The disappearance of Indian revolutionary Subhash Chandra Bose has always been shrouded in Amelia Earhart-like mystery. Adding to the intrigue, a history professor from Ireland just reported that British intelligence planned on assassinating Bose in Istanbul (via arZan):
The British Foreign Office had in March 1941 ordered the assassination of freedom revolutionary Subhash Chandra Bose after his escape from house arrest in Kolkata, an Irish scholar said. Eunan O’Halpin of Trinity College, Dublin, made the stunning revelation on Sunday evening while delivering the Sisir Kumar Bose lecture at the Netaji Research Bureau.
A history professor, O’Halpin said the British Special Operation Executive’s plan to assassinate Bose, popularly known as “Netaji” (the leader), on his way to Germany was foiled as he changed his route and went via Russia.
O’Halpin said he had handed over the classified documents backing this to Krishna Bose, a former MP and wife of Netaji’s nephew Sisir Bose… Netaji’s relative Sugato Bose, a professor of history in the Harvard University, said he had already informed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh about the matter. [Link]O’Halpin said the British Special Operation Executive (SOE) (formed in 1940 to carry out sabotage and underground activities) informed its representatives in Istanbul and Cairo that Bose was thought to be travelling from Afghanistan to Germany via Iran, Iraq and Turkey. The orders had come from London.
“They were asked to wire about the arrangements made for his assassination. Even in the midst of war, this was a remarkable instruction. Bose had definitely planned a rebellion to free India, but the usual punishment for this was prosecution or detention, not an assassination. He was to die because he had a large following in India… If British agents could get close enough to kill him, they surely could have attempted to capture him. The fact that any trace of London’s orders to assassinate Bose remains in official records is just as striking.” [Link]
Update: The Beeb has more:
Describing the decision as “extraordinary, unusual and rare”, Mr O’Halpin said the British took Bose “much more seriously than many thought… Historians working on the subject tell me the plan to liquidate Bose has few parallels. It appears to be a last desperate measure against someone who had thrown the Empire in complete panic.”
Mr O’Halpin said the SOE operatives in Turkey failed to because Bose reached Germany through Central Asia and the Soviet Union. “Every time [the operatives] checked back, headquarters told them the orders were intact and Bose must be killed if found…”Other historians who have worked on Bose say this will add to the mystique of India’s most charismatic independence war figure. “Bose would have reasons to compliment himself if he knew that the British were desperate enough to plan his assassination…” Sugata Bose, Gardiner professor of history at Harvard University and a grand-nephew of Bose. said: “Since he ultimately managed to swing the loyalty of the Indian soldiers to the national cause from the King Emperor, they had all the reasons to contemplate the worst…” [Link]
Nothing suprising at all. He had escaped detention at least twice. Bose was the OG. It’s old hat by now for Westen democracies and others govt’s to pretend they don’t participate in assassinations. Great article in that New Yorker issue years ago, (with the Ganesh cover) celebrating South Asian fiction on Bose and the Indian National Army.
f#@kers!
He’s an interesting figure, though, that bose. I have huge problems with collaboration with germany and japan–even if it was for practical reasons rather than ideological sympathy. I wish I knew the whole story.
saurav,
hitler, mao, churchill, stalin et al. what’s the difference? all mass murderers.
I don’t know enough about this to make the argument, but I suspect there’s a qualitative difference between Churchill and the rest.
In any case, why align yourself with any of them? Lots of people didn’t.
Yea and I heard he wasn’t a good tipper either…what a big jerk.
Saurav
My point too !!
I hate Churchill. But that’s another story. Despite that fact, I would agree there are differences between him and the others mentioned. But I don’t have the same huge problems about Bose siding with the Japanese and the Germans. Bose told Hitler he disagreed with much of what he did, but Bose’s alliance with them was not motivated by wanting to support Japan or Germany, but fight the British.
I am British. But I can also see that, at the time, why should an Indian automatically support Britain during WW2? In retrospect we can look back and say “those awful Japs and Huns!” but what if they had won, how would history view them then? No side is innocent of war crimes. Yes the massive overriding factor is the Holocaust and I am not for one second equating the Allies to the Axis powers. All I’m saying is that the Holocaust was not Bose’s concern and at the time he had not got the viewpoint on the conflict that we do as Westerners 50 years on.
BongBreaker
As is said
History is chronicled by the victor
Just by way of clarification, Bose left Germany due to suspicions about Hitler in 1941 i.e. before the horrors of the “final solution”.
