Burma’s Capital without a Netaji memorial

Recently under the sponsorship of the Indian Embassy in Rangoon, "The Forgotten Hero," the Indian film about Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was shown to the public in Burma. It was screened on August 15, (India's Independence Day) free of charge. The $US5 million film partially shot in Burma, illustrates the life of Bose. Directed by Mr. Shyam Benegal, a part of the film was shot in Burma in December 2003 for 20 days.

The great Indian war hero Subhas Chandra Bose may have spent his finest and fruitful days in Burma, but its capital city does not have any memorial of his. The charismatic independence hero, Netaji, as he was popularly known, fought the British Army with the gallant force of his Indian National Army.

The INA's head office was based in Rangoon. Even when Netaji proclaimed the provisional Indian government, he selected Rangoon as its head quarter. More over, Netaji maintained a special relationship with the common Burmese as well the father of the Nation Aung San. General Aung San reciprocated Netaji's feelings in a befitting manner on different occasions. So for any Indian visitor to Rangoon, it is a surprising revelation that that city does not have any monument to pay respect to Netaji.

The house and buildings, once used by Netaji and his force INA, are either not preserved properly by the present military rulers or have been destroyed for reasons which are unconvincing. Now most of the new generation of Rangoonians do not have any idea about Netaji or have seen any historical monuments related to the legendary war hero.

"For Netaji, Burma and its capital Rangoon had a special niche in his life's purpose of making India free. His love for and comradeship with the people and the Government of Burma, during the struggle of the Indian National Army, under his leadership, will remain as an indelible landmark of Indian history. The respect and affection which he received from the Burmese leaders and the regard and reverence the Burmese people had for him, will, it is hoped, further strengthen the close bonds of friendship and trust that exist between the people of India and Burma," wrote Amiya Nath Bose (dated January 23, 1979), the former Ambassador of India to the then Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma as the preface of a book titled "Netaji and Burma".

Born in Cuttack (Orissa) on January 23, 1897, Netaji completed his graduation in 1919 from the Scottish Church College, Calcutta in Philosophy. He went to England for the Indian Civil Service examination in 1920 and got admitted in Cambridge. But Netaji did not complete the probation period and he resigned from the I.C.S in 1921 and came back to Calcutta to join the nationalist movement. He was then arrested and was put in Mandalay prison for 3 years. Netaji was released in 1927 and he was later elected as the president of Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee.

He was again imprisoned during the Salt Satyagraha led by Mahatma Gandhi. Later when the Gandhi- Irwin pact was signed, Netaji was released but he protested against the pact. This time, Netaji was detained and deported to Europe. Netaji returned to India in1936 and was jailed again till the next year. Netaji was elected the president of Indian National congress in1938.

However, differences with Gandhi led him to resign from the post in 1939 and he formed the Forward Bloc, a nationalist political party. When India was forced to get involved in the 2nd World War, his party opposed it and launched a massive agitational programme in 1940. Netaji was imprisoned again; but this time he started a hunger strike and compelled the authorities to release him. Though he was released, Netaji was placed under house arrest.

Netaji fled from his home in Calcutta on January 26, 1941 and reached Peshwar to arrive in Kabul in the next few days. Netaji had acquired an Italian diplomatic passport (with the help of the Italian Embassy at Kabul) and resumed his journey to Germany through Russia. From there Netaji started regular broadcasts from Radio Berlin against the British from January 1942.

Netaji arrived in Singapore in 1943 and took charge as the head of the Indian National Army (Azad Hind Fauj) from Rashbehari Bose. He became the supreme commander of INA on August 25 1943.

Taking command of the INA, Netaji said while addressing the soldiers, "Throughout my public career, I have always felt that, though India is otherwise ripe for independence in every way, she has lacked one thing, namely, an army of liberation. George Washington of America could fight and win freedom, because he had his army. Garibaldi could liberate Italy because he had his armed volunteers with him. It is your privilege and honor to be the first to come forward and organize India's national army. By doing so you have removed the last obstacle in our path to freedom ... When France declared war on Germany in 1939 and the campaign began, there was but one cry, which rose from the lips of German soldiers -'To Paris! To Paris!' When the brave soldiers of Nippon set out on their march in December 1941, there was but one cry, - 'To Singapore! To Singapore!' Comrades! My soldiers! Let your battle cry be - 'To Delhi! To Delhi!' How many of us will individually survive this war of freedom, I do not know. But I do know this, that we shall ultimately win and our task will not end until our surviving heroes hold a victory parade on another graveyard of the British Empire - Lal Kila or the Red Fort of ancient Delhi."

