Sugata Bose and Subhashini Ali during the book launch of The Indian Struggle, on Subhas Chandra Bose at IIC, New Delhi, on Tuesday, August 23. (Express photo by Abhinav Saha)“The people ruling us want to use Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and pretend that they are restoring his memory in our country. But anyone who can speak of him in the same breath as (Vinayak Damodar) Savarkar… there’s something wrong with that,” said Subhashini Ali, former Member of Parliament, at an event at the India International Centre in New Delhi Tuesday to mark the publication of a new compilation of the freedom fighter’s correspondences and public speeches titled The Essential Writings of Subhas Chandra Bose, by Orient Blackswan.
Two other books, An Indian Pilgrim (an incomplete autobiography) and The Indian Struggle (an account of India’s freedom struggle), have also been republished. All three books have been edited by Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of History, Harvard University, and his father, Sisir K Bose.
Ali was in conversation with Sugata Bose and was speaking on attempts being made to appropriate the legacy of Bose and misrepresent his commitment to secularism. In particular, she was referring to a controversial hoarding that was put up in Karnataka’s Tumakuru district ahead of the Independence Day celebrations. It featured Bose next to Savarkar with the slogan ‘Jai Hindu Rashtra’.
“It is not easy to appropriate Netaji… his life is so crystal clear, what he stood for. His military heroism is hollow if divorced from his unequivocal commitment to religious harmony,” said Sugata Bose, grand-nephew of the freedom fighter.
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He also spoke of how An Indian Pilgrim was not completed past its first nine chapters because Netaji assumed the presidency of the Indian National Congress in 1938 that left him with no time to finish the work.
Incidentally, The Indian Struggle was banned by the British from circulation in India – a move that Bose vehemently opposed.
At the launch, Ali also spoke of Netaji’s efforts to mainstream women’s rights in the freedom struggle and how he helped set up the Rani of Jhansi Regiment of the Indian National Army.