Subhas Chandra Bose (Bengali: সুভাষ চন্দ্র বসু, pronounced

Shubhash-Chondro-Boshū) was born in 23 January 1897 in

Cuttack,Orissa. His father was Janakinath Bose and mother

Prabhabati Debi, and is presumed to have died 18 August 1945

(although this is disputed). He was an Indian revolutionary who led

an Indian national political and military force against Britain and

the Western powers during World War II. Popularly known as

Netaji (literally "Respected Leader"), Bose was one of the most

prominent leaders in the Indian independence movement and is a legendary figure in India today.

Bose advocated complete independence for India at the earliest, whereas the All-India Congress

Committee wanted it in phases, through Dominion status. Finally at the historic Lahore Congress

convention, the Congress adopted Purna Swaraj (complete independence) as its motto. Bhagat

Singh's martyrdom and the inability of the Congress leaders to save his life infuriated Bose and

he started a movement opposing the Gandhi-Irwin Pact. He was imprisoned and expelled from

India. Defying the ban, he came back to India and was imprisoned again.

Bose was elected president of the Indian National Congress for two consecutive terms, but had to

resign from the post following ideological conflicts with Mohandas K. Gandhi and after openly

attacking the Congress' foreign and internal policies. Bose believed that Gandhi's tactics of non-

violence would never be sufficient to secure India's independence, and advocated violent

resistance. He established a separate political party, the All India Forward Bloc and continued to

call for the full and immediate independence of India from British rule. He was imprisoned by
the British authorities eleven times. His famous motto was "Give me blood and I will give you

freedom".

His stance did not change with the outbreak of the Second World War, which he saw as an

opportunity to take advantage of British weakness. At the outset of the war, he left India,

travelling to the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, seeking an alliance with each

of them to attack the British government in India. With Imperial Japanese assistance, he re-

organised and later led the Azad Hind Fauj or Indian National Army (INA), formed with Indian

prisoners-of-war and plantation workers from British Malaya, Singapore, and other parts of

Southeast Asia, against British forces. With Japanese monetary, political, diplomatic and military

assistance, he formed the Azad Hind Government in exile, and regrouped and led the Indian

National Army in failed military campaigns against the allies at Imphal and in Burma.

His political views and the alliances he made with Nazi and other militarist regimes at war with

Britain have been the cause of arguments among historians and politicians, with some accusing

him of fascist sympathies, while others in India have been more sympathetic towards the

realpolitik that guided his social and political choices.

He is presumed to have died on 18 August 1945 in a plane crash in Taiwan, though the evidence

for his death in such an accident has not been universally accepted (see below).

Early life

Subhas Chandra Bose was born in a Bengali Kayasth family on January 23, 1897 in Cuttack

(Odiya Baazar), Orissa, to Janakinath Bose, (ADVOCATE), and Prabhavati Devi. He was the
ninth child of 14. He studied in an Anglo school at Cuttack (now known as Stewart School) until

standard 6. He then shifted to Ravenshaw Collegiate School of Cuttack. From there he went to

the prestigious Presidency College where he studied briefly. His nationalistic temperament came

to light when he was expelled for assaulting Professor Oaten for his anti-India comments .

Subhas Chandra Bose assaults Oaten, 1916]</ref> . A brilliant student, Bose later topped the

matriculation examination of Calcutta province in 1911 and passed his B.A. in 1918 in

philosophy from the renowned Scottish Church College of the University of Calcutta (after

being expelled from the Presidency College, Calcutta for his assault on Prof Oaten for the

latter's anti-India statements.)

Bose went to study in Fitzwilliam Hall of the University of Cambridge, and matriculated, that is

formally enrolled in the Cambridge University, on 19 November 1919. He was a non-collegiate

student. He studied Philosophy for Moral Sciences Tripos, as the honours BA is known. He was

awarded a third class pass in the examinations for Part I of this tripos in 1921. He graduated BA

by proxy on 4 November 1922 (source: UA Graduati 12/26).