Later Netaji formed the Provisional Government of Free India on October 21 1943 and the provisional government, head quartered in Rangoon, received recognition from different countries including Japan, Burma, Croatia, Germany, the Philippines, Nanking China, Manchuto, Italy, Siam (Thailand) among others. Immediate recognition came from Dr. Ba Maw's Provisional Government of Burma to the Provisional Government headed by Netaji on October 24. Netaji acknowledged his heartiest gratitude to the government of Burma and the people for all the help while carrying the struggle.

"I know, the day will come when Free India will repay that debt of gratitude in a generous manner," said Netaji in a speech delivered on April 24, 1945 in Rangoon.

Meanwhile INA had also shifted its base from Singapore to Rangoon on January 7, 1944. After the Andaman and Nicobar islands were won in March 1944, the INA marched into Burma bordering Indian towns Imphal and Kohima. But following the surrender of Japan, the INA had to retreat. Netaji is believed to have died in an air crash over Taipei on August 18 1945.

While Netaji was in Mandalay prison during 1925-27, he narrated the experience of his stay there in his book and was all praise for the Burmese people. "There is something in them (Burmese people) which one cannot help liking. They are exceedingly warm hearted, frank and jovial in their temperament. They are of course quick-tempered and are sometime liable to loose their self-control when under the influence of temper. But that did not appear to me as a serious short-coming. What struck me greatly was the innate artistic sense which every Burman has. If they have any faults, it is their extreme naiveté and absence of all feeling against foreigners," Netaji wrote.

Even General Aung San had a strong conviction regarding Netaji and deemed Subhas Chandra Bose as a sincere friend of Burma and Burmese people. Netaji and Aung San came into close and frequent contacts during the 2nd World War. During a speech at the City Hall Rangoon on July 24 1946, General Aung San said, "I knew Netaji, even before I met him for the first time in Calcutta in 1940, by reading various accounts of his life of sacrifice and struggle and last of all, his own book 'The Indian Struggle 1920-42' which was in those days banned in India and Burma."

Aung San also added, "I knew him also as a sincere friend of Burma and Burmese people. Between him and myself, there was complete mutual trust, and although time was against both of us we could not come to the stage of joint action for the common objective of freedom of our respective nations. We did have an understanding in those days that, in any event and whatever happened, the INA and the BNA should never fight each other."

Speaking to this correspondent, a sensitive Rangoonian, who preferred to be anonymous, said," I do not believe, the Government of Burma is ignorant about Netaji and his relationship with Rangoon. They are surely aware of the enormous struggle carried out by Subhas Chandra Bose from the soil of Burma for India's Independence. The military rulers may have assumed that glorifying Netaji in any manner would be harmful for them, because it will directly or indirectly help and inspire Aung San Suu Kyi and her tireless effort for establishing democracy in Burma."

The events around the times are interesting. Apparently, Bose admired Hitler. Anyway, the British Army, largely consisting of Indian troops, eventually defeated the INA and Japanese expansion at the Indo-Burma border. Here's a cut-and-paste from Encyclopaedia Britannica 2004:

Bose, Subhas Chandra

born , c. Jan. 23, 1897, Cuttack, Orissa, India
died Aug. 18, 1945, Taipei, Taiwan?

byname Netaji (Hindi: “Respected Leader”) Indian revolutionary who led an Indian national force against the Western powers during World War II.

The son of a wealthy and prominent Bengali lawyer, Bose studied at Presidency College, Calcutta (from which he was expelled in 1916 for nationalist activities), and the Scottish Churches College (graduating in1919) and then was sent by his parents to the University of Cambridge in England to prepare for the Indian Civil Service. In 1920 he passed the civil-service examination, but in April 1921, after hearing of the nationalist turmoils in India, he resigned his candidacy and hurried backto India. Throughout his career, especially in its early stages, he was supported financially and emotionally by an elder brother, Sarat Chandra Bose (1889–1950), a wealthy Calcutta lawyer and Congress Party politician.

The Non-cooperation Movement had been started by Mohandas K. Gandhi, who had made the Indian National Congress a powerful nonviolent organization. Bose was advised by Gandhi to work under Chitta Ranjan Das, a politician in Bengal. There he became a youth educator, journalist, and commandant of the Bengal Congress volunteers. His activities led to his imprisonment in December 1921. In 1924 he was appointed chief executive officer of the corporation of Calcutta, with Das as mayor. Bose was soon after deported to Burma (Myanmar) because he was suspected of connections with secret revolutionary movements. Released in 1927, he returned to find Bengal Congress affairs in disarray after the death of Das.

