Mahanayak (A fictionalised biography of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose) by Vishwas Patil; Translated from the original Marathi by Keerthi Ramachandra; Indialog; Price: Rs. 395; 624 pp

What is it about the Subhas Chandra Bose legend that refuses to die? Controversies and debates about his life or his death keep cropping up in the media from time to time, the Bose revival ensuring that he doesn’t fade from public memory.

In fact, currently, some 60 years after his reported death in an air crash in the China Sea, for various reasons, Bose is in the news again. A couple of months ago, German novelist Gunter Grass resurrected a contentious old issue by stating that Bose was a friend of the Nazis, and wondered why he is still a favourite son of Bengal. Secondly, the Mukherjee Commission probing the circumstances of his death, is about to release its findings. And concurrently filmmaker Shyam Benegal has completed an epic biographical movie titled Netaji, which is ready to hit the multiplex screens.

Against this revived interest in Netaji, it’s hardly a surprise that a “fictionalised biography” of this legendary leader is out on the newsstands. This is perhaps the only fictional work on Bose. Considering his adventurous life which lends itself to romance, one wonders why nobody thought of it before.

In the early part of the book, Patil, a well-known Marathi novelist who received the Sahitya Akademi award in 1992, sticks to well-documented facts relating to Bose’s birth into an illustrious well-to-do family, early signs of rebellion, his camaraderie with revolutionaries, his expulsion from college for inciting insurrection which prompted his desperate parents to ship him out to England to prepare for the Indian Civil Service (ICS).

After breezing through the tough ICS exam scoring the highest marks in English composition and being ranked fourth in the merit list, Bose abruptly resigned from the service before he joined it and returned to India. In this fictionalised account, Bose meets Gandhi immediately on his return but is unimpressed with his political vision. He finds his mentor in “Deshbandhu” Chittaranjan Das. From then on Bose’s life is marked by extended stays in prison, and the only respite is during periods when he is involved in the activities of the Congress party.

Much of Bose’s political career within the Congress was scarred by friction with Mahatma Gandhi and his protege, Jawaharlal Nehru. Patil depicts Gandhi as a wily politician, who resorts to emotional blackmail to get his way. Bose is unable to understand why Gandhi isn’t more forceful in his demands for Indian independence. Moreover, his views on industrialisation and economics seem hopelessly outdated to the young rebel.

The other leading lights of the Congress are even worse in Bose’s eyes. Nehru is a chameleon, changing his colour when it suits him; Rajagopalachari and Acharya Kripalani are schemers; Maulana Azad and Sardar Patel are hungry only for power. Pitted against these villains is Patil’s hero.

How much fiction does a fictionalised biography of a historical personality contain? This is an issue that might bother readers, particularly those unfamiliar with Bose’s life.

While Patil sticks to facts through most of the narrative, his big flourish is his portrayal of Bose’s relationship with his Austrian secretary, Emilie Schenkl. Most biographies on Bose skim over this relationship, since it is a personal issue. But Patil, taking the advantage of writing fiction, dwells on it. Bose’s years of exile in Europe, when he was recovering from illness, and later after his escape from India, were lonely. The loneliness was assuaged by Emilie Schenkl, whom he later married, but had to leave behind in Europe.

His “Great Escape” from India in 1941 is well detailed. Bose fled Calcutta from under the nose of the police, with only a vague idea of what lay before him. He landed in Punjab and crossed the Himalayas into Kabul. Eventually after a tense stay in Kabul, he found his way to Berlin, where he started the Indian Legion.

As Patil describes them, Bose’s years in Germany were weary; the theatre of war had shifted to East Asia, and he was desperate to get there. Finally, in April 1943, he arrived in Singapore to take command of the Indian National Army. Here Patil’s narrative gathers momentum and heads towards its shattering climax.

Patil informs us that Netaji had joined a delegation of American World War II veterans returning to Burma after 51 years. “As a result I got to see the airfields and the mountainous restricted areas in Assam and North Burma. Further on my own, I drove through the treacherous 1,800 km long road stretching from Burma to Thailand.” His study of the mountainous, thickly forested landscape forms the backdrop to his description of the fierce battles for Imphal and Kohima, which were crucial to Bose’s hopes of entering India. Into this cauldron, Patil inducts Mountbatten, desperate to retain Imphal; top officers of the Japanese army, racked by internal feuds; and amidst it all, Subhas Chandra Bose, willing to march his army to Delhi. It’s a turbulent canvass of junior officers, common soldiers, and women, playing out their destiny in the war for India’s freedom.

Surprisingly, Patil chooses to end the biography with the conventional version of Bose’s death in an air crash in Taihoku, a version that has been hotly contested by Bose’s family and admirers. Various commissions have been appointed to probe the matter. The issue has hit the headlines again because the Taipei government, in a recent letter to an Indian journalist, clarified that no such crash had taken place.

