In my youth, I thought Netaji was a fascist. This was informed by reading his writings which were sympathetic Mussolini's 'corporatism'. As I grew older, I realised that I was measuring him through the hindsight of what we now know about fascism. (1/n)
It is most likely that Bose knew that fascism amounted to genocide, but he believed the British were worse. Unlike us, who only 're-learned' that Churchill caused the death of 3 million people by manufacturing the Bengal Famine, Bose would've seen it first-hand. (2/n)
Like many others of his time, Bose decided that the Axis powers were a lesser evil than the allies. Let us not forget that when Gandhi went to Italy and met Mussolini in 1931, the latter hailed him as a "saint". (3/n)
Netaji's writings and politics shows us that what we think as clear-cut political baskets, didn't work out like that in the 1930s and '40s. Bose supported socialism, was staunchly secular, was liberal & progressive, but allied with the fascists. (4/n)
What I remember of his writings - which I read 25 years ago - shows that he found no contradiction between corporatism and socialism. Things were not that black-and-white, as the hindsight of WW-2 & the Cold War makes us believe now. (5/n)
Finally, every conspiracy theorist who thinks that Nehru & the Soviets had Bose killed, should ask themselves this question - What would the Allied Powers have done if he had been caught? Would they have treated him as a collaborator & a war criminal?
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