A Chapter from Netaji’s nephew-Amiya Nath Bose’s experience with his uncle-Subhas in the freedom movement.

A Chapter from Netaji’s nephew-Amiya Nath Bose’s experience with his uncle-Subhas in the freedom movement!

From 1928 until his arrest and departure for Europe in 1933, my uncle Subhas Chandra Bose (my Rangakakababu) and I shared the same room on the second floor of our 1 Woodburn Park house. He used to come back home very late after his days of hectic political work at about midnight or later. He would take a bath and eat the food that was kept on the table for him in our room. He would then wake me up. It was not a very pleasant experience for me but I would of course get up.

Rangakakababu would talk to me about many events and about Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and others. I did not know them personally then but I came to know them very well in later years. He would also talk to me about the revolutionary leaders of our country. He told me about Nikunja Sen, who later became the editor of a paper published by my father Sarat Chandra Bose – a Bengali weekly called Mahajati. Nikunja Sen had provided the uniforms and revolvers for the revolutionaries Binoy, Badal and Dinesh. So a good deal of my knowledge of politics, about personalities and the political scenario were gathered by me from Uncle Subhas.

Among the Bengal revolutionaries, I had seen Surya Sen many times at our Woodburn Park house. We used to call him Mashtarmoshai. He was a very quiet and simple man. We did not know then the fire that was inside him and that one day he would lead the Chittagong Armoury Raid.

In 1928 the Congress Session was held in Calcutta and a uniformed Volunteer Corps was organised on that occasion. My Uncle Subhas became the General Officer Commanding of the Volunteer Corps. I remember when Uncle Subhas was coming down the stairs from the second floor to the first floor, his father Janakinath, my grandfather, came out of his room on the first floor and said– Subhas, I hope you will be the Garibaldi of India! This wish proved to be rather prophetic.

After resigning from the Indian Civil Service, Uncle Subhas returned to India and joined Deshabandhu Chittaranjan Das and accepted him as his political guru. Uncle Subhas told me that during the Non-cooperation Movement launched in 1920, Gandhiji had effectively utilised Hindu religious symbols to convert what was purely a middle class movement into a mass movement. But this appeal was limited only to the Hindu masses. In order to draw the Muslims into his movement, Gandhiji had entered into what was known as the Khilafat Pact with the Ali brothers. This was a movement to save the Caliphate in Turkey, with ‘Islam in danger’ as a slogan for the Khilafats. According to Uncle Subhas, and also in my view, this was a grievous mistake that Gandhiji made. The Khilafat movement quickly collapsed when Kemal Ataturk assumed power in Turkey and abolished the Caliphate.

In February 1937 as the President of the Calcutta University Union, I had invited Mohammad Ali Jinnah to speak on Hindu-Muslim relations at the Darbhanga Hall of the University. There Jinnah spoke as a great advocate of Hindu-Muslim understanding and unity.

The situation was to change fundamentally with the elections of 1937 held under the Government of India Act, 1935. The results of the 1937 elections proved that the Congress was merely a Hindu Party. Out of the 482 Muslim seats in British India, the Congress contested only in 56 and won only 28. Most of the seats were won not because of the strength of the Congress but because of Badshah Khan in the North West Frontier. The Congress did not secure a single Muslim seat in Uttar Pradesh, Bengal and in the Punjab. It did not even contest Muslim seats in Sind, Bombay and Bihar, but it won four seats in Madras and the rest in the North West Frontier and only because of Badshah Khan.

During this time Uncle Subhas was in prison. As he was very ill he was taken to the Medical College Hospital where I was allowed to have several interviews with him. He asked me to tell my father Sarat Bose that Congress should press for coalition ministries throughout the country, with the assistance of the Muslim League if necessary. This would help to forge Hindu-Muslim unity. I carried his message to my father. My father wrote to Gandhiji asking for coalition ministries all over India, particularly in Bengal with Krishak Praja Party of Fazlul Haque. Father’s proposal was turned down by Gandhiji in the Congress Working Committee which included Maulana Azad and Pandit Nehru.

It then became clear to Jinnah that in a united India, Muslims will never be in a position to share power. Thus in less than three years the Pakistan Resolution was moved in 1940 calling for a separate state for Muslims of India.

Uncle Subhas’ contacts with the revolutionaries began in the early 1920s, especially when Deshabandhu Chittaranjan Das formed his Swaraj Party in 1923. By the 1930s Uncle Subhas became a firm believer in the revolutionary alternative. Sometime in 1930 Uncle Subhas wrote a letter to Barin Ghosh (brother of Aurobindo Ghosh). He wrote by hand all night in an exercise book which I still possess. He told me – Go and hand over this letter to Barinbabu. In that letter he wrote: Barinbabu, Apnar ognibina Bangali jati kay sonan. Bharatbarsher muktir jonnay chai shashastra sangram. (Barinbabu, Please give your clarion call to the people of Bengal. We need armed resistance for the liberation of India).

