Debate: Gandhi vs Bose 

Mahatma Gandhi and Subhash Chandra Bose had a deep respect for one another despite their hugely differing ideologies. Each appreciated the work done by the other in the national struggle for freedom.

The Father of Our Nation

Bose was fully aware of Gandhi’s importance as a symbol of Indian nationalism and called him “The Father of Our Nation” in a radio broadcast from Rangoon, Burma (Yangon, Myanmar) in 1944 even though in the same speech he expressed his own conviction that force was the only way to win freedom from the British.

When forced to resign at the Tripuri session, Bose said he would “yield to none in my respect for his (Gandhi’s) personality”, adding that “it will be a tragic thing for me if I succeed in winning the confidence of other people but fail to win the confidence of India’s greatest man.”

Later, Bose said that the “service which Mahatma Gandhi has rendered to India and to the cause of India’s freedom is so unique and unparalleled that his name will be written in letters of gold in our National History—for all time”.

Socialism to be the Way Forward

Incidentally, both men considered socialism to be the way forward in India, though in slightly different ways.

• Gandhi did not subscribe to the Western form of socialism which he associated with industrialisation, but agreed with the kind of socialism advocated by Jayaprakash Narayan.
• Both Gandhi and Bose were religious men and disliked communism.
• Both worked against untouchability and spoke for women’s emancipation.

But they differed widely in their ways and methods and in their political and economic ideologies.

Non-Violence vs Militant Approach

Gandhi was a firm believer in ahimsa and satyagraha, the nonviolent way to gain any goal. He believed that it was the way in which the masses could be involved. He objected to violence firstly because an unarmed masses had little chance of success in an armed rebellion, and then because he considered violence a clumsy weapon which created more problems than it solved, and left behind hatred and bitterness which could not be overcome through reconciliation.

Bose believed that Gandhi’s strategy based on the ideology of non-violence would be inadequate for securing India’s independence. To his mind, violent resistance alone could oust the alien imperialist rule from India. He considered the Gandhian civil disobedience campaign as an effective means of paralysing the administration, but did not think it to be efficacious unless accompanied by a movement aimed at total revolution that was prepared, if necessary, to use violence.

Means and Ends

Bose had his eye on the result of the action. When war clouds hung over Europe, he saw the situation as an opportunity to take advantage of the British weakness.

• He believed in seizing whatever opportunity was available to carry forward the struggle for freedom.
• He openly criticised the British for professing to fight for the freedom of the European nations under Nazi control but refusing to grant independence to its own colonies, including India.
• He had no compunction in taking the help of the Nazis or the Fascists and later of Imperial Japan—the ‘Axis powers’ as they came to be called when the war broke out—even though he believed in freedom and equality and other liberal ideals and disapproved of the arrogant racialism of the Nazis and the suppression of democratic institutions in Nazi Germany (as his writings show).
• However, he admired the Nazis and the Fascists for their discipline.

Bose’s supporters point out that his association with Germany and Japan was dictated by revolutionary strategy and not by ideological kinship. In other words, he was just a pragmatist; he was against the Fascist theory of racial superiority and the Fascist acceptance of capitalism.

Gandhi felt that the non-violent way of protest that he propagated could not be practised unless the means and ends were equally good.

• One could not just use any means to achieve an end however desirable that end may be. It would be against the truth that should guide one in all actions.
• Besides, he had a deep dislike for the ideas of the Fascists and the Nazis and would not think of using them to ally against the British, especially when the latter were in a difficult situation.
• He saw Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan not just as aggressors but as dangerous powers. Gandhi himself said: “The difference of outlook between him (Bose) and me as to the means is too well known for comment.”

Bose acknowledged that Gandhi’s methods had their importance when he said in his speech from Tokyo: “Though personally I believe that this method will not succeed in bringing us complete independence, there is no doubt that it has greatly helped to rouse and unify the Indian people and also to keep up a movement of resistance against the foreign government.”

Form of Government

In his early writings, Bose expressed the opinion that democracy was the acceptable political system for India. But later, he seemed to have veered towards the idea that, at least in the beginning, a democratic system would not be adequate for the process of nation rebuilding and the eradication of poverty and social inequality.