Still Bose, like Che Guevara, cuts a complicated figure historically. Given the diversity of the stakeholders in the construction of their historical legacies, what we have been left with is precisely an image of that imperfect humanity that is lacking in the hagiographies of the Churchills and the “demonologies” of the Stalins.
Very well put Jay. I think your comparison to Ch̩ in terms of the position in history Netajo holds is a very apt one. I do wish Brits would look at Churchill with their eyes open. But such is life, he was destined to be celebrated endlessly and voted Greatest EVER Britain by millions of Brits Рabove:
Newton Shakespeare Darwin Brunel
Jeez.
Netajo? No that’s not my Bong daaknam for him, that’s a typi. Typo.
Oh, they shouldn’t have–especially after Congress was, as far as I remember, promised independence during WWI in exchange for support. And the British didn’t deliver afterwards. Again, though, there’s a big difference between active non-cooperation with the British and aligning yourself with Japan. I think I have to think about this more, because my views are so colored.
I’m American. We’re not trained to deal with these things 🙂
Is supporting Britain all right because they firebombed cities and civilians from the sky instead of getting down and dirty with a rifle and bayonet?
Is supporting Britain all right because they firebombed cities and civilians from the sky instead of getting down and dirty with a rifle and bayonet?
That’s always how it works, airstrikes are defined as “tactical,” disemboweling your enemy as “personal” and one is apparently more heinous than the other… That said, to what exactly are you referring or responding?
In the Bengal famine of 1943 an estimated 3 million people died.
Amartya Sen and others have shown this was entirely due to actions taken by the British government. I’ve heard stories from my father’s generation of millions of displaced villagers in the streets of Kolkata begging with their entire families in tow. Satyajit Ray’s “Ashani Shanket” (Evil Signs) is a searing vision of what happened in that time. By sheer body count/time its equal or worse than the Holocaust.
I don’t want to get into a pissing contest over the relative death tolls of British imperialism and the Holocaust–it’s a really simplistic measure of how to evaluate things. We all agree, I hope, that British policy in South Asia was bad. We all also hopefully agree that Stalinist purges and collectivization, the Holocaust, and Japanese war atrocities were bad.
Whether British, American, Japanese, German, whatever, the relevant question is how to determine which of those forces to align yourself or whether you need to align yourself with any of them at all.
Do you feel compelled to align yourself with the U.S. forces in Iraq or with the insurgency? Hopefully not, and if you do, hopefully you can resist it.
I don’t understand this statement. Are you saying I shouldn’t be aligned to either, or only one (if so which one)? What difference would it make if I said I was aligned to one or the other (or neither).
My point in raising the death toll of the 1943 famine was not to engage in a match of tragedies, but to say there are no clear heros and villains. That Netaji sought support from Germany and Japan was not unreasonable. Neither was Nehru’s and the Communist Party’s opposition to him. Nehru understood this, and came to defend the captured INA soldiers in Indian courts. The communists however were not reasonable and kept calling Netaji “Quisling” until sheer public demand forced them to accept that they had made a mistake. Even that was only in the late 1980’s.
It’s dangerous and foolish to stand morale equivilents between the Nazis and the British. I hardly think a Quit India Movement would have worked on the Germans or Japanese. I have increasingly have had sympathy for Bose’s position since in the 1930’s very few people saw democracy belonging to Stalin or Facism.
I case of Bose points to the problem of relying on your enemy’s enemy being your friend.
Of more immediate interest is close links between European Facism and the RSS.
But that’s my whole point, Bose didn’t become a card-carrying supporter of the Axis powers, he took help from them. I don’t want to come across as giving a blind defence of Bose; as I said above, I am very pleased to read what seems to be a fair account of a complex character. Saurav is right, it’s pointless to compare death tolls, but that having been said, I would like to say the Bengal Famine is not on the same scale as the holocaust Suvendra, the holocaust killed over 6 million.
Some would say that, while undertaking his actions in the spirit of “My enemy’s enemy is my friend”, Bose essentially made a deal with the Devil with regards to his alliances with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
If the British had indeed been defeated and Germany and Japan had subsequently gained a foothold in India, the horrors they would have inflicted on the subcontinent would have been far worse than anything the British did.
The Indian soldiers who fought in Burma – many of them Sikh veterans who I have met and talked to at a Gurdwara in London – talk along these lines.
Even after proof to the contrary is available people keep believing in “benign Empire”
I don’t think we’re blindly defending the British Empire as being “benign”, but neither do I think anyone can compare their actions with the large-scale atrocities committed by the Nazis and the Japanese at that time. Some would also say that the excesses of the Mughal Empire (and their immediate successors w.r.t invaders from the North-West) were significantly beyond anything the British did, at least on a comparable scale.
