Alive In The Retelling

How does a man whom Sarvapalli Gopal once called "a born loser" become the subject of a 3 hr 26 min epic? There is a moment in Shyam Benegal's new film that answers the question. In it, Bose (played with a quietly commanding presence and uncanny resemblance by Sachin Khedekar) is meditating when his wife Emilie Schenkl (Anna Prustel) asks what he is doing. "I'm talking to God," he replies. "It appears that God loves to dispose of whatever I propose. Every time I'm within an inch of reaching my goal, something always comes in the way." That line sets the tenor for Benegal's film—the story of a tragic hero who battles the greatest odds, and is doomed to fail.

Yet what was it about this man that inspired such undying loyalty and blind faith that made his followers suicidal patriots? What is it about him that, for decades after he disappeared, people still hoped that he would return, and just a rumour about his re-emergence would bring out the throngs? "Bose was an extraordinary man, chasing what any normal rational person would call an impossible dream," says Benegal. "And he almost makes it possible. But there's nothing Quixotic about him. He had a plan and was totally focused on what he was doing. The story of his life is a great adventure."

Benegal's Rs 35-crore magnum opus covers the period from approximately 1940 to 1945. Early on, we see Bose escaping house arrest in Calcutta and going to Kabul. World War II is on, and while Britain is kept busy in the international theatre of war, Bose wants to seek Russia's help in getting India's independence. The Soviet Union isn't interested, so Bose goes to Germany. When Hitler disappoints, he turns east, heading for Japan to build his liberation army, and lead it through extraordinary guerrilla warfare through Burma and northeast India.

The idea had been knocking about in Benegal's head for a while. His first exposure to Bose was through an uncle Ramesh who served as a young cadet with theINA. After he returned to India at the end of the World War II, young Shyam was regaled with stories of adventure and derring-do. "I was fascinated. I later decided I would one day make a film on Netaji."

The period was a deliberate pick. "It's the part of his life that we know the least about," says Khedekar. "He was in exile from India, and yet managed to muster up a 80,000-strong force." Accounts of his life at this time are full of conflicting reports. Much of it was Bose's doing, of course. Constantly shadowed by both Allied and Axis Intelligence, he had to create a whole lot of red herrings to throw them off the scent. He leaves Calcutta as a Muslim driver of the Bose family, then he goes to Peshawar as Ziauddin, an insurance agent. When he crosses over into Kabul on foot, he's a mute middle-aged Pathan. When he slips into Germany, it's as Italian count Orlando Mazzota.

If the fuzziness about his life adds to Bose's mystique, it certainly created authenticity problems for Benegal and his team. Benegal says he was swamped with material, but had to finally decide on a simple rule of thumb: when he could not corroborate events from several sources, he would simply become Netaji and follow the logic of what he would have done. "I'm a filmmaker, I'm not writing objective history," says he. "I'm trying to see how Netaji looked at the world, how his mind worked, what makes him so attractive as a personality."

What about his marriage to Emilie Schenkl, shown as a Hindu ceremony conducted by a Prussian Indologist in Germany? Forward Bloc members took serious offence to this and have moved court to delete this scene (Bose wearing the traditional headgear and being the docile groom? Blasphemy!). Some of them wouldn't even believe he was married. "Bose's passport said he was single," says Forward Bloc MP Debabrata Biswas."Benegal shouldn't take such liberties." But the party has found very little else to object to.

Long accused by Indian Communists of opportunism and conniving with fascist powers, Benegal's Netaji gets many screen moments to redeem himself. At one point, he tells Emilie: "I know [the Nazis] are worse than British imperialism, but as they say in Indian medicine, it takes a poison to kill a poison." And again, later: "For India's freedom, I will even shake hands with the Devil!" "My view has great deal of warmth and feeling for Bose and the situation he was in," says Benegal. "To call him a fascist agent is nonsense. He took help wherever he could get it."

"Bose's strategy for Independence was very different from Gandhi's," says historian Basudev Chatterjee, former head of the Netaji Institute. "When he articulated that, he was thrown out of the Congress." Even though Benegal claims his film "with its epic structure" has no place for many-layered relationships, there are interesting insights into Bose's relationship with his "political father" Gandhi. The film begins with Bose being cast out of the Congress by Gandhi, but the latter stays a shadowy, paternal presence. Bose declares him "Father of the Nation" and names one of the ina brigades after him. "Nobody understands my relationship with Gandhi," he tells Nambiar, his associate in Germany.

"Bose felt Gandhi was like Christ or Buddha, who wanted to change the world by changing people," says Benegal. "Political independence was not his goal. But for Bose it was." But Benegal does not delve into Bose's other troubled relationships—his well-documented rivalry with Nehru, his abrasive ties with Patel. Nehru is almost diplomatically absented from the film. Benegal refuses to be drawn into any controversy about this. After all, there is still a militant school of thought in India that believes Nehru conspired with Mountbatten to engineer Bose's disappearance. "I'm looking at the story from Bose's point of view," is all he would say. "Why bring Nehru in unless he has a role to play?"

Instead Benegal turns the spotlight on Bose's long underrated role in the freedom struggle. In a final voice-over, Om Puri tells viewers that Bose had hastened the process of India's independence. Says biographer Mihir Bose: "If India has a single moment when it can say yes, this was the time when we finally wrested our freedom from the British, it came during the ina trials." When the exploits of Bose's liberation army whipped up a frenzy of patriotism and righteous fervour. "But again Netaji, ever the tragic hero, missed that moment," says Bose. Absentee hero, perhaps. But Benegal's film will ensure that Subhas Chandra is far from forgotten.