• When Bose proclaimed, on October 21, 1943, the formation of the Provisional Government of Azad Hind (Free India), he held on to his post as Supreme Commander of the Indian National Army, and also named himself head of state, prime minister, and minister for war and foreign affairs.
• He anticipated retaining the position of head of state in a free India. This, say some scholars, indicated the authoritative streak in Bose.
• Bose admired discipline and orderly approach to anything. He admired these qualities in the Fascists of Italy and in the Nazis of Germany.
• Despite his dislike of colonial power and his desire to oust the alien British rule from India, he was impressed by the methodical and systematic approach of the British and their disciplined way of life.
• Bose, however, was not a Nazi or a Fascist, for he supported empowerment of women, secularism and other liberal ideas. Neither was Bose a communist: he considered himself “a socialist, but that was a very different thing from being a communist”.
• He also felt that the theoretical ideals found in Marx’s writings could not be applied in India without a lot of modification.

Bose was a leftist in the sense that he was an anti-imperialist and believed in attaining complete independence. After the achievement of independence, Bose considered leftism would mean socialism; the reconstruction of national life would have to be on a socialist basis. 

Gandhi’s ideas on government can be found in the Hind Swaraj (1909); it was “the nearest he came to producing a sustained work of political theory.”

• Gandhi’s idealised state, his Ramrajya—a utopia, in fact—did not need a representative government, a constitution, an army or a police force.
• Capitalism, communism, exploitation and religious violence would be absent. Instead, the country was to be modelled on the India of the past.
• In many ways, Gandhi’s writings call for a pre-modern, morally-enlightened and apolitical Indian state.
• Swaraj lays stress on self-governance through individuals and community building. 
• He was sceptical of the party system and sure that representative democracy could not provide people with justice. He advocated a stateless society in which life becomes perfect.
• Gandhi was opposed to centralisation. He believed in decentralisation of political as well as economic power, and this could come about only by beginning from the basic unit.
• Every village would be a self-sufficient republic or panchayat. Self-sufficiency did not mean that in times of need help could not be taken from other villages. The panchayat, the unit of local self government, will consist of five persons – male and female – elected annually. It would represent the village community and be the custodian of all authority.

In Gandhi’s view, democracy would not be possible without high morality. It is morality that develops a sense of responsibility in human beings, and the strength of this sense of responsibility would help them to respect and protect the rights of each other. Gandhi laid more emphasis on duties than on rights.

Militarism

Subhas Bose was deeply attracted to military discipline and was thankful for the basic training he received in the University Unit of the India Defence Force.

• He volunteered to form a guard of honour during the ceremonial functions at the Calcutta session of the Congress in 1930.
• Bose, in full dress uniform, reviewed his ‘troops’. Gandhi and most of his supporters were uneasy with this display.

Gandhi was against the military on the whole.

• His Ramrajya, being built on the concept of truth and nonviolence and self-regulation would be a perfect place and would not require either police or grandiose armies.
• All effort must be made to arrive at peace rather than go to war.
• He also listed economic inequality and exploitation as additional causes of war and instability in the international system. If these were eradicated, there need not be any war.

He was not against defensive war: if the innocent were attacked, there was no option but to defend oneself. So, of course, the military was required for self-defence, but it was to be on minimal scale.

Ideas on Economy

Gandhi’s concept of Swaraj had its own brand of economic vision.

• He wanted a decentralised economy without state control.
• Gandhi dismissed both capitalism and Western socialism—the former for its exploitative excesses and the latter for its connection to industrialisation. Both, he believed, led human beings to crave for luxury and self-indulgence.
• Gandhi wanted people to get rid of greed and make do with just the bare necessities of life.
• He developed the idea of village Sarvodaya.
• He advocated a “back to the roots” vision when production was “simultaneous with consumption and distribution and the vicious circle of money economy was absent. Production was for immediate use and not for distant markets.” What he wanted was the revival of ancient village communities in which agriculture prospered, industry was decentralised business was through small scale cooperative organisations. He also wanted the participation of people at all levels.
• He was against largescale industrialisation. He had strong objections to labour saving machinery.
• He was not against instruments and machinery that saved individual labour.

The capitalist who amassed wealth was a thief, according to Gandhi. In his opinion, if a person had inherited wealth or had made a lot of money through trade and industry, the amount was to be shared with the entire society and must be spent on the welfare of all. He put forward his theory of trusteeship under which he wanted the capitalists to be trustees, and as such would take care of not only themselves but also of others. The workers would consider the capitalists as their benefactors and would keep faith in them. So there would be mutual trust and confidence, and as a consequence the ideal of economic equality could be achieved.

Bose considered economic freedom to be the essence of social and political freedom.