Given this is a work of fiction Patil could have ended the story on a more dramatic note. That remains the only flaw in an otherwise engrossing story of the Bose revival. Keerthi Ramachandra has done an excellent job of translating this work into English from the original Marathi. At no point does the reader experience a gap between the idea and the narration, even though many of the idioms and metaphors are distinctly regional.

Dev S. Sukumar

Also read: Remembering Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose

Inclusive development essays

Remaking India: One Country, One Destiny by Arun Maira; Response Books (Sage Publications); Price: Rs.295; 240 pp

Can the 5,000-year-old civilization that is India be remade? It’s a challenge post-independence India has been attempting to respond to for five decades with only a limited measure of success. Former business leader, consultant and columnist Arun Maira is not a fuzzy thinker, or a politician whose passion for a national makeover is suspect. Thoroughly and painstakingly he applies his years of learning the art and science of organisation development in Telco (now Tata Motors Ltd) to the larger task of nation building.

Interweaving personal memoir with insightful suggestions, in Remaking India Maira utilises his accumulated knowledge of the world of business and industry to suggest ways and means to attain the elusive goal of “inclusive development founded on the development of a shared vision” by applying the principles of “scenario thinking” and the “learning field” to identify key obstacles to India’s economic growth and equitable development. This volume is a compilation of his columns in the Economic Times, with some additional contributions. The book is divided into byte-sized chapters, each with an idea that can be easily grasped because it is well written.

Interwoven with personal anecdotes is the story of India from independence, its disastrous romance with Nehruvian socialism down to the present era of economic liberalisation. R.K. Laxman’s cartoons illustrate each chapter, perhaps signifying that Maira’s book like Laxman’s cartoons, is about including the common man in the development process. Indeed the key message in the book is that sustainable development requires including the poorest of the poor in the journey to prosperity.

Early in the book the author suggests we stop regarding India’s humongous 1.2 billion strong population as a liability and view it as an asset. This attitude of turning a problem on its head in the quest for solutions is Maira’s forte. Simultaneously, he stresses the value of empirical knowledge and experience for problem solving. Returning to India in 2002 after a series of successful consultancy assignments Maira was convinced that challenges can be tackled with the application of management practices he learnt in his formative years in Telco for which he repeatedly thanks his mentor the late Sumant Moolgaokar, the first chairman of that path-breaking company which in its new avatar has morphed into India’s largest automobile manufacturer.

On his return to India after almost a decade in the US, Maira observed the changes in the country. As he points out, there have always been poor people on the streets who could be ignored if one so wanted. But now they knock hard on car windows at traffic lights and cannot be shooed away. It’s a good metaphor for realising that the poor are demanding to be part of the new resurgent economy. “The knocking on the window may not only be a warning, but an opportunity to grow our businesses as well,” he writes.

Maira’s belief that we can change things if we demand excellence despite “the subterranean culture of shoddiness that seems to pervade life in India” is worthy of consideration. For people faced with a never-ending litany of woes and a substandard work ethic that isn’t easy. That Maira has faith that it is possible to demand and attain excellence is an indication that he has not, like so many others, given up on India.

“A shared vision, not a vision shared,” is another essential requisite for India to progress, says Maira. People have differing goals and priorities. Therefore dialogue and discussion is vital to finding a shared vision. Unfortunately Maira does not detail the modus operandi to initiate this national dialogue, leaving the reader to sort it out. But given the sheer size and diversity of the country, it’s a daunting prospect. Though Maira laudably proposes celebrating and combining diversity to evolve “a shared vision”, he leaves us wondering how we must go about it.

The business philosophy of creating not merely personal wealth but wealth for society, which he absorbed in the Tata Group was a difficult concept for Maira to apply when he went West. His suggestion to US mega corporations to do likewise was met with scepticism. Such sentimentality is alien to American industry and at a business conference in Aspen, Colorado, delegates implied that it was time for Tatas to enter the real world of business, where business is done for profit.

The author of two other books The Accelerating Organization: Embracing the Human Face of Change and Shaping the Future; Aspirational Leadership in India and Beyond, Maira has an elegant turn of phrase and writes simply and lucidly, making his books a pleasure to read.

Undoubtedly academics and liberals will question the wisdom of running a country like a large business organisation and to be fair to Maira, he is himself unsure about this. Therefore throughout the book he emphasises that new models need to be continually developed for the task at hand — that of remaking the country.

Meanwhile, one hopes that this insightful volume will be read in depth and that Maira’s advice that the theories he propounds need to be adapted for the particular task at hand, will be heeded. The former business leader and author does point us in a certain direction, if only to reaffirm that there is hope for this country which currently seems to be floundering in a deep sea of troubles.

Kalpana Parikh