Talk:Subhash Chandra Bose
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article is within the scope of WikiProject India, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of India-related topics. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page. |
| B | This article has been rated as B-Class on the quality scale. (add comments) |
 |
This article is maintained by the Indian politics workgroup. |
 |
This article is maintained by the West Bengal workgroup. |
|
More information about this article...
|
|
 |
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page. | ||
| ??? | This article has not yet received a rating on the Project's quality scale. Please rate the article and then leave a short summary here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article. [FAQ] | ||
 |
To-do list for Subhash Chandra Bose: | edit · history · watch · refresh |
|---|---|---|
|
||
 Archives |
|---|
|
|
Contents |
[edit] Spellings
His name is correctly spelt "Subhas". Adminstrator, please change the spellings in the name of the page.
[edit] Pronunciation
Could somebody who speaks Bengali/Bangla please add a phonetic pronunciation of Subhas Chandra Bose's name? Particularly the last part - I've heard it mangled to everything between 'bows' and 'boozer'. Thanks! -- TinaSparkle 14:23, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Patrick Henry's Quote is not similar to Netaji's
Virginia's Patrick Henry said "Give me Liberty or Give me Death" in the sense that he would rather die than live in a society filled with ludicrous acts (by British)
Netaji's "Give me blood and I'll give you Freedom". The Blood here means sacrifice. He's saying that People must Sacrifice their nation for Freedom.--Milki 21:50, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Political views status
At present, those comments in "Polical views" that indicate Bose was fascist have been referenced, primarily because of the fact a ready-made web reference was available! No book reference, mentioning the exact page number, have been added as of now.
Now, coming to the other aspect, that is the pragmatism of Bose's decision to ally with Axis power. I have not been able to find out good web-reference, except This. There are many books references. However, this point of view should be referenced ASAP. And also, that Congress' decision not to utilise the crucial momment of WW2 to pressurise British was not also of much benefit - as evidenced by the fact the British did not consult Congress before going to the war, and Congress resigned from the ministry as a lame protest - should be discussed. This discussion could point out the necessity of Bose's decision.
However, any discusssion/ comment have to be properly referenced, preferably from respectable sources like university pages, encyclopedias, or, best, accepted views of the historians. So it is a request to the wikipedians not to make own comments in the article, this is not a place of original research. Please, find out references and help make a really nice and balanced article. Thanks,--Dwaipayanc 09:39, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
I've been looking through this article Roy, Dr. R.C. 2004. Social, Economic and Political Philosophy of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose
It reads like a poorly-referenced hagiography, I'm afraid. Without giving a proper page reference the author selectively quotes the passage I have given in note No.20 on the main page (which shows clearly that by 1944 Bose favoured an authoritarian system), and claims it proves precisely the opposite! Really very poor and not a reliable, neutral source at all. Sikandarji 13:39, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
To User:ScBose - your views are clear enough from the name you've chosen, and I hope you won't take offence at the changes I've made (I've left most of your edits in place) but you must understand just how bad Bose's conduct looks: he allied himself with the Nazis, he set up a unit of the Waffen-SS, he then switched his allegiance to the Japanese despite their actions in South-East Asia, and by reviving the INA brought about a fratricidal war between its troops and the much larger numbers of British Indian troops fighting against the Japanese on the Assam frontier and in Burma. He took to wearing military uniform, he stated quite clearly that he no longer believed democracy to be suitable for India, he seems almost to have fetishized violence when there were alternative means of driving the British out of India which ultimately proved much more successful. Given all this, I think the article is as generous and neutral towards him as can reasonably be expected. His leanings towards Fascism are well-documented, and the list of other 'authoritarian' rulers in post-independence Asia (The Burmese Junta, Lee Kuan Yew, Mahathir Mohammed, Suharto) does not make very encouraging reading: even if few can be characterised as out-and-out Fascists their regimes are or were pretty nasty, and if that's what Bose had in mind for India then, as Sen says, India was probably better off without him. Sikandarji 09:50, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
