Subhas Chandra Bose Born 23 January 1897 Cuttack, Orissa Division, Bengal Province, India Died 18 August 1945[1] Taipei, Taiwan[1] Nationality Indian Alma mater University of Calcutta University of Cambridge Known for Figure of Indian independence movement Title President of Indian National Congress (1938) Head of State, Prime Minister, Minister of War and Foreign Affairs of Provisional Government of Free India based in the Japanese-occupied Andaman and Nicobar Islands (1943–1945) Political party Indian National Congress 1921–1940, Forward Bloc faction within the Indian National Congress, 1939–1940 Religion Hinduism Spouse(s) or companion, Emilie Schenkl (secretly married without ceremony or witnesses in 1937, unacknowledged publicly by Bose.) Children Anita Bose Pfaff Relatives Sarmila Bose Signature Signature of Subhas Chandra Bose Subhas Chandra Bose (About this sound listen (help·info); 23 January 1897 – 18 August 1945 (aged 48)) was an Indian nationalist whose defiant patriotism made him a hero in India, but whose attempt during World War II to rid India of British rule with the help of Nazi Germany and Japan left a troubled legacy. The honorific Netaji (Hindustani language: Respected Leader), 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, is now used widely throughout India. 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. However, he was ousted from Congress leadership positions in 1939 following differences with Mohandas K. Gandhi and the Congress high command. He was subsequently placed under house arrest by the British before escaping from India in 1940. Bose arrived in Germany in April 1941, where the leadership offered unexpected, if sometimes ambivalent, sympathy for the cause of Indias independence, contrasting starkly with its attitudes towards other colonised peoples and ethnic communities. 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 Rommels Afrika Korps, was also formed to aid in a possible future German land invasion of India. During this time Bose also became a father; his wife, or companion, Emilie Schenkl, whom he had met in 1934, gave birth to a baby girl. 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. Adolf Hitler, during his only meeting with Bose in late May 1942, suggested the same, and offered to arrange for a submarine. Identifying strongly with the Axis powers, and no longer apologetically, Bose boarded a German submarine in February 1943. In Madagascar, he was transferred to a Japanese submarine from which he disembarked in Japanese-held Sumatra in May 1943. 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. To these, after Boses 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. 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 turned out to be militarily unskilled, 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. 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. Some Indians, however, did not believe that the crash had occurred, with many among them, especially in Bengal, believing that Bose would return to liberate India. The Indian National Congress, the main instrument of Indian nationalism, praised Boses patriotism but distanced itself from his tactics and ideology, especially his collaboration with Fascism. The British Raj, though never seriously threatened by the INA, 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. Early life: 1897–1921 Subhas Bose, standing, extreme right, with his large family of 14 siblings in Cuttack, ca. 1905. Jankinath Bose, Subhas Boses 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. He was the ninth child of a total of fourteen siblings. He was admitted to the Protestant European School like his other brothers and sisters in January 1902. He continued his studies at this school which was run by the Baptist Mission up to the year 1909 and then shifted to the Ravenshaw Collegiate School. The day Subhas was admitted to this school, Beni Madhav Das, the then Headmaster of the school, understood how brilliant and scintillating was the genius of this little boy. After securing the second position in the matriculation examination in 1913, he got admitted to the Presidency College where he studied briefly. His nationalistic temperament came to light when he was expelled for assaulting Professor Oaten for the latters anti-India comments. He later joined the Scottish Church College at the University of Calcutta and passed his B.A. in 1918 in philosophy. 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: Only on the soil of sacrifice and suffering can we raise our national edifice. Finally, he resigned from his civil service job on 23 April 1921 and returned to India. 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. 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. Bose worked as the CEO of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation 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. 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. His most memorable role was as General Officer Commanding (GOC) Congress Volunteer Corps. 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, Harmans. 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 Bertam Mills circus, which caused a great deal of indignation among the Bengalis. A little later, Bose was again 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 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 countrys 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. 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 article is in a list format that may be better presented using prose. You can help by converting this article to prose, if appropriate. Editing help is available. (December 2013) 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 (Boses 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 Boses 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,[40] and had secretly married her on 26 December 1937. 