http://www.thestatesman.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=357722&catid=39
Russia & Netaji
2 February 2011
Contrary to what Indian communists and historians like to think, the Soviet Union had always supported Subhas Chandra Bose, writes dipak basu
For people brainwashed by false propaganda, it is difficult to recognise the truth. That is particularly true about Indians fed gigantic propaganda against the memory of both Subhas Chandra Bose and his Provisional Government of Azad Hind by Indian government and historians attached to it since 1947. Although it is a fact that along with Germany, Italy, Japan and the Soviet Union too had recognised the Azad Hind Government established in 1943 in Singapore, majority of Indians still don't believe that it could be true.
This could be partly explained by the misinformation spread by Indian and the British historians who held that Bose had been denounced by the Soviet Union because of his proximity to the Fascists and the Nazis. George Orwell, an agent of the British secret service M16, used to rail against Bose regularly on BBC broadcasts, positing the same arguments. A proper analysis can demonstrate that contrary to that view, Bose had been a pro-Soviet socialist all along who had maintained links with Soviet leaders throughout World War II and could secure recognition for his Azad Hind government from Stalin at a time when communists of India, inspired by their British comrades and Orwell, singularly denounced Bose as a "Dog of Tojo" and a traitor.
The Russian military archives in Paddolsk, near Moscow, houses evidence of the recognition bestowed by the Soviet Union upon the Azad Hind government. The discovery was made by General Alexander Kolesnikov, a retired military leader of the now extinct Warsaw Pact Forces, who later became a professor in the Institute of Oriental Studies in the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. During a meeting with an Indian Parliamentary delegation to the Russian Federation in 1996, he submitted a written account of all his findings. The delegation, which included the late Chitta Basu and Jayanta Roy of the Forward Bloc, brought the document back to India. And it formed the basis of an affidavit submitted to the Mukherjee Commission by Dr Purabi Roy, a professor in Jadavpur University, Kolkata, who was sent as part of a three-member Asiatic Society team to Russia to study Indian documents from 1917-1947.
In his article Destiny and Death. Subhas Chandra Bose published in Ezhenedelnaiya Gazeta in January 1997 General Kolesnikov writes that Bose had maintained contact with the Soviet leadership. He had sent an authorised representative of Azad Hind government ~ Kato Kochu (an assumed name) ~ with the rank of an Ambassador to Omsk, which was the alternative capital of the Soviet Union during World War II. There is evidence to infer that Kato Kochu had reached Omsk and had been received by the Soviet leadership.
In March 1999, Pramod Mehra of the National Archives of India, New Delhi, presented a paper at the Netaji Institute of Asian Studies in Kolkata. In page 6 of the paper titled The Declassified Documents from the Ministry of Defence, he writes: "The recognition of the provisional government by the world powers, viz Japan, Burma, Germany, Italy, Thailand, Philippines, Russia declared their firm resolve to support the Provisional Government of India in its struggle for India's freedom." A file (No 265/INA) at the National Archives of India refers to the Provisional Government of Free India as having its representation at Omsk and cites the name of its representative as Kato Kochu.
The most important evidence comes from a letter dated 16 November, 1943 that Bose himself wrote to the then Soviet foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov ~ "I have the honour to inform Your Excellency that in accordance with the will of all the freedom-loving Indians in India and abroad and with the fullest support of all Indians residing in East Asia who number close upon three million, and of their political organisation, The Indian Independence League as well as with the backing of the Indian National Army now stationed in East Asia ~ The provisional Government of Azad Hind (Free India) was established on the 21st of October 1943, with its headquarters temporarily at Syonan or Singapore."
It is indeed surprising that while communists in India were so much against Bose, the Soviet Union chose to maintain close ties with him. The reasons are obvious. Bose has always proclaimed in his book Indian Struggle and in a number of speeches that his aim was to establish a socialist, planned economy in India with the aim to eradicate poverty, illiteracy and caste-religious differences within a decade. He established the first Planning Commission in 1938 with Jawaharlal Nehru as its chairman to create a blueprint for future industrialisation of India. Also, he was the only politician in India to have supported Stalin's move to include the Baltic states in the Soviet Union as reestablishment of Russia's historical claims on its ancient lands. This apart, he had supported the Stalin-Hitler non-agression pact of 1939, by saying that the real enemy of oppressed people was Anglo-American imperialism and that the Soviet Union had to fight the final war against it with Germany and Italy serving only as temporary disturbances. He reached the Soviet Union in 1941 to seek Russian support for India's War of Independence. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Bose was in Rome. He wrote a spirited letter to German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop denouncing the invasion and forbidding the use of Azad Hind Force stationed in Germany against the Soviet Union in any manner.
When Bose arrived in Japan in 1943, Hediki Tojo, Japan's war-time Prime Minister had transformed himself from a military leader to the champion of freedom fighters of Asia. The 1943 Conference of the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere in Tokyo was attended by Sukarno of Indonesia, Bose of India, Aung Sang of Burma other than the deposed kings of Vietnam and Malay as well as the Emperor of China. Political leaders from Mongolia, Philippines and other Asian nations were also in attendance. The conclave was a replication of the Conference of the Oppressed Nations held in Baku, Azerbaijan in 1920 under the patronage of Zenoviev of the Communist International (Comintern) and the Brussels conference of the "League against Imperialism" in 1927 organised by Virendranath Chattopadhyay, the brother of Sarojini Naidu and an associate of Veer Savarkar and Bipin Pal, who was also one of founders of the Communist Party of India in 1920.