Oh yes, and as for the INA and the RIN mutinies 'scaring' the British into leaving India: the INA was a broken and defeated force well before the end of 1945. The protests over the trial of its officers certainly came as a shock to the British, but they were already committed to leaving India by that stage anyway (and Congress knew this, or they would never have agreed to participate in Provincial Elections in 1945-6). The RIN Mutiny was a minor incident which had no effect on Wavell and Attlee's plans, and was actually condemned by Congress! The references you have provided are to a newspaper article and to another (entirely unreferenced) wikipedia entry, and that proves nothing. If you want more references I can go and dig through the 'Transfer of Power' collections, but almost all historians are agreed that the British left India because Congress had ensured that they no longer received sufficient cooperation from Indians to remain there, and that the political price had consequently become too high. I'm not quite sure why some Indians seem so insistent on claiming that the British were driven out by force, and talking up the more violent episodes and individuals (such as Bhagat Singh, who shot the wrong man) at the expense of Gandhi and the Congress. The fact is that with only 150,000 Englishmen in India, only 50,000 of whom were troops and 1,000 ICS, and with a much larger Indian army of between 120 and 150,000, the British presence in India was always based to some extent on cooperation, and on the use of agents such as the Princes, tribal leaders, Sufi pirs (in Sind), the Indian Army, and the lower bureacracy which was almost entirely staffed by Indians. Gandhi saw with brilliant clarity that if the cooperation the British depended on was withdrawn, they would eventually have to leave, and the hartals he organised which caused government clerks, railway and telegraph workers to stay away from work, worried the British far more than terrorist bombs. He also saw that If the British turned to mere violence to sustain their rule they would come badly unstuck, and might not be able to rely on Indian troops any more. That was exactly what happened at Amritsar, where the political fall-out from the Jallianwala Bagh massacre was so great, both in Britain and in India, that Dyer was sacked (he should, of course, have been tried and executed or jailed) but, more importantly, they realised that they would not simply be able to rely on brute force in the future, certainly not on that scale. With his activities in rural areas, Gandhi helped to turn the Congress from an organisation that represented mainly lawyers and other bhadralok, (and which for the first thirty years of its existence had concerned itself largely with matters of such burning import to the Indian population as simultaneous ICS exams in India) into a genuine mass-movement. The success of these tactics before the war can be measured in the reforms reluctantly wrung out of the British in these years - first Montagu-Chelmsford, then the Government of India Act 1935 which is still the basis of the modern Indian constitution (that is why already in 1944 Bose was able to refer to experience of Democracy in India, and then reject it). These were too little, too late for most of the Congress: but they were far more than the British had had any intention of giving up in 1919. This has turned into a bit of an essay, but I suggest a look at these books:
AMIN, S.: “Gandhi as Mahatma: Gorakhpur District, Eastern U.P., 1921 – 2” in Subaltern Studies III
BAYLY, C.A.: The Local Roots of Nationalist Politics. Allahabad 1880 – 1920 (Oxford University Press) 1975
BROWN, Judith M.: Gandhi – Prisoner of Hope (Yale University Press) 1989
Modern India. The Origins of an Asian Democracy 2nd Edition (OUP) 1994
MOORE, R.J.: “India in the 1940s” in The Oxford History of the British Empire Vol.V Historiography
PANDEY, Gyan: “Peasant Revolt and Indian Nationalism: The Peasant Movement in Awadh 1919-22” in Subaltern Studies I
SARKAR, S.: “The Conditions and Nature of Subaltern Militancy: Bengal from Swadeshi to Non-cooperation, c.1905-22” in Subaltern Studies III
SEAL, Anil: “Imperialism and Nationalism in India” in Modern Asian Studies Vol.7 (3) 1973
OMISSI, David: The Sepoy and the Raj. The Indian Army, 1860 – 1940 (London: Macmillan) 1994
YANG, Anand A.: The Limited Raj. Agrarian Relations in Colonial India, Saran District, 1793 – 1920 (Delhi: OUP) 1989
All these will help to give a good account both of the foundations of British rule and the reasons for its demise. Sikandarji 10:27, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
Fascism is always a reaction to the threat of working class insurrection and the breakdown of parliamentary democracy (as part of a more general breakdown of the “normal” functioning of the capitalist state and its agencies such as the army and the police, leading to a crisis in the economy). The paradigmatic cases are Italy in the twenties, Spain and Germany in the thirties, Chile in the seventies. Fascism draws its support in large measure from the petit bourgeoisie (including the property owning peasantry and small businessmen), which seeks a return to "order", as well as the bourgeoisie and seigneurial classes. It would be absurd to portray Bose as seeking a fascist solution to India – for there was no problem of the popular legitimacy of state institutions in a capitalist society such as might require a fascist “solution”. What Bose faced in India was a national liberation struggle and, like ALL national liberation fighters, he looked for external help and support.