(I suspect Punjabi Boy will agree with my last sentence).
It’s also worth remembering that, as a previous poster mentioned, the non-violent Quit India movement would certainly not have worked with either the Nazis or the Japanese — they would have been quite happy to slaughter as many peaceful protestors as possible, even if the number ran into millions. They certainly would not have left India willingly either, at least not without killing the maximum possible number of Indians beforehand.
2 further points to remember:
1) The actions of the Nazis against Jews and other minorities (including homosexuals, the handicapped, gypsies and so on) — not only mass extermination on a genocidal scale, but also horrific genetic experiments. I’m sure everyone’s heard the stories about lampshades made from human skin too.
2). The way that Japanese soldiers treated captured foreign troops — both Indian and British, along with the atrocities and massacres they committed in mainland China against both civilians and soldiers.
I am no fan of Imperialism, but some wannabe colonial powers were far worse than others. Our ancestors got off relatively lightly, compared to how other European and non-European powers would have treated them.
The Brits didn’t leave ‘willingly,’ they left under manpower duress after WWII.
Here’s a quote I ran across re: Hitler planning a colony like the British Raj. I’m not making a moral equivalence, just offering it up because it’s interesting.
The above statement means two things. – Gandhiji’s principle of appealing to the humanity of the oppressor is not universal. – Japanese or Germans are not humans – English are superior human beings.
And I thought English imperialism was over.
This does not make sense – India was never about lebensraum for the British – in the way that Australia, New Zealand and South Africa were. It was pure exploitation – but not usurpation of the race.
The thing is, when I talked to the Burma veterans – they were very explicit that when they fought they felt that they were fighting for India – they knew what would happen if the Japanese broke through – they did not want to see a rape of Nanking in India – which would have happened. They were not lackeys of the British at all, and they did have a sense of urgency in what they were fighting against and for.
They were brave men – they were incensed by how Indian soldiers were treated by the Japanese when captured – apparently a speciality was for Sikh POW’s to be tied to a stake and used as live bayonet practice.
Things were complex and relative.
Rabindranath Tagore, no lackey of the British, was absolutely clear about the nature and reality of Japanese nationalism and you can read his correspondance with a Japanese friend who was an apologist for the Imperial Cult here.
This is an extract from on of the letters;
Everyone knew what the Japanese had in store for India and the Indian people if they ever broke through – it was not so much defending British rule as the more urgent (and horrifying) danger of Japanese occupation that the brave Indian soldiers were fighting against at that moment in time.
Saurav,
I speak for the victims and so I don’t have to spin anything. There is no qualititative difference between the lives of Indians, Jews, Africans, Russians, etc who died at the hands of mass murderers I was talking about. Since you speak for the mass murderers, you have to spin to show that how one system is better than other — something that holocaust deniers always do.
RC,
Now we know how a handful of british ruled over a huge country like india from such a far distance for 200 years. Unfortunately for India, people like Bose are exceptions.
Punjabiboy,
The soldiers during the world wars were not ‘Indian’. They are merceneries. It’s like calling gurkha soldiers in british army ‘nepalese soldiers’.
Bollocks. They were brave Indians who fought and died for India – I have met some of them and they were heroes to a man. They fought to prevent India being raped and occupied by the same army that laid Manchuria to waste. If you cannot see that you are blind and twisted. As soon as they sorted that out they got on with reminding the British to leave.
I will never forget meeting the Burma veterans – and I would love to be there if you ever had the guts to call them a mercenary to their face – despite the fact that they are now in their eighties they are still sprightly and many of them carry a kirpan – and no doubt remember their jungle warfare techniques which could be just as easily applied to cheeky arrogant ahistorical chauvinists as they could to Japanese invaders 😉
“The Brits didn’t leave ‘willingly,’ they left under manpower duress after WWII”.
Right. Kaiser Wilhem (spelling?) of World War I fame and Hitler duo have done as much for india’s freedom as the freedom fighters.
Did they or was empire already doomed before the war even began?
I don’t think that is the case at all. Whatever the wisdom of Gandhiji’s message, neither Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan would have allowed that message to be broadcast nor would they have allowed their citizens to act on it.
Get your answers here http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/specials/Netaji/netajiold.htm
This is a familiar topic. We have discussed the Holocaust, Bose and Churchill’s scummy nature before.
Nobody should be deluded into thinking that the British or other Europeans were any better than the Japanese. Take it from one of the greatest Indians of all time, Tagore, when writing to his Japanese contact (quoting from PB’s link)
Thank you Raj Sahib! Yes massah!
if it wasn’t clear, that second quote wasn’t Tagore’s!
