Strategy or Fascination? Subhas Chandra Bose’s Relations with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, and the Making of Sāmyavāda (1930s–1940s)

The Bengali politician Subhas Chandra Bose was one of the main protagonists of India’s fight for independence. From the early stages of his political life, he proved to be particularly receptive to the ideologies that were developing outside India at the time. His sojourns in Europe between 1933 and 1943 allowed him to directly observe and draw inspiration from the political experiments taking place there, and promote the cause of India’s independence. Bose’s personal contacts with, and declared support to Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, and his original ideology, sāmyavāda (described by Bose as ‘a synthesis between Communism and Fascism’), have sparked controversy. Historiography frames Bose either as a mere supporter of Nazi-fascism intending to establish a similar regime in India, or a hero willing to do anything to free India from British colonialism. This paper argues that both fascination and strategy concurred in defining Bose’s relations with Italy and Germany, which differed from each other and developed over time. Similarly, sāmyavāda cannot be dismissed as derivative of Nazism or Fascism; this paper contends that it was a non-Western attempt to combine two ideologies traditionally considered antithetical into an original, though paradoxical, synthesis suited to an anti- and post-colonial programme.