Subhas Chandra Bose ; 23 January 1897 – 18 August 1945^[1]), widely known throughout India as Netaji (Hindustani: "Respected Leader"), was an Indian nationalist and prominent figure of the Indian independence movement. Bose was the twice-elected President of the Indian National Congress, founder and President of the All India Forward Bloc, and founder and Head of State of the Provisional Government of Free India, which he led alongside the Indian National Army from 1943 until his death in 1945. Bose is perhaps best known for his advocacy and leadership of an armed struggle for Indian independence against the British Empire, as well as his early calls for Purna Swaraj, or complete self-rule, for the people of India.
Bose's attempt during World War II to rid India of British rule with the help of Nazi Germany and Japan left a troubled legacy.^[4][5][6] The honorific Netaji, first applied to Bose in Germany, by the Indian soldiers of the Indische Legion and by the German and Indian officials in the Special Bureau for India in Berlin, in early 1942, was by 1990 used widely throughout India.^[7]
Earlier, Bose had been a leader of the younger, radical, wing of the Indian National Congress in the late 1920s and 1930s, rising to become Congress President in 1938 and 1939.^[8] However, he was ousted from Congress leadership positions in 1939 following differences with Mohandas K. Gandhi and the Congress high command.^[9] He was subsequently placed under house arrest by the British before escaping from India in 1940.^[10]
Bose arrived in Germany in April 1941, where the leadership offered unexpected, if sometimes ambivalent, sympathy for the cause of India's independence, contrasting starkly with its attitudes towards other colonised peoples and ethnic communities.^[11][12] In November 1941, with German funds, a Free India Centre was set up in Berlin, and soon a Free India Radio, on which Bose broadcast nightly. A 3,000-strong Free India Legion, comprising Indians captured by Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps, was also formed to aid in a possible future German land invasion of India.^[13] During this time Bose also became a father; his wife, ^[3] or companion,^[2] Emilie Schenkl, whom he had met in 1934, gave birth to a baby girl.^[3][11] By spring 1942, in light of Japanese victories in southeast Asia and changing German priorities, a German invasion of India became untenable, and Bose became keen to move to southeast Asia.^[14] Adolf Hitler, during his only meeting with Bose in late May 1942, suggested the same, and offered to arrange for a submarine.^[15] Identifying strongly with the Axis powers, and no longer apologetically, Bose boarded a German submarine in February 1943.^[16][17] In Madagascar, he was transferred to a Japanese submarine from which he disembarked in Japanese-held Sumatra in May 1943.^[16]
With Japanese support, Bose revamped the Indian National Army (INA), then composed of Indian soldiers of the British Indian army who had been captured in the Battle of Singapore.^[18] To these, after Bose's arrival, were added enlisting Indian civilians in Malaya and Singapore. The Japanese had come to support a number of puppet and provisional governments in the captured regions, such as those in Burma, the Philippines and Manchukuo. Before long the Provisional Government of Free India, presided by Bose, was formed in the Japanese-occupied Andaman and Nicobar Islands.^[18][19] Bose had great drive and charisma—creating popular Indian slogans, such as "Jai Hind,"—and the INA under Bose was a model of diversity by region, ethnicity, religion, and even gender. However, Bose was regarded by the Japanese as being militarily unskilled,^[20] and his military effort was short lived. In late 1944 and early 1945 the British Indian Army first halted and then devastatingly reversed the Japanese attack on India. Almost half the Japanese forces and fully half the participating INA contingent were killed.^[21] The INA was driven down the Malay Peninsula, and surrendered with the recapture of Singapore. Bose had earlier chosen not to surrender with his forces or with the Japanese, but rather to escape to Manchuria with a view to seeking a future in the Soviet Union which he believed to be turning anti-British. He died from third degree burns received when his plane crashed in Taiwan.^[22] Some Indians, however, did not believe that the crash had occurred,^[23] with many among them, especially in Bengal, believing that Bose would return to gain India's independence.^[24][25]
The Indian National Congress, the main instrument of Indian nationalism, praised Bose's patriotism but distanced itself from his tactics and ideology, especially his collaboration with Fascism.^[26] The British Raj, though never seriously threatened by the INA,^{[27] [28]} charged 300 INA officers with treason in the INA trials, but eventually backtracked in the face both of popular sentiment and of its own end.^[29][26][6]