Gandhi resumed his Congress activity, and Bose was elected president of the Bengal Congress. When the civil disobedience movement was started in 1930, Bose was already in detention. Released and then rearrested, he was finally allowed to proceed to Europe after a year's detention. In enforced exile, he wrote The Indian Struggle, 1920–1934 and pleaded India's cause with European leaders. He returned from Europe in 1936, was again taken into custody, and was released after a year. In 1938 he was elected president of the Indian National Congress and formed a national planning committee, which formulated a policy of industrialization. This did not harmonize with Gandhian economic thought, which clung to the spinning wheel as a symbol. Bose's vindication came in 1939, when he defeated a Gandhian rival for reelection. Nonetheless, the “rebel president” felt bound to resign because of the lack of Gandhi's support. He founded the Forward Bloc, hoping to rally radical elements, but was again incarcerated in July 1940. His refusal to remain in prison at this critical period of India's history was expressed in a determination to fast to death, which frightened the British government into releasing him. On Jan. 26, 1941, though closely watched, he escaped from his Calcutta residence in disguise and, traveling via Kabul and Moscow, eventually reached Germany in April.

In Nazi Germany Bose came under the tutelage of a newly created Special Bureau for India, guided by Adam von Trott zu Solz. He and other Indians who had gathered in Berlin made regular broadcasts from the German-sponsored Azad Hind Radio beginning in January 1942, speaking in English, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, and Pashtu.

A little more than a year after the Japanese invasion of Southeast Asia, Bose left Germany, traveling by German and Japanese submarines and plane, and arrived in May 1943 in Tokyo. On July 4 he assumed leadership of the Indian Independence Movement in East Asia and proceded,with Japanese aid and influence, to form a trained army of about 40,000 Indian men and women rounded up in Japanese-occupied Southeast Asia. On Oct. 21, 1943, Bose proclaimed the establishment of a provisional independent Indian government, and his so-called Indian National Army (Azad Hind Fauj), alongside Japanese troops, advanced to Rangoon (Yangôn) and thence overland into India, reaching Indian soil on March 18, 1944, and moving into Kohima and the plains of Imphal. In a stubborn battle, the mixed Indian and Japanese forces, lacking Japanese air support, were defeated and forced to retreat; the Indian National Army nevertheless for some time succeeded in maintaining its identity as a liberation army based in Burma and then Indochina. With the defeat of Japan, however, Bose's fortunes ended.

A few days after Japan's announced surrender in August 1945, Bose, fleeing Southeast Asia, reportedly died in a Japanese hospital in Taiwan as a result of burn injuries from a plane crash.

Why in this day and age and at this late time in history does anyone in India want to honor a Fascist who fought against the majority of his countrymen on their own country's soil? How do these admirers think India would have fared under Hitler's ethnic cleansing or the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere? It's not like they don't have enough people to honor, Indians have won Nobel Prizes in Literature and the hard sciences in the postwar era. Why honor a very debatable historical footnote?

Well firstly you have no idea about the amount of support Netaji S. C. Bose still has among Indians today (including myself). And to figure that out you have got to ask an Indian. Netaji is regarded as a Fascist only by the Anglo centric media and Raj apologists, not by Indians. For fact Netaji S. C. Bose had much more support then Gandhi and Nehru combined. Our army fought in World War I & II because we were subjects of the British Raj had no other choice but to become cannon fodder wherever the British fought. None of those was our war. We had nothing at stake between the British Empire and the Nazis. The Indian Army fighting in World War I & II were not exactly fighting for their country, the INA lead by Netaji S. C. Bose were.

And Netaji S. C. Bose never approved Nazism or Hitlers actions but his logic was simple, he was ready to shake hands with the devil if it means he can free his country. And remember to the Indian eyes, British Empire and Axis power were equal evils.

Why honor a very debatable historical footnote?

You have no idea, in India Netaji S. C. Bose is bigger then Gandhi because it wasnt Gandhi's non violence that got India its freedom (a myth popularised by the Anglo centric media and the British so-called "Indologists") but the mutiny within the British Indian Army sparked off by the INA(Indian National Army) that lead to the downfall of the British Empire.

I was afraid the answer would be something like this. In other words, Bose's role is currently undergoing a historical re-interpretation - long after the event- by current ultra-nationalists. And like many historical re-interpretations, a lot of embarrassing facts are being swept under the rug in the process.

If India was in the mood you say, then the nation should have been in turmoil during World War II, which it wasn't. The nation was highly governable at that time. You also state the British Indian army was cannon fodder, but in fact, it was a volunteer organization, and so many volunteered to fight that Churchill insisted the Indian divisions be reduced ( I believe by at least half) in the middle of the war. Granted, there were limited opportunities then and enlistment might have seemed a opportunistic way of advancement, yet enrollment was nevertheless a volunteer affair.

