Implacable Foes (হার্ডকভার)

In the telling of the Indian subcontinent’s anti-colonial struggle in the twentieth-century against the British Empire – the Raj–the role of Gandhi, his non-violent tactic–Satyagrah –the Indian National Congress and their supposed success against the Raj has dominated the narrative; and still informs perceptions in the subcontinent and beyond.<br> Revolutionaries and insurrections were ridiculed as inconsequential and misguided ventures, respectively. <br> The history of the British presence, however, was not one of non-violence; and it was the control of the subcontinent and its resources–including the deployment of a vast mercenary army drawn from a displaced, brutalized peasantry–that propelled London to its position as foremost world power at the centre of the global capitalist-system in the 19th and 20th centuries. <br> Would such an empire seemingly bow to an opponent professing to employ strict non-violence? Or did such an opponent help keep the real enemies of the Raj at bay? <br> Historian Ali traces British fears of revolutionaries and their plans; despite public dismissals, in private the Raj was always concerned, casting worldwide surveillance nets and arraying sinister agents and collaborators to monitor revolutionaries–and thwarting their activities where possible. <br><br> The only leader of Congress to emerge in the inter-war years who supported the outright and complete overthrow of the Raj by armed insurrection; Bose became an enemy of both the Raj and the Gandhian Congress; characterized as its one “implacable foe” by the Raj, while Gandhi frankly admitted to an Imperial Viceroy, speaking of Bose, that “he is my opponent.”<br><br> Insurrection coupled with a distinctive vision for a national revolution in the subcontinent meant that Bose also faced two implacable foes; imperial occupier and domestic enemies.<br> Ali argues that it was Bose and the revolution he represented that posed the real threat to the Raj and its collaborators in the subcontinent.<br> Implacable Foes also speaks for the enduring applicability of Bose’s life and message, a generous secularism and forward-thinking progressivism, in the present-day; in a subcontinent still grappling with the poisonous legacies of British imperialism and the spectre of two nuclear-armed states facing off against each other; for the future of amity and equitable relations in South Asia.