Had Bose returned to India....

Had Bose returned to India after the war he might well have prevented the tragedy. He was not a tired politician ready to accept office under any terms. Although his uncompromising hostility to Jinnah and Pakistan might have led to a civil war, the cost of that could not have been greater than the senseless waste of partition.

Certainly Bose's often repeated warning that the Congress would pay dearly for the acceptance of 'office mentality' was historically acute. It came when in the late thirties the Congress was struggling to cope with the consequences of the 1935 Government of India Act, and the blandishments it offered. In the 1936 elections, the Congress reaped the rewards of nearly two decades of unceasing mass struggle against the British and totally vanquished the Muslim League.

But by 1945, after a decade of negotiations and some power-sharing with the British, the Congress was reduced to the level of the Muslim League; just another group, albeit powerful, seeking the rewards of office. And by placing such faith in the negotiating chamber the Congress had played into the hands of Jinnah, the master lawyer and negotiator. As Bose had foreseen, the Congress had thrown away the trump card of its power - mass struggle - for the dubious delights of the round table.

But could Indians have lived with Bose? An extreme man, he produced extreme reactions: total adulation or permanent rejection. Certainly the India of Bose would have been very different from the India of Nehru. Bose had often said that India needed at least twenty years of iron dictatorial rule, and he would most certainly have rejected the type of parliamentary democracy that has developed. This opens up the whole question of whether it is better for people to have food or to have freedom to change their political rulers every five years. The argument can never be resolved - though, given the recent adulation of the West for China, some of the oldest democracies in the world seem to think food is more important.

Surely Bose's rule would have degenerated into autocracy, like that of Mrs Gandhi between 1975 and 1977? Though the analogy is not quite accurate (Mrs Gandhi's rule degenerated long before the events of June 1975), for conclusive evidence Bose's critics point to his behaviour in Germany and with the Japanese during the war. In a climate that brooked no dissent and where the leader was always right, he too came to believe that he could do no wrong.

Part of the possible reason for this change of personality - if there was a change - may lie in the fact that at that stage, particularly in south-east Asia, he found himself a king without any worthwhile courtiers. The people who surrounded him there were political innocents, thrust into the wider world by events beyond their control: they could only applaud never interject. Bose was, as the official Japanese history puts it, 'a bright mornings star amidst them'. There is also evidence to suggest that Subhas Bose was not quite the dictator a simple reading of his speeches makes him out to be.

No doubt there was an authoritarian streak in him, but his actions often belied his dictatorial postures. in 1939, as Congress president, he behaved - against Gandhi's wishes - less like an autocrat and more like a negotiator who had won one round and expected to reap some benefit from it. Throughout his political career he was always loyal to colleagues even at the risk of damaging his own chances: hardly the mark of a man of iron.

Almost alone among Indian leaders, Bose offered solutions that were both visionary and practical. Nehru's socialism may have been more rounded; rigorously logical and free of Bose's celebrated eclecticism. But its strain of romanticism divorced it from the realities of India, and the Nehru years resulted, almost inevitably, in a country with the most progressive socialist legislation outside the Soviet bloc which happily allowed the most unbridled capitalism to grow and flourish on a feudal structure that had changed little, if at all, since the British days. The cynicism this produced has bitten so deep that every government since has had to struggle against it and no combination in Indian politics looks likely to counteract the years of wasted opportunities and lost hopes.

This may seem hard, given the undoubted economic progress India has made in the last thirty years. When the British left, India had little or no industrial capacity; now she is the tenth industrial power in the world, exporting machinery to the West and capable of producing her own nuclear weapons. But the rapid industrialisation has been uneven and ill-directed, with the beneficiaries limited to a small, if growing, sector of the country.

Bose had the capacity to inspire total love and dedication, and produce gold from dross. Many hated him, but those he 'touched' loved him with an almost overpowering sense of completeness. And this, combined with his rigorous, matter-of-fact manner and an instinctive feel for ancient Indian loyalties, might well have produced the revolution that India needed - and still lacks.