The Truth about Subhash Chandra Bose and Tagore !

By Justice Markandey Katju
I have been castigated for calling Subhas Chandra Bose a Japanese agent, and Tagore a British stooge. Some have called me a Nehru stooge and some have said I should have my head examined. Many Bengalis are incensed and have called me anti- Bengali. An F.I.R. against me has reportedly been lodged against me by a BJP MLA in a police station in Kolkata for allegedly insulting Bengalis.
I have great respect for Bengalis. They have made great contributions in literature, science, philosophy, social reforms, etc. At the same time, many of them treat Bose and Tagore as if they are holy cows, whom no one is even entitled to critically assess. So let us have the facts.

Subhas Chandra Bose
There are 3 things I have to say about Bose.
1. It is said that his alliance with the Japanese was correct because an enemy's enemy is one's friend.
My reply is : if alliance with the Japanese would have benefited India then of course it was acceptable. But there was not the slightest chance of that. If Japan had defeated the British with Bose's help they would have turned India into a Japanese colony and looted it, even more ruthlessly than the British, since they were fascists, and certainly not given us independence..

Some people ask what basis I have for saying so. So let me explain.
By the early 20th century Japan had become an industrial power, and was hungrily looking for colonies ( that is, markets and sources of raw materials ) in eastern and southern Asia. Its concept of ' Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere ' was just a euphemism for colonial domination of these areas.
But these areas were already occupied by European powers. So for achieving their end, from the 1930s onwards the Japanese embarked on the road of militant aggression and expansionism. They conquered Korea, Manchuria, parts of China, Vietnam, and went as far south as Singapore and Burma.
Then they decided to invade India, and used Bose and his INA ( which I regard as a ragtag army ) for this purpose.
Had they conquered India, would they have given freedom to us ? Those who think so do not understand the nature of the then Japanese fascist imperialism or the historical context. Japan was fighting for colonial markets and raw materials, not to do charity or social service. Had they conquered India they would have bumped off Bose, as his utility would have been over for them, or they would have made him a puppet ' Head of State ', as they did to Pu Yi, the last Chinese Emperor, whom they made ' Head ' of Manchukuo.
Some people say that is only my opinion. But when we try to find someone's future likely conduct we see his past. If a person has been a gangster and a looter in the past, it is most likely he will continue to be so in the future too. And in the present case we have to see the historical context too. Were the Japanese not eyeing the huge Indian market and immense raw materials available in India, and were at that time under British control. ? Of course they were. Only a simpleton would think otherwise.
2. When Japan surrendered in 1945 why did Bose also give up the fight against the British. He should have started a guerilla war against the British, as the Chinese did against the Japanese. The fact that he did not shows that there was nothing in the man..
3. Bose was no doubt personally an honest man, who had in his youth given up the ICS to serve the nation. But it seems that later he became over ambitious, and after his ouster from the Presidentship of the Congress party by Gandhi, he became haywire. He even went to the extent of going to Germany where he hobnobbed with Hitler and Himmler who sent millions to gas chambers ( his pictures with them can be seen on Youtube ), and tried to become a Nazi collaborator, proposing to raise an army of Indian soldiers to help the Nazis. When the Germans showed little interest in this fantastic proposal, he went off to Japan, where the Japanese thought they could use him in their fight against Britain.
This is the truth about the great ' Netaji ', who, like Faust, had sold his soul to a Mephistopheles ( in fact he sold his soul to two Mephistopheles, first the Nazis, and then the Japanese fascists).
Some people say that India got freedom because of Bose. The truth is that India got freedom because in the Second World War Germany had attacked England and possibly may have conquered it had America not come to its aid, and the price the Americans extracted for helping England was that India should be opened up for U.S. investment, and its markets should also be opened up. This is the reality behind our independence, and it has nothing to do with Bose and his ragtag army.

Tagore
Now let us deal with that great Gurudeb
I have often said that the best poetry in modern India is in Urdu, and the best prose in Bengali. And the greatest Bengali writer, in fact the greatest prose writer in Indian literature, and indeed one of the greatest in the world, was Sharad Chandra Chattopadhyaya.
Sharad Chandra, through his novels and stories, launched a full blooded attack against women's oppression, casteism, and other oppressive feudal and backward customs and practices in India ( see his Shrikant. Shesh Prashna, Charitraheen, Parineeta, Palli Samaj, etc. ) He started taking literature in the revolutionary direction. In his Pather Dabi he writes about a revolutionary organization to fight against British rule.
This scared the British, who banned Pather Dabi ( it was said that at one time the price of one copy of the novel was the same as the price of a Mauser pistol ), and they looked around for someone who would divert literature to some harmless channel. Through Yeats, they found one in Tagore, whose main effort was to divert literature towards spiritualism and nonsensical mysticism ( see his poems Gitanjali, Klanti, Agnibeena Bajao tumi, etc. which are all sentimental rubbish and his novel Gora which is meaningless ). Graham Greene said that apart from Yeats, no one takes Tagore seriously, and later even Yeats turned against him for writing sentimental rubbish.
Of course from time to time Tagore tried to display his 'patriotism' e.g. by renouncing Knighthood over the Jallianwala massacre, but the question is why was he offered Knighthood by the Britishers at all? Why were Sharad Chandra and Kazi Nazrul Islam not offered the same ? Why was Tagore given the Nobel Prize, and not Sharad Chandra, Munshi Premchand, Subramania Bharati, etc ? Obviously because those other writers were not serving British interests, while Tagore was objectively a British stooge who was serving the British aim of diverting literature from the revolutionary direction Sharad Chandra was taking it towards a harmless channel.
There are broadly two theories of art and literature, the first is called art for art's sake, and the second is called

art for social purpose ( see my article ' The Role of Art and Literature ' on my blog justicekatju.blogspot.in ). According to the first theory, art is only meant to please and entertain people, but if it aims at serving a social purpose it ceases to be art and becomes propaganda. According to the second theory, art should serve a social purpose by helping people in their struggles for a better life.
Tagore, like Keats, Alexander Dumas, Edgar Allan Poe, O.Henry, Ezra Pound, etc belongs to the first school.
Sharad Chandra and Kazi Nazrul Islam, like Dickens, Shaw, Balzac, Victor Hugo, Upton Sinclair, John Steinbeck, Pushkin, Premchand, Subramania Bharti, Faiz, Manto etc. belong to the second.
In a poor country like India only the second theory is acceptable. Dancing with garlands in Shantiniketan hardly serves any social purpose.
By Justice Markandey Katju, former Judge, Supreme Court

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