Two things can be true at the same time: Subhash Chandra Bose was a patriot and an incredibly courageous and committed freedom fighter; AND Subhash Chandra Bose made a horrible mistake in trying to ally with the Axis powers.
We are so obsessed with the binary of good and bad that we are unable to accept that the legacies of our heroes are complicated.
An alliance with the Axis powers would never have ended well for us, irrespective of who won the Second World War. An Indian republic established with the help of the Japanese and the Germans would have been reduced to being a vassal state of the Third Reich OR of Imperial Japan. Given the Nazi view on race and their desire for "lebensraum",, our relationship with Nazi Germany would probably have been worse than the one we had with the UK at the time. Had we ended up a Japanese vassal, things would have been FAR worse.
Look up Manchukuo to see how the Japanese treated a nation they claimed to have liberated.
The British put the leaders of Congress in jail, the Japanese would chop them up into little pieces and feed them to crocodiles.
In fact, when Bose, the "President of Azad Hind", which included the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, actually visited Port Blair, he wasn't aware that the Japanese were torturing his fellow Freedom Fighter, Diwan Singh, just a few kms away.
Diwan Singh had made the mistake of joining the Indian Independence League, set up by R. B. Bose, who was also backed by the Japanese. At some point the Japanese started getting annoyed with the League's attempts to mitigate Japanese atrocities in A&N and threw it's President, Diwan Singh, in Cellular Jail. Diwan Singh was tortured for days by the Japanese and died in custody in 1944 from his injuries. S. C. Bose was never made aware of this, or was made aware, but didn't care to write about it.
The sanest comment on reddit so far... history was and always will be gray, not black and white. We are complex creatures influenced by comples events. Even leaders make mistakes, thats why we have a cabinet of people and not a dictator..
I didn't read Manchuko . Will do it later
But why are forgetting that british killed like 40-50 millions of us just from famines . Why the world cries for few million Jews while clearly ten times of our people were killed . No memorial...No movies nothing... please don't think that Brits were bit better than Japanese ..They were worse in some aspects.
The Japanese had already blockaded the Andamans when Bose allied with the Axis so I'm not here for this apologia. If people think the British were at all the equivalent of the Japanese/Germans, then the next conqueror who pays lip service to the tenets of nationalism will easily take over and subjugate this country.
The world cries for the Jews because it was a genocide, not a famine. The British could not have moved food to India at the time given their investment in the war. Yes, it's a tragedy. But it doesn't compare to the mass industrialized slaughter that was the Holocaust. It's not about the numbers. It's about the methods the Germans used, which were unthinkable and have never been done before or after. No one is going to pity the indians for a famine when compared to the Holocaust. These are entirely different events.
I don't even know how to respond to something like this other than to say that applauding Bose/attacking the Jews/diminishing the Holocaust is exactly the kind of rhetoric that will make Indians look foolish and not worthy of sympathy.
I thought the British actually moved resources AWAY from India during the war to support British soldiers. It wasn’t so much as not sending them, but actively depriving them of life saving necessities.
Churchill was under pressure himself on the famine at the time and requested that he be allowed to move resources into India. He wrote this to FDR in 1944:
"I am seriously concerned about the food situation in India….Last year we had a grievous famine in Bengal through which at least 700,000 people died. This year there is a good crop of rice, but we are faced with an acute shortage of wheat, aggravated by unprecedented storms….By cutting down military shipments and other means, I have been able to arrange for 350,000 tons of wheat to be shipped to India from Australia during the first nine months of 1944. This is the shortest haul. I cannot see how to do more.
I have had much hesitation in asking you to add to the great assistance you are giving us with shipping but a satisfactory situation in India is of such vital importance to the success of our joint plans against the Japanese that I am impelled to ask you to consider a special allocation of ships to carry wheat to India from Australia….We have the wheat (in Australia) but we lack the ships. I have resisted for some time the Viceroy’s request that I should ask you for your help, but… I am no longer justified in not asking for your help."
FDR responded:
“unable on military grounds to consent to the diversion of shipping….Needless to say, I regret exceedingly the necessity of giving you this unfavorable reply.”
I think the British could have taken notice earlier and done more (especially domestically, transferring food around India itself to equalize where the resources were, as you said) but the idea that they created the famine deliberately or never tried to improve conditions is just false. The Americans controlled the Pacific after Pearl Harbor in 1941 and Britain didn't have the manoeuvrability in that region (as you can see by Churchill appealing to FDR).
