Chalo Delhi: Writing and Speeches 1943-1945 (Subhas Chandra Bose)

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About the Book

After a perilious ninety-day submarine voyage, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose arrived in Southest Asia on 6 May 1943 to lead the indian independence movement. 'Only when the blood of freedom loving Indians begins to flow', he declared in one of his broadcasts in June 1943,'Will India attain his freedom.' In his last message, on 15 August 1945, he urged faith in India's destiny and expressed confidence that 'India shall be free and before long.'

Volume 12 of Netaji's Collected Works brings together all his speeches and writings as leader of the Azad Hind movement from June 1943 to August 1945. His stirring speeches in Singapore, Malaya, and Burma electrified massive audiences of civilians and soldiers, united Indians of all religions, and insired them to join the march towards delhi.

The Proclamation of the Provisional Government of Azad Hind (Free India) in Singapore on 21 October 1943 blends erudition and passion. Netaji's radio address to the 'Father of Our Nation' provides the most detailed justification of his curse of action and seeks the Mahatma's blessings in the 'holy war' raging around Imphal and Kohima. The 'Tokyo thesis' delivered to university faculty and students in November1944 highlights the three supreme challenges for free India-national defence, eradication of poverty, and education for all. His letters-most published here for the young women and men who joined the Indian National Army.

This volume is indispensable for all interested in modern South Asian history and politics, as well as nationalism and international relations in the twentieth century.

About the Author

Sisir Kumar Bose (1920-2000) founded the Netaji Research Bureau in 1957 and was its guiding spirit until his death in 2000. A participant in the Indian freedom struggle, he was imprisoned by the British in the Lahore Fort, Red Fort, and Lyallpur Jail. In the post-independence period he played a key role in preserving the best traditions of he anti-colonial movement and making possible the writing of its history. He authored nad edited biographies, memoirs , monographs, and research papers on Netaji's life and times, One of India's best pediatricians, he was Director and later President of the Institute of Child Health, Calcutta.

Sugata Bose is the Gardiner Professor of History ot Horvard University. He is the author of several books on economic, social and political history, including A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (2006).

Introduction

On 6 May 1943, after a perilous 90-day submarine voyage, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose reached Sabang on the coast of Sumatra. The journey had begun on 8 February 1943 at Kiel in Germany and included a daring transfer from a German to a Japanese submarine in the Indian coast off the coast of Madagascar on 28 April 1943. Subhas Chandra Bose authographed a photograph with the crew taken just prior to disembarkation: 'It was a great pleasure to sail aboard this submarine… I believe this will mark a milestone in our fight for victory and peace.

Netaji had come across half the globe to accept the leadership of the Indian independence movement in South East Asia. After his escape from India in January 1941 he had gone to Europe in an attempt to win over Indian prisoners-of-war in German and Italian hands to the cause of Indian freedom. The German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 had upset his plans. The Japanese military advance across South East Asia in December 1941 and early 1942 opened the eastern frontier of Indian to the army of liberation of his dreams. A conference of Indian expatriate patriots at Bangkok on 15 June 1942 had issued him an invitation to lead them in South East Asia. At the time he had been able only to send them a message underscoring the need to 'link up Indian Nationalists all over the world'. A year later he was at last among them, providing that link in person. The presence of well over two million, if not three million (as claimed by the Azad Hind movement), Indian civilians in the region gave his movement in Asia a very large social base of support. From Sabang he first flew to Tokyo to garner support for his armed struggle and Japanese recognition of Indian independence. This twelfth and final volume of Netaji's Collected Works opens with his statements and stirring radio broadcasts from Tokyo. 'Only when the blood of freedom-loving Indians begins to flow,' he declared, 'will India attain her freedom.

