Netaji Bose's 'The Indian Struggle'

In 'The Indian Struggle' Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose wrote-

The wars of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe had effected a considerable improvement in the science and art of fighting and this knowledge was at the disposal of the European races, when they went over to the East.

How did they get there? By ship. But those ships were engaged in highly profitable commerce. There was a virtuous circle whereby the 'Flag followed trade' save, towards the end of the Nineteenth Century when trade was supposed to follow the Flag into darkest Africa.  

The first physical conflict between Indians and Europeans showed that the former were at a disadvantage in the matter of military skill.

No. Indians won the first conflicts but then decided not to bother. Why? The Europeans actually paid you to fight. The Indian Prince might not pay you so the main reason you showed up was so as to gain some loot. Economics matters. If you have money or the prospect of money, you can always acquire military skill. Maharaja Ranjit Singh had the best army in India. Sadly, he did not have a worthy successor.  

It is significant that before the British conquest of India, the Indian rulers had Europeans in their service in the army as well as in the navy and many of them occupied high positions.

Plenty of non Western kingdoms recruited Western soldiers to train and raise new nizam-e-jadid regiments on the Western European pattern. Why did Qajar Iran retain its independence while Sikh Punjab transitioned happily to British rule within a decade Ranjit Singh's death? The answer is that British administration had some virtues which few native dynasties could match. What were those virtues? They had to do with the only manner in which the British interfered in local government and challenged age old customs.

British Justice stipulated the same punishment for a high caste or a low caste man, it gave the same weight to evidence from an infidel as it did to one of the faith. There were no discriminatory taxes. Slavery was abolished as were many repugnant customs like 'suttee'- the burning of widows upon their husband's pyres.

Bose thinks that no previous invader had 'interfered with local self-government' though, in his own native Bengal, terms of Arabic, not Sanskrit, origin predominated in all matters of local government, land tenure, fiscal policy and so forth. In fairness, Bose was saying that previous invaders had settled in India. The fact that they enslaved the native population did not matter because the masters had become Indian. Bose does not mention that the British too had progeny who were settled in India. But the British did not promote this Eurasian class above the heads of the natives. Had they done so, by Bose's logic, there should have been no 'Indian Struggle'. Rather those of purely native descent should have licked the boots of 'half caste' Brits. Such was Ind's immemorial custom.

Bose finds something very sinister in the attempt of the British administration to improve itself and the condition of the people it ruled.

He writes-

 Out of the consciousness of a civilising mission there came the attempt on the part of Britain to 'anglicise' every sphere of the life of the Indian people.

Bose had noticed, on his visits to Indian villages, that Indian peasants had taken to Morris dancing and drinking warm beer and eating Lancashire hotpot. This was because Britain had used its imperial power to 'anglicize' every sphere of the life of the Indian people.

The missionaries became very active in propagating their religion,

but these missionaries were even more successful in China. Why? Because their religion was better.

and educational institutions on the British model were founded by them, as well as by the state, in different parts of Bengal.

But it was Hindus who founded 'Hindu College' which became the famous Presidency College.  Bose may have thought that his parents had been forced by the Brits to educate him so exclusively in the English medium that some fellow students laughed at his rudimentary spoken Bengali. But Bose was wrong. His parents were ambitious for their children. They chose English medium because English education was superior to the native variety. This remains true to this day.

The entire educational system was built up on the British model and English was made the medium of instruction, not only in the University but also in the secondary schools.

In Bengal, this was at the demand of Hindu Bengalis- particularly Kayasths like himself. Macaulay pointed out that Indians would only study Sanskrit or Arabic if they were paid to do so. By contrast, they would pay good money to study English. This remains the case to this day all over the sub-continent.

In art and architecture also, British models were imposed on the country.

Very true! If you wanted to build a mosque or temple or house or anything else, the Government insisted it be done on British models.

In fact, in inaugurating the new educational system, the Government deliberately stated that their object was to train up a nation who would be English in everything, except in race.

Sheer nonsense! Macaulay spoke of a class of intermediaries- often Kayasthas like Bose himself- who would pay to study English so as to make a lot of money for themselves. But this intermediary class would be few in number. The Brits never envisaged any substantial proportion of the population becoming fluent in English. What would be the point?

Bose himself, taking charge of the Indian soldiers who changed allegiance, could not have made himself understood to them in English. He had to learn Urdu- which he did to great effect in a German submarine.