If India wants to honor someone that requires no history-massaging in the post War era, I would recommend a statue of Nobel Prize-winning Sir Vidia Naipaul in Rangoon poised in the midst of a highly articulate diatribe on his favorite theme of how fixation on the colonial past is vitiating current Indian culture ( Yes, I know he is West Indian, but he is accepted as a subcontinent spokesman as well).

I was afraid the answer would be something like this. In other words, Bose's role is currently undergoing a historical re-interpretation - long after the event- by current ultra-nationalists.

To an extent you are right. Bose's role is currently undergoing a historical revision and it is about time.

About time we Indians take a re-look at our own history and do so purely from an Indian perspective rather then be at the receiving end of a highly biased Westernised and Anglo-centric version dished out by the western world and I absolutely disagree with you that any revision/re-interpretations necessarily involves suppressing embarrassing facts. On the contrary a lot more unknown facts comes to light. And in any case there never was any embarrassing facts relating to Bose except that (and his only crime being) he allied himelf with the Nazis and the Japanese and we all know he did so openly and as Indians we understand why he did it and completely approve of it. In fact it is considered one of the proudest moments of Indian history when the highly outnumbered and overstretched INA beat back a vastly superior allied army to liberate Imphal and raise the Indian tricolour there (the first town in India to be liberated).

If any it was the British who hid the facts for a long time and thereafter it was the Congress party which underplayed/supressed facts about Bose (facts that were unpalatable to them). For instance did you know that Gandhi and his stooges within the Congress were roundly defeated by Bose (who had a huge popularity among the masses) in the Congress presidential elections? Did you know that for the masses Bose was as big as (probably bigger than) Gandhi and neither Gandhi nor the British loved the idea of Bose leading the Indian independence struggle? Gandhi was considered more manaegable by the British while Bose was condsidered a hardliner and a rebel maverick who could potentially ignite a massive rebellion for independence. It was both Gandhi's and British idea to get rid of Bose from the Indian political scean.

With the demise of the Nehruvian-Gandhian Congress, and the present rise of the right wing Hindu nationalist parties, Bose's role is being given its deserving place in history. For a long time the victorious allied nations wrote their own version of history and potrayed Bose as a fascist simply because he waged war against the British rule in India. Its a version of history most Indians find unacceptable. Today even the Congress (the current government being held by the Congress) has accepted and recognized the role of S. C Bose in the Indian independence struggle.

If India was in the mood you say, then the nation should have been in turmoil during World War II, which it wasn't. The nation was highly governable at that time.

If that is so then why did you have Jalianwala bagh massacre or police shoot-out on innocent civilians protesting Simon Commission. If India was so "highly governable" then what was the British doing repressing Gandhi's "civil-disobedience" or "quit India movement" involving millions and millions of people all over India. Jalianwala bagh massacre was a classic example (not the first or the only one) of how the British ruthlessly crushed any brewing of turmoil much like how red China crushes democratic movements with Tianmen square like incidents. Supressing freedom and and crushing rebellion can temporarily make it more governable but it does not change the general mood of the population.

You also state the British Indian army was cannon fodder, but in fact, it was a volunteer organization, and so many volunteered to fight that Churchill insisted the Indian divisions be reduced ( I believe by at least half) in the middle of the war. Granted, there were limited opportunities then and enlistment might have seemed a opportunistic way of advancement, yet enrollment was nevertheless a volunteer affair.

Hardly surprising in a country (British India) where more then 75% of the population was reeling under massive poverty or starvation due to famine or droughts. Given the extreme level of poverty of the masses under the British system, it was by no means difficult to find useful raw materials for cannon fodder. The army was more often the only source of making a living. Voluntary enrollment does not mean that Indians signed up in large numbers only to fight Nazism (a concept most Indians had nothing to do with). In any case, for us, it was Britain's war in which our solidiers were sacrificed but our contributions were conveniently forgotton and never recognized except for a passing mention once in a while .

I greatly appreciate and agree with some of the writings of V. S Naipaul but the fact is Naipaul is no historical figure nor is he (sadly) an Indian citizen let alone being a leader in the Indian struggle. Even in India not many know him.

We have plenty of historical icons who gave their lives for the independence struggle (and whose contributions were never recognized) to go after nobel prize winners who made a carrier out of nothing but hypocritical blustering (who never had to walk the talk) from his armchair. (The latest I heard of V. S Naipaul was that he has move away from his pro-Hindu agenda and has become secular now that he has a Pakistani Muslim wife).

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