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 Boses 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. He was elected president again over Gandhis 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. On 22 June 1939 Bose organised the All India Forward Bloc a faction within the Indian National Congress, 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 a free India needed socialist authoritarianism, on the lines of Turkeys 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 Linlithgows decision to declare war on Indias 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. He was thrown in jail by the British, but was released following a seven-day hunger strike. Boses house in Calcutta was kept under surveillance by the CID. In Nazi Germany: 1941–1943 Bose greeting Heinrich Himmler (right), the Nazi Minister of Interior, head of the SS, and the Gestapo, 1942. Bose (2nd from left) talking to Himmler and other Nazi officials. Bose and Himmler continuing their discussion over refreshments. A photograph from the German Federal Archives, whose caption says, The ceremony, which took place on the occasion of the founding of the Indian National Provisional Government of Free India Centre at the Hotel Kaiserhof in Berlin (16 November 1943), turned out to be a flaming indictment of the British war hunger in India. In addition to numerous leading German personalities, the Japanese ambassador, General Oshima and the Republican-fascist Italy, his excellence Anfuso, attended the event. Shown here is the Secretary of State in the Foreign Office, Keppler, bringing greetings and wishes of the Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop. Boses arrest and subsequent release set the scene for his escape to Germany, via Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. A few days before his escape, he sought solitude and on this pretext avoided meeting British guards and grew a beard on the night of his escape, he dressed as a Pathan to avoid being identified. Bose escaped from under British surveillance at his house in Calcutta. On 19 January 1941, accompanied by his nephew Sisir K. Bose in a car that is now on display at his Calcutta home. He journeyed to Peshawar with the help of the Abwehr, where he was met by Akbar Shah, Mohammed Shah and Bhagat Ram Talwar. Bose was taken to the home of Abad Khan, a trusted friend of Akbar Shahs. On 26 January 1941, Bose began his journey to reach Russia through British Indias 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. Boses guide Bhagat Ram Talwar, unknown to him, was a Soviet agent.[49][50][51] 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. After assuming the guise of a Pashtun insurance agent (Ziaudddin) to reach Afghanistan, Bose changed his guise and travelled to Moscow on the Italian passport of an Italian nobleman Count Orlando Mazzotta. From Moscow, he reached Rome, and from there he travelled to Germany.Once in Russia the NKVD transported Bose to Moscow where he hoped that Russias 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. In Germany, he was attached to the Special Bureau for India under Adam von Trott zu Solz which was responsible for broadcasting on the German-sponsored Azad Hind Radio. He founded the Free India Center 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. 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 Subhas Chandra Bose. This oath clearly abrogates control of the Indian legion to the German armed forces whilst stating Boses 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 could have been easily persuaded to leave after such an invasion, which might also have resulted in an Axis victory in the War. In all, 3,000 Indian prisoners of war signed up for the Free India Legion. But instead of being delighted, Bose was worried. A left-wing admirer of Russia, he was devastated when Hitlers tanks rolled across the Soviet border. Matters were worsened by the fact that the now-retreating German army would be in no position to offer him help in driving the British from India. When he met Hitler in May 1942, his suspicions were confirmed, and he came to believe that the Nazi leader was more interested in using his men to win propaganda victories than military ones. So, in February 1943, Bose turned his back on his legionnaires and slipped secretly away aboard a submarine bound for Japan. This left the men he had recruited leaderless and demoralised in Germany. Bose lived in Berlin from 1941 until 1943. During his earlier visit to Germany in 1934, he had met Emilie Schenkl, the daughter of an Austrian veterinarian whom he married in 1937. Their daughter is Anita Bose Pfaff.[56] Boses party, the Forward Bloc, has contested this fact. In 1943, after being disillusioned that Germany could be of any help in gaining Indias independence, he left for Japan. He travelled with the German submarine U-180 around the Cape of Good Hope to the southeast of Madagascar, where he was transferred to the I-29 for the rest of the journey to Imperial Japan. This was the only civilian transfer between two submarines of two different navies in World War II. In Japanese-occupied Asia 1943–1945 Main articles: Azad Hind Fauj and Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind The crew of Japanese submarine I-29 after the rendezvous with German submarine U-180 300 sm southeast of Madagascar; Bose is sitting in the front row (28 April 1943). Bose meeting Japanese prime minister Hideki Tōjō in 1943 Bose speaking in Tokyo in 1943. Greater East Asia Conference in November 1943, showing Japanese prime minister Hideki Tōjō (centre) with heads of various Japan-supported puppet, collaborationist, or provisional regimes, from left to right: Ba Maw (Burma), Zhang Jinghui (Manchukuo), Wang Jingwei (Republic of China, Nanjing), Tojo, Wan Waithayakon (Siam), José P. Laurel (Second Philippine Republic), Bose (Provisional Government of Free India). The Indian National Army (INA) was the brainchild of Japanese Major (and post-war Lieutenant-General) Iwaichi Fujiwara, head the Japanese intelligence unit Fujiwara Kikan and had its origins, first in the meetings between Fujiwara and the president of the Bangkok chapter of the Indian Independence League, Pritam Singh Dhillon, and then, through Pritam Singhs network, in the recruitment by Fujiwara of a captured British Indian army captain, Mohan Singh on the western Malayan peninsula in December 1941; Fujiwaras mission was to raise an army which would fight alongside the Japanese army. After the initial proposal by Fujiwara the Indian National Army was formed as a result of discussion