“Mystery over India freedom hero” says the BBCs Mike Thomson, reporting that “Indian independence fighter Subhash Chandra Bose did not die in a Taiwanese plane crash, an inquiry has found. The report into one of the great mysteries of India’s freedom struggle concluded that Mr Bose had died but not in the 1945 crash as widely thought.”
Chandra Bose may be considered by some Indians as a hero and freedom fighter (indeed the Forward Bloc movement he founded still exists as an Indian political party) – but I wasn’t previously aware that the BBC were given to describing him as such. Did the BBCs wartime bulletins use the phrase ?
The description is especially incongruous given the link from the story to this – “Hitler’s Secret Indian Army“, which describes Bose’s recruitment efforts among Indian prisoners of war in Germany (the Indian soldiers ended up in the SS, where they were to be accused of war crimes in their retreat through France).
” … by August 1942, Bose’s recruitment drive got fully into swing. Mass ceremonies were held in which dozens of Indian POWs joined in mass oaths of allegiance to Adolf Hitler.
These are the words that were used by men that had formally sworn an oath to the British king: “I swear by God this holy oath that I will obey the leader of the German race and state, Adolf Hitler, as the commander of the German armed forces in the fight for India, whose leader is Subhas Chandra Bose”
Bose was obviously one of those who, like the IRA in 1916, considered that England’s difficulty was India’s opportunity.
Thomson bends over backwards to offer extenuation. “In all 3,000 Indian prisoners of war signed up for the Free India Legion. But instead of being delighted, Bose was worried. A left-wing admirer of Russia, he was devastated when Hitler’s tanks rolled across the Soviet border. Matters were made even worse by the fact that after Stalingrad it became clear that the now-retreating German army would be in no position to offer Bose help in driving the British from faraway India. When the Indian revolutionary met Hitler in May 1942 his suspicions were confirmed …”
But by August 1942, when the recruitment drive was getting ‘into swing’, the Wehrmacht had been driving into Russia for fourteen months. According to Bose’s Wikipedia entry, “He was also, however, prepared to envisage an invasion of India via the U.S.S.R. by Nazi troops, spearheaded by the Azad Hind Legion; many have questioned his judgment here, as it seems unlikely that the Germans could have been easily persuaded to leave after such an invasion, which would also have resulted in an Axis victory in the War.”
One might have expected the British Broadcasting Corporation’s view of Bose to include the terms ‘rebel’ and perhaps even ‘traitor’. I shall ask my children to take a look in forty or fifty years and see if this “notorious insurgent” has become a “freedom hero”.
if you want to see true soviet style re-writing of history, check the Indian school sylabus – from memory it has Bose topped by the chinks.
At the ‘B’BC the “notorious insurgent” is a hero.
You have to remember the ‘b’BC is the enemy of the British and Britain.
Rather of a piece with the Beeb News giving a shameless plug to Ken Loach’s latest anti-Brit film the other night; yes, the Black and Tans committed counter-productive atrocities but the IRA that Loach (and, by extension, the Beeb) is so keen to lionise were hardly lily white freedom fighters either. End of rant!
>> So, in February 1943, Bose turned his back on his legionnaires and slipped secretly away aboard a submarine bound for Japan.
Hmmm. Some twelve years ago a full-page article was published in a Dutch broadsheet on this very subject. One point of interest to the Dutch journalist was the presence of Sikh Free Indian Legion soldiers in Holland, where they guarded the coastal resort of Zandvoort. This much to the consternation of the Dutch authorities who were horrified to find their daughters fraternising with dark-skinned occupiers. This episode was however mostly uneventful, hence the article focussed on the wider background of Bose and his collaboration. And to put it simply, there was absolutely no mention of Bose being disillusioned with Hitler and therefore transferring to Japan. The article said that the Germans facilitated his contact with the Japanese.
This is real National Enquirer stuff….maybe he’s with Elvis.
There was a “secret History” thing on this nut some time ago. It does tend to denigrate the thousands of Indian troops who fought in North Africa, in Italy, and under Slim in India especially at Imphal and Kohima.