The reason the Brits preferred to recruit soldiers fluent in Gurkhali or Punjabi or whatever, rather than English, was because they were more reliable soldiers. If they had tried to anglicize the Army, the loyalty of the troops would have been compromised.

In the new schools, students began to think, to talk, to dress and to eat as Englishmen would.

Which students? Only those whose parents were ambitious for them. However, few Hindus 'ate as Englishmen would' because to do so was repugnant and involved loss of caste. It is doubtful that Indians 'thought' as Englishmen would simply because their paths to wealth were so different.

The new generation turned out by these schools was quite different from the old. They were no longer Indians in their equipment but English.

This is nonsense. The English were a maritime race. English educated Indians did not take to the Sea. They made money the old fashioned way and talked the same sort of bollocks upper caste Indians had always talked.

Faced with the menace of being swallowed up by a new religion and a new culture, the soul of the people died.

Really? Very few Indians knew the Brits were around as late as 1911, when an England returned scholar made a survey. The soul of a people can't die because of something it knows nothing about.

The first visible embodiment of this revolt was Raja Ram Mohon Roy and the movement of which he was the father was the Brahmo Samaj movement.

What fucking revolt? Roy supported British rule and wanted its extension. But his religious objection to idolatry was based in Islam and his 'Brahmo' religion owed more to Dara Shikoh's translation of the Upanishads than to Vedanta.

Ram Mohon Roy stood out as the apostle of a religious revival.

He opposed 'idolatrous' Hinduism. It was the Unitarians who found his stupid polemics against Trinitarianism useful.

He urged a return to the original principles of Vedantism and for a total rejection of all the religions and social impurities that had crept into Hinduism in later times.

Coz he read a book by a Mughal Prince. He'd have been better off simply converting to Islam- but then he wouldn't have been able to make a lot of money.

He also advocated an all-round regeneration of the social and national life and the acceptance of all that is useful and beneficial in the modern life of Europe. Raja Ram Mohon Roy therefore stands out against the dawn of the new awakening in India as the prophet of the new age.

It was a new age which never materialized. Bose was writing a hundred years after the fellow died. He must have understood that Roy was a shite prophet.

In 1818, Warren Hastings wrote that the time was not distant when Britain would voluntarily relinquish its 'accidental' Empire in India. Thanks to silly arses like Roy that time became progressively more distant.

Bose pretends that the Brahmos weren't ultra loyalists who spent their time fighting with their more orthodox cousins or with lower caste Brahmos- like Keshab Chandra Sen.

Consider the following rigmarole. How did a guy who passed the ICS exam come to write it?

The Brahmo Samaj was founded in 1828. By that time British rule in India had spread through a large portion of the country and people had begun to realise slowly that the new invaders were different from the old.

Why did it take the Indians so long to realize that the Brits were white in complexion and generally had fair hair and light coloured eyes? Were they all completely blind?

Moreover, when the inquired about the old District Collector or Governor, they were told the fellow had retired and gone home to Britain. Why did it take the Indians so long to realize that the Brits liked living in their own country and only came to India to gain wealth? Was it because Indians were utter cretins?

They had come not merely to make money or to preach religion, but to conquer and to rule — and unlike the invaders of old they were not going to make India their home but were going to rule as foreigners.

That's a good thing, surely? Had the Brits settled in India and had lots of babies, Indians would have been stuck licking the boots of those babies and the babies they would themselves have had.

It was greatly preferable to accede to British paramountcy because the British colonel who came to your court as the Governor-General's agent would not grab your throne for his own progeny. He would not abduct your womenfolk to serve in his harem so as to raise up a brood of his own which would tyrannize over your own progeny. 

The realisation of this national menace quickly roused the masses to a sense of the danger that threatened them. Thus occurred the revolution of 1857.

In which Bengal and Madras and Bombay remained completely loyal to the Brits and nothing revolutionary whatsoever happened.

It was by no means merely a revolt of the troops — a sepoy mutiny — as English historians are wont to say — but a real national revolution.

In which three fifths of the Company's territories remained wholly loyal.

It was a revolution in which both Hindus and Mohammedans joined and they all fought under the flag of a Mohammedan.

Who didn't want to fight at all, being perfectly content to remain a pensioner of the British.

