A Flaming Sword Forever Unsheathed 31943, the back of the nationalist resistance within India was broken
and the eastern province of Bengal on the front line of the war against
Japan was engulfed in a gigantic man-made famine in which some
three million people were to perish.^5
One leader, however, had escaped the clutches of the British in 1941
and was now ready to raise the Indian flag of in de pen dence abroad.
Louis Fi scher, in the course of his conversations with Gandhi, asked
about this man: Subhas Chandra Bose. In his response, Gandhi de-
scribed Bose as “a pa tri ot of pa tri ots,” albeit “misguided.” What Fi scher
learned about Bose from Kurshed Ben (“Sister Kurshed”), who was
deputed by Gandhi to take care of his guest, was even more revealing.
Kurshed Naoroji was the granddaughter of Dadabhai Naoroji, a found-
ing father of the Indian nationalist movement and the first Indian
member of the British House of Commons, in the late nineteenth cen-
tury. For the previous fif teen years, she had been a constant disciple of
Gandhi, the apostle of nonviolence. “If Bose entered India at the head
of an Indian army,” Kurshed Ben told Louis Fi scher, “he could rally the
whole country.” Bose, according to this feisty forty- year- old woman,
was “more popular than Nehru, and in certain circumstances had a
stron ger appeal than Gandhi.”^6
On July 4, 1943, India’s would- be George Washington rose to accept
the leadership of the Indian freedom movement in Southeast Asia.
Wearing a light suit and tie and a white Gandhi cap, Subhas Chandra
Bose looked more like a philosopher than a military commander as he
faced some two thousand representatives of the Indian Inde pen dence
League in the packed Cathay Theater of Japanese- occupied Singapore.
The words he spoke, however, were reminiscent of Giuseppe Garibaldi,
the hero of Ital ian uni fi ca tion. In ringing tones and elegant Hindu-
stani, he told those who were prepared to follow him that he could of-
fer “nothing but hunger, thirst, privation, forced marches and death.”
The passion of the delivery was often drowned by the enthusiasm of
the audience’s response. “When we reach Delhi’s Red Fort and hold our
victory parade there... ,” Subhas Chandra Bose began before thunder-
ous cheers interrupted him. Once the applause died down, he contin-
ued his sentence: “... no one can say who among us will be there, who