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RANJAN BORRA
tive, so that whenever any action were taken, there would be simul-
taneous action on many fronts.
It was on Points Three and Eight of this ten-point program,
which outlined Netaji's concept of a governmental structure for a free
India, that he radically differed with his colleagues. His advocacy of a
strong central government with dictatorial powers, and his rejection
of mid-Victorian parliamentary democracy, no doubt earned him the
disrepute of harboring pro-Fascist views. But Bose remained con-
vinced of his ideal, and diligently propagated his "doctrine of syn-
thesis," in which he suggested that perhaps the ideal system for India
would be a blend of communism and fascism:"
Bose expressed these views in 1934, and they were echoed in his last
known public address, which he made before the students of Tokyo
University in 1944:6
7Ibid. p. 87.
8 Alexander Werth,
Lothar Frank, and Sisir K. Bose, A Beacon Across Asia (Calcutta: Orient
Longmans, 1973), pp. 249-250.
Since Bose disappeared from the scene, the world political situa-
tion has changed profoundly . . . The principal features of
present-day world politics is the struggle for hegemony between
the two superpowers, (the) USA and USSR. A new competitor in
the field is Maoist China ... The Western capitalist system leads
to two directions, viz., the conservative direction resulting in the
domination of big landlordsand big business interests, and the other
in a liberal Socialist direction resulting in some sort of the so-
called democratic Socialist system. The left Socialist or the Com-
munist world has three directions, viz., the orthodox Soviet
system represented by (the) Brezhnev doctrine, the new pro-
letarian communism as propounded by Mao Tse-tung, and lastly,
the independent left Socialist movements represented by Tito in
Yugoslavia, Castro in Cuba, and Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam . . .
Bose's opting for the Western capitalist system of either variety
... can be dismissed outright. His whole political record cancels
any such possibility. On the other hand, as a dedicated national
revolutionary, with a messianic faith in India's historic obligation
to evolve a new social order on the basis of a synthesis of all
known revolutionary social experiments, he could not have
accepted the hegemonistic political creed of either Russia or
China. The Samyavada that he was searching for India un-
doubtedly meant for him a new alternative. Thus, Free India
under the leadership of Subhas Chandra Bose would have
emerged as a new challenge to the world in ideology and practice.
There is every reason to believe that, because of (the) history,
size, and potential of a united India, the India of Bose's concep-
tion and making would have been a bigger challenge to world
history and politics than Vietnam, Yugoslavia, or Cuba.
essential economic and social reforms, and under which the moral
fabric of the nation has deteriorated. Rampant corruption continues
to plague the administrators. Nor is India a solitary example. The
pattern is evident among all the newly-independent nations of South
and Southeast Asia. This has led many observers to reassess the wisdom
of introducing the institutions of parliamentary democracy into the
region. The latest example is Bangladesh, where parliamentary
democracy has already been replaced by a single-party system under
a presidential form of government.
If parliamentarydemocracy has failed in Southern Asia, must the
choice now lie between Communist and nationalist totalitarianism?
Not necessarily, because a third alternative does exist. It would
certainly be worthwhile to experiment with Bose's philosophy of
synthesis before giving in to either form of despotism. According to
him:"