Subhas Chandra Bose (also called Netaji) (23 January 1897 – 18 August 1945) was an Indian freedom fighter who played an important role in India’s independence movement, and his defiant style of patriotism appealed to many in India. A participant of the noncooperation movement and a leader of the Indian National Congress, he was part of the more militant wing and known for his advocacy of socialist policies. He was a contemporary of Mohandas K. Gandhi, at times an ally and at other times an adversary. Bose tried to get rid of the British rule in India during World War II by taking the help of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose
Indian Freedom Fighter
Birth: January 23, 1897, Death: 1945
Early Days
Subhash Chandra Bose was born on 23 January, 1897 in Cuttack (Orissa) to Janakinath Bose and Prabhavati Devi, both successful advocates.
When he was young, Bose was strongly influenced by Swami Vivekananda’s teachings and was known for his patriotic zeal as a student; he also adored Vivekananda as his spiritual Guru.
Bose studied at Presidency College, Calcutta where he was later expelled for attacking a professor making racist remarks towards Indians. He later joined the Scottish Church College and earned his B.A in Philosophy.
After finishing his graduation in Calcutta, Netaji went to England to pursue his further education from the Cambridge University.
When in the UK, he also cleared the ICS (Indian Civil Services) examination and got selected, but he felt that India’s freedom cause could not be served if he continued to work for the British. So he resigned from his civil service job and returned to India in 1921.
Shortly after arriving in Indian in 1921, Bose met Gandhi in Mumbai and asked him several questions as to what the plan was for moving forward. It’s believed that Bose was disappointed after the meeting as he felt Gandhi did not have a clear roadmap as to how India was going to gain independence.
Gandhi had more of a passive approach whereas Bose was looking for action, for something revolutionary.
Bose returned to Calcutta and met Chittaranjan Das, with whom Bose had exhaustive conversations and was finally convinced of dedicating himself to the movement started by Gandhi.
Growth in Stature
Right from the beginning (after joining Indian National Congress – INC), Bose provided his leadership skills and within a short span of time went on to become an important leader not just in Bengal, but throughout India.
In 1923, Bose was elected the President of the All India Youth Congress and also the Secretary of Bengal State Congress. He also served as the Chief Executive Officer of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation, with Chittaranjan Das as mayor of Calcutta. He was regarded as a vigilant and charismatic youth icon in the Indian National Congress.
Bose was arrested countless times, and deported to Burma (Myanmar) in 1925 because he was suspected of connections with secret revolutionary movements.
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. In this period, he researched and wrote the first part of his book The Indian Struggle, which covered the country’s independence movement in the years 1920–1934.
Differences with Gandhi
Bose was a radical in the Indian National Congress (INC) and went on to become the party President in 1938 and 1939.
In 1938, after he was elected president of the Indian National Congress, he backed the policy of broad industrialization. However, it contrasted with Gandhi’s economic thought which was more about focusing on the cottage industries and benefiting from using India’s own resources.
In 1939, Bose became the Congress president by defeating Pattabhi Sitaramayya who had the support of Gandhi. This was the first time in the past two decades that a leader was able to challenge the authority of Gandhi.
However, Bose was later removed from the leadership position in 1939 following differences with Gandhi and the Congress high command over the method of acquiring independence.
The general perception in India and especially among the people of Bengal is that there were huge differences between Mahatma Gandhi and Subhas Chandra Bose.
However, Dr. Sugata Bose, noted historian and grandnephew of Subhas Chandra Bose, says that the differences are highly exaggerated. “The parting that took place in 1939 was a temporary one and if we study the relationship between Gandhi and Netaji, we will find that it was one the marked with deep mutual love, affection and respect,” says Sugata, who also happens to be a Harvard professor.
Bose believed that Mahatma 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.
Formation of Forward Bloc
After leaving the Presidency of Congress, Netaji formed the Forward Bloc in 1939. The All India Forward Bloc (AIFB) was a faction within the Indian National Congress, and Netaji’s aim was to consolidate the political left (he was hoping to rally the radical elements).
