Deceitful Distortions

On Subhas Bose’s attempted meeting with Doctorji in 1940, I would go with the records of that attempt documented by HV Seshadri, editor of ‘Dr Hedgewar – the Epoch Maker’ rather than those left behind by Gopal Mukund ‘Balaji’ Huddar. Huddar, who was once in the RSS, was a close confidant of Doctorji and later became a committed communist. After decades, Huddar’s single article titled ‘The RSS and Netaji’ (1979), which appeared in the now defunct Illustrated Weekly, has been dug out to demonise and belittle Dr Hedgewar. Ironical, since it was Indian communists who were at the forefront in abusing and denouncing Netaji in the 1940s at the behest of their British sponsors.

Giving up on the RSS, Huddar turned into an ardent communist, and ardent communists are known to be intellectually dishonest, displaying an uncanny skill of spinning tales to suit their political and ideological ends. While in Britain, Huddar had also come under the influence of Rajani Palme Dutt (RPD) (1896-1974), influential communist ideologue and general secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). Huddar’s claim, arrogating to himself the role of Netaji’s sole emissary to Doctorji, thus need not be taken seriously. It must be treated more as an attempt to remain relevant by an old and fading communist.

Huddar claims that Subhas Bose had sent him as an emissary to Doctorji, who was then convalescing in Deolali in Nashik district. Our retracing of Doctorji’s revolutionary roots and of his past connections in the nationalist movement indicates that it was Trailokya Nath Chakraborty, who most likely had been Subhas’s emissary to Dr Hedgewar. Subhas, with whom Chakraborty struck a close association during their days in the “Wooden Prison” of Mandalay, obviously knew of the latter’s revolutionary past and of his Anushilan Samiti vintage. Subhas had already met Hedgewar in 1928, and most likely would have relied on Trailokya Nath Chakraborty, to reach out to Doctorji. Moreover, in the left circles, Huddar was a fairly junior activist then, with no background in the Anushilan Samiti.

Dr Hedgewar knew Bengal well, and leaders from Bengal remembered Dr Hedgewar. The revolutionary links were never completely severed and were never forgotten. Stalwart revolutionaries and leaders from Bengal remembered his past association with them and the province. They were also aware of the transformative movement that Doctorji had assiduously built up with India’s regeneration as its goal. They felt a kinship with his aim. The Anushilan Samiti, to which Doctorji once belonged, was not just an organisation, it was a philosophy. At its core was the aspiration to see a free India, an India based on equality and justice, where opportunities would be open to all. It would be an India to which the world would look up to. Trailokya Nath Chakraborty’s connections thus must have been put to use by Subhas to revive that link, now that another global opportunity, with the onset of the second world war, emerged to free India. We shall come to the details of that visit later.

Huddar and his communist comrades later imputed motives to Doctorji’s inability to meet Subhas Bose and weaved a vacuous but well-articulated false tale around it. In this context, it will be instructive to see how Indian communists themselves collaborated with the British, supported the Muslim League’s Lahore Resolution of 1940, and spoke out against Hindus and against India’s cultural unity. While they did not have a problem with Jinnah’s demand for a separate Muslim homeland, Indian communists were vehemently opposed to Hindus and to any talk of Hindu unity.

Communist ideologue Gangadhar Adhikari (1898-1981) referred to all talk of cultural unity of India and of Hindu cultural unity as a “great drag and hindrance.” Adhikari’s insidious thesis, ‘Pakistan and National Unity’, became the main ideological plank standing on which Indian communists lent full-throated support to Jinnah’s demand for Pakistan. Adhikari spoke of a “multi-national consciousness” in India, arguing that the real problem was not “cultural separation and cultural freedom”, it was rather, the fulfilment of a “full-throated urge of every nationality within this multi-national pattern for its fullest and freest development.”

Their demand, Adhikari argued, was for “every nationality” to achieve “self-determination.” Terming the Muslim League’s demand for autonomy for “regions in which Muslim nationalities like Sindhis, Pathans, Punjabis, Eastern Bengal Muslims lived” as a “just democratic demand”, he argued that since 1940, his party had realised that the “so-called communal problem” was a problem of “growing nationalities” and that it “could only be solved on the basis of the recognition of the right of self-determination to the point of political secession, of the Muslim nationalities, and in fact of all nationalities.”

Adhikari’s comrades in arm, Puran Chand or PC Joshi (1907-1980), the general secretary of the CPI, was even more emphatic when he said, “In order to say that all Indians must stand together against British rule, it is not all necessary to say that India is one nation.” Joshi reiterated the communist thesis of “17 free homelands” in India. Till 1947, Indian communists became, after the Muslim Leaguers, the chief standard-bearers of the Pakistan movement.

Regarding the communist role in incubating Pakistan, Rammanohar Lohia (1910-1967), observes in his ‘Guilty Men of India’s Partition’, that “Communism is partitionist, only when it is not in power, in order to weaken its foe in the shape of a strong nationalism.” Of the Indian communist support for Pakistan, Lohia acerbically writes that, “Communist support to partition did not produce Pakistan. At its worst, it acted like an incubator. Nobody remembers it now except as a stale propagandist argument against communism. I am somewhat intrigued by this aspect of communist treachery, that it leaves no lasting bad taste in the mouth of the people.”

With his sharp capacity to discern social and political currents, Doctorji was perhaps the first public personality to “warn the nation about the possibility of Pakistan, as early as 1932”, writes HV Seshadri in his biography of Doctorji. Addressing the valedictory function of the Sangh Varg at Wardha, Doctorji spoke of how “Gandhara Desha of yore” had “now become Afghanistan” and he was afraid that likewise, “Hindusthan of today may well become Islamistan of tomorrow if things continue in the same strain as at present. People may soon start thinking of securing political independence even at the cost of our Dharma and Culture. Please ponder for a while: of what use will such independence be?”

Doctorji had rightly assessed the winds. By December 1930, Muhammed Iqbal (1877-1937), Pakistan’s future poet laureate, had started emphasising, historian Bimal Prasad tells us in his monumental study ‘Pathway to India’s Partition’, the “bond of Islam uniting Indian Muslims and the need for concentrating the bulk of them in one specified territory.” This, Prasad argues, “contributed significantly to the evolution of the thought-process which finally culminated in overwhelming Muslim support for the idea of Partition.” Between 1927 and 1932, Prasad points out, “the Partition idea was no longer confined to stray individuals here and there, but received much wider airing” and “it would be appropriate to place the emergence of the Partition idea in these years…” Doctorji, thus, with the prescience of a sage, had early and rightly discerned the violently divisive currents that were gaining force.

The writer is a member of the National Executive Committee (NEC), BJP, and the Chairman of Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation. Views expressed are personal