A Victory slogan and Abid Hasan Safrani
Many articles and books mention that Champakaraman Pillai was
the originator of the usage of “Jai Hind,” and I was also misled by it
initially. Though Pillai was a hardcore patriot who fought for Indian
independence from Berlin during the early WW1 years and until he died in 1934,
he was barely involved with Subhas Bose and the INA. Pillai’s seminal work with
the Indian Independence committee is somewhat misunderstood and exaggerated,
and requires more research to be retold, which I promise to do another day, as
it is still a work in progress. However, I had promised to clear the air about
the slogan Jai Hind, and that is our topic for the day.
The term Jai Hind was surely the handiwork of Abid Hasan
(Safrani), who was Bose’s 1940s confidante and fellow traveler for some years
thereafter. To get to the story, let us
first retrace Bose’s trips to Europe and Safrani’s arrival at Berlin. Bose had,
after a couple of arrests and jail terms, become quite sick and suspected to be
suffering from Tuberculosis (potentially contracted in Mandalay prison in 1925),
was advised to have it diagnosed and have it treated at a European sanatorium.
It took a while for him to get permission to travel, following which he was
packed off to Europe from the prison in February 1933, in a vessel bound for Italy.
After a few days in Rome and Venice, he was interned at the
Furth sanatorium in Vienna, where the TB diagnosis was confirmed. In June, he
traveled to Prague, and it was there that he met ACN Nambiar, who had been
living there after being expelled from Berlin, following which Bose visited
Poland. In July, he traveled to Berlin, where the ailing Bose met very few
Germans of importance, and went back to Vienna to take care of an ailing
Vallabhai Patel. His travels continued around Europe, and he visited Germany
again in 1934, demanding an end to Hitler’s Anti Indian propaganda. Returning
to Vienna, he met his future partner Emilie Schenkel, who became his
stenographer. He then spent time dictating his work, ‘Indian Struggle’, and getting
it proofed for his publisher. When an urgent telegram arrived informing him of
his father’s illness, Bose departed for Calcutta in 1934, where his father
passed away shortly thereafter. Returning to Vienna in April 1935, he underwent
gall bladder surgery and spent his recovery time at Karlsbad and Bad Gastein
(the thermal baths – or springs which supposedly had radioactive traces and
curative sulfurous mineral water). Later, he visited an ailing Kamala Nehru,
who was spending her last days at Badenweiler. Here he also met Nehru and
Indira, who had arrived to be at Kamala’s side.
From 1933 to 1936, under watchful British eyes, he travelled
around Europe, rebuilding his health and developing contacts with political
movements of both right and left to further the cause of Indian independence. In
April 1936, Bose returned to India.
As we know and studied earlier, in 1941, Bose, who had
returned to India, slipped out and went to Afghanistan, donning the guise of
Italian Orlando Mazzotta, traveled across to Russia, Austria, and Germany. It
was during Bose’s second trip to Berlin in the Italian guise that Abid Hasan
met Bose for the second time. When his friend N ‘Gopu’ Swami told him that a strange-looking
bloke was visiting Berlin and talking about India, Hasan decided to check him
out. NG Swami, then working with
Siemens, brought along Abid Hasan to a meeting with Bose, and they hit off
famously after that and started the Free India Center in Berlin. Abid Hasan and
Swami offered their services, and when Abid mentioned that he could do more after
finishing his last semester, Bose chided him for being selfish. Safrani and
Swami later worked at Annaberg to recruit Indian POWs and create the Azad Hind
Fauj, as well as receiving training in military and radio equipment. I will cover
the interesting story of N.G. Swami in a forthcoming article.
During those days, the INA was in its formative phase. The
flag was made up from the green, saffron, and white tricolor of the Indian
National Congress. The springing tiger took the place of the Congress charka
while Tagore’s Jana Gana Mana was chosen by Bose as the national anthem, as
against “Bande Matram,” which he was not keen on (since Muslims would not
accept Mother worship) and hence dropped, to ensure Muslim support. Nevertheless,
the original Jana Gana Mana, being a Bengali song, took quite some time before
its acceptance. It appears also that around that time, Abid Hasan took the surname
Safrani after the saffron color, signifying Hindu solidarity.
In one of those meetings, Bose asked his team to find a
common national greeting that would have a nice ring to it and would be
acceptable to all religious communities. In a report quoting Hasan, I set
about noting how each one greeted the other. We had the Garhwalis, Dogras,
Rajputs, Sikhs, Muslims. . . . The Muslims were ruled out by their ‘Shalaam
alekum’ and the Sikhs by their ‘Sat Sri Akal’. . . Some people who were
supposed to be educated said ‘Namaskar’, but it was not a common greeting. Then
I found that the Rajputs mainly greeted each other with ‘Jai Ramjiki ’. [This]
... is the common man’s language. So that began to appeal to me. Then I
thought, why not ‘Jai Hindustan ki’? [then] why not ‘Hind’? . . . ‘Jai Hind’.