At that moment it looked as if the English would be thrown out of the country.

Not to Bose's ancestors or other Bengalis, which is why they stayed loyal. The Brits might have been thrown out of the Doab- if the rebels had fought better- but they'd have kept the littoral. The Hindus and Muslims would have fallen out and begun massacring each other- a fight the Hindus would have won because the Brits would have backed Marathas, Sikhs and Gurkhas against the extreme 'Wahhabi' (this was the term the Brits used) Muslim 'Ghazis'.

But through sheer luck they won by the skin of their teeth.

Luck? The rebels, with one or two notable exceptions, were crap at fighting. Not so the Scottish highlanders who earned such a reputation for valour that to this day the Indian and Pakistani armies employ bagpipers. 

The failure of the revolution was due among other causes to lack of support from some quarters, viz., the Sikhs of the Punjab and to hostility on the part of the Gurkhas of Nepal. When the revolution was crushed, a reign of terror followed and the country was disarmed from end to end. 

By loyal Indians. Consider the manner in which the Pataudis refer to 1857. The call it 'Ghaddar'- treachery with the additional meaning of anarchy and misrule. It took a Chitpawan Brahman to name the events of that year as 'the first War of Indian Independence'.

What motivated Bose's writing such nonsense? He was seeking to establish a link between some imaginary Hegelian Revolutionary Geist and his own struggle to displace White ICS men and third rate British politicians with Brown ICS men and third rate Indian politicians.

  The revolution of 1857 followed in the wake of World revolution of 1848.

There was no connection between the two whatsoever. There may have been a Pan Islamic angle to it- at least this is what the Brits suspected- but this had nothing to do with Europe's 1848, when 'History reached a turning point, but failed to turn.'

The birth of the Indian National Congress took place at a time when there was a similar upheaval in other parts of the world.

It was created by British Civil Servants so as to strengthen the hand of local administrators against Whitehall. There were no 'upheavals' anywhere at that time.

The movement of 1905 closely followed the Boer War in South Africa and was contemporaneous with the Russian Revolution of 1905.

The movement of 1905 was an own goal by upper class Bengali Hindus. They should have permitted the partition of Bengal on religious lines. Their successful opposition to it aroused the rancour and suspicion of the Muslims.

The attempted revolution during the Great War was a phenomenon visible all over the world, at about the same time.

What happened was that the Jugantar revolutionaries were hoping for military assistance from Germany. However the British Secret Service had full knowledge of the plan from the Czechs. They successfully cracked down on the revolutionists not just in India but also America. Indeed, the Brits emerged stronger, not weaker from this trial of strength. Going forward, it was the British police officer, Tegart, who gained salience. He suspected the Bose bros of wanting to assassinate him and made common cause with the anti-Bose faction in the INC. Ultimately, Tegart in retirement received a nice sinecure in the shape of a London Directorship in Birla's Industrial Empire.

Last but not least, the movement of 1920-21 was contemporaneous with the Sinn Fein Revolution in Ireland, with the fight of the Turks for their independence, and it closely followed revolutions which brought freedom to countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia.

Why is Bose highlighting the fact that India did not get what Egypt got at that time? The fact is that Gandhi called off this movement because the Indian bourgeoisie needed the Brits more than the Brits needed them. Ceylon got universal franchise in 1931. Indians could not agree sufficiently to get any such thing. The gap between Hindus and Muslims widened. The price of Independence was Partition. Nationalism could defeat Imperialism but such Nationalism, it turned out, was founded upon Religion. Thus, India was more similar to Turkey than to the Western world. What happened at the Treaty of Lausanne also happened in India. There, Greek Muslims went to Turkey and Turkish Christians went to Greece. In India, at least in the North, there was a similar exchange of populations on the basis of Religion. The Communist party, on Stalin's orders, endorsed this. It seems that the Bose brothers had lived in vain.

There is no doubt, therefore, that the awakening in India is organically connected with the upheaval all over the world during the last and the present century.

Had there been any such 'organic connection' then Communism in India would have taken a very different course after reforms began in China and the break up of the Soviet Union.

It is unfair to judge Bose's intellect by highlighting a book he dashed off in a hurry under adverse circumstances. However, Bose's narrative is still in vogue among Left-Liberals in India and so it is worthwhile recalling that though death can destroy the body, stupidity is immortal.