Punjabiboy,
Soldiers who fought for establishing british rule, that is, jallianwallah bagh, crawling orders in punjab, repeated famines that killed millions of indians (read amartya sen) are merceneries. If these soldiers who fought for maintaining british rule are indians then Bhagat Singh is a traitor who fought for the removal of british rule.
siddharth
But would you say that to a Burma veteran’s face? And what would you have done when the Japanese army started raping and decapitating in Bengal? Pulled your dhoti up and offered your hind to them?
What a simpleton you are.
I depends on your point of view. I doubt the Chinese or Vietnamese would agree with your statement. I am sure many Bengalis would. As I recall Burmese general Aung Sen who fought against both the British and the Japanese said, that in ultimately siding with the Allies, the British may make us bleed but the Japanese grind our bones.
You have to give dignity to Indian British Army and their sacrifices. One fact almost everyone forgets that day-to-day British Imperialism in India was done mostly through Indians at all levels. So was the case in North America. You just can’t be a revisionist. I have ancestors who took part in Quit India movement (even got freedom fighter’s pension) but some of them were civil servants/ army officers in British India – they all were decent people.
Again, read “Freedom at Midnight” by Larry Collins and Dominque Lapierre. Also, read Guleri’s “Usne Kha Tha” – one of the finest Hindi short story ever written about an Indian soldier dying in the trenches in WW I. Check out the movie “Massey Sahib”. You start understanding the complexity of the issue.
General Dyer used a Gorkha regiment in Jallianwallah Bagh for the fear that they might be a mutiny. Burma front was one of the bloodiest theater in WW II and Japanese track record as occupying power is best left unsaid.
Kush
PS: I need to blog on these topics
Punjabiboy,
Millions of bengalis starved themselves to death at the hands of british during the second world war. The fate of bengalis at the hands of british were no less hideous.
Obviously, you belive that people like the british punjabi governor who made punjabis crawlare cool. As a libertarian, I respect others choices and so I respect your wish to be an invertebrate. As for me, no thanks to british rule, I have a back bone and I can walk straight.
I normally participate predominantly on the Sikhnet discussion forum, so you’ll forgive me I’m a little unused to the typical desi-style insults and sarcasm which one or two SM participants appear to be using in order to emphasise their points. There are ways of getting one’s points across without resorting to such tactics; we’re all friends here, after all.
A few points to enable people to understand my own stance, if there is any confusion in this regard:
I am a Sikh, and therefore for me the “ideal” role model with regards to appropriate reactions — both non-violent and military — to unwarranted military, religious, or political aggression is mainly Guru Gobind Singh. I’m not here to bash religion on anyone else — this is hardly the thread or the forum to do so — but at least this will explain where individuals like myself (and probably Punjabi Boy too) are coming from.
Following on from this, I am a great admirer of Gandhi ji and believe that he did a huge amount to facilitate Indian independence; however, for obvious reasons I am not necessarily going to agree with all of his methods. Non-violence worked against the British but it would certainly not have been successful against their predecessors, the Mughals, and it sure as hell wouldn’t have worked against either the Nazis or the Japanese. Punjabi Boy and some other people on this topic have already explained the reasons why.
The British were unable to sustain their overseas imperial dominions, especially India, due the massive drain in their financial and military resources as a result of WW2. Basically, their economy and infrastracture were affected too badly. Yes, they obviously did not “leave willingly”, but their exit was far less bloody than it would have been if the imperial powers had been Nazis or the Imperial Japanese.
Indian troops fighting in Burma and elsewhere during WW2 may well have been doing so for financial reasons but they were also doing so in order to defend India, not to “establish British rule” (which was already consolidated after 1857). There is a difference between the two concepts here.
Stating that we ended up with the “least worst option” with regards to the British (as opposed to other Western/Eastern powers) does not imply a “Yes massah” attitude. Compare it to what the Spanish did to their overseas colonies, what the Belgians did to what was formerly known as Zaire, and — as detailed already — what the Germans and the Japanese did to the peoples of other countries they invaded, and you’ll see my point.
If we’re going to compare it to yet more imperial powers, my opinions on the Turkic-Mughal invaders and their treatment of indigenous Indians should be self-evident and I’m sure you don’t need me to explain my thoughts.