Contents

• 1 Early life: 1897–1921
• 2 With Indian National Congress: 1921–1932
• 3 Illness, Austria, Emilie Schenkl 1933–1937
• 4 With Indian National Congress 1937–194

Early life: 1897–1921

Subhas Bose, standing, extreme right, with his family of 14 siblings in Cuttack, ca. 1905.  Jankinath Bose, Subhas Bose's father, was a prominent and wealthy lawyer in Cuttack.  Subhas Bose (standing, right) with friends in England, 1920  Bose as a student in England preparing for his Indian Civil Service entrance examination, ca. 1920. Bose ranked fourth among the six successful entrants.

Subhas Chandra Bose was born on 23 January 1897 (at 12.10 pm) in Cuttack, Orissa Division, Bengal Province, to Prabhavati Devi and Janakinath Bose, an advocate.^[30] He was the ninth in a family of 14 children.
He was admitted to the Protestant European School, like his brothers and sisters, in January 1902. He continued his studies at this school which was run by the Baptist Mission up to 1909 and then shifted to the Ravenshaw Collegiate School. The day Subhas was admitted to this school, Beni Madhab Das, the headmaster, understood how brilliant and scintillating his genius was. After securing the second position in the matriculation examination in 1913, he got admitted to the Presidency College where he studied briefly.^[31]
His nationalistic temperament came to light when he was expelled for assaulting Professor Oaten for the latter's anti-India comments. He later joined the Scottish Church College at the University of Calcutta and passed his B.A. in 1918 in philosophy.^[32] Bose left India in 1919 for England with a promise to his father that he would appear in the Indian Civil Services (ICS) examination. He went to study in Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge and matriculated on 19 November 1919. He came fourth in the ICS examination and was selected, but he did not want to work under an alien government which would mean serving the British. As he stood on the verge of taking the plunge by resigning from the Indian Civil Service in 1921, he wrote to his elder brother Sarat Chandra Bose: "Only on the soil of sacrifice and suffering can we raise our national edifice."^[33]
He resigned from his civil service job on 23 April 1921 and returned to India.^[34]

With Indian National Congress: 1921–1932

Bose at the inauguration of the India Society in Prague in 1926.  Bose at his residence in Calcutta in the late 1920s.  Subhas Bose, GOC (General Officer Commanding) of the Congress Volunteer Corps (in military uniform) with Congress president, Motilal Nehru, who is taking the salute. Annual meeting, Indian National Congress, December 29, 1928.  Subhas Chandra Bose with Congress Volunteers, 1929

He started the newspaper Swaraj and took charge of publicity for the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee.^[35] His mentor was Chittaranjan Das who was a spokesman for aggressive nationalism in Bengal. In the year 1923, Bose was elected the President of All India Youth Congress and also the Secretary of Bengal State Congress. He was also editor of the newspaper "Forward", founded by Chittaranjan Das.^[36] Bose worked as the CEO of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation for Das when the latter was elected mayor of Calcutta in 1924.^[37] In a roundup of nationalists in 1925, Bose was arrested and sent to prison in Mandalay, where he contracted tuberculosis.^[38]
In 1927, after being released from prison, Bose became general secretary of the Congress party and worked with Jawaharlal Nehru for independence. In late December 1928, Bose organized the Annual Meeting of the Indian National Congress in Calcutta.^[39] His most memorable role was as General Officer Commanding (GOC) Congress Volunteer Corps.^[39] Author Nirad Chaudhuri wrote about the meeting:

Bose organized a volunteer corps in uniform, its officers being even provided with steel-cut epaulettes ... his uniform was made by a firm of British tailors in Calcutta, Harman's. A telegram addressed to him as GOC was delivered to the British General in Fort William and was the subject of a good deal of malicious gossip in the (British Indian) press. Mahatma Gandhi being a sincere pacifist vowed to non-violence, did not like the strutting, clicking of boots, and saluting, and he afterwards described the Calcutta session of the Congress as a Bertram Mills circus, which caused a great deal of indignation among the Bengalis.^[39]

A little later, Bose was again arrested and jailed for civil disobedience; this time he emerged to become Mayor of Calcutta in 1930.^[40] During the mid-1930s Bose travelled in Europe, visiting Indian students and European politicians, including Benito Mussolini. He observed party organisation and saw communism and fascism in action.^{[citation needed]} In this period, he also researched and wrote the first part of his book The Indian Struggle, which covered the country's independence movement in the years 1920–1934. Although it was published in London in 1935, the British government banned the book in the colony out of fears that it would encourage unrest.^[41] By 1938 Bose had become a leader of national stature and agreed to accept nomination as Congress President. Pasumpon Muthuramalinga Thevar known for his close friendship with Nethaji Subash Chandra Bose.

Illness, Austria, Emilie Schenkl 1933–1937

This section requires expansion. (April 2015)

Bose convalescing in Bad Gastein, Austria, after surgery in early 1933.  Bose with Emilie Schenkl, in Bad Gastein, Austria, 1936.  Bose in the Himalayan resort town of Dalhousie, India (June 1937), where he was convalescing, receiving Mirabehn, a disciple and emissary of Mahatma Gandhi, who had been sent by Gandhi to enquire about his health. From left to right are shown: Bose, Dr. N. R. Dharamvir (Bose's friend and physician), Mirabehn, and Mrs. Dharamvir.  Bose, Indian National Congress president-elect, center, in Bad Gastein, Austria, December 1937, with (left to right) A. C. N. Nambiar (who was later to be Bose's second-in-command in Berlin, 1941–1945), Heidi Fulop-Miller, Emilie Schenkl, and Amiya Bose.

With Indian National Congress 1937–1940

Bose, the president-elect of the Indian National Congress, arrives in Calcutta on 24 January 1938 after a two-month vacation in Europe where he had spent one and a half months with Emilie Schenkl at the spa resort of Bad Gastein,[42] and had secretly married her on 26 December 1937.[43]  Congress president Bose with Mohandas K. Gandhi at the Congress annual general meeting 1938.  Bose at the Lahore City Railway Station on 24 November 1938.  Bose arriving at the 1939 annual session of the Congress, where he was re-elected, but later had to resign after disagreements with Gandhi and the Congress High Command.

He stood for unqualified Swaraj (self-governance), including the use of force against the British. This meant a confrontation with Mohandas Gandhi, who in fact opposed Bose's presidency,^[44] 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. He was elected president again over Gandhi's preferred candidate Pattabhi Sitaramayya.^[45] U. Muthuramalingam Thevar strongly supported Bose in the intra-Congress dispute. Thevar mobilised all south India votes for Bose.^[46] 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.^[47] On 22 June 1939 Bose organised the All India Forward Bloc a faction within the Indian National Congress,^[48] aimed at consolidating the political left, but its main strength was in his home state, Bengal. U Muthuramalingam Thevar, who was a staunch supporter of Bose from the beginning, joined the Forward Bloc. When Bose visited Madurai on 6 September, Thevar organised a massive rally as his reception When Subash Chandra Bose was heading to Madurai, on an invitation of Muthuramalinga Thevar to amass support for the Forward Bloc, he passed through Madras and spent three days at Gandhi Peak. 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 an independent 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 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 organised 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.^[49] 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 CID.^[50]