Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose - An ideal leader - his leadership traits - Part 1

 Swami Vivekananda had said in Karma Yoga, 

"If you really want to judge of the character of a man, look not at his great performances. Every fool may become a hero at one time or another. Watch a man do his most common actions; those are indeed the things which will tell you the real character of a great man. Great occasions rouse even the lowest of human beings to some kind of greatness, but he alone is the really great man whose character is great always, the same wherever he be. "

The traits of Subhas Chandra Bose as disclosed by those who had interacted closely with him bears testimony to this.

Adopted from www.netajisubhasbose.org

S.A Ayer, Propaganda Minister of Azad Hind gives a description of the domestic life of Netaji in Singapore, his traits and his daily routine in his book "Unto Him a Witness". Netaji used to stay in a seaside Bungalow. "Usually, he was a late riser, because he invariably retired very late, and then read political and religious books in bed till the early hours of the morning. He rose any minute after six but never later than seven in the morning, had his bath and always breakfasted in his bed-cum-office room by 8-00 a.m. The breakfast consisted of a couple of half-boiled eggs and two or three cups of tea, which he enjoyed at all hours, between morning and evening. Colonel Raju, his personal physician, who was also staying on the same floor, in the room opposite to mine (Ayer's), used to say how difficult he found it to "manage" Netaji. " Always excess," Raju used to say", implying of his habits to munch extra supari or smoke excessively or play many rounds of badminton. A few mornings he took some Ayurvedic medicine with honey. Ayer continues,  "If after breakfast, no callers were expected, Netaji would drive first to the IIL Headquarters and carry on till about 11-00 a.m. or midday, then drop in at the Supreme Command Headquarters for an hour or so ; in between, tea would be sent for and he would gulp down several cups of it at both places. It was not unusual for him to forget all about his Iunch; not so his personal staff. But he was always thoughtful and considerate; and insisted on their taking tea too whenever he had it. But then. Colonel Raju and A.D.Cs. Rawat and Shamshere Singh would rather have a morsel of rice and curry than pots of tea. Back home about 2-00 p.m. Netaji and Staff would sit down for a rather late lunch." The lunch was inevitably simple - Plain boiled rice, thin dal, plain-cooked vegetables, a saucer of dahi (curds) and a banana, ending up with a cup of good coffee. Kali was his loyal and faithful table boy in lunch table and never would one day pass when Netaji would not be cracking a joke with Kali on the prices of the banana.  Kundan Singh was his faithful valet.

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Writes Ayer in "Unto Him a Witness", "At any meal, particularly if he had a number of guests, Netaji had something very interesting and amusing to say about food. He avoided serious talk as far as possible. He wanted his guests, who sometimes included very junior INA officers or IIL, officials, to feel quite at home at table with him. Netaji used to crack jokes and laugh a lot even during hard times. He never showed his disappointment with debacles.

 

After lunch, he would go and sit in the drawing room to have another smoke to be followed by forty winks of sleep, if nobody had come to lunch or was waiting downstairs by appointment. In any event callers would begin coming from 3-00 p.m. onwards and the interviews would go on non-stop till nearly dusk. Then Netaji would send word to us in our rooms to get ready for badminton, and we would play till it was absolutely impossible to see the shuttlecock in the dark.

 

After a bath, Netaji would come down for dinner about 8-00 p.m. This was a more leisurely meal which Netaji would eat very well and enjoy every morsel of. At least two helpings if fish was really good, plenty of pooris with dal, followed by a plateful of rice with curry, one more helping of rice if the curry was very good, followed by some sweets.

 

Coffee would go round. Then we could tell how soon or late Netaji wished to go to bed that night. If he ordered more coffee to be sent up to his room sometime after dinner, then it was to be practically an all-night affair going through important papers, taking important decisions, writing letters. 

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When he was free for a while in the evening and did not fancy badminton, he would go found the grounds of the house and visit his pets—two monkeys, two goats, two rabbits, three or four ducks and geese, and a tonga pony. 

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One of the monkeys was named Ramu and the other Sita. He was very fond of Ramu, and Ramu was equally fond of Netaji.

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The other pets really belonged to Colonel Raju who started collecting the menagerie patiently. Having seen them during his walk round the house for a few days, Netaji started liking them too. He would go to each of them and feed them with his own hand." Netajji however disliked cats and Abid Hasan had a few such pets who used to loiter around.

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Ayer also recalls Netaji's penchant for making fun of even extremely difficult and troublesome situations. One night in April 1945 – Major Swami and Ayer was called to his room, and he said to them, "Italy gone, then Germany, then Japan. Which other world power shall we turn to next ? What about turning to Russia ? " He was also amused by the constant anti Bose propaganda of the BBC and the All India Radio (AIR). Ayer narrates one more incident, "Netaji always had a hearty laugh against himself whenever he heard the AIR say: " Subhas Bose will now think up some ingenious excuse for his failure to bring about a revolution inside India, and he will go on bluffing the Japanese." It would so happen that some high-ranking Japanese would be sitting with Netaji at that very moment." 

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Ayer also recalled another vital aspect of Netaji, of on the previous night of forming the Provisional Government of Azad Hind, he wrote pages after pages of his speech and gave them for typing to Ayer. Ayer writes, "What amazed me was that he never even once wanted to see any of the earlier pages that he had written. How he could remember every word that he had written in the preceding pages, how he could remember' the sequence, the paragraphs. In the entire script there was not one word corrected or scored out, and the punctuation was complete. That he wrote out the whole proclamation sheet after sheet, without a break and at one sitting was some measure of Netaji's clear thinking, remarkable memory and grasp and facile pen ! The entire historic proclamation was written with the ease with which a brief letter could be penned."

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Ayer summed up Netaji's characteristics as, "Probably the most outstanding and admirable aspect of Netaji, the fighter, was his capacity to go on fighting—and fighting—in the face of defeats and disappointments." He gave examples after examples of the indomitable spirit of Netaji. After the desertion of the five officers of the INA to the British Army, Netaji was disappointed. He also sprained his hip during an exercise and was bed ridden for about a week. Once he got a little better, he called for a meeting of about thousand men of INA and spoke for about four hours to them on the betrayal. He asked the men to shoot any officer betraying them, ordered for the celebration of anti-traitor's day and turned the whole incident around in such a way that the morale of the troops, instead of going down, went up a few notches. After the vicious carpet bombing of the hospital in Myang on 10th February 1945, Netaji, still recovering from the hip muscle sprain, on hearing the news, immediately sent his adjutants Major Rawat and Major Swami, to check the condition of the patients and the staff. The hospital was completely burnt by using incendiary bombs. A large number of patients had been killed on the spot, and most of the rest had sustained severe burns and were transferred to the General Hospital. Netaji, despite doctor's advice and at great risk to his own health, went to the General Hospital to check the condition of his soldiers, talk to them personally and attend to their needs, two or three times a day. 

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