User talk:Amartyakumar

A path to Independence

Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya Assistant Professor, Department of Applied Mechanics, Bengal Engineering and Science University, Shibpur Howrah - 711103. E-mail : amartyakumar@yahoo.co.in             amartya_67@rediffmail.com Mobile : 9830066562

On 18th August, 1945, in Taiwan an Indian Nationalist hero died and a legend was born. Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, the stalwart most closely identified with militant Indian Nationalism lost his life in harness, in an air crash, but earned the status of a martyr killed in war in the cause of his nation.

Netaji's fate is inextricably linked to the turbulent swirls and maelströms of World War II. Coerced by the British in 1939 into fighting for them via the British Indian Army, an act that excreted stench of riding roughshod over a nation's emotions and prompted the Indian National Congress-led provincial governments elected in 1937 to resign, but in spirit sympathising with Japan for the help rendered to Netaji and the Indian National Army, modern India maintains a balanced attitude to the war.

Netaji escaped from British-occupied India in January, 1941 reaching Germany after transiting through Russia under a nom de guerre with a passport given by the Italian Embassy in Kabul. He had hoped to lead an army to British-occupied India through Russia but the German attack on Russia on 22nd June, 1941 upset his plan. He looked upon the attack on Russia as a major mistake on Germay's part, opening a new front before the British had been crushed. En passant, a flashback is in order here. In late 1940, while the German Foreign minister von Ribbentrop was talking to his Russian counterpart Vyacheslav Molotov in Berlin, the British Air Force raided Berlin prompting von Ribbentrop to take Molotov to a bunker. In the bunker, von Ribbentrop said that the British had been defeated. Molotov answered “If that be the case, why are we here and whose are these bombs which fall? “.

Netaji got an opening, however, when Japan shed its sitzkrieg in China and attacked the United States of America by bombing Pearl Harbour in Hawaii on 7th December the same year. With the finesse of a ninja, on 25th December, Japan captured Hong Kong and on 15th February, 1942, Singapore from the British. Japan's blitz expanded and the sun at noon was blazing. Had Netaji come to Asia then, the momentum of the Indian National Army and Japan together with the Congress's Quit India Movement under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi could well have knocked the British out of India. Md. Ali Jinnah (whose politics contrasts strongly with that of another Muslim leader, Mustapha Kamal Ataturk of Turkey) and his Muslim League and their British co-conspirators would have been thrown out of action and the division of India may never have taken place. A unified free India may have been born at the end of the war. Radcliffe may never have had the chance to be the agent for killing and displacing millions by scrawling lines on a map.

Japan’s greatest expansion in 1942

A question mark may be why did not Netaji come to Asia in early 1942? The fact is, he could not arrive. Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that the United States of America gave very stiff resistance to the Japanese in the Philippines and the speed at which Japan had hoped to conquer the archipelago was therefore slowed down considerably and Japan needed six months to drive the Americans out completely from the Philippines. Also the Kuo-Ming Tang under Chiang Kai-Shek and the Chinese Communist Party under Mai Zedong sank their differences to fight the Japanese together in China.

After the defeat of the Afrika Korps of Germany under the command of General Rommel to British forces under General (later to be Field Marshal) Montgomery at El Alamein in Egypt, Germany was defeated by the Russians at Stalingrad with the surrender of Feld Marschall von Paulus and his troops to Marshall Zhukov. In the meantime, in the Pacific, Japan's expansion was halted after the indecisive battle with the United States Navy under the command of Admiral Nimitz over Port Moresby in Papua-New Guinea and the defeat of the Japanese Navy under the command of Admiral Yamamoto at the Battle of Wake Islands. All this occurred before Netaji could come to Asia. Throughout 1942, at the fringes of affairs and waiting in the wings, Netaji saw the tide of the war turning before he could come to Asia in 1943. Perhaps, his coming was a little too late for Japan was already on the defensive.

Shyam Benegal in his magnum opus "Bose: The Forgotten Hero", does little to dispel the mystery of what Netaji was planning throughout 1942. He is shown in the film sitting beside the Japanese ambassador in Berlin watching a film on the British and their protégés in Singapore surrender to Major General Fujiwara. We can assume that this took place sometime in March, 1942. Cut to Netaji's meeting with Hitler where the Nazi leader was bluntly told that his invasion of Russia was a colossal mistake. The next shot in Kiel Harbour with Netaji boarding a German submarine was in 1943. Minute details of Netaji's activities in 1942 are absent.

A note finale might be in order. It has come to light that the British instructed their secret agents to assassinate Netaji as soon as they discovered that he was no longer in British-occupied India. Glasnost is not a character trait one associates with the British but it is possible that British agents engineered the air crash at Taipei (then Taihoku). Like a true soldier that he always was Netaji embraced a soldier's death. In life and in death he remained true to the Latin precept 'Jam non concilio bonus, sed more so percurdus, ut non recte facere posim, sed nisi recte facere non posim'.

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