So was Bose a “fascist” for turning to a “fascist” government for military help? No more than Attaturk was a “Stalinist” for turning to the USSR for military help or Taiwan was “Zionist” for turning to Israel for help – the demands of realpolitik do make what may seem unlikely bedfellows. Does the fact that the US has supported a long list of dubious military regimes make the USA a "fascist" regime?
Bose was confronted with a situation where a few imperialist powers were engaged in a worldwide struggle for supremacy to hold on to or acquire large parts of the world – a process which started well before the First World War. Like many third world “modernisers” Bose, the founder of the National Planning Agency in 1938, was obviously impressed by the supposed success of the five year plans in modernising the Soviet Union – to argue that this means he sought the same “fascist” solutions for economically backward India as economically advanced Western societies like Italy and Germany is absurd.
Furthermore, to argue that the man who was at the forefront of Indian protests against the fascists in the Spanish Civil War, as well as against the Japanese actions in Nanking, had suddenly experienced a “conversion” on the road to Berlin and Tokyo stretches credulity. To argue that Bose was a “fascist” is a British imperialist argument – the wikipedia entry should make it clear that this is a very partial, one-sided argument and by no means a consensus view.
To User:Sikandarji Words like "Nazis" and "Waffen-SS" are there to frighten the children. To use arguments like Bose wearing military uniform to support the contention that he is a fascist lowers the debate several notches – there are many photographs of Churchill in naval uniform during world war 2, deGaulle was never out of uniform and Bose was the leader of an army and did undertake the long march to and back from Imphal – Gandhian dhoti and sandals might have been a trifle unsuitable. You yourself acknowledge the weakness of your own position that Bose was a fascist by trying to retract and by lumping him with other “authoritarian” rulers – why don’t you ask a woman breaking stones for a roadbuilding project in "democratic" Bihar whether she might not be better off in Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore? The fact is you don’t know what the term “fascist” means but you are lazy enough to attribute it to Bose. Those of us with more respect for the victims of fascism tend to use the term with more discrimination and care.
For 1 1/2 million Indians to fight for the British imperialist war machine is not as innocent an endeavour as you would have us believe. These were hired mercenaries of the British – collaborators paid to maintain a regime which dragged India into two world wars without the consent of people in India. The fact that the Indian prisoners proved so susceptible to Bose’s persuasion shows that their allegiance to the British crown was not as strong as you maintain, as do the actions of Indian sailors and workers, Muslim and Hindu, during the Bombay Mutiny. History is replete with the examples of imperial elites using native compradors to maintain imperial control – to challenge this is not considered dishonourable by most people unless they happen to be old colonels waxing their moustaches and nostalgically harking back to the good old days of imperial rule.
The truncated, neutered, compromised, "independence" granted to Congress and the Muslim League by the imperialists was a far cry from the vision of liberation which inspired so many freedom fighters and which Bose, with all his contradictions, sincerely sought to articulate.
