Justice Katju
Are Tagore and ‘Netaji’ holy cows and private property of Bengalis ? Is no one permitted to raise any questions about ‘Gurudeb’ and ‘Netaji’ ?
https://www.hastakshepnews.com/are-tagore-and-bose-the-private-property-of-bengalis/
I regard Tagore as objectively a British agent, and Subhas Chandra Bose as a Japanese agent.
One evening at Allahabad when I was a Judge there ( 1991-2004 ) I was at the house of one of the High Court Judges who had invited some judges for dinner.
There I mentioned my view that Subhas Chandra Bose was a Japanese agent.
http://justicekatju.blogspot.com/2016/01/bengalis-and-bose-i-hold-bengalis-in.html
At this, one of the High Court Judges, who was a Bengali, reacted almost hysterically, and started shouting at me, and threatening to walk out. I was taken aback, and had to apologise, as I did not want the party to be broken up.
But I have witnessed a somewhat similar reaction by many ( not all ) Bengalis if one speaks against Tagore. It is sometimes impossible to talk rationally with many Bengalis about ‘Netaji’ and Tagore.
Are Subhas Chandra Bose and Tagore the private property of Bengalis ? Can no one criticize them in the presence of Bengalis ? If Bengalis regard them as public figures, not the private property of Bengalis, then the public surely has the right to assess and criticize them.
I have expressed my views about Bose and Tagore on my blog justicekatju.blogspot.in and I do not intend to repeat them in detail.
I regard Tagore as a British stooge who was promoted by Yeats ( who got him a Nobel Prize ), and used by the British to divert literature from the revolutionary direction Sharad Chandra Chattopadhyaya and Kazi Nazrul Islam were taking it ( see Sharad Chandra’s novel ‘ Pather Dabi’, which was banned by the British. At one time the price of one copy was the same as that of a Mauser pistol ).
See in this connection my article ‘ The Role of Art and Literature ‘ on my blog.
I have explained there that there are broadly two theories of art and literature, one is called ‘Art for art’s sake’, and the other is called ‘ Art for social purpose ‘. In a poor country like India only the second theory is acceptable.
Tagore belonged broadly to the school of ‘ Art for Art’s sake’, propagating spiritualism and mystical nonsense ( see his poems ‘Gitanjali’, ‘Agni beena bajao tumi kemon kore’, ‘Klanti’, etc ), while Sharad Chandra and Kazi Nazrul Islam belonged to the school of ‘ Art for social purpose’.
The British were scared of the writings of Sharad Chandra, as they could inspire an anti-British Indian freedom struggle, and so they promoted their stooge Tagore who diverted Bengali literature to a harmless, spiritual direction.
Am I not entitled to even present my view about Tagore before Bengalis ? Do I not have freedom of expression ?
As regard Bose, I regard him as a Japanese agent, otherwise why did he give up the struggle against the British in 1945 when the Japanese surrendered ? If he was a real freedom fighter he should have carried on a guerilla war against the British, as the Chinese had done against the Japanese. In a guerilla war one fights with the weapons of the enemy, by snatching them from the enemy.
As a young man, Bose was no doubt full of patriotism, because of which he resigned from the ICS and joined the freedom struggle. However, it seems later in life he became ambitious. After Gandhi forced him to resign from Presidentship of the Congress in 1939, he became frustrated, and at first went to Nazi Germany where he hobnobbed with Hitler and Himmler, two of the most evil men in world history, seeking their help to fight the British. When that scheme did not work out, he went to Japan, whose rulers helped him raise the INA.
In fact Bose was only being used by the Japanese Imperialists, who would have bumped him off once his utility was over, or made him a puppet ruler of India, like Pu Yi, who was a puppet ruler of Manchukuo.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Puyi
Would the Japanese fascists have given freedom to India if they had defeated the British ? Not at all, they were fascist imperialists, seeking markets and raw materials, and if they had conquered India would have looted it, and slaughtered a lot of Indians, the way they looted Manchuria and North China under their occupation, and slaughtered tens of thousands of Chinese in Nanking, Shanghai, etc. ( see on Youtube about these massacres ).
Many Bengalis and others support Bose, as they believe he was right since an enemy’s enemy was one’s friend. They forget this dictum cannot be of universal application. Making an alliance with India’s enemy’s enemy i.e. Japan, would have been good if it would have benefited us. But as I have pointed out above, if Japan had conquered India they would not have given us freedom, but would have made India their colony, and looted us, perhaps much more ruthlessly than the British ( since they were fascists ).
I have great respect for Bengalis, many of whom are my close friends. I would only request them to react rationally and ponder about what I have said, instead of reacting emotionally, treating Bose and Tagore like holy cows
