It has been a ‘silly season’ on Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose but all sides risk backlash

A few years ago, a friend of mine objected to Blow Horn, a spiced-up cider being sold in Britain, having a likeness of Subhas Bose’s face on the label of the bottle.

Clearly, the name and Bose’s image had been inspired by inscriptions often found on the rear of Indian trucks. Neither my friend nor I are puritanical or teetotallers. Even Bose later in his life was known to enjoy a cognac.

However, I wrote to the chief executive of Cotswold Cider Company, producers of the beverage, pointing out Indians may not be “amused, indeed offended” by Bose figuring on his brand and suggested “it may be sensible to remove his picture”.

Rory Souter of the firm replied to say my comments “had been noted”. I soon discovered the artist’s impression of Bose was quietly withdrawn from the product.

I was reminded of the above when I observed a controversy had arisen about a portrait of Bose unveiled by the Indian president Ram Nath Kovind at Rashtrapati Bhavan. The allegation made by Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Mohua Moitra was the painting was based on a still of an actor who had played Bose’s role in a recent feature film. The president’s office dismissed the charge. The fact is Moitra’s claim was incorrect; at the same time the reproduction did not quite resemble Bose’s features. Indeed, it looked much like recreations on the back of Indian lorries, as well as akin to posters and calendars found at Indian roadside eateries and convenience stores.

Daily controversies over Bose render no favours to respecting him. Indeed, the unveiling of the 125th year of his birth has been particularly unseemly and unbefitting of the occasion. Since their surfacing at the centre under Narendra Modi, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have been attempting to appropriate Bose’s political legacy with the shrill accusation that the Indian National Congress “threw him out” and since the country’s independence have deliberately erased him from history books. These with obviously West Bengal state elections in mind.

Five years ago, Modi’s attack against the incumbent chief minister Mamata Banerjee and appeal for poribartan or change fell on deaf years. BJP won a pitiful three seats in an assembly of 294. However, their nakedly divisive agenda paid dividends last year when they mustered 18 of the 42 seats from the state in the Lok Sabha. Now, a distasteful competition has broken out between BJP and TMC to outdo the other in their embrace of Bose.

Everyone is entitled to pay homage to him, regardless of his or her ideological affiliation. But the fact is BJP, given their diametrically opposite views on politics, economics and religious and social issues as compared to Bose’s vision, have, arguably, no claim on him whatsoever. The Hindu Mahasabha and the likes of Vinayak Savarkar and Shyama Prasad Mukherjee were, for instance, poles apart from Bose’s uncompromising position on secularism.

In 1924, as a 27-year-old chief executive of the Calcutta Corporation, Bose introduced a series of radical reforms. Among these was a step taken to give a higher proportion of jobs to qualified Muslims (who were the majority community in united Bengal). When he was challenged by some Mahasabha members of the body, he replied, “I entirely repudiate the suggestion that the appointments have been made in utter disregard of the best interests of the Corporation.” He added, “I do not think I shall be wrong if I say that in the past Hindus have enjoyed what may be regarded as a sort of monopoly in the matters of appointments.” As for Savarkar, “the father of Hindutva”, Bose found him “too narrow in his thinking”.

Bose belonged to Congress. He was twice elected president of the INC; and with them in spirit till his last breath, notwithstanding his differences with Mahatma Gandhi and especially the right-wing of the organisation. TMC assert their proximity to Bose’s ideals as a result of being comprised of former Congress members. It could, though, be argued, no matter what the provocation, Bose did not deem its fit to defect from the INC, which Banerjee and her band did for comparatively flimsier reason. And to put the record straight, Forward Bloc was formed as a group - not a political party - by Bose to consolidate the left cause within Congress.

On his 124th birth anniversary on 23 January last, the central government of BJP arranged a function in Kolkata to celebrate the event with Modi in attendance. It was astonishing that they chose the city’s Victoria Memorial – a symbol of British imperialism in India - as the venue. That is not to suggest history should be denied and the reality of British India obliterated. But commemorating an Indian freedom fighter’s birthday at the premises of monument to remember a British empress of India was to say the least insensitive. Event managers should be aware a backdrop needs to be appropriate and not chosen just because of architecture.

Incidentally, no election in West Bengal has ever been won in the name of Subhas Bose or any other Bengali icon since Indian freedom. Congress, the CPI(M)-led Left and TMC have all succeeded on the basis of contemporary, contextual political or economic issues.

The undisguisedly religious, provocative and un-Bengali shouts of “Jai Shri Ram” at Victoria Memorial were certainly an affront. The chant collides headlong with Bose’s example of even-handedness towards faiths and is alien to the culture and religious practices of Hindu Bengalis, who worship Goddesses Durga, Kali and other deities, but not Ram, who is considered to be merely an incarnation of God.

The RSS-dictated BJP’s attitude towards West Bengal is dangerously gambolling with the wind. Their policy of Hindi-isation and Hindu-isation is in serious confrontation with the Bengali cultural and language and their heritage of peaceful coexistence between castes and religions. Military and political leaders of West Pakistan made the gigantic mistake of undermining such sentiments in East Pakistan and paid a heavy price.