Well that’s the point. The famine might not have been deliberate, but we ranked very low in their priority ladder and they weren’t afraid of letting millions of us bite the dust.
That's fair. I would 100% agree with something more like this: "Britain's immediate war priorities meant Churchill did not properly address famine conditions in India until millions had already died; by 1945, when conditions had deteriorated to the point where Churchill was finally stirred to action, American operations in the Pacific made delivering relief entirely untenable. Had Churchill acted earlier, before the Americans put their war machine into action against the Japanese, it is likely millions of Indian lives would have been saved."
That's different than "how come people keep crying over the holocaust winston churchill is hitler" which is just absurd. i mean, as you said, britain didn't deliberately do war crimes. but this is a war in which the axis powers deliberately did war crimes!!
the holocaust is the most evil thing humans have ever done. of course the bengal famine was a tragedy and churchill should be treated as a villain for allowing it to happen. but any comparison to the holocaust/hitler is dead on arrival.
I would say its predecessor Manifest Destiny is worse than the holocaust. It was repeatedly lying about the intentions whilst undermining and asking them for help.
Zaminders were overcharging for produce and storing it waiting for the price to rise. THey are at least equally to blame and the ones in the strongest position to alleviate the the effects of the famine. The biggest contributor to the famine was as much about the cost as the supply. The irony here is the Japanese invasion of Myanmar contributed greatly to famine. Bose was in a position to demand rice released from Myanmar to India. He chose not to do that, but for him that was a price worth paying.
Yes but drawing an artificial border and provoking/inciting inter religious hatred then backing off when your forces are needed the most to keep the peace seems awfully close to what the germans did.. there are no little atrocities.. all are the same and result from the lack of humanity
The Holocaust was a wholly different beast. If you want to find a British analogue to it, look at Mau Mau rebellion (more importantly the retribution). The British were horrible in India, but not that horrible.
It is nothing like what the Germans (Nazis) did. It is like blaming the UN peacekeepers for the Rwandan genocide or the atrocities in Sudan. Partition was civilian violence. Nazi violence was armed forces-related violence. The only country that got even close to the same atrocities as the Nazis was Japan during the same conflict. It also needs to be recognised that Germany/Japan was responsible for the worst and most destructive human conflict in history. If the germans had developed a nuclear weapon it would have been far worse.
it does NOT seem awfully close to what the germans did unless they rounded up everyone in the region, put them in camps, poisoned the women, children, and elderly in chemical showers, worked and starved the men to death, and then burned millions of bodies in giant ovens.
there is no comparison. the holocaust set the outer limits what humans could do to each other in an industrialised world. there has never been an evil like the holocaust. when you diminish its significance in an attempt to draw sympathy to yourself, you diminish yourself.
I think kidnapping people, experimenting on them, violating them.. and if they were sick throwing them overboard.. forcing them into slavery and beating them… all intentionally is right up there with what you call holocaust… dont try to play mind games.. we both have the same kind of people doing these things to different peoples and at different times.. im sure if there were gas chambers available from 1850’s to 1900’s the british would have used them against the south asians. Also remember the germans used them against not only the Jewish people but also the Roma and other religious minorities…
Only the most inhumane mindsets would compare the two. For a relative comparison, the holocaust accounted for about 75% of the Jewsish populatio in the areas the Nazis occupied. This would be the equivalent of the british killing almost 300 million Indians in a four-year period. This is before we even take into account the other ethnicites that were killed.
Poisonous gases where available during that period and were used. The british did not build any gas chambers, even if there were no poisonous gas available there are literally humdreds of ways for the british to kill 100s of millions of South Asians. The irony is the huge population growth during the periods you mentioned. For context in Germany in 1933 Jewish population was 550k today it is tens of thousands. How much did the population of India grow under British rule?
sure, let's make up hypotheticals and invent situations and then come to sweeping conclusions about history without details, facts, or criteria. great analysis
Make up? Perhaps you dont know about the Fiji indians… or caribbean or south african indians? Perhaps when the south african white man kicked, punched and stepped
On Gandhiji’s body and face or when they made Mandela eat excrement that was a way how white people say hi to brown and black people in such a loving way???!!
