George Orwell vs Subhash Chandra Bose: A War of Propaganda

Delhi, 1942. As the hour hand of the clock inched closer to six every evening, the policemen would begin to patrol the bazaars confiscating every radio set that played Azad Hind Radio. Although the British banned its broadcasts, rumour has it that even policemen hid transistors inside their uniforms to listen to the electrifying voice of Subhas Chandra Bose broadcasting straight from Berlin.Meanwhile, in room number 314 of the BBC office, London, a tall man named Eric Arthur Blair took notes on Bose’s broadcast. Later in the week, he will have to come to the mic and broadcast under his pen name George Orwell to refute Bose’s claims of Axis victory.This story is about much more than propaganda wars. It has a frustrated patriot compelled to write propaganda, and a rebel broadcaster who weaponises Hitler’s airwaves.And what followed was to shape the course of World War 2 and India’s freedom struggle.Long before Bose formed the Azad Hind Radio, broadcasts from Radio Zeesen were already popular in India as early as 1939. It had all the elements that a colonised country wanted to hear—fabricated war reports, praises of Indian freedom fighters, condemnation of the British colonial crimes, mix of Indian and western classical music, and anti-British commentary.Author Chandrika Kaul in Communications, Media, and the Imperial Experience quotes the German broadcasts encouraging Indians to revolt. They put forward one question: Why should Indians die for an empire that enslaves them?Little did the listeners know they were consuming heavy Nazi propaganda in the name of radio programs. Abha Sharma Rodrigues in her thesis George Orwell, The BBC And India: A Critical Study explains the power of German broadcasts with a letter by Lionel Fielden, the Controller of Broadcasting in India in 1939.In his letter to the director general of BBC, Fielden wrote, “For the past fortnight, the Germans have continually harped upon the number of ships which they have sunk, and I, most quite candidly, confess that by the sheer fact of listening in to a lot of these broadcasts, have almost been convinced myself that we have lost six hundred thousand tons. What then of the average Indian?”Fielden’s continuous warnings at last convinced the British government to take countermeasures, as the radio propaganda by Germany had become too aggressive to be ignored.In 1940, the BBC was finally chosen to help the British government fight the Nazi propaganda. Subsequently, a dedicated Indian section was formed in London. Abha further explains that despite Fielden’s offer to head the Eastern Service, ZA Bokhari, director of the Delhi Broadcasting Station of All India Radio, was chosen at last.This is where George Orwell comes into the picture. Neither did he ever dream of working in a radio station, nor was he the BBC’s first choice for the position of Talks Assistant. With a desire to fight Germans, he wanted to join the British army but was deemed unfit on medical grounds.Discouraged at his failure to serve Britain in the war, financially struggling Orwell was unaware of the opportunity that awaited him.He was approached after author Mulk Raj Anand had passed on the job offer, citing national interests. Although his anti-imperialist stance, left-wing ideology, and sympathy for the Indian freedom struggle posed him as a threat, Orwell was finally selected and joined the BBC in August 1941.After his dramatic escape from India under house arrest, Bose took refuge in Germany with high hopes of establishing a recognised Indian government in exile. Of the many demands Bose had proposed to the Führer, only a few saw light of the day. A dedicated propaganda campaign for India was one of them.In The Lost Hero, Mihir Bose mentions how Bose, much like Orwell, despite wanting to fight for his country with arms, resorted to fighting with words for the time being. Although the propaganda programs on Radio Zeesen had laid the groundwork, Bose ensured Azad Hind Radio would not follow its footsteps.Programs in Radio Zeesen were mainly produced by propagandists suited to Nazi interests and limiting Indians’ role to translating. Azad Hind Radio gave them a free hand and ensured to prioritize Indian interests. Finally, on 19 February 1942, four days after the fall of Singapore, Bose took everyone by surprise with his first broadcast on radio.Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: How Urdu Poets Celebrated His Courage & StrengthThe Indian section of the BBC’s Eastern Service started off on 10 May 1940 with a daily broadcast of ten minutes. It expanded to a wide range of programs in a short time. Known personalities that worked at BBC include Balraj Sahni, Damyanti Sahni, Indira Devi of Kapurthala, and Mulk Raj Anand, who later joined as a freelancer at Orwell’s request.One of its most featured programs include ‘Through Eastern Eyes,’ where Indians were invited to talk about their life in Britain. Talks like ‘Story of Fascism,’ ‘Rise of the Nazi Party,’ and ‘The Leaders’ were aimed at demonising axis powers. It also included programs featuring music, discussions on books, ideologies, and more.These programs not only focused on countering Nazi propaganda but also on presenting a cultural and democratic image of Britain, while downplaying its imperialist image. On the other hand, Azad Hind Radio kept a different attitude. Its programs were radically different compared to the BBC propaganda in terms of content, tone, and the objective.Unlike the BBC’s civilised tone, Azad Hind Radio broadcasts openly called for revolt against the British. Their programs featured impassioned speeches by Bose himself, news bulletins glorifying Axis victories, letters from Indian prisoners of war, and rousing patriotic music with explicit nationalist messaging.Orwell and Bose, both former colonial officers, chose a similar yet ironic path to serve their nations.Orwell, despite calling out colonial crimes by the British government in India, downplayed them to counter Axis propaganda. And Bose, despite strongly opposing imperialism, joined hands with Hitler to pave the way for India’s freedom.With the rising popularity of Bose, the British government had put a nationwide ban in both Britain and India, forbidding editors and broadcasters from using his name. It resulted in British media referring to Bose with names like ‘Indian Lord Haw-Haw’ and ‘India’s Quisling No 1.’On the other hand, Bose kept his focus on urging his countrymen to revolt against the British rather than answering allied propagandists. At times, he too targeted the whole British propaganda machinery with names like ‘Bluff and Bluster Corporation’ and ‘the mouth-piece of a dying empire.’Why George Orwell’s 1984 Is Hauntingly Reminiscent of Contemporary IndiaAfter broadcasting for some time, the officials at the BBC decided to check its impact on the ground level. As a result, Lawrence Brander, head of BBC’s Eastern Service, was sent to India in the spring of 1942. The reports that Brander sent cast doubt upon the efforts of the Indian section, especially Orwell’s.In one report Brander wrote, “My servant this morning says that the bazaar is full of German and Japanese warnings to Indians to make peace before a very horrible war comes to them. Nothing comes from our side but the BBC Hindustani half hour.”In another report he mentioned, “There is great hatred of the British in this country,” which suggests that despite its heavy propaganda, BBC failed to win the loyalty of its listeners. By 1942, even the British intelligence, MI5, also admitted that Bose’s propaganda was winning the airwaves.On the other hand, the long-term impact of Bose’s efforts was seen during several instances:The mutiny of HMS Talwar where almost the whole of the Royal Indian Navy rebelled.The death sentence of 3 INA officers triggered nationwide protests and forced the British government to commute the sentence.Cripps Mission, where Stafford Cripps visited India to seek its full support in war and offer it dominion status in exchange.After successfully launching the radio propaganda, Bose’s frustration was growing again for failing to do more. In 1943 he left for Japan and later set-up the Azad Hind Radio in Singapore. On the other hand, Orwell too lost his enthusiasm and resigned from the BBC the same year amid rising internal conflicts and censorship.Although Orwell, during his time at the BBC, countered Bose’s speeches, an entry in his war-time diary shows a different side of the author. Orwell records an exchange between him and Stafford Cripps:I asked him what he thought of Bose, whom he used to know well, and he described him as “a thoroughly bad egg”. I said, there seemed little doubt that he is subjectively pro-Fascist. Cripps: “He’s pro-Subhas. That is all he really cares about. He will do anything that he thinks will help his career along.”I am not certain, on the evidence of Bose’s broadcasts, that this is so.This was not a propagandist talking, but a patriot acknowledging the determination of the other. In coming years, Orwell’s disillusionment of propaganda and censorship became the foundation of one of the greatest books on totalitarianism and the manipulation of information.At the end, the allied forces won the war, but Bose won the narrative despite the nationwide ban and the whole British press machinery after him. It was not just a battle of propaganda, but two men’s radical struggles to break the shackles of colonialism and censorship.(Padma Shri awardee Professor Pushpesh Pant is a noted Indian academic, food critic and historian. He tweets @PushpeshPant. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)Book Excerpt: How the INA Trials Hastened India's Independence from British Rule

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Topics: BBC Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose George Orwell