SITA RAM GOEL 2/18, Ansari Road, New Delhi - 110 002. 3.1.1997 Dear Shri Chari, Thanks for your letter of 30 December 1996 inviting me to write an article on Netaji’s Political Thoughts for Netaji Special of the Organiser. T have never fancied Shri Subhash Chandra Bose as a national hero, or a thinker (political or otherwise), or even as a patriot in the proper sense. The word ‘Netaji’ is particularly distasteful to me as it is a literal translation of “Der Fuehrer”, the designation of Hitler whom I have always despised as a monstrous criminal and a mass murderer like Lenin and Stalin, Bose is not a patriot for me because his ruling passion was not love of India’s cultural patrimony but a blind hatred of the British. Nor is he «: a thinker by himself because his recipé for India’s salvation was a synthesis of Fascism and Communism. I wonder how he came to perceive the two totalitarian ideologies as different. Moreover, he believed that India needed an authoritarian regime for at least twenty years, most probably under himself. I cannot accept him as a national hero because he did not believe in our people’s capacity to achieve freedom from foreign rule, and looked towards Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany and Tojo’s Japan for effecting India’s liberation. This attitude places him squarely in the company of Shah Waliullah who invited Ahmad Shah Abdali for restoring Muslim rule. Waliullah’s lead in looking at the Pathans as liberators of India was followed later on by M.N. Roy, Raja Mahendra Pratap, and many others who joined hands with the most fanatic mullahs during the Khilafat agitation, We have to thank our stars that all these ‘heroes’ failed, and India escaped disaster. Muslims had been demanding for a long time that India, should not be called ‘Hindustai’ but ‘Hind’ a Ja the Arab and Turk invaders. It was Bose who implemented the Muslim demand when he named his army as “Azad Hind Fauj”, and coined ‘Jai Hind’2 as the national slogan. He had no use for Vandemataram which had been our national slogan till that time, It was not an accident that Pandit Nehru plumped for ‘Jai Hind’ as soon he heard it, and started shouting it from every platform, He heartily endorsed the word ‘Hind’ in his book, The Discovery of India , and disowned Vandemataram. The marching song of the ‘Azad Hind Fauj’ was set to the tune of a song in the film ‘Sikandar’ produced by Sohrab Modi. It did not occur to Bose that Alexander was an invader, and that national tunes of a far superior kind were available in plenty and to spare. He simply did not have any national consciousness whatsoever. But the most significant fact is the doings of his followers after he disappeared from the scene. Most of his Muslim stalwarts left for Pakistan. Some of them are known to have led the first invasion of Kashmir from Pakistan, About his Hindu followers who remained in India, the less said the better. The daughter of Captains Sehgal and Lakshmi, Suhasini Ali, married a Muslim Communist and has been an incurable Hindu-baiter. So also all others who have joined either the United Left Front in Bengal or the Socialist parties which are now front- runners in the Janata Dal. Subhash Bose should be placed where he belongs — in the ranks of the self- alienated Hindus masquerading as secularists. Eulogising such a man is bound to harm Hindutva for which I — and I think your Weekly also — work. Politicians may find profitable the myths which have been invented about him. He may also pass as a thinker in a climate which hails the likes of M.N. Roy, Ram Manoher Lohia and B.R. Ambedkar and even Laloo Prasad as thinkers. And he may be hailed as a great patriot at a time when patriotism has become the monopoly of those who have been Soviet stooges or ISI agents or both. But I am neither a politician nor a thinker not yet a patriot of the secularist sort. Iam a student of history who prefers primary sources to popular stories. For me, Bose was no more than a mindless activist who hardly knew what he was doing. I judge him by the standards set by Maharshi Dayananda, Bankim Chandra, Swami Vivekananda, and Sti Aurobindo whom alone I cherish as modern India’s foremost thinkers, heroes and patriots.You are welcome to publish this letter in your Special if you like. I am sorry to disappoint you by not being laudatory about the latest fashion in hero-worship. Regards Shri Seshadri Chari, Editor, Organiser, Sanskriti Bhavan, Jnandewalan, Deshbandhu Gupta Road, New Delhi - 110 055. Sincerely (SITA RAM GOEL)