His high score in the Civil Service examinations meant an almost automatic appointment. He

then took his first conscious step as a revolutionary and resigned the appointment on the premise

that the "best way to end a government is to withdraw from it. At the time, Indian nationalists

were shocked and outraged because of the Amritsar massacre and the repressive Rowlatt

legislation of 1919. Returning to India, Bose wrote for the newspaper Swaraj and took charge of

publicity for the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee. His mentor was Chittaranjan Das,

spokesman for aggressive nationalism in Bengal. Bose worked for Das when the latter was
elected mayor of Calcutta in 1924. In a roundup of nationalists in 1925, Bose was arrested and

sent to prison in Mandalay, where he contracted tuberculosis.

National politics

Mohandas K. Gandhi at the Indian National Congress annual meeting in 1938 when Subhas

Chandra Bose was President of Congress party.

Released from prison two years later, Bose became general secretary of the Congress party and

worked with Jawaharlal Nehru for independence. Again Bose was arrested and jailed for civil

disobedience; this time he emerged to become Mayor of Calcutta in 1930. During the mid-1930s

Bose travelled in Europe, visiting Indian students and European politicians, including Mussolini.

He observed party organization and saw communism and fascism in action. [1].By 1938 Bose had

become as leader of national stature and agreed to accept nomination as Congress president. He

stood for unqualified Swaraj (self-dependence), including the use of force against the British.

This meant a confrontation with Mohandas Gandhi, who in fact opposed Bose's presidency,

splitting the Indian National Congress party. Bose attempted to maintain unity, but Gandhi

advised Bose to form his own cabinet. The rift also divided Bose and Nehru. Bose appeared at

the 1939 Congress meeting on a stretcher. Though he was elected president again, over Gandhi's

preferred candidate Pattabhi Sitaramayya, U. Muthuramalingam Thevar strongly supported Bose

in the intra-Congress dispute. Thevar mobilised all south India votes for Bose. However, due to

the manoeuvrings of the Gandhi-led clique in the Congress Working Committee, Bose found

himself forced to resign from the Congress presidency. His uncompromising stand finally cut
him off from the mainstream of Indian nationalism Bose then organized the Forward Bloc on

June 22, aimed at consolidating the political left, but its main strength was in his home state,

Bengal. U Muthuramalingam Thevar, who was disillusioned by the official Congress leadership

which had not revoked the Criminal Tribes Act (CTA), joined the Forward Bloc. When Bose

visited Madurai on September 6, Thevar organised a massive rally as his reception.

Bose advocated the approach that the political instability of war-time Britain should be taken

advantage of—rather than simply wait for the British to grant independence after the end of the

war (which was the view of Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and a section of the Congress leadership

at the time). In this, he was influenced by the examples of Italian statesmen Giuseppe Garibaldi

and Giuseppe Mazzini.

His correspondence reveals that despite his clear dislike for British subjugation, he was deeply

impressed by their methodical and systematic approach and their steadfastly disciplinarian

outlook towards life. In England, he exchanged ideas on the future of India with British Labour

Party leaders and political thinkers like Lord Halifax, George Lansbury, Clement Attlee, Arthur

Greenwood, Harold Laski, J.B.S. Haldane, Ivor Jennings, G.D.H. Cole, Gilbert Murray and Sir

Stafford Cripps . He came to believe that a free India needed socialist authoritarianism, on the

lines of Turkey's Kemal Atatürk, for at least two decades. Bose was refused permission by the

British authorities to meet Mr. Atatürk at Ankara for political reasons. During his sojourn in

England, only the Labour Party and Liberal politicians agreed to meet with Bose when he tried to

schedule appointments. Conservative Party officials refused to meet Bose or show him courtesy

because he was a politician coming from a colony. In the 1930s leading figures in the
Conservative Party had opposed even Dominion status for India. It was during the Labour Party

government of 1945–1951, with Attlee as the Prime Minister, that India gained independence.

