The parallel lives of Subhas Chandra Bose and Nehru

About 15 years ago, I appeared before a committee in Vigyan Bhavan. This committee was looking into the death of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose for the tenth time. One of the members referred to my review in Frontline in 2001 (I am not sure of the date) in which I had said that Subhas Bose had died on August 17, 1945 in an air crash in Taiwan.

One of the members asked, “Were you present at Taipei airport on that day?” I normally do not get flustered but this time I was. “No, I was not. I was only 14 years old then.” The next no ball was even more bizarre. The same man frowned at me in disdain. “How are you so sure if you were not in Taipei?” I told him that news of Netaji’s death was broadcast on the radio, and the newspapers in India had reported it.

Before me, Mr Pranab Mukherjee had appeared before the committee. He asked me to be careful and precise. “They are a very strange lot.” So they were.

Beginnings

Jawaharlal Nehru was his own Boswell. Subhas Chandra Bose was not. Bose’s writings were nowhere near Nehru’s. However, Bose had a much rougher time in prison than Nehru. In 2005, when I was in Mandalay on an official visit, I asked if I could see the jail in which Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Subhas Chandra Bose had been incarcerated. The guide told me that the jail had been pulled down some years back. He showed me the place where the jail was and he knew all about Tilak and Bose. “The conditions were appalling. No electricity, no potable water, rats and mosquitoes all over the cell. The food was inedible. Tilak’s and the Netaji’s health took a beating. The two were constantly in poor health for the rest of their lives.”

Nehru and Bose had much in common. Both had charisma, good looks, were secular, and had immense stamina and courage. Their popularity was next only to Gandhiji’s. Both were Cantabrigians. Bose qualified for the Indian Civil Service (ICS), but it went against his grain to serve the British Empire. To the chagrin of his parents, their 23-year-old son resigned from the ICS, which was neither Indian, nor civil, nor service.

On his return to India, his first act was to meet Gandhi. The meeting was not a success. Bose became a CR Das follower. Unfortunately, Das suddenly died in 1925, and in the 1930s, Nehru and Bose spent long years in jail. Both travelled to Europe when out of prison, during the mid-1930s.

In the summer of 1934, Subhas met Emilie Schenkl in Vienna and fell deeply in love with this woman, who was a Roman Catholic. She was 13 years younger than her future husband. Their marriage was a hush-hush affair, but Bose did not want his beloved to keep their relationship secret. A daughter was born, whom Bose never met. In contrast, Nehru was released from prison in late 1935 and rushed to Europe to be with his tubercular wife Kamala. She died on February 28, 1936 in Lausanne. Bose was present.

Differences

In the next three years, their political paths crossed: Nehru was elected the Congress president twice. Bose succeeded him in 1938. The Congress leadership — which meant Gandhiji — did not take kindly to Bose seeking a second term. He, however, defied the Mahatma, whose candidate Dr Pattabhi Sitaramayya lost to Subhas. Rabindranath Tagore supported Bose. Gandhiji took Pattabhi’s defeat as his own.

Commenting on the time, Indian historian and author Rudrangshu Mukherjee said: “Gandhi’s reaction to Subhas’ victory was uncharacteristically devoid of grace. In a public statement he said that since he had prevailed upon Sitaramayya not to withdraw from the contest, the latter’s defeat was "more mine than his". Eventually, Mahatmaji had his way and Subhas resigned, and launched his own party — the Forward Bloc. Throughout the unseemly controversy Nehru’s behaviour was Hamlet-like. This did not rebound to his credit.”

The Nehru-Bose drift was soon to become a storm. The two exchanged heated letters in March 1939. Subhas’s letter was 20 pages long, Nehru’s reply, 13 pages. The Bose letter was ill-tempered, Nehru’s, elegantly vague and unusually defensive. He wrote, “But, I am a dull subject to discuss at the tail end of an inordinately long letter. Let us leave it at this that I am an unsatisfactory human being who is dissatisfied with himself and the world, and whom the petty world he lives in does not particularly like.”

"Passing friendship"

Their differences were deep on vital matters. Nehru despised Hitler and Mussolini. He had refused to meet the Italian dictator in March 1936, while Subhas met him five times. His meeting with Hitler on May 29, 1943 in Berlin was anything but reassuring. Bose’s stay in Germany and his refusal to condemn Hitler’s horrific treatment of the Jews attracted huge criticism. Nehru’s approach to the Jewish issue was entirely different. Bose left Germany "empty handed".

On February 9, 1943, Netaji sailed in a German submarine for the east accompanied by Abid Hassan Saffrani, who after 1947, became India’s ambassador to Denmark. Between 1943 and 1945, Netaji Bose was in Japan and Singapore, Malaya and Myanmar, leading the Indian National Army (INA), which he had established with the help of his Japanese hosts. It was a valiant effort but destined to be a failure. In his broadcasts to India, Netaji called Gandhiji the "Father of the Nation". He also gave us “Jai Hind”.

Despite lauding Gandhiji, Netaji and Nehru could never reconcile their differences. Commenting on the relationship, Mukherjee said. “In the crevasse of their rivalry of aim, fell the tension-fraught and passing friendship of Subhas and Jawaharlal. Their lives could have no tryst.” Truer words were never spoken.