The BJP has spotted an opportunity; and it’s making a concerted effort to appropriate the legacy of Subhas Chandra Bose

For long-time BJP watchers it comes as no surprise that the party has upped its game in the appropriation of great leaders of India who have been largely ignored or placed on a pedestal lower than that of Jawahar Lal Nehru. This is not to say that Nehru was not among the tallest of our national leaders in the battle for Independence but the Congress Party must take a majority of the blame for fetishizing its first family and thereby opening up an opportunity for an ascendant political party that seeks to create a more holistic sense of India’s modern political history and, by extension and association, the BJP’s its role in it. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, therefore, cannot be faulted in his plans to join freedom fighters and veterans to unfurl the Tricolour from the ramparts of the Red Fort, 21 October, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Subhas Chandra Bose or Netaji’s declaration of Azad Hind (Independent India). It was on this date in 1943 that Netaji announced the formation of India’s first independent Government in opposition to the British colonial state which still ruled over the country.

Its political opponents may cavil, but the fact remains that Netaji’s legacy that of yet another Congress leader of the freedom struggle after Sardar Patel’s the BJP has assiduously and many would argue successfully appropriated. JP and Ram Manohar Lohia, not to mention BR Ambedkar, have already been inducted into the BJP’s pantheon of icons which is a remarkable achievement given leaders such as BS Hedgewar, MS Golwalkar, VD Sarvakar and SP Mookerji are also well-entrenched there. Indeed, it is a mark of a political organisation which recognises the ideological-political truism that when its social base expands so must its iconology. Bose’s profile has rightly been raised in West Bengal too by the Trinamool Congress after decades of neglect by the Marxists; at the national level, though, it was the Congress which missed a trick, as it were, and the BJP has been astute enough to fill the breach. It is now only to be hoped that the ruling party will not limit its welcome effort to highlight Netaji’s legacy merely to further its political ambitions but will initiate a movement based on Bose’s ideals of a truly equal India and his vision for a modern India albeit rooted in its civilizational heritage.