Renegade's Revenge

Thoughtful men thought twice when they learned that sardonic, myopic Subhas Chandra Bose, traitor, was with the Japs around Imphal. Twice President of the Indian National Congress and long the loudest foe of British rule in India, Bose's name was wildly cheered in Delhi after Bose himself had turned up in Berlin seeking Hitler's aid in freeing India. That was August 1942.

By last October Bose had worked his way to Singapore via Tokyo. He proclaimed a "Provisional Government of India," set about recruiting an "army of liberation," was tireless in his praise for Jap assistance in the task. When the time came to threaten Allied communications with southeast Asia, the Japs dubbed Bose a general and took him along with his "army of liberation." Through the heavy folds of British censorship in New Delhi came word that Bose's forces numbered some 3,000 men; others, freer to speak the truth, guess that he may have as many as 30,000 Indians from Malaya and from Jap prison camps. More important than the size of his army was one explosive fact: an armed, anti-British Indian stands today on Indian soil and calls upon his fellows to rebel against the Raj.

Skillful lawyer, shrewd polemicist, Cambridge-educated Bose speaks and writes with logic and persuasion. In Indian politics, he used to rank at least No. 3, after Gandhi and Nehru, and for some he still is No. 1. His theme of Samyavada (equality) with no room for the idle rich has charm for millions of unhappy Indians. He emphasizes a single-party state and authoritarian discipline.

Beyond the prongs of the Jap advance into little Manipur lies the sprawling province of Bengal, Bose's home. Beyond the immediate threat to Allied arms lies the chilling possibility that the Japs mean what they say when they promise 350,000,000 Indians immediate independence. Well may the canny Japanese recall how Kaiser Wilhelm shoved Lenin into a tottering Russian empire, watched him bring the structure down.

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