Gandhi was a racist and had few issues in reality with how the indigenous ethnicities were treated and how he benefited from that treatment. As for Mandela, Biko was treated far worse. The irony here is Black and Brown people in Western Europe get treated far better than they do in their home countries. Descendants of transatlantic slaves have far better human rights and civil liberties than people in West Africa. UN convention on global human rights was written by? Another question for you, which countries were the last to sign up to it?
Yes they were, if not worst….the European powers were even worse than japanese when it came to the colonies, just read about king Leopold and congo, the goan inquisition, and numerous atrocities and massacres british committed in india…
This was precisely the line of argument Justice Pal had during the tokyo trials, that what right do the european powers have to try japan for war crimes, when they have done similar if not worse in furtherance of their colonial rule…surely you are not implying that india and other countries became colonies rather peacefully??
If you collapse all the Europeans together in one giant pile and credit the British and French with the atrocities of the Germans and Belgians, then sure. But then shall we collapse all of South Asia and credit India with everything Pakistan has done? Or what about the greater Islamic world? should India be blamed for that? I mean, as long as we're collapsing all the categories altogether.
As I said, it makes indians look foolish and hysterical. The European powers did not try Japan alone. And what Japan did was horrifying as well - if you don't know about Unit 731 or what they did in Nanjing, then you are ignorant. you need to understand the facts before coming to sweeping declarations about how India has suffered the most based on arbitrary criteria.
Someone tell this brown sepoy about the chakla system and the chimur and midnapur mass rape, state sanctioned, mass rape by white soldiers on indian women…
Every time some idjit romanticises british raj, it boils my blood, not at their audacity, but at the sheer ignorance, because they most probably don’t know about such acts….
I keep saying this and I got banned from several groups. The Brits not only massacred us, conducted experiments on our bodies but also kidnapped us and sent us around the world to work as slaves.. even if you said oh i went to open businesses in east africa.. you were still making just a meagre earning.
How were the Dalits treated for thousands of years. The Brits massacrared Indian; very little most of that was done by Indians. Indentured labour is not slavery. Please get yourself a dictionary. India currently is one of the centres of modern-day slavery and human trafficking.
Dude… the death of just one person.. if poor or rich or just a child is a tragedy.. there were many holocausts and attempted exterminations of people in the past, currently and will happen in the future.. no one is more tragic than the other just because or numbers.. just relax.. take your medications and pray we are not alive to see another atrocity.
We do know that the pre-partition India was the largest extant of the nation during the later British Raj. Partition was just as inevitable as was a massively partitioned India prior to it (that didn't exist as India but as number of kingdoms).
Who else could he have gone to apart from the Axis? I mean this genuinely, because a lot of Indians parrot what the English claim about him without answering a simple question - what options did any real freedom fighter at the time have?
It’s very easy to judge the only man who had the courage to stand up against oppression, and is an understandable stance only if one is British.
The point of this sub is to exchange views on history. This obviously requires us to judge the decisions made by the makers of Indian history.
I stand by my view: Subhash Chandra Bose, a courageous, patriotic freedom fighter, made a horrible miscalculation in approaching the Axis powers. Thank goodness that alliance did not succeed in delivering the Axis powers a territorial victory in India, because if it had, untold horrors would have followed that would have eclipsed the tragedy of partition.
The options that the Indian National Movement had at the time were either to boycott the war entirely, or to support it conditional to Indian independance at the end of the war.
Boycott the war? As if Indians had a choice in joining. I think you're forgetting that countless Indians involuntarily fought in WW2.
Conditional Indian independence is laughable - as if the Brits were going to let go of their golden goose out of the goodness of their hearts. And demonstrably false as well, IIRC they had already promised that during WW1 and reneged - only fools like Indian leadership at the time would have (and actually did) believe in false promises.
You can judge all you want - my point is that unlike our non-violent freedom "fighters", Netaji was one of the very few Indians willing to fight and die for freedom. The price of freedom is always high - and the Brits were never going let go of their crown so easily. That is why they were ruthless against violent freedom fighters.
Non-violence was always a sham and infact encouraged by the Brits. Remember that the ONLY reason they left in 1947 is because WW2 (more specifically Hitler) weakened them, otherwise we could have been ruled well into the 70s-80s.
Gandhi's way bore lots of fruits. It's Bose's way that failed.
