CALCUTTA, 5 February 2005 — German Nobel Prize-wining author Gunter Grass has branded India’s nationalist icon Subhash Chandra Bose a Nazi stooge scandalizing millions who blindly heroworship him.
Gunter, ironically, chose to attack Bose in Calcutta where he is particularly venerated by Bengalis as Netaji, or The Leader. In West Bengal, Bose is still more popular than Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister. Many Bengalis, in fact, refuse to believe that Bose died in 1945 in an aircrash.
Significantly, the Nobel laureate has ignited a controversy before the release of leading film director Shyam Benegal’s celluloid extravaganza, Bose: The Forgotten Hero, later this month.
Just last month, Bose’s 108th birth anniversary was observed across India with the usual fanfare.
But speaking at the Calcutta book fair earlier this week, the Nobel laureate said: “Bose went to Germany and sought Hitler’s help. He traveled to Tokyo in a German submarine. Bose also sought Japanese help. But no one seems to be critical of him. On the contrary, he is held in high esteem in Bengal.”
Grass added: “Despite Bose’s association with Nazis and Japanese, why Bengalis admire him so much instead of being critical beats me”.
Rubbing salt into Bengali wounds, Grass declared that Mahatma Gandhi was a “greater and more successful leader” than Bose.
Bose escaped from India in 1941 and secretly met Adolf Hitler in Berlin to seek his help to drive out the British. When the Nazi leader turned down the request, he approached the Japanese.
Traveling in submarines, he reached Singapore where with Japanese help he raised the Indian National Army (INA) comprising Indian soldiers of the British Army who had been captured by the Japanese in Southeast Asia during the World War II. The INA marched to India’s northeast, where after initial success it was crushed by the British Army without much ado.
Bose himself was reportedly killed on Aug. 18, 1945, aboard a Japanese bomber which crashed seconds after takeoff from a military air base in Taipei en route to Moscow.
According to the official version, he was cremated and the ashes preserved in an urn in Tokyo’s Renkoji temple.
But millions of Indians, particularly Bengalis led by Forward Bloc (FB) — the political party founded by Bose — refused to believe that he perished in the crash. As ordinary Indians eagerly waited for him to resurface, Bose’s popularity rivaled Mahatma Gandhi’s and Jawaharlal Nehru’s.
Attempts by Indian government to bring back the ashes from Tokyo and build a memorial were persistently thwarted by FB. The government set up two inquiry commissions in 1954 and 1970 to unravel the mystery of Bose’s death.