Punjabi Boy, long before the rest of India was aware of the true cost of Imperialism, bengali “babus” was fighting running battles with the british army. Along with Punjabis, we have borne the brunt of British violence. Shahid Bhagat Singh’s comrade in arms was B. K. Dutt, a Bengali. His plan to bomb the Assembly was hatched in Kolkata in conjunction with fellow Bengali terrorists. Clearly you are not aware that Bengalis were killed and raped by the British. They cut off Bengali weavers’ thumbs to prevent competition against british mills. They enslaved of Bengali women by the tortured the Ryots to ensure proper Indigo output.
Forget the economic costs of British imperialism. The sheer violence brought by them on India left marks that remain on her today.
Erm. Sorry. Runaway thumbs.
I meant, “They enslaved Bengali women and torturned Ryots to ensure proper Indigo cultivation”.
It’s easy to be a badass infront a computer screen.
Another article on Bose and his activities with the Axis’ powers. The article tries to debunk the idea that Gandhi’s Quit India policies were instrumental in achieving independence but rather, puts front and center Bose and the threat of the INA’s mutinous activities.
It’s facile to speculate a third way. Do you really believe Bose and his rag-tag group of soldiers could have afforded not to have sided with the Axis powers. …was there a third way. Victory is not for the timid.
jellyfish
Thanks that was hilarious I havent laughed like that since reading your last post.
You pompous sap!
Now, can you address the point that those who were fighting the Japanese in Burma were fighting to prevent a rape-of-Nanking style occupation of India and not being a lickspittle of the British?
Or are you not able understand this simple point underneath your ‘libertarian’ posturing? (maybe that broom-handle you use as a spine has slipped and burst your jelly-brains?)
And would you tell one of the brave Indian soldiers who fought against the Japanese Imperial armies that they were ‘mercenaries’? I dont reckon you would be able to do it, because you are just too jellyfish-chicken – even at eighty five years of age they would dance circles around a cheeky clueless poltroon like you (much like I am doing now) 😉
Yes indeed they were heroes and their brilliance and bravery makes pipsqueaks like you irrelevant!
Suvendra Dutta
I was making a point about what the Japanese would have done to anyplace in India – trust me I do not need to be reminded of the bravery and greatness of Bengalis as anyone here will testify I am a huge Bengali fan.
Dont mind my using sarcasm to put pressure on my point. I myself dont agree with all of Gandhiji’s strategies (inspite of being a great admirer of him)
In your above statement I have an issue, which is – You say that the British left because they were “drained due to WWII” and then you turn around and say that their exit would have been far less bloody compared to Nazis or Japanese. – Its not logical because if we believe that British left due to their inability to maintain this colony, it does not say anything about how they would have left (bloody or not bloody) if they had NOT been drained.
With all due respect, Zaire cant be compared with India since India had different political situation (in terms of organisation)
Suvendra, at the risk of being a bad Bong, I think in addition to pointing out how Bangalis were the victims of British imperialism, it should also be noted that British imperialism probably elevated Bangalis within a South Asian context (even as it oppressed them along with everyone else). I’d guess these are two sides of the same coin and probably have to do with the lengthy and close encounters with the British because of the center of British power in South Asia being in Calcutta until 1912, the early presence established by the British in Bengal compared to some other parts of South Asia, etc. But I’m willing to be corrected because my knowledge of this is not as in depth as it should be.
The other thing is that, beyond the immediate abuses of British imperialism that you pointed to, the structural components that left a lasting legacy were the key horrible feature for me (I think that’s kind of a signature of British colonialism from South Asia to Palestine). Divide and rule, the destruction of the manufacturing industries and the overall setup of economic relations between Britain and South Asia, the precedent of Partition, and other “administrative measures” affected all South Asians and do to this day.
Jai, thanks for the helpful comment. I wholeheartedly agree wtih this, but it raises some interesting questions. If the British left without much direct bloodshed because they were taxed, is it a reflection on the character of their imperialism in South Asia or simply a matter of resources that prevented more violent resistance by them to the indpendence movement after WWII? Yes, very counterfactual, but I can’t help wondering aloud 🙂
Bongi, that’s what makes it interesting–the argument is that you don’t have to be a card-carrying member to advance Japan’s agenda. In the context of a war, he took their resources to fight a common enemy and thereby increased their resources to prosecute that war. Irrespective of his beliefs, his actions had the potential to have profound effects on the entire world–maybe they did.
Punjabi boy, my apologies for assuming intent when none was present.
It would appear we are both agreeing on the deleterious effects of colonialism. In that spirit, I will grant you that British colonialism had some mitigating factors, most prominently a strong socialist movement. On that line, perhaps you remember the name of the British Marxist who was leaking information to Indian nationalists while working in the Colonial government. He later wrote a autobiography.