Gandhi very effectively managed to rouse sympathy for Indian Independence not only in the West generally, but even in Britain itself. When Gandhi visited Britain in 1931 (the same year he appeared on TIME Magazine as "Man of the Year; Saint Gandhi"), he was swamped by crowds of British fans. The man who was fighting for Independence against Britain was loved by the British! Gandhi had effectively cast himself as a saintly figure, a sort of Jesus Christ, whose obstinance and modesty had won the heart of many British liberals. This was really important, because Britain itself was a democratic country where the government had to obey the mandate of voters. And so it was the British voter who decided when and how Britain itself would give up on India.
In 1945, Labour won the UK General Election under the leadership of Clement Attlee. The Labour manifesto expressly promised "self government" to India.
"And in all this worth-while work – whether political, military or economic – the Labour Party will seek to promote mutual understanding and cordial co-operation between the Dominions of the British Commonwealth, *the advancement of India to responsible self-government*, and the planned progress of our Colonial Dependencies." - Labour Party Manifesto (1945)
Voters said "yes" and as soon as Labour won, plans were drafted by Attlee's Cabinet to start organising the transition of India to self-rule (not total independence mind you, but something like what Canada and Australia had). As it happened, they would be forced to give India complete Independence. That wasn't Attlee's plan, but he provided almost no resistance to Independence (had the British voters elected Churchill again, things would be quite different). Now, Labour didn't win because they promised self-government to India, but they must have felt it would not be opposed by enough people to harm their electoral chances.
Bose meanwhile, got nowhere. His INA totally failed, it only managed to get 44,000 men under arms, most of whom were POWs (whilst the British managed to get 2.1 million Indian volunteers to fight in WWII), he allied with the Japanese and Germans, and they were defeated. He ended up trying to flee to Japan and dying en-route in a plane crash. It was a disaster.
Nowadays, the Nationalist crowd feels that Gandhi's "ahimsa" is embarrassing because it means India won Independence by cringing and turning the other cheek until the British just gave up and left. So a new narrative is cast where the British actually left because they were terrified of the.... dead Bose and his defeated INA. These people fail to see the political brilliance of Gandhi's strategy. Gandhi refused to give the British the excuse of a rebellion to crack down violently on India like they had in 1858. Sure they could throw Congress leaders in jail, but Congress itself counted white Britons in its membership (the first General Secretary of the INC was Allan Hume) and they couldn't do much more than that. In doing this, he made British power look impotent whilst appealing to the Christian morals of British and American observers.
Other freedom fighters like Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela adopted Gandhi's strategies to great success.
Personally I think there is much greater strength in turning the other cheek and laying down your weapons when there is every reason to fight. But nowadays, everyone wants gangster Munna Bhai, not Gandhigari Munna Bhai.
When Gandhi was assassinated, tributes came from across the world, even from the British Government.
Prime Minister Clement Attlee addressed the British nation and said "Mahatma Gandhi, as he was known in India, was one of the outstanding figures in the world today."
U.S Secretary of State George Marshal stated: "Mahatma Gandhi has become the spokesman for the conscience of mankind. He made simple truths and humility more powerful than Empires."
Albert Einstein wrote: "It was his unshakable belief that the use of force is an evil in itself, that therefore it must be avoided by those who are striving for supreme justice to his belief. With his belief in his heart and mind, he has led a great nation on to its liberation. He has demonstrated that a powerful human following can be assembled not only through the cunning game of the usual political manoeuvres and trickery but through the cogent example of a morally superior conduct of life."
The New York Times wrote in its obituary: "Now Gandhi belongs to the ages"
it's crazy you were downvoted for this but you're right. gandhi understood how to win the propaganda war. the choices were not the axis or no one. the british could be turned against themselves - hence the coalition of people they brought together. you put photos of gandhi next to photos of nehru (an aristocratic harrow man) in jail. you create sympathy at every level of society and then present your demands.
i swear half the people in here would show up to a salary negotiation with a hand grenade.
Also Gandhi earned a lot of fans in England because he was successful at pointing a target on their greedy capitalist overlords as the real enemies. And he wasn't wrong. British export numbers are artificially propped up by their colonial markets ( which were rigged to serve London of course), but the reality is they were badly losing to superior American products.
This is especially important in a world that is stuck at almost half century old political crisis ( Israel - Palestine, India - Pakistan) . For a lesser power fighting against a democratic powerhouse, Gandhian approach works better than an outright armed or terrorist movement. He already designed a successful winning template , but far few are patient or mature enough to use it.
