Dark Attempts: Appropriating National Icons

 

Dark Attempts: Appropriating National Icons

The Modi government has been trying to appropriate national icons connected to the freedom movement, since it doesn’t have its own icons. On October 31, 2018, a Statue of Unity-the world’s tallest, measuring 182 meters (nearly 600 feet)- over River Narmada in Kevadia Gujarat, was inaugurated in memory of the Iron Man of India, Sardar Patel- the first Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister of Independent India. The colossal tower cost India nearly Rs.3000 crore.

 

The Modi government, instead of spending so much money in raising the Statue, should have spent that money in constructing a national museum or some other monument in honour of Sardar Patel.  It cannot appropriate Patel, who was a Congress leader and close colleague of Pandit Nehru, as its icon. It was Patel who banned the RSS for a year and half, after the assassination of Gandhi. While Narendra Modi government is trying to appropriate the legacy of Patel, he got now renovated Sardar Patel Cricket Stadium named after himself instead. Similarity, the Modi government is attempting to appropriate Ambedkar- champion of the underdog and social justice. The history is sought to be rewritten to show the Congress in bad light. By projecting the Congress Party did not give due recognition to Ambedkar, it is deliberately side stepping the fact that Ambedkar was the first Law Minister in the Nehru Cabinet, and that Nehru made him the Chairman of the Constitution Drafting Committee, though he was not a Congress man. Otherwise, Ambedkar would not have achieved the status and stature  that he acquired  in the post independence India.

 

Now the Modi government is appropriating Subash Chandra Bose, yet another national icon to get at Nehru. On January 23, 2022, on the occasion of Bose’s 125^th birth anniversary, Modi, while installing the Netaji hologram at the India Gate, by replacing the Amar Jawan Jyoti, Modi said: “It was unfortunate that after independence efforts were made to create the contributions of several great personalities…But today the country is correcting those mistakes.”  In fact, it is an attempt to erase the unforgettable memory of the greatest military victory that the Iron Lady Indira Gandhi secured in the Indo-Pak War of 1971 by liberating Bangladesh. A myth is created that after independence the Congress ignored the national heroes and that the Modi government is now correcting the historical wrongs.  Netaji, like Patel and Ambedkar, cannot be appropriated by the Modi government. Subhash Chandra Bose, though escaped from India to fight the British with the support of Axis Powers from abroad to liberate India, he was an uncompromising national hero of the freedom struggle.

 

This is clear from his book The Indian Struggle 1920-1942, banned by the British, published in India after independence in 1948. His autobiography -An Indian Pilgrim- written towards the end of 1937 during the European trip after being nominated as the President of the Indian National Congress- throws light on Netaji’s indomitable spirit in the freedom movement.  He was a critic of Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence, and even attempted to dislodge him from the Congress leadership, He was an extreme radical who believed in armed rebellion. He wanted Nehru to reject Gandhi’s leadership and lead from front the radical left- leaning wing of the Congress.  He thought a synthesis between Communism and Fascism was inevitable, which Nehru didn’t subscribe as he was a staunch anti-Fascist. Bose, however, admired both Gandhi and Nehru and held them in high esteem, naming his Azad Hindu Fauj (INA) brigades after them. Nehru and Bose were comrades-in- arms and Nehru collaborated with Bose on every thing except in defiance of Gandhi’s leadership. When Bose was arrested on May 10, 1936, Nehru observed it as 'Subhas Day' in protest against the arrest.

 

Bose believed in Hindu-Muslim unity and secular India, which is juxtaposed to the ideology of the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS. He said: “History will bear me out when I say that it is a misnomer to talk of Muslim rule when describing the political order in India prior to the advent of the British. Whether we talk of the Mughal Emperors at Delhi or of the Muslim Kings of Bengal, we shall find that in either case the administration was run by Hindus and Muslims together, many of the prominent Ministers and Generals being Hindus." In The Freedom Struggle, he viewed India as a, mosaic of multiple faiths. He wrote: “The government of India should have an absolutely neutral and impartial attitude towards all religions.  Religious fanaticism is the greatest thorn in the path of cultural intimacy and there is no better remedy for fanaticism than secular and scientific education.”

 

The Sangh Parivar wants to appropriate Netaji as it is politically expedient, but doesn’t subscribe to his views on communal harmony. Sugata Bose in his biography of Bose His Majesty’s Opponent says, “Having become an icon among icons of the freedom struggle, Netaji has been subject to political appropriation especially on the eve of elections. The Hindu right lauds his military heroism, ignoring his deep commitment to Hindu-Muslim unity and the rights of religious minorities.”

 

As a matter of fact, Savarkar’s ideology and his support to the British was totally opposed to what Bose believed.  Prof. Shamsul Islam, who taught at Delhi University, in his article Savarkar opposed Bhagat Singh's, Netaji's dream of India, supported British war efforts, based on the Volume 6 of Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya: Hindu Rashtra Darshan, quotes V.D. Savarkar to highlight how he was siding the British and supporting them. 

 

According to Prof. Islam, “Netaji raised Azad Hind Fauj (INA) consisting of people of all religions and regions for armed liberation of India. Netaji fought against the repressive British rule and the two-nation theory, while Savarkar sided with the British rulers and the Muslim League in order to defeat the all-inclusive freedom struggle.”  Savarkar wrote: “So far as India’s defence is concerned, Hindudom must ally unhesitatingly, in a spirit of responsive co-operation with the war effort of the Indian government … by joining the Army, Navy and the Aerial forces in as large a number as possible”. He defended the support to the British: "political folly into which the Indian public is accustomed to indulge in thinking that because Indian interests are opposed to the British interests in general, any step in which we join hands with the British government must necessarily be an act of surrender, anti-national, of playing into the British hands and that co-operation with the British government in any case and under all circumstances is unpatriotic and condemnable.”

 

The Hindu Mahasabha under Savarkar’s leadership organised high-level Hindu Militarization Boards in different regions of the country to help the Hindus seeking recruitment in the British armed forces, with the British government taking the Hindu Mahasabha leaders on its war committees. He sent a telegram on July 18,1941, to the Viceroy of India Wavell thanking him for this gesture: “Your Excellency’s announcement defence committee with its personnel is welcome. Hindu Mahasabha views with special satisfaction appointment of Messers Kalikar and Jamnadas Mehta.”

 

The ‘legacy raids’ are the ‘dark attempts’ designed to erase the face of Nehru as one of the foremost freedom fighters and the prime architect of modern India. But Nehru’s legacy is too deeply entrenched in contemporary Indian history to be erased. In reality, it is an attempt to cover up non participation of the Hindutva ideologues in the freedom movement and their support to the British Raj. The Modi government wants to acquire the credentials of patriotism, not burdened by participation in the freedom movement."