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Subhas Chandra Bose (January 23, 1897 - August 18, 1945) also known as Netaji, was a Orissa born and Bengal based Indian leader of the movement to win independence from British rule. Bose helped organize and later lead the Indian National Army put together with Indian prisoners-of-war and plantation workers from Singapore and Southeast Asia.
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He was educated at the Protestant European School and the Ravenshaw Collegiate School in Cuttack, now in Orissa, the Scottish Church College, Calcutta and the University of Cambridge . He resigned from the prestigious Indian Civil Service, despite placing fourth on the merit list, to join the freedom movement. Bose was once president of the Indian National Congress. He was elected for a second term against the wishes of Mahatma Gandhi, who supported Pattabhi Sitaramayya. Although Bose won the election, Gandhi's continued opposition led to the resignation of the Working Committee which further put pressure on Bose to finally resign. After having left the Congress Bose formed a separate party, the All India Forward Bloc.
At the start of World War II, Bose traveled to Germany where he joined the Special Bureau for India under Adam von Trott zu Solz, broadcasting on the German-sponsored Azad Hind Radio. He founded the Free India Centre in Berlin and established the Indian Legion, (consisting of some 3500 soldiers) from Indian prisoners of war who had previously fought for the British in North Africa. The Azad Hind legion was attached to the Waffen SS, and they swore their allegiance to Hitler. At a time when none in Germany dared to criticise Hitler, Bose had openly criticised Hitler's treatment of Jews, annulment of democratic institutions in Germany and Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union.
Disappointed with the support for Indian independence from Hitler, he travelled by submarine around the Cape of Good Hope to Imperial Japan, which helped him to raise his army. This was the only civilian-transfer across two different submarines of two different navies in World War II.
A testament to Bose's organizational acumen, the Indian National Army consisted of some 45000 regular troops, a separate women's army unit named after Rani Laxmibai (in a regular army, the women's army unit was the first of its kind in Asia), who gave her life in the First War of Independence in 1857. These were under the aegis of a regular government, with its own currency, court and civil code, named the "Provisional Government of Free India" (or the Arzi Hukumate Azad Hind) and recognised by nine states: Germany, Japan, Italy, Croatia, Nationalist China, Siam, Burma, Manchukuo and the Philippines. On the declaration of its formation in Singapore, President Eamon de Valera of the neutral Irish Free State sent a note of congratulations to Bose. This government had participated as a delegate or observer in the Japanese-controlled so-called Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
En route to India, some of Bose's troops assisted in the Japanese victory over the British in the battles of Arakan and Meiktila, along with the Burmese National Army led by Ba Maw and Aung San. In the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal and India's northeastern towns of Kohima and Imphal, where the Provisional Government was established, the I.N.A. was forced to pull back due to sudden withdrawal of Japanese air cover with Japan's retreat following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Though his role in collaborating with the Axis has been criticised by many commentators, he is still considered by many, especially in Bengal, as having taken a heroic stance against oppressive British imperialism.
At the time of the start of the Second World War, great divisions existed in the Indian independence movement about whether to exploit the weakness of the British to achieve independence. Many felt that any distinctions between the political allegiances and ideologies of the warring factions of Europe were inconsequential in the face of the possibility of Indian independence, and that it was immensely hypocritical of the British to condemn pro-democracy Indians for allying themselves with anti-democratic Axis forces when the British themselves showed so little respect for democracy or democratic reforms in India.
Though Bose did ally himself with the Axis powers, there is little to suggest he shared anything approaching their doctrines of racial superiority; instead it appears he was motivated to join them largely out of political pragmatism.
Bose and the unit's heroism is still remembered among many nationalist Indians. It is also fondly remembered by some Japanese and Indian historians who see Japanese efforts to support Bose as supporting the view that it was fighting a war on behalf of the oppressed peoples of Asia.
Bose at the time claimed to see little difference between the fundamentally oppressive nature of either British imperialism or the Axis' fascism. His own politics, as far as he had any besides anti-imperialism and a personality cult, were probably radical socialist.
Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport, located in Dum Dum, West Bengal, near Kolkata (Calcutta) is named after him. Bose was posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award in 1992, but it was later withdrawn in
response to a Supreme Court of India directive
following a Public Interest Litigation filed in the Court against the "posthumous" nature of the award. The Award Committee could
not give conclusive evidence of Bose's death and thus it invalidated the "posthumous" award.
Bose is supposed to have died in a plane crash over Taiwan while flying to Tokyo. However, his body was never recovered, and conspiracy theories concerning his possible survival abound. One such claims that Bose actually died in Siberia, while in Soviet captivity.
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