Patel, Rajendra Prasad, C. Rajagopalachari and Govind Ballabh Pant.
The break came at the Tripuri Congress in January 1939, when Bose defeated Gandhi's nominee, Pattabhi Sitaramayya, for the presidency. He then resigned under pressure, and founded the Forward Bloc on May 3, 1939. In justifying the new party, Bose argued that Gandhism was tied to the "haves" and vested interests, while the Forward Bloc would speak for labourers, peasants and progressive youth. Rawat's account makes clear that two distinct camps existed inside the Congress and that one of them eased Bose out.
Nehru and Bose
One of the book's strongest threads is the relationship between Nehru and Bose, portrayed as marked by political, ideological and even familial closeness. Rawat quotes Nehru's 1936 presidential address, in which he called Bose a "brave comrade" whose counsel the Working Committee had missed during his detention. He also draws on declassified files showing that Nehru set up a trust of Rs 2 lakhs from INA funds for the welfare of Bose's family, and includes Nehru's 1960 letter to Bose's daughter Anita. Rawat further argues that Bose's nine-point declaration on fundamental rights at the Haripura Congress anticipated the Objectives Resolution that Nehru presented to the Constituent Assembly in December 1946. He firmly rejects the malicious propaganda blaming Nehru for Bose's disappearance, countering it with documents and testimony from Bose's closest associates.
Rawat insists that Bose was both secular and socialist, and offers considerable evidence. Bose worked closely with Muslim colleagues such as Abid Hasan Safrani, who coined the slogan "Jai Hind", and General Shah Nawaz Khan, and he commanded the loyalty of many Muslim and Sikh soldiers in the INA. He also maintained ties with Dr B.R. Ambedkar. On the economic side, the book highlights Bose's concept of "municipal socialism", which he outlined to the Bombay Corporation in 1938, arguing that modern municipalities must provide water, education and health care. Bose envisioned state control of production and distribution, a casteless society and full gender equality. Rawat notes how closely this resembles Ambedkar's 1947 memorandum "States and Minorities".
The Wartime Story
Bose's escape from India through Afghanistan on an Italian passport, his time in Germany, and his move to East Asia are told with precise dates and documentation. Rawat convincingly argues that Bose never embraced Nazi ideology and instead sought to use a wartime adversary against the British Raj, their common enemy.
Considerable space goes to the formation of the Azad Hind Fauj, the recruitment of prisoners of war in East Asia, and the National Bank of Azad Hind, created to sustain a force of around 50,000. The Provisional Government of Azad Hind was proclaimed on October 23, 1943, with Bose as Prime Minister. The book follows the INA's campaigns of 1944, including operations around Imphal and Kohima, and the support Bose received from Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo.
The final journey and the INA's aftermath
The chapter on Bose's last days is meticulous. After Japan's collapse he sought to reach Manchuria and contact Soviet forces. The Mitsubishi bomber carrying him crashed shortly after takeoff from Taihoku on August 18, 1945. Col. Habib-ur-Rahman, who survived, reported that Bose died that night in a military hospital, and his ashes rest in the Renkoji temple in Japan. Although the death remains contested in India, Anita Bose and other family members accept the plane-crash account.
Rawat then turns to the INA trials, noting that the British prosecuted INA officers as common criminals and that Nehru pressed for fair treatment of men he regarded as freedom fighters. The closing chapter, on the plight of INA veterans, is especially moving. Many were denied back pay, barred from the regular army, and forced into a long struggle through the INA Veterans Association before pensions were finally granted in 1983.
Assessment
The epilogue observes that many Bose files were declassified in 2014, after decades in which closed archives let partisan myths flourish. Rawat's contribution is to put the documented record before ordinary readers. If the book has a weakness, it is that its ambitious scope sometimes blurs chronological and analytical focus, with the sheer volume of material on Bose's post-escape adventures crowding other themes. It is descriptive and accessible rather than densely academic.
Still, these are modest reservations. Rawat has produced a well-researched, readable and timely corrective that presents Bose as a secular socialist with a message for today's generation. As Sugata Bose is quoted in the epilogue, Nehru and Netaji were "great friends even when they had their differences". For readers wanting to separate Bose the man from Bose the myth, this is a valuable place to start.
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*Chairman, Institute for Economic and Social Justice, Visakhapatanam; Former Member UPSC; Former Vice Chancellor, Dravida University, Kuppam, Andhra Pradesh
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