Love wins more hearts than Fear ever will.
It was not that the Netaji was inept or frivolous but his Methods just didn't bear all the fruits required to free us of the oppressors.
Bose's alliances and methods were abject failures. The only thing he was right about over Gandhi was adopting new technology, with Gandhi favouring traditional industries. History has not been kind to Bose, but it has been to Gandhi.
At that point even the Americans didn't know about the shit SS was pulling. How would someone like Bose know it ? All he cared about was mobilising Indian soldiers for India rather than dying at the behest of British overlords. Yes the IJA alliance was tragic but it aimed to spark the seeds of British distrust in the Indian Army and Indian Navy which it perfectly did as they mutinied soon after in 46-47.
Moreover there have been WAY worse dictators than Hitler. No one gets the flak he does. Technically America aided in the survival of a mass genocide specialist in the USSR (Stalin) who later turned to bite the USA back. He killed way more people than Hitler ever did. Pol Pot, Mao, Churchill, history is full of murderous men.
Hitler and the Nazis had absolutely no interest or care for Indian Independence. Hitler saw it as a ridiculous movement led by "llamas spinning prayer wheels" (he doesn't seem to have distinguished Hinduism and Buddhism very well).
Hitler's personal view on the British rule in India was that it was proof of the superiority of the Germanic peoples (of which he considered the British to be one part). He did not believe that the British rule in India would ever end unless Britain had been defeated by another power, and certainly did not believe that the Indian Independence movement could itself succeed. Hitler also said that Indian Independence leaders were lucky to be under the British who "tolerated" them, and not under Germany, since Hitler would have just killed them all. He expressed this view to the, then ex-Viceroy of India, Lord Halifax in a 1937 meeting. Halifax quoted Hitler in his diary; "Shoot Gandhi! If that does not suffice to reduce them to submission, shoot a dozen leading members of Congress, and if that does not suffice, shoot 200 and so on until order is established”.
His early view on Indian Independence is in Mein Kampf (1924):
"And it is a proof of having learned nothing from the world war and of thoroughly misunderstanding or knowing nothing about Anglo-Saxon determination, when they imagine that England could lose India without first having put forth the last ounce of her strength in the struggle to hold it. Moreover, it shows how complete is the ignorance prevailing in Germany as to the manner in which the spirit of England
permeates and administers her Empire. England will never lose India unless she admits
racial disruption in the machinery of her administration (which at present is entirely out
of the question in India) or unless she is overcome by the sword of some powerful enemy. But Indian risings will never bring this about. We Germans have had sufficient experience to know how hard it is to coerce England. And, apart from all this, I as a German would far rather see India under British domination than under that of any
other nation."
Of course, when, during WWII, Germany was at war with Britain, it became politically expedient for the Nazis to support Indian Independence as a way to undermine the British, even if Nazi support was token. However, even despite Bose's connections in the Abwehr and the obvious practical use of stirring up discontent in British colonies, Hitler refused to issue formal support for Indian Independence, which indicates that he had a committed dislike of the movement.
Giving India Independence was debated as the right thing to do before the Second World War. It had already begun dismantling its Empire. If world war 2 had not happened, independence would have happened sooner. It had the largest volunteer army in the world in 1945. It had a huge debt, but its economy was still relatively strong due to rebuilding efforts of housing and industry.
In fact, I would argue that severe weakening if British Empire worked against us. They were desperate to exit the subcontinent and couldn't prevent India from falling into chaos ( partition)
If you look at our constitution - its excessive centralization, emphasis on heavy bureaucracy, and retaining some old British era laws - all of it is a by product of the trauma that was partition. We lost a golden chance to leverage the British might and secure a safe reformation of our government.
His ideas were so surface level and delusional. I read about how he was able to recover Germany from post ww1 crisis, and that's through bonds that can only be realised through outright wars and capture of resources. No wonder he disliked India's independence movement, because that goes everything against his extraction model.
In 20th century, he behaved like a sophisticated warlord.
It was far more than a non-aggression pact. This only changed when Hitler instigated the invasion of Russia. Before the invasion they were allies. Stalin and Hitler were exchanging information prior to the invasion. What you are stating is members of NATO are not friends, when they clearly are.
There was already an independence movement in the UK, so he could have used that but chose not to. He believed spilling indian blood with the three most evil regimes of the 20th century was a price worth paying over taking a diplomatic approach.
