“A synthesis between Communism and Fascism”: Subhas Chandra Bose’s sāmyavāda as a non-Western overcoming of ‘opposite’ ideologies

The Bengali politician Subhas Chandra Bose was one of the protagonists of India’s fight for independence. During the Thirties, he emerged as a leader of the Indian National Congress’ young, socialist wing, and was elected president of the party in 1938. However, Bose’s radical views caused a split between him and the Gandhian majority of the Congress. The split widened during the Second World War, when Bose openly sided with the Axis Powers in an anti-British perspective.
From the early stages of his political life, Bose proved to be particularly receptive to the ideologies that were developing outside India at the time. His lengthy sojourns in Europe between 1933 and 1943 allowed him to observe directly and draw inspiration from the epochal political experiments that were taking place there. In fact, Bose himself in his book The Indian Struggle described his political doctrine, sāmyavāda, as “a synthesis between Communism and Fascism” based on the traits shared by the two ideologies.
In addressing sāmyavāda, historiography often reported the definition given by Bose in The Indian Struggle without critically assessing it. However, a closer look at Bose’s own words shows that over time sāmyavāda embodied different meanings: from a mere synonym of “equality” or “socialism” to a combination of totalitarian postulates, from a radical alternative to Gandhi’s methods of ahiṃsā and satyāgraha to an all-round project of “benevolent dictatorship” aimed at governing independent India.
Through an analysis of some essential primary sources, such as Bose’s speeches and writings, this paper retraces the origins and constant development of the sāmyavāda ideology, with the aim to highlight the originality of this doctrine. Bose’s sāmyavāda in fact can be read as a non-Western attempt to combine two ideologies traditionally considered antithetical into an original, though intrinsically paradoxical, synthesis suited to an anti- and post-colonial programme.