A Flaming Sword Forever Unsheathed 13in South Asian his tory: that “men of spiritual yearnings with the strain
of mysticism” were often associated with “the cult of the sword.”^26
Netaji’s sword then made a journey from Calcutta to Delhi. At the
crowded Howrah railway station, heart- rending cries asking the leader
to return reverberated as the train moved off. Huge numbers of people
gathered at Mughalsarai, Allahabad, Kanpur, Ghaziabad, and smaller
wayside stations as the relic traveled across the Gangetic Plain. From
Delhi station the sword was taken in a gigantic pro ces sion to the Red
Fort, with thousands of people lining the streets and showering flowers
from balconies and treetops along the way. “So many of us who knew
Netaji have assembled here today,” Prime Minister Indira Gandhi said
at the Red Fort, “with hearts laden with emotion. His slogan was ‘On-
ward to Delhi.’ He himself could not reach Delhi. But his sword has
come here today and we welcome it warmly. Netaji was an example of
India’s courage. I can still remember when we were young and we
looked into his inspired eyes, our hearts also filled up with fervor. We
can therefore well understand how and with what fervor he or ga nized
the Azad Hind Fauj (Indian National Army).”^27
The symbolism of the sword has sometimes led people to make easy
assumptions about the muscular quality of Bose’s nationalism, and to
ignore the tender aspects of his personality. In a chapter titled “My
Faith—Philosophical” in his unfin ished autobiography, he iden ti fied
love as “the essential principle in human life.”^28 A model of leadership,
he inspired awe among his followers, but did not instill fear. It was
through expressions of unbounded love that he elicited devotion and a
fierce loyalty that remained with those whose lives he touched de cades
after he had passed from the scene. Mehboob Ahmed, Bose’s young
military secretary in 1945, had the good fortune of working with Gan-
dhi and Nehru later in his career. He acknowledged the greatness of the
Mahatma and the Pandit, but there was only one man at whose call he
was prepared to lay down his life, and that was Netaji.^29 Bose wept
when he sent his soldiers into battle and did not restrain his tears when
he witnessed and shared their suf fering. One could speak of Bose in the
words that Carl Sandburg used to describe the heartbroken Abraham
Lincoln: “on occasions he was seen to weep in a way that made weeping
appropriate, decent, majestic.”^30