Mr. SUBHAS BOSE. (Hansard, 1 December 1936)

§ THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (THE MARQUESS OF ZETLAND)

My Lords, I do not for a moment complain of the observations which the noble Earl has made with regard to the detention of Mr. Subhas Bose, for indeed there is nothing more distasteful to any administrator than to have to resort to measures of this kind. Nevertheless I am satisfied, from bitter personal experience, that in the circumstances in India it is unavoidable. I should like to disabuse your Lordships' minds of any idea that the greatest care is not taken in examining the evidence against persons like Mr. Bose before these powers of detention are used against them.

By way of illustration of the extraordinary care which is taken, I would like to give the noble Earl an example that came within my own experience. I was in Bengal at a time of great unrest when the terrorist movement was a very serious menace, and it became necessary to intern a considerable number of persons. I examined personally the evidence against a large number of them, and the evidence seemed to me to 512 prove conclusively their guilt. Nevertheless, partly to satisfy myself and partly to satisfy public opinion, I invited two learned Judges of different High Courts in India, one of them an Englishman and one of them an Indian—Mr. Justice Beechcroft and Mr. Justice Ohandravarka—to examine the dossiers of all those persons against whom we had proceeded and to give them an opportunity of defending themselves. They did so, and the conclusion to which they came was that out of 806 cases—the number of men against whom we had to proceed—in six only was there any doubt at all in their minds as to the guilt of the persons proceeded against. If I may say so that seemed to me to be a very remarkable result. In six cases only out of 806 was there any doubt in the minds of those two learned Judges as to the justification which the Government had had in proceeding against them. That is by the way.

I now come to the case of Mr. Subhas Bose himself, and Mr. Subhas Bose's career has not been quite accurately given by the noble Lord who asked this Question. Unhappily, Mr. Bose, a man of great ability, a man possibly of genius, is a man who, whether by his own fault or by misfortune, has directed almost all his ability to destructive rather than constructive purposes. As a young man he became a member of the Indian Civil service, but while a probationer in that service he came to the conclusion that he could not serve what he described as two masters—namely, the Government of the country and the public of the country, and he therefore resigned. He came out to Bengal, and in the year 1921–22, when His Majesty, then His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, was visiting India, Mr. Bose took a very prominent part in organising, what were illegal volunteer corps which were intended to deprive the police of their proper functions and take over their functions from them on behalf of the Indian National Congress. As your Lordships are aware, even in this country where we are not troubled to any great extent at any rate with subversive movements, it has quite recently been considered desirable to introduce legislation to deal with the wearing of unlicensed uniforms, the organisation of processions and so on. In India we had those powers, and it became 513 necessary for me to proceed against Mr. Bose under the Act which conferred those powers upon the Executive.

Mr. Bose was convicted in the Courts. It was not a case of interning him without trial; he was convicted and served his sentence. At this late hour I will not venture to trouble your Lordships with a full history of Mr. Bose's subsequent activities. They have, unhappily, been of a subversive nature, and on various occasions he has been restrained either as a result of sentences in the Courts or, on occasions, as the noble Lord pointed out, under the special powers conferred upon the Executive for dealing with persons engaged in activities of that sort. Let me come down to the present year. It is quite true, as the noble Lord said, that Mr. Subhas Bose was permitted to come to Europe for treatment, and he spent a considerable time, I think, in Vienna. Unhappily, it came to the notice of the Government that while he was in Vienna he was still carrying on his subversive activities. He was warned, therefore, that if he returned to India he could riot be permitted to retain his liberty. He ignored that warning and returned to India this spring and was arrested on his arrival. After a short period of arrest he was permitted to take up his abode with his brother in his brother's house at Kurseong, not far from Darjeeling. There he is living with certain restraints imposed upon his liberty. One of those restraints is that he shall not take part so long as he is under restraint in any form of political activity.

The noble Lord asked me two Questions. He asked, first: How long do the Government propose to keep Mr. Bose under this modified form of restraint? And, secondly: Will he be allowed to take part in the forthcoming Elections? In view of what I have said with regard to Mr. Bose, I think your Lordships will hardly be surprised if I say that it is not at this moment possible to say precisely how long it will be considered necessary to impose these restaints upon Mr. Rose's liberty, and in view of the conditions under which he is at present living in his brother's house it will not be possible for him to take an active part in the forthcoming Elections. I presume that what would be possible for him would be to do, as indeed his brother did at the 514 time of the last Elections to the Legislative Assembly in India. At that time Mr. Bose's brother, named Mr. Sarat Bose, was, unhappily, also under restraint if not actually in prison—I do not remember now which—but he did stand for election as an absentee candidate and he was elected. He was not, of course, permitted to take his seat while the orders of restraint were in operation against him, but those orders have recently been cancelled, and it would, therefore, be possible I presume for Mr. Subhas Bose to follow his brother's example. I am afraid this reply will not be wholly satisfactory to the noble Earl who asked these Questions, but if time had permitted, which really at this late hour it does not, I should have been prepared from my own personal knowledge to have given the noble Lord very good reason why Mr. Subhas Bose should not at the present time be allowed his complete liberty.