National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Saturday said that India wouldn’t have been partitioned if Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was there at that time.
Delivering the first Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Memorial lecture in the national capital, Doval said there were very few parallels to the “genius” of Subhas Bose. “I am not saying good or bad but there are very few parallels in the Indian history or the global history of people who had the audacity to sail against the current — and not an easy current the current of the British empire,” Doval said.
“Netaji (Subhas Chandra Bose) said I will not comprise for anything less than full independence and freedom. He said that he not only wants to free this country from political subjugation but there is a need to change the political, social and cultural mindset of the people and they should feel like free birds in the sky,” the NSA said.
Doval said that when former British Prime Minister Clement Atlee came to India in 1956 and was asked by the then Calcutta Governor why the British had agreed to Independence in 1947 when there was no pressure to vacate, Atlee said that it was because of Netaji.
The NSA pointed out that Pakistan founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah had said that he could accept only one leader and that is Subhas Chandra Bose.
“He (Atlee) said that even though Netaji was thought to have died in 1945 in a plane crash in Taipei, even after his death they were afraid of the ideas of nationalism that (Netaji ) had created, many Indians would have gone down that path,” Doval said.
The NSA, further said that history has been unkind to Bose while adding that he was happy that Prime Narendra Modi is somebody who has been very keen to resurrect it.