• He was all in favour of modernisation which was necessarily to be brought about by industrialisation.
• He believed that India’s downfall in the political and material sphere had been brought about by the people’s in ordinate belief in fate and the supernatural accompanied by an indifference to modern scientific developments, especially in the field of war weapons.
• He felt the backward agriculture had to be modernised. The labour that was ousted from the agricultural sector as a result of such modernisation could be helped only with the development of industry, which could absorb the surplus labour from agriculture.
• In his speech at the Haripura Congress session, Bose expressed his opinion that, for India to progress, a comprehensive scheme of industrial development under state ownership and state-control would be indispensable.
• And he spoke about the need to set up a planning commission to advise the national government. He also spoke about abolition of landlordism and liquidation of agricultural indebtedness.
• He was much impressed by the success attained by the Soviet Union in economic development through rapid industrialisation within a short period of time.

Bose had his reasons for demanding industrialisation for India. It would solve the problem of unemployment. Socialism, he said, was to be the basis of national reconstruction and socialism pre supposed industrialisation.

Moreover, industrialisation was necessary if India were to compete with foreign countries. Industrialisation was also necessary for improving the standard of living of the people at large. Bose classified industry into three categories: heavy, medium, and cottage.

Religion

Gandhi was primarily a man of religion. He had a steadfast view on religion, and his religion was the basis of all his other ideas.

• Truth and non-violence were the two principles that helped Gandhi in evolving a comprehensive view of religion that went beyond narrow sectarianism.
• For Gandhi there is no higher way of worshipping God than serving the poor and identifying God in them.
• He considered different religions to be merely the different paths towards the same destination.
• Gandhi out of his own experiences and readings came to the conclusion that all religions are based on the same principles, namely, truth and love.
• He claimed that religion is a binding force and not a dividing force.

He said that each person should follow his or her own religion freely. He would not conceive of a state without religion, for the basic tenets of his religion were at the base of his idea of state too.

Subhash Bose believed in Upanishadic teachings. He revered the Bhagavad Gita and was inspired by Vivekananda.

• He was also inspired by the India of the past as reinterpreted by thinkers.
• According to many scholars, Hindu spirituality formed the essential part of his political and social thought throughout his adult life. However, he was free of bigotry or orthodoxy.
• He was for total non-discrimination on the basis of religion and in context he took up the Hindus’ cause when he demanded that Hindu prisoners be given the right to do Durga Puja just as Muslims and Christians were allowed to celebrate their festivals.
• Bose motivated Indians towards freedom struggle through Hindu symbolisms as appropriate for the audience. On December 9, 1930, he called upon the women to participate in the liberation struggle, invoking the imagery of Durga, a form of Shakti, ready to vanquish evil.

However, he was not a sectarian. He named his force Azad Hind Fauz, and there were many non-Hindus in that army and who were close to him. The INA was to be a mixture of various religions, races, and castes with total social equality of all soldiers. They were served food cooked in the common kitchen and shared space in common barracks breaking the age old caste bonds and practices. Common celebrations of all religious festivals took place in the INA.

Bose was a secularist with an impartial attitude to all religions. He said that Free India must have an absolutely neutral and impartial attitude towards all religions and leave it to the choice of individuals to profess or follow a particular religion of his faith. Religion is a private matter, the State has nothing to do with it.

Caste and Untouchability

Gandhi’s goals for society were mainly three: eradicating untouchability, maintaining the varna distinctions of the caste system and strengthening tolerance, modesty and religiosity in India.

• Gandhi believed that one way of reinvigorating India was to wipe out untouchability, which he considered to be a pernicious practice preventing millions of peasants from realising their dreams and aspirations. It was incompatible with Swaraj.
• He said that if any Shastra propounded untouchability that Shastra should be abandoned.
• He, however, supported the varna system; he believed that the laws of caste were eternal, and were the base for social harmony.

In the India that Gandhi visualised, each village would be organised around the four-fold divisions with every member of society doing his or her own duty. As there would be a complete system of reciprocity, according to Gandhi, no one would be subject to feelings of differences in status.

Bose looked forward to an India changed by a socialist revolution that would bring to an end the traditional social hierarchy with its caste system; in its place would come an egalitarian, casteless and classless society.

• Subhas Bose completely rejected social inequality and the caste system.
• He spoke in favour of inter-caste marriages.
• In his public speeches, Bose spoke vehemently against untouchability.

He was inspired by Vivekananda in his belief that the progress of India would be possible only with uplift of the downtrodden and the so-called untouchables.

Women

Gandhi played an important role in uplifting the status of women in India.