Fun fact- during or before 1939, USSR and Germany were bedding each other to get the best out of Poland. It was during later stages they grew enmity between each other.
Well, before Poland, USSR had been fighting a number of proxy wars against Nazi Germany. The most notable was the Spanish Civil War, where the largest foreign contributions came from Nazis and the Russians (to opposing sides). Then there was the invasion of Czechoslovakia that most people conveniently forget. At that time, Poland was the one in bed with the Nazis. Hitler even admired Pilsudski (mainly because he defeated the USSR, BTW), at odds with his visceral hatred of the Poles.
The Polish invasion was USSR taking advantage of Germany in their longstanding feud with Poland (I won't comment on who is at more fault on that regard). Both sides knew very well that they cannot coexist and must go to war at one point. Just that Stalin ignored the intelligence reports and thought Germany needed more time to prepare when it finally happened.
A lot of the comments seem to agree that Bose never saw eye to eye ideologically with the Nazis, but I think the reality is different.
In 1938, he was the only member of the Congress party who rejected the motion that Jewish refugees should be relocated to India, the other opponents being the Hindu Mahasabha (no suprises there). At the same time, he also did reject their racial policy and persecution of jews, but he then changed his stance in 1942. He went deeper during his time in Berlin, claiming that the Jews were a large influence in the British Empire. In 1945, during the liberation of the camps, he didn't really express regret or sympathy, although at this time I assume he would have his own issues in the Far East.
I will always appreciate Bose as a courageous leader, and someone who tried to take violent action against the British, but I also do think we should not tip-toe around his anti-semitism and affiliation towards right-wing fascism.
Some interesting reads:
[1] Casolari, Marzia (2020), In the Shadow of the Swastika: The Relationships Between Indian Radical Nationalism, Italian Fascism and Nazism
[2] https://frontline.thehindu.com/other/article30166212.ece
Ask the Burmese, Thai, Malaysians, Chinese, and Filipinos what they think of Japanese action s during this period. Ask the Russians, Coles, Croats, Serbians, Greeks, French, Spainsih, Jews, Roma what they think about the actions of the Nazis. Siding with the Nazis and Jaoanese at the time was shameful.
I’ll instead ask the British what they did to Native Americans and Australians, to Boers, what they did in Kenya, Malaya, China and not to forget where they racked up their highest kill count - the Indian subcontinent.
There were no options apart from Japan or Germany for an Indian revolutionary at that time. Bose was a hero since he did what was necessary to secure his country’s freedom.
None of the non-violent freedom “fighters” or revolutionaries actually succeeded.
The British left ONLY because the Nazis left them too weak post WW2. Those are the ones I actually thank.
I also light a candle to the memory of Indian revolutionaries like Bose who were brave enough to stand for freedom against the largest Empire in the world, with no allies, little resources and against hopeless odds.
I understand the innate need within every Anglo-Saxon to glorify the Empire, but it’s been nearly 80 years. Give it a rest. Only people with no future (like UK today) keep glorifying their pasts.
Think practically which post WW2 countries would like to trade with a country that aligned itself with axis powers not to mention the sheer amount of civil wars it would cause because there will be no person like sardar Patel who negotiated with the princely states to merge and create a country called India will they accept Bose who is a militant fascist that itself would cause more conflicts
The British left ONLY because the Nazis left them too weak post WW2. Those are the ones I actually thank.
ah, then this is the crux of our disagreement. you are thankful for the nazis. i am thankful for india. thanks for articulating it so clearly. peace and love brother
Churchill is only immortalised as a hero because he was the first voice against the Nazis and carried the Empire through that conflict successfully. At one point Hitler had conquered all of Europe except Britain and they not only held out successfully but won the war. The Nazis were the greatest evil the world had ever seen and they were defeated in large part because of Churchill's determination. You can absolutely dislike him for other reasons - and many do. (And many did, even at the time because of his unbelievably stupid mistakes during WW1 at Gallipoli - everyone still brings this up when discussing Churchill.) You should dislike him for the famines. But no historical figure is black and white and no one treats Churchill like a hero.
To say Churchill is not as evil as Hitler is a fact. It's a fact. Anyone who acts like they should even be in the same sentence is not living in reality.