The following year, in 1940, the Forward Bloc held its first All India Conference in Nagpur where it passed a resolution titled ‘All Power to the Indian People’, and suggested the use militant action for the struggle against British colonial rule. Subhash Chandra Bose was elected the president of the party.
Sensing trouble, the British arrested Bose and put him under house arrest. However, Bose managed to escape in January 1941 and went into exile.
Indian National Army (I.N.A)
With the outbreak of the Second World War, he saw as an opportunity to take advantage of British weakness.
After escaping house arrest, Netaji went to the Soviet Union via Afghanistan and sought the support of the Soviets for the Indian independence struggle. However, Stalin declined Bose’s request.
Bose then went to Germany, where he set up the Free India Centre in Berlin, and created the Indian Legion (of about 4500 soldiers) which consisted of Indian prisoners of war who had previously fought for the British in North Africa before being captured by Axis forces (of Germany and Japan).
However, by 1943, Bose felt Germany may not help India gain independence, so he left for Japan. It was in Japan that “The Indian National Army (INA)” was reorganised by Bose.
“Give me blood and I will give you freedom”; these words were said by Subhash Chandra Bose during a rally of Indian in Burma to gather support for the Indian National Army.
The Indian National Army, alongside Japanese troops, advanced to Rangoon (Yangon) and then on Indian soil, moving into Kohima and the plains of Imphal in the East of India.
In a stubborn battle, the mixed Indian and Japanese forces, lacking Japanese air support, were defeated and forced to retreat; the Indian National Army nevertheless for some time succeeded in maintaining its identity as a liberation army, based in Burma. With the defeat of Japan, however, Bose’s fortunes ended.
Netaji’s Death
A few days after Japan announced surrender in August 1945, Bose, fleeing Southeast Asia, reportedly died in a Japanese hospital in Taiwan as a result of burn injuries from a plane crash.
Netaji is believed to have died in an air crash in 1945 (though many suspect the news).
However, because his body was never recovered, there was another theory that was quite popular back then, according to which some people believed that the plane crash never happened and that Bose would return to gain India’s independence.
Officially, Bose died in a plane crash over Taiwan , while flying to Tokyo on 18 August 1945 . It is believed that he was on route to the Soviet Union in a Japanese plane when it crashed in Taiwan , burning him fatally. However, his body was never recovered, and many theories have been put forward concerning his possible survival. One such claim is that Bose actually died in Siberia , while in Soviet captivity. Several committees have been set up by the Government of India to probe into this matter.
In May 1956, a four-man Indian team (known as the Shah Nawaz Committee) visited Japan to probe the circumstances of Bose’s alleged death. The Indian government did not then request assistance from the government of Taiwan in the matter, citing their lack of diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
However, the Inquiry Commission under Justice Mukherjee , which investigated the Bose disappearance mystery in the period 1999-2005, did approach the Taiwanese government, and obtained information from the Taiwan Government that no plane carrying Bose had ever crashed in Taipei. The Mukherjee Commission also received a report originating from the U.S. Department of State supporting the claim of the Taiwan Government that no such air crash took place during that time frame. The revelation makes it clear that disappearance of Bose is a mystery which cannot be simplified by the story of his death.
The Justice Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry submitted its report to the Indian Government on November 8, 2005 . The report was tabled in Parliament on May 17, 2006 . The probe said in its report that as Bose did not die in the plane crash, and that the ashes at the Renkoji Temple (said to be of Bose’s) are not his. However, the Indian Government rejected the findings of the Commission, though no reasons were cited.
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 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 on Bose’s death and thus the “posthumous” award was invalidated. No headway was made on this issue however.
Bose’s portrait hangs in the Indian Parliament , and a statue of him has been erected in front of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly.
Dr. Sugata Bose says all the conspiracy stories about Netaji’s death was false, and reiterated that Subhash had indeed died in the plane crash. He said that the theory that Subhash was held captive in Russia and later lived as a ‘Baba’ was an insult to this great son of India.
