IN THE West, regard for the founding fathers of independent India is usually confined to Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, the pacifist in a dhoti and the suave Cantabrigian. By contrast Subhas Chandra Bose, or “Netaji” (“revered leader”), took up arms against the British and sided with the Axis powers in the second world war, dying in a plane crash in 1945 in Japanese-occupied Taiwan. The British called him a quisling, but his martial valour still inspires Indians. In his native Bengal most public places seem to be named after him.
Yet in India the story of Bose’s life remains partially classified—supposedly on grounds of national security. So it made for good drama on January 23rd, Netaji’s birthday (in 1897), when the government of Narendra Modi declassified 100 of its files on Bose and promised more to come. They shed little light, but that is hardly the point. Bose is one of the few heroes of India’s independence movement that the prime minister’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) can hope to claim—Gandhi and Nehru belong firmly to its arch-rival, the Congress...Continue reading
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