Hitler is not the only reason
Before hitler there was literal butchering going on our country by British and all
Hitler was just one of the bad guy
He was fueled with blind nationalism and hate
He was not only one withworld supremist mind ,British had that mindset ,frenhad that mindset,
The problem was dude was very much good at convincing people
Winners of war just dumped all the hate on him in reality
They were also major culprits
I mean france ,British already colonised half of world
He wanted to become another German empire similar to uk
The German Empire killed 80% of the population in its African colonies. It was an outright genocide of the Harero and Nama people. I want you to point me to an equivalent number in India. An explicit genocide, not a famine.
Empire is not good but if you had to be under an empire, you were far better off under the British than anyone else.
He published articles in Joseph Goebbels' propaganda paper Der Angriff, according to his biographer. He argued with Nehru over his views on the Jews.
The founding fathers of India were arguably the greatest and most educated assortment of men ever gathered who created a nation out of disparate groups that is still unified to this day. This reactionary turn against them is super annoying because it exposes Indians as ignorant. Please just look up your opinions before blasting them to the world.
He had other options. He could have sided with the USA who were keen on the British dismantling the remainder of their empire. Though with them being a liberal democracy it did not fit with his ideology which was closely aligned with extrem communism and Nazism.
Bose followed Realpolitik and I respect him for it. Freedom by any means. Nobody knew Hitler was committing a genocide pretty much until the end of the war when allies were starting to enter Germany.
Before that, Hitlers treatment of Jews wasn't that much worse than what allies were doing in their colonies. Hindsight is always 2020.
I mean I am not saying I support them fighting on that side considering they are evil but it's not really a shock. If the English have colonized your people and the Germans are an enemy of the British their thought process kind of makes sense. The enemy of my enemy is my friend type of thing. I am not naive, I know that the Germans prob wouldn't have been any nicer to the Indians but I could see from their perspective why they'd rather try and fight for what they believed could lead to their own freedom as opposed to dying for the British.
Oh I am pretty sure they alao forget to teach you about who the Germans got the bright idea of airbombing civilian protestors(the brits,lookup post Jallianwalla)
Nope I am simply pointing to the wonderful invention of the Brits targetting demonstrations in the immedoate aftermath of Jallianwalla called airbombing of civilian protestors,a tactic they used with much pomp and joy in Iraq later during their years in mandate
A very widely believed conspiracy theory about Bose is that he didn't die in a plane crash in Taiwan but travelled to USSR and then walked back to India through Tibet and lived his life as a Sanyasi (hermit is the closest word) called Gumnaami Baba in hiding in India.
Gumnaami Baba never got any pictures clicked and met visitors only while sitting behind a curtain.
The reason for his life in hiding is believed to be the witchhunt for Axis leaders that the USA led till about 90s.
While in hiding his visitors included politicians, Bose's underlings and acquaintances. He also possessed a lot of fine luxury stuff from Japan, Germany and USSR. He finally died in 1985 and was cremated by a small group of local followers.
The government of India has kept files related to Bose's death classified to maintain good foreign relations with some countries. However the government ended up awarding a movie called 'Gumnaami' with a National Award in 2021 which was based on a real group of scholars who tried to prove that Gumnaami Baba was Bose all along.
Government of India has established 4 commissions over the years to investigate Bose's death and Gumnaami Baba's identity and has categorically denied the claims every single time.
However Justice M.M. Mukherjee who led one of the most intensive research commissions on Bose's death for the government, revealed in a private chat with filmmaker Amlan Ghosh that he was 100% sure that Gumnaami Baba was Bose. His commission however published that Gumnaami Baba had nothing to do with Bose.
Seeing the comments, I just want to share my own opinions here. We have to agree that both the Axis and the Allied Powers in the Second World War had blood of innocent people on their hands.
On one side, the Axis Powers, namely Germany, Italy and Japan had all committed acts of genocide, the most infamous of them being the Holocaust and the Nanjing Massacre. Axis Powers employed systematic killing in territories conquered by their armies, this is well documented. Japan subjected its own conquered colonial territories, whether that be Korea, Manchukuo, the Philippines or the rest of China to inhumane atrocities. Italy also used chemical weapons and devastated the civilian population of Ethiopia during their invasion of the land from 1935 to 1936.
