[Reader-list] Fwd:Understanding Hindutva

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Lalit,

Actually, Subhash Chandra Bose, didn't have any problems being called  
a Fascist. So you don't have to get your knickers in a twist if  
anyone should choose to call him one. And nor should we have any  
hesitation in calling him a Fascist. A Fascist is, well, a Fascist.  
Bose's book, 'The Indian Struggle' which he wrote in Vienna while  
courting Austrian Fascists in the 1930s actually calls for a  
synthesis of Fascism and the kind of state being developed in  
Stalin's Russia. He also courted Mussolini (not very successfully)  
the most important Italian Fascist politician, in the same period.  
This is way before the well known alliance with Hitler and Tojo,  
which most Indian nationalists sort of turn a blind eye to while  
performing their genuflections to the obscenity of war-time realpolitik.

As early as 1930 -- in his inaugural speech as mayor of Calcutta --   
Bose first expressed his support for a fusion of socialism and  
fascism. This is not long after the time when he personally led a  
lathi charge against a procession of agitating Industrial Workers in  
Calcutta, who were peacefully asking for the Congress leadership,  
including Bose, who they thought (mistakenly) would be sympathetic to  
their demands, to pay some attention to their plight. In doing this,  
Bose played the role of the Fascist Storm Trooper leader to the hilt,  
dressed in a quasi military uniform, leading a band of armed thugs on  
a violent rampage against a peaceful assembly of workers. But it  
wasn't just the 'fancy-dress' aspects of Fascism that attracted  
Bose.  Let us pay attention to his own words.

“... I would say we have here in this policy and program a synthesis  
of what modern Europe calls Socialism and Fascism. We have here the  
justice, the equality, the love, which is the basis of Socialism, and  
combined with that we have the efficiency and the discipline of  
Fascism as it stands in Europe today.”

( From Bose's inaugural speech of Sept. 24, 1930. Quoted in: Leonard  
A. Gordon, Brothers Against the Raj: A Biography of Indian  
Nationalists Sarat and Subhas Chandra Bose (New York: 1990), p. 234.)

For example, in late 1944 -- almost a decade-and-a-half later -- in a  
speech to students at Tokyo University, he asserted that India must  
have a political system "of an authoritarian character. . . To repeat  
once again, our philosophy should be a synthesis between National  
Socialism and Communism."

(Speech of November 22, 1944, in S.C. Bose, Fundamental Questions of  
Indian Revolution (Calcutta: Netaji Research Bureau, 1970), pp. 403-4.)

His detailed comments on Fascism in his book The Indian Struggle:  
1920-1934, which was first published in 1935, accurately represent  
the views he held throughout most of his career. This is what he  
says, for instance about 'Democracy and Freedom'

“ It (the future Indian political order) will not stand for a  
democracy in the Mid-Victorian sense of the term, but will believe in  
government by a strong party bound together by military discipline,  
as the only means of holding India together and preventing a chaos,  
when Indians are free and are thrown entirely on their own resources."

Here he is again, on 'Fascism'

“One is inclined to hold that the next phase in world- history will  
produce a synthesis between Communism and Fascism. And will it be a  
surprise if that synthesis in produced in India?... In spite of the  
antithesis between Communism and Fascism, there are certain traits in  
common. Both Communism and Fascism believe in the supremacy of the  
State over the individual. Both denounce parliamentary democracy.  
Both believe in party rule. Both believe in the dictatorship of the  
party and in the ruthless suppression of all dissenting minorities.  
Both believe in a planned industrial reorganization of the country.  
These common traits will form the basis of the new synthesis. That  
synthesis is called by the writer "Samyavada" -- an Indian word,  
which means literally "the doctrine of synthesis or equality." It  
will be India's task to work out this synthesis.”

Subsequently, in an interview to the British Indian communist  
journalist, Rajani Palme Dutt, Bose muted his enthusiasm for Fascism  
somewhat, while not abandoning it altogether, but came back with  
fulsome endorsements of Fascism as is evident in his speeches and  
declarations made in Germany and Japan. Bose's was not a the 'fascism  
of an opportunist'. Rather his occasional 'anti-fascism' was  
certainly opportunist and totally in keeping with the Machieavellian  
political personality that he assiduously cultivated for himself.

All of this is rather well documented. And all you need to do is to  
go to any decent research library and look up a few books and  
documents (the ones I have cited will suffice) to know exactly what  
Bose thought of Fascism and when he said what he said.

I think the fact that Bose either died, or did not choose to appear,  
or could not choose to appear and stake his claim at the political  
sweepstakes in India after the transfer of power in 1947 is probably  
the greatest stroke of good fortune to have befallen the people of  
this country. I do not suffer from any nostalgia for the Nehruvian  
epoch. But the banal mediocrity of the Nehru years, in my opinion,  
are a far cry from the disaster that a combination of Bose and Patel  
would have meant for India. Bose's dreams for India were a brutal and  
authoritarian dictatorship, suitably 'Indianized' by a high dose of  
Vedantic Messianism and somewhat coloured by radical sounding  
slogans. (In welding this nightmare together, Bose inspired by what  
he had seen or knew of the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and Imperial  
Japan). I am sure that this would have landed us in a far greater  
mess than we are in already.

As always, I would have been happier if our uber-patriotic list  
members done a little more homework before embarassing themselves and  
all of us, yet again.

best,

Shuddha


On 15-Oct-08, at 12:12 AM, Lalit Ambardar wrote:
> .
>
> Netaji Subash Chandra Bose- the hero of the nation had met Hitler &  
> had sought his help in the freedom struggle against the British  
> colonialism. Is he too sought to be declared a fascist?
>