On 2 July 1943, Subhas Chandra Bose arrived in Singapore-once 'a bulwark', now 'a graveyard' of the British Empire. He was greeted with the song: 'Subbas-ji, Subhas-ji, woh jaan-e-Hind aagaye,woh naaz jispe Hind ko, woh shan-e-Hindaagaye.' This was just an early indication of the affection and pride that Indians in South East Asia felt for their leader. Two days later, at an enthusiastic representative assembly of Indians in South East Asia held in the Cathay theatre, Netaji accepted the leadership of the Indian Independence League from Rashbehari Bose. The English translation in cold print of his speech in Hindustani on that historic occasion can hardly capture the passion of the delivery and the enthusiasm of the audience's response that can be seen in the film recordings of that day. In ringing tones and elegant Hindustani he told those who were prepared to follow him that he could offer 'nothing but hunger, thirst, privation, forced marches and death' on the journey towards the Red Fort of Delhi. The following day, 5 July 1943, was 'the proudest day' in Netaji's life as he had 'the unique privilege and honour of announcing to the whole world that India's Army of Liberation' had 'come into being. In the months that followed he electrified massive audiences of civilians and soldiers with his speeches in Hindustani and elicited an overwhelmingly positive response to his call for 'total mobilization'. His speeches were instantly translated into Tamil. 'Indians outside India', he told a mass meeting in Singapore on July 1943, 'particularly, Indians in East Asia, are going to organize a fighting force which will be powerful enough to attack the British army of occupation in India. When we do so, a revolution will break out not only among the civilian population at home, but also among - the Indian Army, which is now standing under the British flag. When the British government is thus attacked from both sides-from inside India and from outside-it will collapse and the Indian people will - then regain their liberty.' He had already given his soldiers the slogan 'Chalo Delhi', reminiscent of the 1857 rebellion in India, in the course of his speech on 5 July. From the Indian civilians in South East Asia called for 'total mobilization for a total war'. In return for such mobilization of men and women, money and resources, he promised 'a real second front for the Indian struggle'.

A large majority of Indian expatriates in South East Asia responded with great emotional fevour to this patriotic call for a revolution. At least 18, 000 civilians, mostly Tamils from South India, excluded by the British from their mythology of martial races, enlisted in the Indian National .Army (INA). They received military training alongside professional soldiers from the north-western regions of the subcontinent. Some 40,000 soldiers of Britain's Indian Army forsook their allegiance to the King emperor and professed a new loyalty to Netaji and the cause of India's freedom. 'When Netaji arrived in Singapore,' Shah Nawaz khan explained at the time of the Red Fort trial of November 1945, I watched him very keenly ... I heard a number of his public speeches,·which had a profound effect on me. It will not be wrong to say that I was hypnotized by his personality and his speeches. He placed the true picture of India before us and for the first time in my life. I saw India, through the eyes of an Indian. Many tens of thousands of civiliance joined the numerous local branches of the Indian Independence League that provided support functions of various kinds to the army of liberation. While travelling in the submarine, Subhas Chandra Bose had dictated a speech to Abid Hasan which he planned to deliver to a women's regiment of the INA of his dreams. A torpedo attack had not been permitted to interrupt the dicration The speech was eventually given to the first recruits of the Rani of Jhansi Regiment of a thousand young Indian women from Malaya and Burma-mostly but not exclusively Tamils. In July 1943 the seventeen-year-old Janaki Davar (Thevar) went to hear Subhas Chandra Bose speak at a rally in Kuala Lumpur. At the end of the meeting people rushed forward to give money, jewellery, and anything else they possessed to Netaji. Janaki took off her earrings and gold chain and put them in Netaji's hands. Her parents learnt of what she had done from a photograph on the front page of the local newspaper the next day. When Lakshmi Swaminathan came recruiting for her regiment, Janaki persuaded her father to grant her permission to join. She went with the regiment to Burma in January 1944 and was one of the hundred women who retreated on foot with Subhas Chandra Bose from Burma to Thailand in May 1945.

Netaji undertook a whirlwind tour of various Sourh East Asian countries, galvanizing support for his cause. 'From 1925 to 1927,' he said during a visit to Burma in August 1943, 'I used to gaze from the verandah of my cell in Mandalay prison on the palace of the last in- dependent king of Burma and I used to wonder when Burma would be free once again. Today Burma is an independent state and I am breathing the atmosphere of that liberated country. Netaji tried to send rice from Burma to Bengal which was being decimated by a terrible man-made famine, but his offer was nervously suppressed by the British in India. On 26 September 1943, a ceremonial parade and prayers were held at the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah's tomb in Rangoon to signal the INA's determination to march to the Red Fort of Delhi. 'We Indians, regardless of religious faiths, cherish the memory Bahadur Shah', Netaji said, 'not because he was the man who gave e clarion call to his countrymen to fight the enemy from without, but because he was the man under whose flag fought Indians from all provinces, Indians professing different religious faiths, the man under whose sacred flag ... freedom-loving Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs fought side by side in the war that has been dubbed by English historians as the sepoy mutiny, but which we Indians call the first war of independence.' That spirit of dynamic faith-inspired unity, not listless secular uniformity, was what he wanted to see emulated in 'the last war of independence'.

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