Scbose 14:39, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
-
- I don't know whether Professor Sen is a British Imperialist, but perhaps he's suffering from a form of false consciousness [1] - Nirad Chaudhuri also refers to Boses's "pronounced fascist leanings" Thy Hand Great Anarch (London) 1987 p32. This is not a view confined to "British Imperialists", it is one that deserves more serious consideration. I think I made it pretty clear that whilst I find Bose's actions during the war reprehensible and counter-productive, I'm not entirely comfortable with him being described as a 'fascist' either, although you seem somehow to have twisted that into a personal attack. The article shows that there are numerous dissenting views on Boses's role during the war, and his evolving political beliefs. I added both the quotations in which he condemns Nazism and Japanese aggression in China and that in which he calls for an "authoritarian system" in post-independence India whilst rejecting democracy, so I'm sad to see that my attempts at even-handedness on the page itself appear to have gone unappreciated. Please, leave the preaching out of this. To describe the Waffen-SS as "there to frighten the children" but then claim the moral high ground as one of that virtuous and self-selecting group "Those of us with more respect for the victims of fascism" is stretching things a bit. If you think India and the world would have been better off had Bose, the INA and the Japanese won their struggle against the Indian Army you're entitled to your opinion. I maintain that it is insulting simply to describe the latter as "collaborators" and denigrate their contribution to defeating Fascism (and I do know what the term means). Whether Bihar in particular has ever been truly democratic is questionable, but I somehow doubt if even Bose could have turned it into Singapore. The fact is that he isn't tainted with the many disappointments and failures of Independence because he died at the right time. That's why he's still revered as some sort of Messiah figure. From my own study of his writings and career I see no reason to suppose that he would have been any more successful than any other Indian political leader in preventing Partition or alleviating India's poverty in the aftermath of Independence: an Independence which was taken, not granted. Sikandarji 22:58, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
To User:Sikandarji- The only link you can provide is to some kind of informal after-dinner ramblings (completely unannotated) for American freshmen (who presumably know even less about Indian history than they do about their own). I don't know if the augustly titled Professor Sen is suffering from false consciousness, but inebriation had crossed my mind. Your reference to Nirad Chaudhuri proves the opposite of the point you are trying to make. Nirad Chaudhuri was a celebrated and refreshingly candid apologist for British imperialism - the wikipedia entry on his life states that "To his last day, he remained the quintessential Victorian English country gentleman, if not by ownership, then by knowledge, habit, refinement and taste. He lived by his genteel squirearchical standards till he breathed his last." [2]. Since we disagree about Bose and his relation to fascism I suggest you stick to that and not indulge yourself overly on attributing fictional motivations to me (such as my wanting the Japanese to win, seeing Bose as some kind of messiah etc.). I am touched by your veneration for the anti-fascist credentials of the British Empire and its sepoy cannon fodder, albeit somewhat incredulous that we are talking about the same institution which pioneered the use of concentration camps in South Africa during the Boer War, as well as using chemical weapons, man-made famines and eugenicist doctrines of racial superiority as instruments of imperial policy. Scbose 10:41, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
-
- The most cursory glance at Chaudhuri's writings would show that he had no great love for the British in India, (he distinguishes carefully between British domestic political and literary culture and that of the Empire). However, it is usual for people simply to read the deliberately provocative dedication to The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian and fail to progress any further, and I am not surprised to find that Wikipedia repeats the lazy myth that he was an Imperialist or an apologist for Imperialism. I suggest you read his books, rather than relying on hearsay. At no stage have I claimed that the British Empire was free from sin (what polity is)? and the Bengal famine of 1943 is a particularly dark stain, although I think you'd be hard-pressed to argue that it was deliberate. All I am suggesting is that the British Empire was better than the regimes it was fighting during WWII, with which Bose saw fit to ally himself, and that is all which is at issue here. To describe all those who served in the Indian Amry at that time as "cannon-fodder" is infantilising (it was a volunteer army, after all) and does them a grave injustice. Sikandarji 19:55, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] The Second World War
I just wanted to add, that since I have started to work on this article, I have come to sympathise with Bose and his views a good deal more than I did to begin with (and this despite him being a Cambridge man......). I still think he was wrong, and misguided, in the choices he made, but I accept that much of that knowledge comes with hindsight, as we have come to understand better the horrors of both the Nazi and Japanese regimes in this period. I would be very interested to garner further opinions from Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans about British India's role in the Second World War. By 1945 2.5 million Indians were serving in the British Indian Army against the Axis, and overall during the war about 4 million volunteered. They played a crucial role in defeating the Axis in the Middle East, in North Africa (at El Alamein, for instance) and of course in the defeat of the Japanese and the INA at Kohima and Imphal, and the subsequent reconquest of Burma. This contribution has only recently come to be fully acknowledged in Britain, and is viewed with pride and gratitude. How is India's role seen in defeating the Axis seen in India and Pakistan today? All opinions welcome.