Political Views
Subhas Chandra Bose, believed that the Vedanta and the Bhagavad Gita were the sources of inspiration for the struggle against the British. Swami Vivekananda’s teachings on universalism, his nationalist thoughts and his emphasis on social service and reform had all inspired Subhas Chandra Bose from his very young days.
The fresh interpretation of the India’s ancient scriptures had appealed immensely to him. Many scholars believe that Hindu spirituality formed the essential part of his political and social thought through his adult life, although there was no sense of bigotry or orthodoxy in it.
Subhas who called himself a socialist, believed that socialism in India owed its origins to Swami Vivekananda. As historian Leonard Gordan explains “Inner religious explorations continued to be a part of his adult life. This set him apart from the slowly growing number of atheistic socialists and communists who dotted the Indian landscape.
Bose’s correspondence (prior to 1939) reflects his deep disapproval of the racist practices of, and annulment of democratic institutions in Nazi Germany. However, he expressed admiration for the authoritarian methods (though not the racial ideologies) which he saw in Italy and Germany during the 1930s, and thought they could be used in building an independent India.
Bose had clearly expressed his belief that democracy was the best option for India. The pro-Bose thinkers believe that his authoritarian control of the Azad Hind was based on political pragmatism and a post-colonial recovery doctrine rather than any anti-democratic belief.
However, during the war (and possibly as early as the 1930s) Bose seems to have decided that no democratic system could be adequate to overcome India’s poverty and social inequalities, and he wrote that an authoritarian state, similar to that of Soviet Russia (which he had also seen and admired) would be needed for the process of national re-building.
Accordingly some suggest that Bose’s alliance with the Axis during the war was based on more than just pragmatism, and that Bose was a militant nationalist, though not a Nazi nor a Fascist, for he supported empowerment of women, secularism and other democratic ideas; alternatively, others consider he might have been using populist methods of mobilisation common to many post-colonial leaders.
Bose never liked the Nazis but when he failed to contact the Russians for help in Afghanistan he approached the Germans and Italians for help. His comment was that if he had to shake hands with the devil for India’s independence he would do that.
Who Gave Bose the Name of Netaji?
There are many theories around how Bose got the title “Netaji”.Some say it was Mahatma Gandhi who first addressed SUBHASH CHANDRA BOSE as Netaji for the first time. Some say his huge popularity made people refer to him as ‘Netaji’.
Another theory is that Adolf Hitler himself referred to his as the FUHRER OF INDIA after their meeting where he as impressed with Netaji’s dedication towards his country. Fuhrer means a leader (Netaji in Hindi) and Hitler was referred to as the fuhrer by Germans.
In the book Indian Summer by Historian Alex Von Tunzelmann, it’s mentioned that Bose, after defeating Pattabhi Sitaramayya (backed by Mahatma Gandhi) for the post of Congress president, started calling himself Netaji in a deliberate imitation of Adolf Hitler’s title, ‘Fuhrer’. It’s common knowledge that Bose admired Hitler a lot.
Who Coined the Term ‘Jai Hind’
Bankim Chandra gave us Bande Mataram, Rabindranath Tagore gave us Jana Gana Mana, and Bose gave us “Jai Hind”, our biggest national slogan.
While Netaji definitely popularised the term ‘Jai Hind’, some reports say that the term was actually coined by someone else and Netaji gladly accepted it.
Bose is credited with the very famous slogan, “Give me blood, and I shall give you freedom!” as well as “Jai Hind. ” He is also credited to be the first man to call Mahatma Gandhi “Father of the Nation”, in his address from Singapore, when he also asked for his blessings and good wishes for the war he was fighting. Bose’s ashes are stored in the Renkōji Temple, in Tokyo. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose will always be remembered for the sacrifices he made for his country.
Academic Projects on Netaji
ICSE Class X: History Project Topic
Title: Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose – The Forgotten Hero.
Include the following points: Aim, Background (Bose and Congress), Project Overview, Forward Bloc, INA and Bose, Impact of the INA, Conclusion, Bibliography.
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