The search for an Indian narrative

The day after Narendra Modi swept into power there was a seminar at London’s Harrow Town Hall. It was not about the elections but the legacy of Subhas Bose. The setting was, unintentionally, ironical. Down the road is Harrow School where Jawaharlal Nehru had been educated and Nehru, of course, was Bose’s great rival during India’s freedom struggle.

However, what made the evening revealing was that instead of discussing what Bose stood for, there was heated discussion about whether Bose, following an air crash, had died in August 1945, just days after Japan’s surrender, in a Japanese military hospital in Taiwan.