between Fujiwara and Mohan Singh in the second half of December 1941, and the name chosen jointly by them in the first week of January 1942. This was along the concept of—and with support of—what was then known as the Indian Independence League, headed by expatriate nationalist leader Rash Behari Bose. The first INA was however disbanded in December 1942 after disagreements between the Hikari Kikan and Mohan Singh, who came to believe that the Japanese High Command was using the INA as a mere pawn and propaganda tool. Mohan Singh was taken into custody and the troops returned to the prisoner-of-war camp. However, the idea of a liberation army was revived with the arrival of Subhas Chandra Bose in the Far East in 1943. In July, at a meeting in Singapore, Rash Behari Bose handed over control of the organisation to Subhas Chandra Bose. Bose was able to reorganise the fledgling army and organise massive support among the expatriate Indian population in south-east Asia, who lent their support by both enlisting in the Indian National Army, as well as financially in response to Boses calls for sacrifice for the national cause. INA had a separate womens unit, the Rani of Jhansi Regiment (named after Rani Lakshmi Bai) headed by Capt. Lakshmi Swaminathan, which is seen as a first of its kind in Asia. Even when faced with military reverses, Bose was able to maintain support for the Azad Hind movement. Spoken as a part of a motivational speech for the Indian National Army at a rally of Indians in Burma on 4 July 1944, Boses most famous quote was Give me blood, and I shall give you freedom! In this, he urged the people of India to join him in his fight against the British Raj. Spoken in Hindi, Boses words are highly evocative. The troops of the INA were under the aegis of a provisional government, the Azad Hind Government, which came to produce its own currency, postage stamps, court and civil code, and was recognised by nine Axis states—Germany, Japan, Italy, the Independent State of Croatia, Wang Jingwei regime in Nanjing, China, a provisional government of Burma, Manchukuo and Japanese-controlled Philippines. Recent researches have shown that the USSR too had diplomatic contact with the Provisional Government of Free India. Of those countries, five were authorities established under Axis occupation. This government participated in the so-called Greater East Asia Conference as an observer in November 1943. The INAs first commitment was in the Japanese thrust towards Eastern Indian frontiers of Manipur. INAs special forces, the Bahadur Group, were extensively involved in operations behind enemy lines both during the diversionary attacks in Arakan, as well as the Japanese thrust towards Imphal and Kohima, along with the Burmese National Army led by Ba Maw and Aung San. Japanese also took possession of Andaman and Nicobar Islands in 1942 and a year later, the Provisional Government and the INA were established in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands with Lt Col. A.D. Loganathan appointed its Governor General. The islands were renamed Shaheed (Martyr) and Swaraj (Independence). However, the Japanese Navy remained in essential control of the islands administration. During Boses only visit to the islands in early 1944, when he was carefully screened, by the Japanese authorities, from the local population who[clarification needed] at that time were torturing the leader of the Indian Independence League on the Islands, Dr. Diwan Singh, who later died of his injuries, in the Cellular Jail. The islanders made several attempts to alert Bose to their plight, but apparently without success. Enraged with the lack of administrative control, Lt. Col Loganathan later relinquished his authority and returned to the Governments headquarters in Rangoon. On the Indian mainland, an Indian Tricolour, modelled after that of the Indian National Congress, was raised for the first time in the town in Moirang, in Manipur, in north-eastern India. The towns of Kohima and Imphal were placed under siege by divisions of the Japanese, Burmese and the Gandhi and Nehru Brigades of INA during the attempted invasion of India, also known as Operation U-GO. However, Commonwealth forces held both positions and then counter-attacked, in the process inflicting serious losses on the besieging forces, which were then forced to retreat back into Burma. When Japanese funding for the army diminished, Bose was forced to raise taxes on the Indian populations of Malaysia and Singapore. When the Japanese were defeated at the battles of Kohima and Imphal, the Provisional Governments aim of establishing a base in mainland India was lost forever. The INA was forced to pull back, along with the retreating Japanese army, and fought in key battles against the British Indian Army in its Burma campaign, notable in Meiktilla, Mandalay, Pegu, Nyangyu and Mount Popa. However, with the fall of Rangoon, Boses government ceased to be an effective political entity. A large proportion of the INA troops surrendered under Lt Col Loganathan. The remaining troops retreated with Bose towards Malaya or made for Thailand. Japans surrender at the end of the war also led to the eventual surrender of the Indian National Army, when the troops of the British Indian Army were repatriated to India and some tried for treason. On 6 July 1944, in a speech broadcast by the Azad Hind Radio from Singapore, Bose addressed Mahatma Gandhi as the Father of the Nation and asked for his blessings and good wishes for the war he was fighting. This was the first time that Gandhi was referred to by this appellation. His most famous quote/slogan was Give me blood and I will give you freedom. Another famous quote was Dilli Chalo (On to Delhi)! This was the call he used to give the INA armies to motivate them. Jai Hind, or, Glory to India! was another slogan used by him and later adopted by the Government of India and the Indian Armed Forces. Another slogan coined by him was Ittefaq, Etemad, Qurbani (Urdu for Unity, Agreement, Sacrifice). INA also used the slogan Inquilab Zindabad, which was coined by Maulana Hasrat Mohani.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Mar 2014 11:00:21 +0000
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