Ah! That appealed to me.
There is also a mention that the initial suggestion from
Hasan, who had an impish sense of humor, was “hello’ but as it was just a
flippant remark, it was quickly discarded. According to Krishna Bose, Netaji
immediately called MR Vyas and other Free India Center workers for a
consultation. They kept saying Jai Hind to each other to get a sense and feel
of how it sounded. Everyone liked it, and “Jai Hind” was approved.
In a speech/paper, ‘Netaji and the Indian Communal Question’
– Safrani, who penned it for The Oracle in 1979, explains the real
purpose and implies it was a group activity that produced it. One serious
hindrance in seeking emotional integration was the absence of a communal
greeting. Namaste, Sat Sree Akal, Salaam, had all to be dropped, not finding
common acceptance apart from the fact that each of these required the
submissive bowing of the head, accompanied by the equally submissive movement
of one or both the hands. We, on the contrary, wanted to stand erect with our
heads lifted up when greeting even those much senior to us, as soldiers do when
greeting their officers. Netaji prodded us on to find such a greeting, and we
did so. “Jai Hind’ was spontaneously acclaimed, and it became our salutation
and war cry common to every Indian.
A documentary titled The War of the Springing
Tiger with voices of various INA personnel, including Abid Hasan, Lakshmi
Sehgal, etc. (plus script from Illustrated Weekly March 1964) nails it –
Quoting Abid Hasan (time marker 15:50):
When I was called to Berlin one day, I told Mr. Bose: Sir,
that we must have a national greeting.
He said: What is it? What is it?
I said: Hello. He was furious. He said: Hasan, I don't like
cheap humor.
But he said: The idea is good. We must have a national
greeting. You had better all think over it.
So, I thought of Jai Hind, and I tried it with a couple of
friends of mine. They liked it.
So, I went back to Berlin and told Mr. Bose.
He immediately called everyone and said Try it out.
Everyone was saying Jai Hind, Jai Hind, Victory to India,
Victory to India.
They liked it.
Soon enough, German reports termed the Indian legion units as the Jai Hind Volunteers and the movement the Jai Hind (Bose) movement.
Interestingly, Bose was always conscious of the need to have
all communities working together. Abid Hasan led efforts to ensure that Hindu,
Muslim, and Sikh soldiers dined together instead of eating in separate messes.
Bose, when deciding to leave Germany and ally with Japan, had toyed with the
idea of taking a Hindu, a Muslim, and a Sikh on his journey to Asia. When the
German naval authorities told him that he could take only one aide, he picked
Abid Hasan to be his companion. N.G. Swami, and four others with advanced
training in wireless telegraphy, secret ink, and sophisticated radio
transmitters, were to follow on MV Osorno in March.
Before we continue further with the story of Jai Hind, let
us see the purported connections to Champakaraman Pillai, who was also a
freedom fighter present in Germany and who passed away in 1934. When Bose tried
to travel to Germany, Pillai, who was firmly entrenched in Berlin, had actively
dissuaded the trip, believing that Bose would not be well received, which
proved to be right. It is said that Pillai gave the slogan to Bose when they
met in Vienna in 1933, but it seems unlikely. Moreover, though we have records
of Pillai’s letter to Bose, the meeting in Vienna is unsubstantiated, as Pillai
was quite ill at that time.
Anyway, going by legends, Pillai coined the phrase in 1907
while schooling at Trivandrum, aged 16 years. Now, this is quite unlikely as
Hindustani was never taught or spoken in Trivandrum during that period, and
Pillai had little possibility of learning such terms (though in all fairness,
he may have heard it much later at Turkey and from Arabs, who termed India as
Al Hind or Hindistan), let alone coining something in such an alien language. Also,
there are no mentions of the usage of Jai Hind being uttered or popularized between
his coining it and the time when Bose used it in Germany. His letters to
various people do not have the usage mentioned. But some reports, a couple of
books, and speeches about him, much later, credit him with the usage, thus lending
weight to the legend. I am convinced that Pillai was not the originator of the usage.
Jai Hind thus became the popular war cry during the INA
years in SE Asia. However, during the war, it was considered a rallying cry and
disapproved by the British. An INA archiver, Madan Gopal, states - When the
British took Mandalay, they issued an order that no Indian was to use the
greeting 'Jai Hind’. The result of this order was that boys and girls of our
Balak Sena in Mandalay came out in the streets and greeted British officers
with Jai Hind. After the INA debacle and demobilization post WW II, the
usage was popularized by Congress and other Indian leaders.
