Subhas Chandra Bose
Netaji: The Enigma
Subhas Chandra Bose: 23rd January, 1897 – 18th August, 1945 (?)
The enigma continues…is he? isn’t he? did he? didn’t he?...the swirling mists surrounding the man simply refuses to fade, 125 years on and forward. He is the forever young, handsome, charismatic and indefatigable hero, a kind of mythical being who can never perish. His Achilles’ Heel has not been found and he’s in the marathon for a long haul. Well, just when you’ve been wondering at the dusty statue at Shyambazar Five Point Crossing in Kolkata, dirty with bird droppings and interspersed with a crisscross network of electric wires hanging across the road on its head, joining connections to heaven knows where…wondering at the tiresome necessity to attend long boring lectures on a winter morning to mark the birthday of this man and hoisting the national flag he never saw (or did he?)…wondering…but wait…suddenly there’s something to stoke the national conscience, or at least an attempt at it. There’s a statue being installed somewhere by someone important and Netaji is again being lauded for his ‘contribution’…just when you thought his case is finally fit for the national archives, the hoopla surrounding the ‘de-classified’ files and Gumnami Baba not withstanding.
It was Subhas Chandra’s fate that controversy never eluded him in life as in death (did he? didn’t he?). The official tag-line may go hoarse declaring ’his ‘death’ on 18th August, 1945, in a plane crash at Taipei in Taiwan, but there continues to be quite a sizeable number of people who believe he survived secretly as Gumnami Baba in Uttar Pradesh and was alive for years after independence. Until a few years ago, pictures used to emerge in newspapers [that of a strikingly familiar bearded old man], claiming to be an ‘original’ one of the man after he became a Baba. Coincidentally, fresh wall paintings would emerge soon enough with the words ‘Netaji phire esho’ (Netaji please return). I often wondered if it was indeed possible for a man to be alive after more than a century, unless he had drunk the elixir of longevity. But then, public conscience is a mysterious domain and they have always loved rebellious figures and wish to keep them ‘alive’ in whichever way possible. Controversies surrounding his public life, his equation with Gandhi, his private life, his marriage to Emilie Schenkl and their daughter Anita Bose Pfaff (did he? didn’t he?), the conflicting opinions within his own family then and even later, all serve to create a total matrix – a cover of oblivion to hide the truth. Well, what is the truth then? Nobody knows for sure and maybe will never know.
Subhas Chandra left the Congress after his re-election for the second consecutive term in 1939, after his differences with Gandhi. It was at this very juncture that he became an international figure, hobnobbing with the Nazis, Fascists, Japanese and the Axis Powers, in protest against the British, often thought to be to ‘the detriment of Indian interests’. His ‘great escape’ from house-arrest from his home in Elgin Road, Calcutta, on 16th January, 1941, has found its way to school text-books in India and is truly the stuff that legends are made of. By then, he was a master of disguise and travelled to Peshawar in the guise of a Pathan, then to Afghanistan, then USSR (disguised as an Italian Count) and finally reached Germany. The details of his escape, is cinematic to say the least. His travel to southeast Asia via a submarine, cemented his position as a hero for posterity. The stories surrounding the travails of the INA (The Indian National Army; Azad Hind Fauj), and the popularity they had garnered, had surely set the pulse of the nation soaring. We can just say that it has not lowered ever since. But, tragic heroes always have their own downfall, triggered by themselves alone. But then, Netaji perished in an air crash…rubbish…how could he? Could the tale of the Gumnami Baba following nearly the same route to return, have stemmed from a tremendous urge to see their hero as an immortal being whom none can destroy? My intellectual faculties are at a jeopardy…did he? didn’t he? But, I still went to watch a film on the Gumnami Baba and literally stood up in reverence for the man when the last song was being played at the end of the movie…was it in reaction of the drama created on screen about the ‘unknown’ sannyasi? Surely dramas do move us to the core, but it was more in reverence for the intended real ‘Netaji’, the ultimate hero…hoping against hope that this tale was true…should not Netaji have been around to witness Independence and have survived to see the ‘progress’ of his dreams (or the lack of it) many years after? Surely! But then…contradictions do not seem to end for this man…the enigma continues!
[Afterthought: Should I dare to write a biography of a hero about whom everybody seems to know everything about? I dare not…so, just a few thoughts penned down and here’s hoping that the real legacy of Subhas Chandra comes forward…minus the fluffy sensational frills.]
