Nehru and Bose: Parallel Lives

by Rudrangshu Mukherjee

Jawaharlal was opposed to fascism (and of course to its most virulent form, Nazism) since its inception in Europe. He read the fascist movement—it so happened, rightly—as the greatest threat to hard-won democratic liberties. He made no secret of this opposition—his writings of the 1930s are replete with his condemnation of fascism as are his letters on history that he wrote to his young daughter. Subhas did not share this antipathy. He saw Mussolini as a great man who represented the aspirations of the age. He met him a number of times and sought his advice. His admiration for Mussolini ran so high that he thought that the highest compliment he could pay to Gandhi’s Salt March was by comparing it to Mussolini’s march on Rome: a march in which Mussolini was not even present. Subhas saw fascism as a movement that represented discipline and efficiency; he argued that the future of India would have to be fashioned through a mixture of fascism and communism. Subhas had from his youth a fascination for things military, and this may have been one factor that attracted him to militaristic regimes. There is no record of Subhas ever criticizing the atrocities committed by the Black Shirts in Italy, the Nazi regime in Germany and other parts of Europe, and the Japanese army in Southeast Asia. He had studied philosophy and in his personal life was a deeply religious man, but he saw no ethical problems in trying to achieve his noble vision through an alliance with regimes that stood fo...

Nehru and bose core belief on facism