No, dear land of liberty, you can’t judge Bose. He sought it, too

Subhash Chandra Bose’s oft-debated status as ‘Nazi collaborator’ is in the news again, courtesy a discussion in the US press after a picture of the (Indian-origin) Chief of Staff to Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wearing a T-shirt with Bose’s image.

Volumes can be written about the topic, and then it gets lost in hyperbole and sentiment, so I am attempting a brief, bullet-point summation of why an American description of Bose as a Nazi collaborator is massively preachy and sanctimonious:

1. The USSR, the cherished Allied partner in WW2, was a ‘Nazi collaborator’ till the morning of Operation Barbarossa, courtesy the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Soviet trains loaded with foodgrains and oil were steaming into German territory till the moment the first guns opened up. Much is made of Germany’s invasion of Poland – after all, Britain and France declared war on Germany in response to Hitler marching into Poland. But did Germany occupy all of Poland? No. While the Poles were still fighting, the eastern half of Poland was occupied by Stalin’s troops as per a German-Soviet pact. Did the Allies therefore declare war on the USSR as well, since the issue was guaranteeing Polish sovereignty? Of course not. The US, a sovereign nation, subsequently allying with Stalin as soon as he was at war with Hitler, on the ‘enemy’s enemy’ rationality, wasn’t ‘collaboration with a dictatorship’, but Bose, a citizen of a colonised state nobody was willing to support militarily, seeking support from nations that were at war with Britain was?

2. There were thousands upon thousands of Nazi collaborators in Europe. Half of Europe was collaborating with the Nazis during the occupation, when Hitler seemed unstoppable, either out of ideological necessity or out of the need for self-preservation. Nations that proudly talk of liberty today were filling trains with Jews and sending them off as ordered, without the least resistance to German instructions. Anti-Semitism in Europe existed before Hitler and didn’t die with him. Vichy France’s troops fought the Allies on multiple fronts, on multiple occasions. Fact check: More French troops bore arms for the Axis than for the Allies during the course of WW2.

3. Bose was no Nazi fanboy. If at all, he was on better terms with Mussolini than with Hitler, with whom he had one single, unflattering meeting that left him distinctly unimpressed. In a letter to Dr Thierfelder, in 1936, he spelt out his views on the culture the Nazis were instilling in the country: ‘When I first visited Germany in 1933 I had hopes that the new German nation which had risen to consciousness of its national strength & self-respect would instinctively feel a deep sympathy for other nations struggling in the same direction. Today I regret that I have to return to India with the conviction that the new nationalism in Germany is not only narrow and selfish, but arrogant… The new racial philosophy which has a very weak scientific foundation stands for the glorification of the white races in general, and the German race in particular’. If he thereafter came back to that Germany, despite not being a fan of Nazism, it was on as pragmatic a ground as on Britain and the US coming to Russia’s aid despite not being lovers of communism. In times of war, you cannot pick and choose basis nuances.

4. Should he have gone to other nations to seek help in securing India’s freedom? As a Leftist, he may well have considered reaching out to the USSR, but when Germany declared war on the Soviet Union, the option of joint German-Soviet support became impossible. The US, which today is discussing his status as a collaborator, should ideally have been the first option for anybody seeking liberty from colonial occupation. But Uncle Sam was busy propping up His Majesty’s forces to retain their colonies across Asia vs the Axis, howsoever it may be worded in retrospect. 2,00,000 American soldiers were garrisoned on Indian territory during the war. How would the US have supported India’s independence movement while itself having an Asian colony in the Philippines, till the Japanese snatched it? It is easy to describe things in black and white in retrospect, but which side had its hands clean? Did the US not act as a collaborator with imperialism while Bose acted as a collaborator of Nazism? The Congress, by then having distanced itself completely from Bose, resolved at Wardha in December 1941 that a ‘subject India’ could not ‘offer voluntary and willing help to arrogant imperialism which is indistinguishable from fascist authoritarianism’- and that was a very polite way of putting it. But, for once, the tone was not politically correct – it WAS indistinguishable. Being an imperialist collaborator was worse than being a fascist one – at least the latter option had the possibility of freedom, while the former only reinforced slavery.

Bose was clear on his plan even in 1940, while imprisoned, to head out & seek freedom with the help of global powers. “In spite of being in a precarious position, the British would not hand over power to the Indian people and the latter would have to fight for their freedom… India would win her independence if she played her part in the war against Britain and collaborated with the powers that were fighting Britain.” That is what he had envisioned, that is what he did till the day he lived. Too bad he had to go via Berlin and Tokyo to do that, and too bad the press in the US doesn’t like that today, but if the Statue Of Liberty was beckoning him then, to actively support the fight for India’s freedom, there is no recorded evidence of it. So let’s keep the moral high ground out of it, thank you.