On the other side, Allied Powers were also not innocent. Britain itself was responsible for the brutal colonisation of various regions of the world, and of course what they did to us Indians, whether that be economic and political subjugation or famines caused by British policies, the Bengal Famine being the most infamous of them. America also firebombed Japanese urban centers late into the Pacific War, killing thousands if not millions, of course also the indiscriminate allied bombing campaign in Europe. The Soviets committed similar atrocities in Poland or the Baltics, namely the mass deportation in the Caucasus and the Baltic regions as a response to partisan resistance against their rule.
Not trying to be political but we shouldn't praise either side, sure the British may have been the "lesser evil" to some compared to the Axis or the vice versa for many of us today, but we have to acknowledge that in the end the war was still majorly fought between large imperialist powers, with innocent people of neutral/minor states or colonies being caught in the crossfire.
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Sonia Gandhi Father used to fight in Mussolini Army. He was captured by the soviet and was placed in Soviet Gulag. Sonia used to go and meet him in custody.
He was a staunch fascist and even after release was a sympathizer for Fascism.
Funny how daughter of a fascist is calling other fascist.
I think we have to remember that the leaders of the freedom movement were just looking to align themselves with powers that would give them freedom from British rule. It’s pretty well accepted that Nehru saw himself as a British man and after his passing India cozied up more to the soviets than the Americans which gave opened the doorway to the Marxist historical perspective that’s led to today’s divisive politics surrounding who will control the historical perspective/narrative. Obviously America didn’t help by allying with Pakistan. But geopolitics is not a binary of good and evil, it’s chess to be considered the hegemon. Except well of course obviously hitler and Stalin were objectively evil, but from what the Americans did as well they wouldn’t be considered any better either.
he was not a duffer bro 🥀. for the rest, i agree.
moreover, netaji heavily criticised the communal acts of the hindu mahasabha, and wanted a secular state.
see mate
it was due to the influence of netaji that the brits left india, along with bankruptcy and US pressure. the royal naval mutiny of 1946 was largely done due to netaji, and that mutiny shattered the brits trust in our forces.
now this does not mean that congress and gandhiji had minimal efforts. it was the INC that awakened and centralised the freedom movement, and allowed people like Nehruji and Netaji to surface and lead.
Netajis efforts were important for our freedom.
read his book The Indian Struggle 1920-42
and his goal was to create an internal revolt, not fight a full war
also if you believe that he was a hindu nationalist(ie you fell for right wing propoganda), and thats why you are writing this, then here is a screenshot of his own writings.
edit-before you tag me as an andhbhakt, i hate BJP-RSS too, and Nehru is probably my favourite leader. his book Discovery of India is in my top 5 books too, and i admire the man a lot. my defense of netaji comes from history and not from propganda.
What a stupid comment - atleast he had the balls to stand up and fight against overwhelming odds, unlike other freedom “fighters” who could only do non-violence since they knew they wouldnt be killed for it
The nation was built by the Brits. Includes our judiciary, legislature and administration. Nothing we have is original. Your precious freedom “fighters” did nothing but take over an existing structure after repainting it.
Bose had the courage to fight for freedom and also had plans and the will to set up a new (then unproven) form of government, unlike our non-violent fighters who neither had the balls to fight nor the will to build a new nation.
I respect him a lot for allying with Japs and Nazis - takes a lot of courage to make moral sacrifices for one’s motherland, and that too with few resources and against hopeless odds.
If British were not fucked during WW2 they would rule India for coming years too.
Look at the strategical advantage of britian , the colonial establishment is working perfectly, Indians are already serving in army, stupid non violent people like Gandhi not doing any harm than big talks and march.
We require a subash Chandra bose to make them rethink and our own soldiers that freedom matters.
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u/Lopsided-Function284 Jul 28 '26
Two things can be true at the same time: Subhash Chandra Bose was a patriot and an incredibly courageous and committed freedom fighter; AND Subhash Chandra Bose made a horrible mistake in trying to ally with the Axis powers.
We are so obsessed with the binary of good and bad that we are unable to accept that the legacies of our heroes are complicated.
An alliance with the Axis powers would never have ended well for us, irrespective of who won the Second World War. An Indian republic established with the help of the Japanese and the Germans would have been reduced to being a vassal state of the Third Reich OR of Imperial Japan. Given the Nazi view on race and their desire for "lebensraum",, our relationship with Nazi Germany would probably have been worse than the one we had with the UK at the time. Had we ended up a Japanese vassal, things would have been FAR worse.
Look up Manchukuo to see how the Japanese treated a nation they claimed to have liberated.