Sikandarji 00:10, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
- I can say only one thing. They are hardly remembered among the common men. In fact, that many Indians fought in the allied power remains almost unmentioned in our text books, at least in school levels. I am not aware of other parts of the subcontinent, but in the part I live (West Bengal, India) I do not see any commemoration of the soldiers. May be one of the reasons is the traditionally low Bengali presence in the Indian armies. Would be intersting to hear the scenario in Punjab.--Dwaipayan (talk) 13:55, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit] JAPANESE ATTROCITIES IN THE ANDAMAN & NICOBAR ISLANDS
This is something that has really been swept under the carpet, and must be given a line or two. Japanese behaviour in the Andamans brings forth very searching questions about the modus operandi of the I.N.A. - and to think Bose wanted the Japanese army in New Delhi! Let's face it, how could he call himself a potential liberator if this kind of thing was being done by his "friends" and under their very noses. I think this link: [3] will get quickly deleted, as the article seems profoundly biased and is probably well guarded by a gang of Bengal Tigers who have as much time for other points of view as Bose himself did.
It makes me laugh how Indian historians love to believe that the tiny isolated uprisings by the Indian armed forces in 1946, which resulted in almost no British casualties, chased the British out of India. I have even seen this portrayed as fact in Indian school books. The mutinies did not even have the support of Congress or the Muslim League, who even supported their suppression! They were nothing at all and the type of thing that the British had been actively dealing with for 200 years. There was a far bigger mutiny during WWI, Bose’s INA, consisting of former soldiers, was a kind of mutiny, and let's not even talk about the trouble in 1857 which was ten thousand times bigger, there was even a sizable military mutiny in the 1820's. The trouble in 1946 was a trifling affair. The new British Socialist government(quite rightly)had already made up its mind to get out, something India is loathed to give credit for, as kindly British acquiescence is something they just can't admit - despite a truck load of evidence. This is why they said Gandhi was not a decisive factor.
- I think I deleted that link not because I know or intend to preserve a bias, but rather because it's to a personal website and part of a POV bit in the article. --Improv 13:55, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
- I'm not the original contributor by the way - I think you'll find that numerous atrocities were committed by the Japanese in the Andamans (and everywhere else in South-East Asia): this is widely known and accepted. However, I agree the original link was to what looked like an unreliable and very POV site, hence this statement was essentially unreferenced. In itself though I don't think it is unacceptably POV - if the atrocities happened, they should be referred to here. If I can find a good reference I may reinstate the passage. Sikandarji 17:18, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
- Only thing that is laughable is your attitude and your pretense that you have even a pint of actual intellect while making blanket statements. --Blacksun 12:59, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
I have added the "netaji & Indian communists" subsection .i will add content to it later.Bharatveer 08:10, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Slight POV problem.
There are parts of this article which are probabbly unintentionally ever so slightly biased. I think it is a bit of a diservice and insult to the hundreds of thousands of men of all religions who served in the Indian Army between 1939 and 1945 in both Europe and Asia who fought against nations who were totalitarian and fundementally wrong in nature. In that case it might be neccessary to adjust the article to restore the actual effect of this curious figure in history.--Pudduh 14:12, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
I am a little puzzled by some of the claims in this article@
"In England, he exchanged ideas on the future of India with British Labour Party leaders and political thinkers like Lord Halifax, George Lansbury, Clement Attlee, Arthur Greenwood, Harold Laski, J.B.S. Haldane, Ivor Jennings, G.D.H. Cole, Gilbert Murray and Sir Stafford Cripps" followed by "It may be noted here that during his sojourn in England, only the Labour Party and Liberal politicians agreed to meet Bose when Bose tried to schedule appointments with them. Conservative Party officials refused to meet him or show him the minimum courtesy due to a politician coming from a colony"
I was under the impression that Lord Halifax was a Conservative and that the second Indian MP in the House of Commons during the 1880's and 1890's was also a Conservative. These facts seem to be at odds with the claim.
Categories: WikiProject Indian politics articles | B-Class Indian politics articles | Unknown-importance Indian politics articles | WikiProject West Bengal articles | B-Class West Bengal articles | Unknown-importance West Bengal articles | B-Class India articles | B-Class India articles of High-importance | High-importance India articles | Unassessed biography articles | To do | To do, priority undefined