The enigma continues…is he? isn’t he? did he? didn’t he?...the swirling mists surrounding the man simply refuses to fade, 125 years on and forward. He is the forever young, handsome, charismatic and indefatigable hero, a kind of mythical being who can never perish. His Achilles’ Heel has not been found and he’s in the marathon for a long haul. Well, just when you’ve been wondering at the dusty statue at Shyambazar Five Point Crossing in Kolkata, dirty with bird droppings and interspersed with a crisscross network of electric wires hanging across the road on its head, joining connections to heaven knows where…wondering at the tiresome necessity to attend long boring lectures on a winter morning to mark the birthday of this man and hoisting the national flag he never saw (or did he?)…wondering…but wait…suddenly there’s something to stoke the national conscience, or at least an attempt at it. There’s a statue being installed somewhere by someone important and Netaji is again being lauded for his ‘contribution’…just when you thought his case is finally fit for the national archives, the hoopla surrounding the ‘de-classified’ files and Gumnami Baba not withstanding.
It was Subhas Chandra’s fate that controversy never eluded him in life as in death (did he? didn’t he?). The official tag-line may go hoarse declaring ’his ‘death’ on 18th August, 1945, in a plane crash at Taipei in Taiwan, but there continues to be quite a sizeable number of people who believe he survived secretly as Gumnami Baba in Uttar Pradesh and was alive for years after independence. Until a few years ago, pictures used to emerge in newspapers [that of a strikingly familiar bearded old man], claiming to be an ‘original’ one of the man after he became a Baba. Coincidentally, fresh wall paintings would emerge soon enough with the words ‘Netaji phire esho’ (Netaji please return). I often wondered if it was indeed possible for a man to be alive after more than a century, unless he had drunk the elixir of longevity. But then, public conscience is a mysterious domain and they have always loved rebellious figures and wish to keep them ‘alive’ in whichever way possible. Controversies surrounding his public life, his equation with Gandhi, his private life, his marriage to Emilie Schenkl and their daughter Anita Bose Pfaff (did he? didn’t he?), the conflicting opinions within his own family then and even later, all serve to create a total matrix – a cover of oblivion to hide the truth. Well, what is the truth then? Nobody knows for sure and maybe will never know.
Subhas Chandra left the Congress after his re-election for the second consecutive term in 1939, after his differences with Gandhi. It was at this very juncture that he became an international figure, hobnobbing with the Nazis, Fascists, Japanese and the Axis Powers, in protest against the British, often thought to be to ‘the detriment of Indian interests’. His ‘great escape’ from house-arrest from his home in Elgin Road, Calcutta, on 16th January, 1941, has found its way to school text-books in India and is truly the stuff that legends are made of. By then, he was a master of disguise and travelled to Peshawar in the guise of a Pathan, then to Afghanistan, then USSR (disguised as an Italian Count) and finally reached Germany. The details of his escape, is cinematic to say the least. His travel to southeast Asia via a submarine, cemented his position as a hero for posterity. The stories surrounding the travails of the INA (The Indian National Army; Azad Hind Fauj), and the popularity they had garnered, had surely set the pulse of the nation soaring. We can just say that it has not lowered ever since. But, tragic heroes always have their own downfall, triggered by themselves alone. But then, Netaji perished in an air crash…rubbish…how could he? Could the tale of the Gumnami Baba following nearly the same route to return, have stemmed from a tremendous urge to see their hero as an immortal being whom none can destroy? My intellectual faculties are at a jeopardy…did he? didn’t he? But, I still went to watch a film on the Gumnami Baba and literally stood up in reverence for the man when the last song was being played at the end of the movie…was it in reaction of the drama created on screen about the ‘unknown’ sannyasi? Surely dramas do move us to the core, but it was more in reverence for the intended real ‘Netaji’, the ultimate hero…hoping against hope that this tale was true…should not Netaji have been around to witness Independence and have survived to see the ‘progress’ of his dreams (or the lack of it) many years after? Surely! But then…contradictions do not seem to end for this man…the enigma continues!
[Afterthought: Should I dare to write a biography of a hero about whom everybody seems to know everything about? I dare not…so, just a few thoughts penned down and here’s hoping that the real legacy of Subhas Chandra comes forward…minus the fluffy sensational frills.]