January 23 comes around each year and India remembers Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. We call it Parakram Diwas now. Most people understand parakram simply as courage, the kind you find on battlefields. But Netaji’s idea of courage went beyond that. It was about the hard choices a leader makes when a nation’s freedom is on the line. When you look at how India has moved in the last ten years – especially on defence and how it handles itself on the world stage – something becomes clear. There is a philosophy running through these decisions. Netaji would have seen it, and he would have liked what he saw.

The comparison feels strange at first glance. Netaji lived through India’s struggle against the British. Modi leads India now, in a democracy, in the twenty-first century. The world they inhabited could not be more different. Yet, if you dig deeper into how they think about power and the state, the similarities are striking. Both believed that a nation’s moral standing comes from being strong. Both saw government as a tool for the people’s will, not for crushing it. Both rejected the idea that India should sit back and let others decide its future.

Who was Netaji really? Not the revolutionary icon from textbook illustrations. Historians call him a realist who thought like an idealist. He looked at the world without rose-tinted glasses. In his view, might mattered. Weak nations get pushed around. A country that cannot fight will not stay free. This put him directly against Gandhi. Gandhi was content to wait, to appeal to the conscience of the British, to believe non-violence would win the day. Netaji thought that was naive. He wanted action – immediately. He was convinced that modern technology and industrial strength were what gave a nation respect. He pushed for a government strong enough to make decisions fast and mobilise the country behind them.

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