From 1930 Uncle Subhas made it quite clear to me that he did not believe that non-violence would bring freedom. He of course acknowledged that Gandhiji had given the freedom movement a mass character, but he was convinced that we could not spin our way to Swaraj.

In 1939 while I was studying at Cambridge University, Uncle Subhas asked me to come to India during the summer vacation. I came home as instructed. During my stay in India the Second World War broke out on 3 October 1939. Soon after Uncle Subhas summoned me and asked me: Are you willing to risk your life for a mission for me? I was a young man and more than willing to do my Uncle’s bidding, so I said yes. Uncle Subhas said: I want to send a letter to the Soviet Government which you will carry back to Europe. Though we have been able to infiltrate into the Police and the Civil Service in India, we have not been able to do much to influence the British Indian Army which is still very loyal to the British Government. I want the Soviet Union to launch an attack from the north-west and that will help us to organise a revolution inside India.

Uncle Subhas believed that within the pincers of these two movements, India will be able to achieve her freedom. He also believed that the Soviet Union would not seek to colonise India.

So negotiations were started with the CPI Politbureau. They agreed that I should carry a message from Subhas Bose to the Soviet Government asking them for armed assistance. The message was written in Uncle’s own hand and not typed.

I told Uncle Subhas that if I were caught with the message he could be hanged by the British. He said: I will take that risk, but you will also be hanged. I said – Yes, I know.
He further said: I will only tell your father and nobody else. If you are caught and if you are hanged, then I shall tell your mother and everybody else as to why you met with this fate.

Uncle Subhas knew psychology very well. He told me: Carry the letters casually in your overcoat pocket (I was carrying two letters, one from Uncle Subhas to the Soviet Government and a second letter from the CPI to the Comintern).

I began my journey by seaplane from Karachi. I finally reached Poole in England via Basra, Corfu and Bordeaux. When I got down at Poole seaport on the south coast of England a police officer came up to me and addressed me – Amiyababu kemon achhen? (Amiyababu How are you?) I looked at him. He was a British Police Officer from the New Scotland Yard. It was almost the end of October but my shirt became wet with perspiration. I knew if I were caught with the secret message I could be hanged. At the same time, I was acutely conscious of the great danger to my Uncle Subhas.

The officer searched my suitcase – all my books, clothes, shaving kit etc. He took away all my books, detained my suitcase, but he did not search my overcoat pockets! I went through.

I handed over Uncle Subhas’ message to the designated KGB agent. It is now known that the Soviet Union did not take any action. History took a different turn with the attack on the Soviet Union by Hitler in June 1941. That explains why the Soviet Union did not respond to Subhas Bose’s request for armed assistance. By this time Uncle Subhas had already made his daring escape from India, and had arrived in Berlin to lead the next phase of his struggle for Indian freedom. He wrote to the Nazi Foreign Minister Ribbentrop in very clear terms that the attack by Germany on the Soviet Union will be considered as an act of imperialist aggression by the people of India.
——————————————————————————————————
This article is based on edited extracts from a lecture by Amiya Nath Bose at Presidency College, Calcutta on 23 January 1996, only a few days before he passed away.

Amiya Nath Bose was the second son of Sarat Chandra Bose and Bivabati. He grew up under the close care and inspiration of his father Sarat and uncle Subhas, the famed Bose Brothers. He entered student politics as an undergraduate at Scottish Church College in Calcutta, and founded the Calcutta University Students Union and became its first President. During his years in England (1937-44) as a student at Cambridge University, and also qualifying as a Barrister, he was actively involved in campaigning for Indian independence, particularly during the 1942 Quit India Movement. After his return to India at the end of the Second World War, he worked closely with his father Sarat Bose to strengthen and unite the progressive leftist forces in the country, and to prevent the partition of India and then of Bengal.Throughout his life, as a politician and a Member of Parliament, Amiya nath sought to promote the Bose Brothers’ vision of a secular, just and prosperous India. In the late 1970s as the Indian Ambassdor to Burma, from where Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose had launched his final battle for Independence, Amiya nath endeavoured to promote the Bose Brothers’ vision of Asian unity and cooperation. Earlier Amiya nath had personally researched and collected a wealth of valuable documents, photos and films on Netaji and his activities from the archives in England, Germany, Italy and Japan as well as in India. He entrusted his collections to the museum and archives at Netaji Bhawan in Calcutta established by Sarat Chandra Bose in 1946, to be readily available to scholars, researchers and students across the globe.