Gandhiji was not too keen with
the usage but waffled about it when asked by the United Press of India (Jan
1946), whether Jai Hind could be appropriately adopted in a non-violent scenario
since it was coined as a war cry and replied - It does not follow that
because Jai Hind was devised by Subhas Babu as a war cry in armed warfare, it
must be eschewed in a non-violent action. On that basis, even Vande Mataram may
have to be given up because there are instances of people committing violence
with this cry on their lips. If a thing is essentially an evil, it becomes a
positive duty to abjure it. In my opinion, Jai Hind and Vande Mataram have
almost the same meaning. In one, we make obeisance to Mother India and thereby
wish her victory; the other merely wishes her victory. There is no question of
singing the two together. As I have said before, Jai Hind cannot replace Vande
Mataram.
Interestingly, Nathuram Godse,
who assassinated Gandhiji, listed in his manifesto (point 84) his disgust with
Congress for appropriating Subhas’s INA slogan ‘Jai Hind’ and pretending to
like INA and Subhas, resulting in the Congress election victory in 1945-46.
Nehru was asked this question once (Note that Nehru also knew
Pillai and they had met in Berlin) by BC Roy, when traveling to the DVC
together with Lady Mountbatten – He said – Yes, it was used by Subhas and
the INA people. I used it for the first time in a meeting at Lucknow, about the
time the INA was in the news, and it caught on marvelously. It is short and
compact and conveys an idea – Victory to India, a New India. He also complained
that Rajendra Prasad was, however, fond of using the alternate Jai Bharat!
In 1966, Indira Gandhi explained it succinctly – I call
upon you to join me in raising the great slogan given to us by Netaji Subhas
Chandra Bose. This slogan represents our strength, so join me in raising this
slogan three times. Your voice is the voice of a great nation; it should reach
the far-off mountains and every nook and corner of India. It should inspire
courage and self-confidence in every Indian, Jai Hind, Jai Hind, Jai Hind.
After his INA days and a prison sentence, Abid Hasan joined
the IFS and over a long diplomatic career, served as the first secretary or
Ambassador in several countries, including Egypt, China, Switzerland, Iraq,
Syria, Senegal, and Denmark, before retiring in 1969 and settling back in
Hyderabad. He passed away in 1984, unheralded and unsung.
Many years later, Gandhiji had become famous and was frequently
associated with the loincloth he wore. Gandhiji’s wedding gift for Elizabeth’s
and Philip’s royal wedding in November 1947 is even more interesting as he
presented them (on Mountbatten’s recommendation) with what is termed as
‘fringed lacework cloth made of yarn spun by the donor on his spinning wheel’.
The royal family was reviewing the presents later, and Queen Mary was horrified
when she saw it, mistaking it for Gandhiji’s loincloth!! She stated to her lady
(Pamela Hicks, Mountbatten’s daughter, confirms this event in a Telegraph
article) in waiting – ‘Such an indelicate gift, what a horrible thing’!! Prince
Philip stated that it was not and that Gandhiji was a great man, but Queen Mary
had by then moved to stony silence…
Gandhiji wrote a note to accompany the gift. It stated- Dear
Lord Mountbatten, This little thing is made out of doubled yarn of my own
spinning. The knitting was done by a Punjabi girl who was trained by Abha’s
husband, my grandson. Please give the bride and the bridegroom this with my
blessing, with the wish that they would have a long and happy life of service
of man… Yours sincerely M K Gandhi….
Despite what she thought the special gift was, Queen
Elizabeth held onto it for years, and it popped up in royal exhibitions, but
with a wrong translation – “Jai Hind- long live India”. The cloth was regifted
by Queen Elizabeth to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he visited the UK
in 2018.
References
Netaji: Subhas Chandra Bose's Life, Politics & Struggle
- Krishna Bose
Abid Hasan Safrani: Netaji’s Comrade-in-Arms - Ismat Mehdi,
Shehbaz Safrani
Legendotes of Hyderabad – Narendra Luther
I Was Nehru's Shadow: From the Diaries of KF Rustamji (IP)
Padma Vibhushan - Ed P.V. Rajgopal
Orlando Mazotta - the Adventures
Champaka Raman Pillai – The forgotten Freedom fighter
Gandhiji’s Jai Hind gift – image courtesy Hindustan
Times, and note transcript from Rebecca English’s photo of it. Abid Hasan - Siasat