This is not just an insult to the British but to the Indian Army which is too often forgotten although its enormous efforts in Montgomery’s 8th Army were vital.
Rick
Exactly – and the anniversary of Kohima is on 31st May. From the memorial there:
“When You Go Home, Tell Them Of Us And Say, For Your Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today”
So Kohima had Indian troops on both sides !
The impression I get from a (admittedly brief) trawl round the net is that his switch to Japan was caused, not by revulsion at Hitler, but by a realisation that Japan could attack India, but Germany couldn’t.
Given the treatment of ‘lesser breeds’ throughout SE Asia by the Japanese, Bose might not have found an Axis victory altogether to his liking.
Interesting Japanese source here on the Indian soldiers who fought for Japan in PNG.
http://ajrp.awm.gov.au/ajrp/remember.nsf/pages/NT00002ADA
“One might have expected the British Broadcasting Corporation’s view of Bose to include the terms ‘rebel’ and perhaps even ‘traitor’. I shall ask my children to take a look in forty or fifty years and see if this “notorious insurgent” has become a “freedom hero”.”
You mean how they have gone all wet between the legs over this ‘HERO’;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4998836.stm
This is an example of how the 2nd world war was indead a world war. There was very little of the important parts of it that did not alline behind the allies or the axis.
Unfortuately we are seeing a similar thing happening again. I believe for more similar reasons than might seem apparent. I dont know if I am allowed to use the word Nazi anymore so lets call them Parties, groups or individuals, that think the state and or the control of it has most if not all the answers to their problems. Why they believe this has plenty to do with complicated more local issues. However the outcome, of these allinements historicaly, has been another world war.
A good example also how: Understanding the meaning of the German Nazi party as almost entirly Racist in its reason for its exsistance, is to be seriously misslead. Nasty governments nead lotts of money to put their names to sometimes good and quite often bad things. European hegemony to Adolf Hitler was to him the destiny of the German nation to obtain and dictate to. Who got in the way and who helped was a secondary consideration.
Before and during WWII Nazi Germany aided and abetted ‘national liberation movements’ within the British Empire and even within the UK itself.
In some cases it actually helped to establish political movements in countries vital to British interests during the war.
I am often amused when I hear liberal leftists refer to the Baath Party as a ‘Stalinist’ organisation.
It was founded by the Abwehr (German Intelligence) in 1943.
Ba’ath founded by the Abwehr? That’s simply at its best a false statement. Seriously, there is absolutely no proof of any major Abwehr involvement (to the extent that you consider ‘founding’). Yes, there was contact made between the Abwehr and approximately 27000 political organisations, just as there were British paramilitaries trying to garner the support of local civilians to fight for them – but you fail to recognise that the founders of the Ba’ath party were utterly opposed to the influence of Europe in their affairs.
Stop making outlandish statements, that have no basis beyond your own twisted reality.
You seem to be implying that the BBC is failing because it’s not looking at the world through British eyes?
It’s looking internationally and India now he’s a hero rightly or wrongly and I guess they’re just going along with that.
Good to see Arab Nazis trawling sites like this one. Even better to see them half admitting their guilt by stating there is no proof of ‘major’ Abwehr involvement in the founding of the Baath movement.
Arseholes like AJS use language like this because you can rarely prove any covert operation of any intelligence service. So lets consider the following ‘coincidence’ from George Kerevans treatise on the origins of Baathism that strongly points to Abwehr involvement in its foundation.
‘In 1941 the Arab World was electrified by a pro-Axis coup in Baghdad. At that time, Iraq was nominally independent but Britain maintained a strong military presence. An Arab nationalist by the name of Rashid Ali al-Kailani organised an army coup against the pro-British Iraqi monarchy and requested help from Nazi Germany. In Damascus, then a Vichy French colony the Baath Party founders immediately organised public demonstrations in support of Rashid Ali.’
I’ll leave saner, impartial browsers to draw their own conclusions….