With Gandhi

Netaji & Gandhiji After the death of great leaders like Lokmanya Tilak and Dr. Annie Beasant and martyrdom of revolutionaries like Shaheed Bhagat Singh there were only two major thoughts which were prevalent in India, one was that of Gandhiji and the other was that of Netaji. ( It is to be noted that there still were great revolutionaries like Swatantryaveer Savarkar, but either they all were in exile or were in prison.) While Gandhiji advocated non-violence and talks with the British, Netaji was of the opinion that there should be no compromise with the British and that every means should be used to free India. In spite of that Gandhiji and Netaji were extremely fond of each other. Netaji started his political life by going to Gandhiji, who directed him to work under Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das. He resigned from the post of the INC president only because of the opposition of Gandhiji. He called Gandhiji as the "Father of the Nation" from Radio Berlin, the much revered title given to Gandhiji. The great war cry of 'Jai Hind' was given to the nation by Netaji. 'Do or Die' used by Gandhiji during the Quit India Movement of 1942, was given by Netaji. Before leaving the country in 1939( before he was arrested) Netaji met Gandhiji and requested him to start a nation wide mass movement. But Gandhiji refused, since he believed it would cause large scale violence. When some of his friends told him to do that himself, he said 'If I give a call than 20 lakh people would come, but if Gandhiji gives a call than 20 crore would come. He also reportedly said that 'it will be tragic for me if I succeeded in winning the confidence of other people but failed to win the confidence of India's greatest man (Mahatma Gandhi)." After that Netaji and Gandhiji never met with each other.

Netaji first went to Germany and then, in one of the most daring thing, he went to Japan in a submarine. In the eventful years of World War II, when Gandhiji gave a call of ''Do or Die'' and Netaji led the Indian National Army to make a fierce assault on the eastern front, the British media tried to magnify the differences between the two great men over the ''nonviolent'' and ''violent'' means adopted by them. Gandhiji, while out rightly rejecting the suggestion that he was sympathetic to the Japanese, chided the British media for its blatant hypocrisy. The atomic bombs were dropped on Japan and on 15th August, 1945 Japan surrendered. After that Netaji went to an unknown place or died in a plane crash as said by some sources. It is believed by many that Netaji died in a plane crash ( The webmaster does not subscribe to those views). According to them his plane stopped at Formosa. After lunch and refueling, his plane resumed the journey, but within minutes it met with disaster, dived headlong and burst into flames. Bose was picked up badly burnt and bruised. He was removed to the hospital but by 8 or 9 p.m. his end had come. Many of the close associates of Netaji like Habib ur Rahman said that Netaji dies in a plane crash. Gandhiji never believed that Netaji could have died, the works of Mahatma Gandhi reveal this. In his ''heart of hearts'' maintaining that he was not killed, Gandhiji ''intuitively'' believed that Netaji was still hiding in some unknown place and would reappear at an appropriate time to serve his motherland. Gandhiji had wondered in 1945 how Netaji could die when Swaraj was yet to be achieved. This conviction of Mahatma caused much embarrassment to the British government and even some close comrades of Netaji tried to convince him that Netaji was really killed in the plane crash. Despite the sharp differences over the means to be used for achieving independence for the country, Gandhiji always adored Netaji for his extraordinary valour and organising capacity, the memoirs reveal. Gandhiji wrote in the issue Harijan of (24-2-1946) that ''Subhash Chandra Bose's patriotism is second to none.''

The Bombay Chronicle then wrote that Gandhiji still believes in his heart of hearts that Netaji is alive. Gandhiji dealt the issue of Netaji's reported death in Harijan under the title, 'Is Netaji Alive?'. He wrote, ''Some time back it was announced in the newspapers that Subhash Chandra Bose had died. I believed the report. Later the news was proved to be incorrect. Since then I have had a feeling that Netaji could not leave us until his dream of swaraj had been fulfilled. To lend strength to this feeling was the knowledge of Netaji's great ability to hoodwink his enemies and even the world for the sake of his cherished goal.'' But when close associates of Netaji like Captain Habibur Rahman narrated the last moments of Netaji after the plane crash, Gandhiji reconciled to the fact that Netaji had left the countrymen. He, at the same time stressed that, ''He is living with us in his message and the ideals he placed before the world.'' When one of the soldiers of 'INA' asked Gandhiji in 1948, what would he have done if Netaji had returned to him victorious, Gandhiji replied, ''I would have asked him to put away the weapons and stack them before me.'' Interestingly this was the very instruction Netaji gave to the fighting 'INA' men. Captain Shah Nawaz Khan told Gandhiji that Netaji had asked 'INA' soldiers that in an independent India, they would be expected to serve their country not by means of swords but through non-violence. The last words of Netaji (according to his close associate Habib-ur Rehman) were: ''I don't think I will recover. So when you go back to India, do tell our countrymen that I tried my best to wrest freedom but they should continue their struggle until they succeed.'' Before he died however, he dictated this message to his companion: "I have fought for Indian freedom till the last. Tell my countrymen India will be free before long. Long live free India!" The tiny Bhagwad Gita which he always carried lay intact. (source www.hindubooks.org) Netaji often used to declare that if and when he succeeded in freeing India from British rule, he would immediately relinquish mundane pursuits leaving his countrymen to manage their own affairs. P N Oak, one of the earliest to join Indian National Army (INA), who was later closely associated with Netaji and organised broadcasts from Azad Hind Radio, Saigon, Singapore, says, since Netaji was totally disinterested in worldly pursuits and ambitions, a common belief of political observers and lay public of those times that Jawaharlal Nehru and Bose were rival contenders of political leadership was basically wrong.

In fact, Netaji has repeatedly and emphatically declared in his public speeches in East Asia that if the INA succeeded in liberating India he would toss over that freedom to the people and retire into spiritual oblivion.