For quite some time now, there have been attempts by Right Wing Hindu Organizations to portray people like Subhash Chandra Bose and Sardar patel in different lights to destroy the image of Jawaharlal Nehru and the legacy of Indian Secularism. Although they have mastered the art of rewriting false history, there are some things that cannot be changed. One of them is the relationship Subhash Chandra Bose had with Hindu Mahasabha.
Throughout Bose’s writings and speeches, he referred to congress Hindus as the nationalist Hindus and the likes of Hindu Mahasabha as communal, and every time equated them with the muslim league. In fact, it was during the presidency of Subhash Chandra Bose that the congress banned the dual membership of Congress and Mahasabha.
Bose wrote a editorial in his forward bloc weekly on May 4, 1940 under the title of ‘Congress and Communal Organizations’.
‘That was a long time ago’, he wrote, ‘when prominent leaders of the congress could be members of the communal organisations like Hindu Mahasabha and Muslim League. But in recent times, the circumstances have changed. These communal organisations have become more communal than before. As a reaction to this, the Indian National Congress has put into its constitution a clause to the effect that no member of a communal organisation like Hindu Mahasabha and Muslim League can be a member of an elective committee of Congress.’
Thus, in Bose’s estimation, Hindu Mahasabha was ‘Communal’ and to be placed in same brackets as Muslim League. Indeed, he mentioned Hindu Mahasabha before Muslim League every time he referred to Communal Organisations.
When Syama Prasad Mookerjee joined Hindu Mahasabha, Dr Mookerjee wrote in his diary that Bose met him and told him if he went about building Hindu Mahasabha as a political body in Bengal, “He ( Subhash Chandra Bose) would see to it, by force if need be, that it was broke before it was really born.”
Later, Bose came true on his words that he was not adverse to using force and intimidation to put Mahasabha down. In the words of Balraj Madhok, a leader of Mahasabha at that time, ‘Subhash Chandra Bose with help of his supporters, decided to intimidate the Mahasabha by use of force. His men would break-up all Mahasabha meetings and beat up the candidates. Dr Mookerjee would not tolerate it. He got a meeting announced, to be addressed by him. As soon as he rose to speak, a stone hit him in his head, and he began to bleed profusely.’
When Subhash Chandra Bose was forming INA. ‘Hindu nationalists’, instead of helping him were hand in glovess with British. Hindu Mahasabha, under Savarkar’s leadership organised recruitment camps for british armed forces. As Savarkar said, ‘Whether we like it or not, we shall have to defend our own hearth and home against the ravages of war and this can only be done by intensifying the government’s war efforts to defend India. Hindu Mahasabhaites must, therefore, rouse Hindus ESPECIALLY IN THE PROVINCES OF BENGAL AND ASSAM as effectively as possible to enter the military forces of all arms without losing a single minute.
The above material suggests that Bose considered these so called Hindu Organisations Communal, and this was only till 1945. If Bose was alive to see the later activities of these organisations, I wonder what he would have said or done.
This article was originally published at fakkad.in by Garvit Garg.