Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose would have been 127 years-old this month. Eighty years after he died or went missing, in the corporeal sense of the meaning, he continues to exert tremendous influence on Bengali lives on both sides of the old Bengal. It is therefore only natural that we go back to him and try to understand the man and the politics he represented before he vanished for all time. And that word ‘vanished’ is at the core of much of our research on Netaji, for there are many among us who remain convinced that he did not die in August 1945 but may have been spirited away somewhere.

Over the decades, students of the Netaji mystique have propagated the notion that he was abducted and taken away to Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union --- because of his unforgivable dealings with the likes of Adolf Hitler and Hideki Tojo --- and never returned.

Their suspicion remains, that Netaji may have perished in a Stalinist prison. There have been writers who have quoted people in the know about the reported plane crash in Taipei as suggesting that on the day in question nothing in the nature of a plane coming down or burning up in flames occurred. There have been reports emanating from Taipei that contrary to certain opinions expressed about bad weather conditions on the day Netaji’s plane crashed, there was no rain or storm.

The mystery behind Netaji’s disappearance has therefore never been resolved. The generation of Bengalis, born in the 1920s and which worshipped him without question, did not believe that he died in 1945. Various ideas were given out --- that he had walked away from the scene when the inevitability of failure in the struggle against British rule stared him in the face, that he had quietly moved off into seclusion in a remote part of India and lived out the remains of his life there, that he had been spirited away by enemies unwilling to see him re-establish a foothold in Indian politics.

In May 1964, as people filed past Jawaharlal Nehru’s body to pay their last respects to him, newspapers reported the presence of a saffron-clad sadhu who came and stood before the newly deceased prime minister’s corpse for a while before disappearing into the crowds.

He bore something of an uncanny resemblance to Netaji, which fact led the media to have the image of the man published in the newspapers and ask the natural question: Could he have been Subhas Chandra Bose? No one saw the mysterious visitor again once he had walked away from Nehru’s bier.

In the eight decades since August 1945, a veritable library of works on Netaji’s life, politics and death/disappearance has come up in India, which works have of course drawn passionate responses especially from Bengalis around the world. Among the more significant of works on Netaji is Sugata Bose’s detailed His Majesty’s Opponent and Leonard Gordon’s Brothers Against the Raj, the latter a compendium of the struggle against British colonial rule by Subhas and Sarat Chandra Bose. Add to that the relatively recent Nehru and Bose: Parallel Lives by Rudrangshu Mukherjee.

There are of course scores of others, some extremely emotional in tone and tenor and others dealing with the fraught relations Netaji had with both Gandhi and Nehru. To the credit of Indian historians and political leaders, though, Subhas Chandra Bose’s place in Indian history has never been questioned or undermined.

Nothing has ever been done to airbrush him out of history. That he solicited German and Japanese support in his war against British colonialism has never been held against him. In an era of historical distortions or misreadings of history, the resolve of Indians to keep Netaji on a high pedestal is remarkable.

Subhas Chandra Bose is today part of Indian and of course Bengali folklore. That the Indian national flag owes its original form to Netaji is remembered. Recalled too is his contribution to the choice of Rabindranath Tagore’s jana gana mana as independent India’s national anthem. Netaji’s sufferings, which were on a higher degree than the pains gone through by other Indian leaders at the hands of the Raj, have made a legend of the man.

His incarceration at the hands of the British colonial power is the stuff of epic tales, of political tragedy. His principles were clear and unalloyed by convenience.  At a time when any other politician would have heeded Gandhi’s advice to stay away from seeking a second term as president of the Indian National Congress, in the late 1930s, Bose went ahead to defeat the Mahatma’s man Pattabhi Sitaramaiya and reassert his appeal among Congressmen.

It is of course another matter that Gandhi was peeved at Netaji’s victory. It remains a huge question as to how Indian history or Congress politics would have evolved had Gandhi not turned his back on Bose. Netaji did not receive the kind of support he thought would be coming from Nehru in his struggle, but of course Nehru had his reasons to stay clear of what he saw as Bose’s increasingly radical politics.

Rabindranath Tagore foresaw the future in Subhas Chandra Bose. In a preceding era, Bose for his part believed that Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das embodied the aspirations of freedom-seeking Indians. Das’ unexpected death in 1925 was an immense shock for Netaji and in a way left him to carry on the struggle alone, all by himself. It is a tribute to Netaji’s valour and wisdom, to his heritage that Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman saw in him the heroic figure from whom he could draw inspiration for his own political struggles in post-1947 Pakistan.

Subhas Chandra Bose remains an authentic epic tale in our telling and retelling of history. His Indian National Army (INA) and his government are part of history enriching the struggle of India’s people across the communal divide for freedom from foreign subjugation. How would he assess the situation developing in India after 1945? Would his presence prevent the communal riots which ravaged Calcutta in 1946? Would an assertive Netaji be a pivotal force in preventing the partition of the country in 1947? Had he returned home after 1945, would he be able to reclaim his place in politics, occupied as the space then was by Gandhi, Nehru and Jinnah? Given his radicalism, would he be able to inaugurate a democratic structure of government, the way Nehru was to do, in a free India? These questions will remain unanswered. History is silent on things that might have been.

(Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was born on 23 January 1897 and died/disappeared on 18 August 1945)
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Syed Badrul Ahsan writes on politics, diplomacy and history