Virendranath was the link between Subhas Bose, the Soviet Union, and Japan, and without him the Azad Hind movement might not have become a reality. He became the leader of German Indian Committee, which helped revolutionaries in India with weapons and sanctuaries. This committee had supplied weapons to Indian revolutionary groups such as Jugantar, Anusheelan Samity and to Jatin Sarkar or Tiger Jatin and to the legendary Surya Sen. The committee sent Narain Marathe, Herambalal Gupta, and Rash Bihari Bose to Japan in 1915. In 1933, Virendranath escaped to the USSR. He became the head of the Indian department of the USSR Academy of Science in Leningrad and got very close to the two key leaders of the Russian revolution ~ Lenin's wife Nadezhda Krupskaya and Sergey Kirov.
The Japanese government sent a number of scholars to Germany during 1920s. To this circle, belonged many young scholars during 1926-29 who later enriched Japanese academics and culture. Rouyama, Arisawa, Kunizaki of Tokyo University, and professors from Kyoto University ~ Muraichi Horie, Yoshihiko Taniguchi, Katsuichi Yamamoto, and Katsujiro Yamada ~ were the founding members of The Association of Revolutionary Asians. In addition to these scholars, Japanese artists and journalists in Berlin were part of this group. Theatre and film personalities of Japan such as Koreya Senda, Seki Sano, Yoshi Hijikata, Teinosuke Kinugasa, Souzo Okada, writers such as Seiichirou Katsumoto and Seikichi Fujimori, the painter, Ousuke Shimazaki, and the architect, Bunzou Yamaguchi, were also members. And, Virendranath was the leader of this group.
These Japanese intellectuals became very prominent upon their return home. They supported and financed the formation of the Azad Hind Fauj in Japan and hosted Indian revolutionaries including Mohan Singh, Giani Pritam Singh, Satyananda Puri, and Rash Bihari Bose. They prevailed on the Japanese government to bring Bose to Japan from Germany and to release about 80,000 Indians held as prisoners of war by Japan in Singapore in 1942 to fight for the freedom of India.
In a letter dated 20 November, 1944 to Jacob Malik, the Soviet Ambassador to Japan during World War II, Bose wrote: "Now, when I am in Tokyo, I would like to use this opportunity to see your Excellency"¦ to find through your Excellency a support of the Soviet government in the struggle of India for its independence.
"The fact, that now we have close connections with Axis powers in your common struggle against British and Americans does not stop me. I am happy to say that Axis powers have a very clear idea about the peculiarity of problem of India and they have kindly recognised the Azad Hind (Independent India) Provisional Government"¦ Besides Japan, whose relationship with the Soviet Union has strictly neutral character, even the Government of Germany has understood in full and appreciated the fact, that we, the Hindu, were interested only in actions against England and America. The Government of Germany also understood and appreciated the fact that we were not interested in the actions against the Soviet Russia"¦
"I know, that there is an alliance between the Soviet government and governments of the England and USA now. But I quite well understand"¦ that it cannot prevent the Soviet government from rendering us support"¦ With gratitude I recall the assistance rendered to me by the Soviet government after I left India in 1941"¦
"During his life Lenin always from the bottom of his heart supported colonial countries in their struggle for independence"¦ As I know, after Lenin's death the Soviet government has not changed its policy concerning problems of subjugation of such countries as India at all.
"As far as my party is concerned ~ Progressive Bloc ~ I can say, that at a time when the Soviet foreign policy in Europe was blamed by approximately all parties of India in 1939-40, we were the only people who openly supported the Soviet foreign policy towards Germany and Finland"¦"
Bose maintained socialist views throughout his life, and, on very many occasions, expressed his hope for an egalitarian and casteless industrialised Indian society in which the state would control the basic means of production. That has not escaped the notice of the Soviet Union, who never had any faith in Mahatma Gandhi.
It was not the Soviet Communist Party but the British Communist Party which had advised the CPI to go against Bose and the Azad Hind government during World War II as the CPI could not have any direct contact with the Soviet Communist Party. Ajoy Ghosh, the then general secretary of the CPI, said that in Moscow in 1953, Stalin had rebuked him for not supporting the Azad Hind government during the war.
The decision for the CPI to transform itself from a revolutionary organisation to a pro-British organisation in 1942 was prompted by some factors, hitherto neglected by historians. CPI was formed by Indian revolutionaries MN Roy, Abani Mukherjee and Virendranath Chattopadhya in Moscow in 1920 with the patronage of none other than Lenin. However, since the deposed members of the Khilafat movement, Muzzafar Ahmed for example, joined the CPI during its Tashkent conference in 1926 against the wishes of its founders, the party's character changed a lot.
During the 1930s, a group of very privileged, British-educated Barrister sons of mega rich land-owners of India utterly changed the character of the CPI, relegating it but to a chapter of the British Communist Party. British socialists are traditionally anti-Indian and staunchly anti-Hindu. The class characteristics of Indian communists had changed by that time, with most revolutionaries who used to be in the CPI having left it for the Forward Bloc or the RSP or the Congress Socialists. The CPI eventually became a very pro-British organisation reflecting the propaganda of George Orwell.
The British connection is also responsible for the decision of the CPI, as well as that of Gandhi, to support the "Pakistan proposal" of Jinnah. The decision of a section of the CPI, who later formed the CPI-M, to support the Chinese invasion against India in 1962 was also influenced by this British connection. The Soviet Union had denounced the Chinese invasion but the British, along with Australians, had supported it indirectly by putting the blame on India.
The CPI before 1948 and the CPI-M since its formation in 1964, had committed a number of historic blunders. This happened owing to the inability of its leaders to have a proper international perspective. They had restricted themselves first to the British communists and then to the Chinese, who are essentially anti-Indian. The decision of the CPI to oppose Bose's Azad Hind government, which was supported by the Soviet Union, is one of those historic blunders.
The author is a professor in international
economics, Nagasaki University, Japan
