Bose Set Of 2 Books : (Bose The Military Dimension: A Military History of INA and Netaji | Bose or Gandhi Who Got India Her Freedom ? )

1. Bose The Military Dimension: A Military History of INA and Netaji:-

This book is a 125thAnniversary tribute to Bose and his INA. It is a path breaking book that seeks to evaluate Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose as a military leader and assess the combat performance of the Indian National Army (INA) in WWII and its significant impact on the Freedom Struggle. Netaji was instrumental in India getting her freedom. The book has gone into great details about each & every engagement fought by the INA. The INA was the primary catalyst that inspired the military revolts of 1946 that ultimately forced the British to quit. For the first time, the author has examined the events of 1946—especially the revolts in the Royal Indian Navy and the British Indian Army in great detail. He has cited British sources to prove that these revolts were primarily instrumental in forcing the British to leave in such a tearing hurry merely two years after they won the WWII. This book seeks to reopen the significant historical debate about how India got her freedom. A succession of court historians have tried to craft a narrative that India had obtained her freedom entirely by the soft power of Ahimsa/non-violence; that hard power had no role to play whatsoever. This is a huge sacrilege. As per the INA’s official history, the force had a total strength of 60,000. Of these, 26,000 were killed in action. This is an enormous scale of sacrifice. The pity is that the Nehruvian dispensation treated these men as traitors.

2. Bose or Gandhi Who Got India Her Freedom ? :-

This book seeks to answer a seminal question about Nation state formation in Post colonial India, “Who got us our Freedom and how?” Was it due to the violence of Bose and His INA- or was it due to the peaceful and non-violent agitation of Mahatma Gandhi? Where we are going depends a lot on where we came from. The author has painstakingly analysed the documents now available in the British Transfer of Power Archives. He has methodically identified the key British decision makers in London and New Delhi in the critical period from 1945-1947, and examined their letters and reports about the INA trials and their violent aftermath (November-December 1945) and then the mutiny in the Royal Indian Navy (February 1946). Relevant letters from the Viceroy and military appreciation of the situation by Fd Mshl Auchinleck, alongwith reports from the Governors of the various provinces, as also the report of the Director IB, have been reproduced in the original alongwith Letters from the Prime minister Lord Clement Attlee and Secretary of state for India, Pethik Lawerence. The documentary paper trail is chillingly clear. The British were shaken by the wide spread violence in support of the INA and the serious question mark it raised about the continued loyalty of some 2.5 million Indian soldiers then being de-mobilized after the war. There were less than 40,000 British troops in India then. They were war-weary and home-sick. How could they have quelled a revolt by 2.5 million combat hardened Indian Soldiers? It was this stark maths that forced the British to leave when they did. Nelson Mandela in South Africa, continued with the non-violent methods of the Mahatma. Unfortunately South Africa got its freedom only in April 1994. The unfortunate fact is that the British left but handed over power to an anglophile elite that faithfully carried on with the narratives and constructs of the Raj. This narrative strongly coloured nation state formation in India for it started with the a priori British assumption that India never was a nation state – just a warring cauldron of castes and creeds. Caste today is sadly the basis of all politics in Independent India. They wiped out all mention of Bose and his INA, and pacified the state in a manner that would ensure that India never became a major military power. Did the British deliberately induce the legacy of pacifism to ensure that like post-war Germany and Japan, India would never become a formidable military power?

Did India become a nation only in 1947? A Postscript has been added to bring the book up to date.