• Gandhi was instrumental in bringing women out of their homes to take part in the struggle for freedom.
• It involved bringing women out of the purdah – a system that was prevalent among Hindus as well as Muslims of the time.
• It involved the possibility of being jailed and thus being separated from their families. These were steps that were revolutionary for those times.
• Apart from bringing women into the struggle for swaraj, he vehemently opposed various social ills affecting women like child marriage, the dowry system and female infanticide, and the treatment of widows.
• He considered men and women to be equal and declared that men should treat women with respect and consideration.
• However, in the matter of the roles of men and women, Gandhi would be regarded as patriarchal and traditional by present standards. Gandhi considered women to be the presiding deities of the home. It was their dharma to take care of the home.

However, Gandhi also said that dharma did not imply brutish behaviour from men treating women as chattel. Women should not tolerate ill-treatment from their husbands. But he did not ask women to walk out of their homes and launch agitations, personal or public, against their plight or a satyagraha within their exploitative domestic environments.

Subhash Bose had a more robust view of women.

• Differing from the German National Socialists (Nazis) and the Italian Fascists, who stressed the masculine in almost all spheres of social and political activity, Bose considered women to be the equals of men, and thus they should be prepared to fight and sacrifice for the freedom of India.
• He arduously campaigned to bring women more fully into the life of the nation.
• When, as Congress President in 1938, Bose set up the Planning Commission, he insisted that there should be a separate planning commission for women. This commission was chaired by Rani Lakshmi Bhai Rajawade and was to deal with the role of women in planned economy in future India.
• Later, in 1943, he called on women to serve as soldiers in the Indian National Army. This was a most radical view. He formed a women’s regiment in the INA in 1943, named the Rani of Jhansi Regiment.
• Many women were enthused to join the regiment commanded by Captain Lakshmi Swaminathan (Sahgal after marriage). While those less suited to combat duties were employed as nurses and in other support roles, the majority were trained as soldiers. They were given the same treatment as the men and received no special privileges.

In Bose’s view, women should be given a high position in the family as well as in society. He believed in female emancipation, in liberating women from age-old bondage to customs and man-made disabilities, social, economic and political. He wanted women to get all-round education including not only literacy, but physical and vocational training. He was all for abolition of purdah and also supported widow remarriage.

Education

Gandhi was against the English system of education as also against the use of English as a medium of instruction.

• He wanted education to be in the vernacular.
• He advocated free and compulsory education for all-boys and girls between 7 and 14 years.
• In Gandhi’s view education should be an integrated approach to the full development of the personality; it should include physical training and high moral principles along with intellectual and cognitive development. He differentiated between learning and education, knowledge and wisdom, literacy and lessons of life. According to him, “Literacy in itself is no education”.
• To Gandhi morality had to be a part of education. Gandhi said that education should be a means of attaining knowledge and wisdom that ultimately place the seeker on the spiritual path.
• The end of education was not merely a means to make a career and achieve social status. Education should be a means to enlightenment.
• Gandhi also wanted the Hindu scriptures to be a part of education as they propounded discipline and self-restraint.

He conceived his Nai Talim or basic education for all in 1937. Nai Talim aimed to impart education that would lead to freedom from ignorance, illiteracy, superstition, psyche of servitude, and many more taboos that inhibited free thinking of a free India. This scheme of education was to emphasise on holistic training of mind and body, so along with academics, there was to be purposeful manual labour.

Handicrafts, art and drawing were the most fundamental teaching tools in Nai Talim. As Gandhi wanted to make Indian villages self-sufficient units, he emphasised on vocational education which increases the efficiency of students in undertaking tasks in those villages and make the village a self-sufficient unit.

Subhash Bose was for higher education, especially in the technical and scientific fields, as he wanted an industrial India.

• He said, “National Reconstruction will be possible only with the aid of science and our scientists.”
• He wanted Indian students to be sent abroad for “training in accordance with a clear and definite plan so that as soon as they returned home, they may proceed straight away to build up new industries”.

Therefore, though there were some ideological differences between the two great leaders of Indian freedom struggle, they had great admiration for each other. Bose hailed Gandhi as "greatest Indian" who aroused the mass towards freedom movement. He referred to many instances showing both the leaders had respect with each other. Gandhi also acknowledged the contribution of Bose in changing the loyalty of Indian soldiers towards Indian freedom rather than Britishers. Gandhi also responded to Bose's Azad Hind Fauz where he built "cultural intimacy" among religious communities and broke down barriers by allowing his soldiers belonging to different religions to dine and live together.

In 1942, Gandhi called Bose the “Prince among the Patriots”. When the death of Bose was reported, Gandhi said that Netaji’s “patriotism is second to none... His bravery shines through all his actions. He aimed high and failed. But who has not failed.” On another occasion Gandhi said, “Netaji will remain immortal for all time to come for his service to India. 

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