On the outbreak of war, Bose advocated a campaign of mass civil disobedience to protest against

Viceroy Lord Linlithgow's decision to declare war on India's behalf without consulting the

Congress leadership. Having failed to persuade Gandhi of the necessity of this, Bose organized

mass protests in Calcutta calling for the 'Holwell Monument' commemorating the Black Hole of

Calcutta, which then stood at the corner of Dalhousie Square, to be removed [citation needed]
. A

reasonable measure of the contrast between Gandhi and Bose is captured in a saying attributable

to him: "If people slap you once, slap them twice". He was thrown in jail by the British, but was

released following a seven-day hunger strike. Bose's house in Calcutta was kept under

surveillance by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)[citation needed], but their vigilance left a

good deal to be desired. With two court cases pending, he felt the British would not let him leave

the country before the end of the war. This set the scene for Bose's escape to Germany, via

Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. On the night of his escape he dressed as a Pathan and left his

house under strict observation. Bose had never been to Afghanistan, and could not speak the

local Pashto language.

Bose escaped from under British surveillance at his house in Calcutta. On January 19, 1941,

accompanied by his nephew Sisir K. Bose, Bose gave his watchers the slip and journeyed to

Peshawar. With the assistance of the Abwehr, he made his way to Peshawar where he was met at

Peshawar Cantonment station by Akbar Shah, Mohammed Shah and Bhagat Ram Talwar. Bose

was taken to the home of Abad Khan, a trusted friend of Akbar Shah's. On 26 January 1941,

Bose began his journey to reach Russia through India's North West frontier with Afghanistan.
For this reason, he enlisted the help of Mian Akbar Shah, then a Forward Bloc leader in the

North-West Frontier Province. Shah had been out of India en route to the Soviet Union, and

suggested a novel disguise for Bose to assume. Since Bose could not speak one word of Pashto,

it would make him an easy target of Pashto speakers working for the British. For this reason,

Shah suggested that Bose act deaf and dumb, and let his beard grow to mimic those of the

tribesmen. Bose's guide Bhagat Ram Talwar, unknown to him, was a Soviet agent[2].

Supporters of the Aga Khan III helped him across the border into Afghanistan where he was met

by an Abwehr unit posing as a party of road construction engineers from the Organization Todt

who then aided his passage across Afghanistan via Kabul to the border with Soviet Russia. Once

in Russia the NKVD transported Bose to Moscow where he hoped that Russia's traditional

enmity to British rule in India would result in support for his plans for a popular rising in India.

However, Bose found the Soviets' response disappointing and was rapidly passed over to the

German Ambassador in Moscow, Count von der Schulenburg. He had Bose flown on to Berlin in

a special courier aircraft at the beginning of April where he was to receive a more favourable

hearing from Joachim von Ribbentrop and the Foreign Ministry officials at the Wilhelmstrasse.

[1]

In 1941, when the British learned that Bose had sought the support of the Axis Powers, they

ordered their agents to intercept and assassinate Bose before he reached Germany. A recently

declassified intelligence document refers to a top-secret instruction to the Special Operations

Executive (SOE) of British intelligence department to murder Bose. In fact, the plan to liquidate

Bose has few known parallels, and appears to be a last desperate measure against a man who had

thrown the British Empire into a panic.[2]

Pashtun insurance agent ("Ziaudddin") to reach Afghanistan, Bose travelled to Moscow on the

Italian passport of an Italian nobleman "Count Orlando Mazzotta". From Moscow, he reached

Rome, and from there he traveled to Germany, where he instituted 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 created the Indian Legion (consisting of some 4500

soldiers) out of Indian prisoners of war who had previously fought for the British in North Africa

prior to their capture by Axis forces. The Indian Legion was attached to the Wehrmacht, and

later transferred to the Waffen SS[3]. Its members swore the following allegiance to Hitler and

Bose: "I swear by God this holy oath that I will obey the leader of the German race and state,

Adolf Hitler, as the commander of the German armed forces in the fight for India, whose leader

is Subhash Chandra Bose". [4] This oath clearly abrogates control of the Indian legion to the

German armed forces whilst stating Bose's overall leadership of India. He was also, however,

prepared to envisage an invasion of India via the USSR by Nazi troops, spearheaded by the Azad

Hind Legion; many have questioned his judgment here, as it seems unlikely that the Germans.