The blood patriot

“Ittehad, Itmad, Qurbani” (Unity, faith, sacrifice)
— Motto of the Azad Hind Fauj (The Indian National Army)

The 114th birth anniversary of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose — recently commemorated on January 23, 2011 — is an appropriate occasion to remember him and the Az

ad Hind Fauj. On this occasion, the government of West Bengal declared that the day would henceforth be observed as Deshprem Diwas, or Patriotism Day. The implied paradox that patriotism could be reduced to an annual one-day event seemed to escape notice. If patriotism is not to be the last refuge of the scoundrel, it has to be a full-time job, without weekends or holidays.
Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was a patriot, perhaps one of the greatest freedom fighters India’s struggle for Independence has produced. He remains an unblemished and unchallenged icon for a cynical, disillusioned generation in search for role models. On the international stage, Netaji keeps company in the pantheon of soldier heroes like Simon Bolivar, Jose de San Martin, Giuseppe Garibaldi and Ho Chi Minh, an aspect downplayed in India, especially by the ahimsa establishment, whose votaries claimed exclusive credit for non-violence for bringing Independence to this country.
There have always been murmurings of an unspoken conspiracy of silence to keep Netaji at a profile lower than the “conformist” freedom fighters. Earlier, the Indian Left had reviled Netaji during the 1940s as an Indian Quisling, heaping opprobrium upon him for collaborating with the Axis powers against their beloved spiritual homeland, the Soviet Union. The Indian National Congress — India’s Grand Old Party dominated by the Nehru-Gandhi duopoly — viewed Bose as a threat to the establishment and successfully manipulated his exit from the organisational hierarchy.
Now, over the past few years, the very same political class which had earlier denigrated him or sought to sideline him is scrambling to retrace steps and reappropriate Netaji for their political agendas, especially as the next Assembly elections in West Bengal looms closer. Those who had done their best to consign him to oblivion after Independence, have now rediscovered his electoral weightage and are strenuously attempting to reconfigure Netaji as one of their own.
Netaji’s greatest achievement was the revival and revitalisation of the Indian National Army (INA) after the initial pioneering effort in 1941 by Capt. Mohan Singh failed to fructify. Under his inspirational leadership the INA became India’s Mukti Bahini, seeking to confront the country’s colonial overlords militarily for the first time since the Sepoy Mutiny in 1857. “Chalo Dilli” was no street slogan for political processions, but a proclamation of grand strategic intent, though achievement of the objective had all the prospects of a hard long war.
West Bengal has appropriated Netaji as its own illustrious son, though his birth place and initial education were in Orissa and the INA he created had few, if any, exclusive linkages with Bengal, except in individual capacities. The INA recruited extensively amongst the Indian diaspora in what is today Southeast Asia, but their core fighting strength was fashioned out of the wreckage of the British-Indian infantry battalions incarcerated in Japanese prison camps after debacles in Hong Kong, Malaya and the retreat from Burma. These included illustrious entities like 1/14 Punjab (now 5 Punjab of the Pakistan Army), and 2/17 Dogra and 2/18 Garhwal Rifles, both adorning the post-Independence Indian Army. These were trained professional infantry and there was thus a strong leavening of the traditional British martial classes in the INA. But they were totally intermixed into what today’s class-regimentalised Indian Army would designate as “all India, all class” units, while the Bahadur Group of the INA commanded by Col. Shaukat Hayat Malik can lay strong claims to be the earliest ancestor of the special forces in the Indian Army, the Navy and the Air Force.
The initial offensive of the INA was incorporated into Operation U-Go launched by the Japanese 15th Army under Gen. Renya Mutaguchi in 1944 in the Imphal-Kohima region on the Indo-Burmese border. From this liberated zone inside India the INA planned to revert to a guerilla mode and infiltrate into the strategic depths of India’s eastern region in Assam and Bengal, to build up a low-intensity campaign in the interior exploiting anti-British sentiment fanned by the Great Bengal Famine raging at the time, while the Japanese hammered down the front door. The ultimate outcome for India if Japan had emerged victorious can only be speculated on, but the history of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere which Japan sought to establish in Asia does not make for comforting reading.
The post-Independence Indian Army is the spiritual and temporal heir of two armies — the British Indian Army and the Indian National Army. From the former, it has imbibed almost every aspect of its functioning, mannerisms and attitudes; from the latter, nothing. Its principal opponent, the Pakistan Army, is a highly Islamicised military which uses terror as a weapon of state. Is there any matching military and spiritual doctrine to provide sustenance for an avowedly secular Indian Army, now mired in moral distress as well? In the 64th year of the nation’s Independence, the modern Indian Army must introspect deeply upon its Azad Hind Fauj heritage which stressed patriotism as a way of life, something with far more substantial foundations than the mere regimental loyalties which have served so far. The true heritage of Netaji and the INA, which goes well beyond the mere military and into the spiritual, ethical and emotional region of military motivation, will provide succour. The teachings of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose must become required study material in its professional institutions, to motivate the Army and prepare it for the future in an increasingly turbulent environment.

Gen. Shankar Roychowdhury is a former Chief of Army Staff and a former member of Parliament