Subhas - The Man Beyond the Hero

For a Bengali, to write about Rabindranath Tagore and Subhas Chandra Bose is perhaps the most difficult thing. These iconic personalities (despite, and because of their differences), for ages, much like the Ganges River, have fed and nurtured the consciousness and ideologies of Bengal and Bengalis. It becomes even more relevant to remember them in today’s times amidst raging debates and political discourse that are – in more ways than one – redefining our religious understanding and values and confusing them with spirituality and dogma.

Reserving Tagore for another post, I am dedicating this one to the Man whose 125th birth anniversary the nation celebrates today - Subhas Chandra Bose, our very own Netaji. 

Much has been said and written about his controversial life and death already. I’m not going to reiterate all that. Because if life is a mosaic of colours, emotions, and adventures, Netaji is the quintessence of it. He is also, and more so, as he titled his unfinished autobiography, An Indian Pilgrim.

Yes, not a politician, a leader, a war hero – but a pilgrim. And in every sense of the word.

He was the man who truly chose the road not taken, leaving home, forsaking stability and luxury to undertake hardship and suffering in the pursuit of a greater goal; the man who worshipped at the altar of Bharat Mata with the same ardent passion with which he imbibed the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita (his literary companion until the very end), Shankaracharya, Sri Aurobindo and Swami Vivekananda; the man who lived by the mantra of the Rig Veda - आत्मनो मोक्षार्थम् जगत् हिताय च – bridging the gap between self-realisation and social welfare, praticising yoga and taking his school and collegemates to various religious sites and gurus, tending to people afflicted by the then-dreaded cholera, and feeling “like a criminal” at the sight of a beggar outside his home. He was the man who worshipped Durga and Kali and meditated at the Ramakrishna Mission in Singapore even while leading his army from the front. The man who believed Hinduism is the thread binding the immense diversity of his holy motherland without being blind to the shortcomings of the religion. He wrote essays on materialism only to see if someone could prove him wrong through logic and evidence, fought for his friends' right to idol worship, was moved to tears by a touching piece of music, and protected and inspired his female comrades with the instincts of a father. A man of reason and emotion, of generosity and incomparable bravery. As he described himself in a letter to his friend, Dilip Kumar Roy (March 5, 1933) - "I am sometimes a Shaiva, sometimes a Shakta and sometimes a Vaishnava."

Very little is said, however, about Netaji’s philosophy, his spirituality. The reasons are not far to seek. He hated bigotry. He hated the use and abuse of religion through public display. He didn’t see the need to speak of the God he believed in when he could live Him through his life as an Indian.

That was Netaji’s religion. And this was his India. His brand of ‘secularism’ didn’t promote non-committal uniformity, where differences cannot be spoken of and a blinkered, strait-laced point of view is adopted at convenience, to disregard and blame the past. Instead, he believed in acknowledging and respecting differences in order to rise above and make the best of them. His men, and women (Rani of Jhansi Regiment with many Tamil recruits) – Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians – dined together before marching to the battlefield to lay down their lives for their beloved Bharat Mata. They were proof of an overarching, true ‘unity’ – distinctive ‘individuals’ acting as ‘one human being' to fulfill the one noble cause that all of them believed in.

In an era when world-changing ideologies were just coming into their own– anti-colonialism, fascism, Nazism, socialism, and communism (with the true nature and full implications of some of them unknown still) – he stood as a patriot, a nationalist, whose nation extended beyond the borders of a country -- to embrace the world. There may be contradictions in this, but few saw India as he did – an India in the context of the world.

We can debate over his political strategies (including what is often misconstrued as appeasement), the diplomatic alliances he formed, the people he had to trust to help him during crises, but we cannot deny the purity of the vision he was chasing. For in the context of the difficult time he lived in and the Herculean challenges he had to conquer, he had devoted his heart, mind, and soul to that one vision – to which he ultimately sacrificed his life willingly, and with complete faith. He dreamt of a balanced India, where not only women and minorities would be empowered to be equals but where all religions coexisted in harmony and in mutual respect, where industrialization led to material progress and an appreciation of diversity and distinctive ideologies to spiritual progress.  It was his "desire that every man and woman of the country and the entire nation may, in every respect, realize Truth. In this quest, in this Sadhana, political freedom is only a means." That is how he referred to his path, as his sadhana to accomplish national freedom and ultimately attain "complete fulfillment in personal and national life." 

We are a free nation today – with the freedom of speech, the freedom to proclaim, the freedom to criticise, the freedom to dissent and be devout, but have we achieved Netaji’s ideal of freedom? Sadly, no. When liberty and libertines rule, true emancipation is only a dream that silent pilgrims dream of – where there is no need to defend or attack; where one can live one's God through his/her life, carrying forward the message of karmayogis - uniting bhakti and shakti – as their pilgrim hero did.

"The pages of Indian history teem with the undying examples of martyrs who suffered and died for the sake of their religious beliefs. They died so that India may live. And in spite of our misery and degradation, India still lives. She lives because her soul is immortal - her soul is immortal because she believes in religion...

...From the ashes of the dead past India is again rising phoenix-like to take her place among the free nations of the world, so that she may deliver her message, the message of the spirit, and thereby fulfill her mission on earth. India lives today because she still has a mission unfulfilled."

(Letter to the Chief Secretary of the erstwhile Govt. of Burma Through The Superintendent of Jails, Mandalay, dated February 16, 1926) 

(Pic Credit: Netaji Research Bureau, Calcutta/Wikipedia)

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