Subhas Chandra Bose (1897–1945,) called Netaji (“Respected Leader,”) was an Indian revolutionary prominent in the independence movement against British rule. An ally and later an adversary of Mahatma Gandhi, Bose was known for his militant approach to self-government and his push for socialist policies.
Bose’s legacy is contested because any means and any ally were suitable in his struggle to liberate India. However, his defiant patriotism continues to be celebrated in India.
Born into a prominent Bengali family in Cuttack, Orissa, Bose studied at Calcutta’s Presidency College (where he was expelled for his nationalism) and Cambridge. A successful candidate for the Indian Civil Service in 1920, he did not take up his appointment, returning instead to Calcutta to work in Gandhi’s Non-Co-operation Movement.
Bose came under the tutelage of Bengali nationalist politician Chittaranjan Das of the Swaraj Party. In 1924, he became chief executive officer of the Calcutta Corporation but was imprisoned until 1927 for political activism. In 1928, he became secretary of the Indian National Congress (INC.)
Throughout the 1930s, Bose took part in the civil disobedience movement but became progressively frustrated with Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent methods. He became president of the INC in 1938. Still, He was forced to resign because he felt that a disciplined mass revolutionary movement was the fastest and best for Indian self-rule.
Bose formed Forward Bloc, a militant nationalist party, and supported the Axis Powers at World War II. Incarcerated and then placed under house arrest, he escaped and went to Nazi Germany in 1943. He failed to gain support there. Bose then traveled to Japan, where he announced an Indian National Army (INA) to drive the British out of India.
In 1943, Bose announced the formation of the Provisional Government of Free India. He recruited Indian prisoners-of-war and formed a provisional government-in-exile. However, his army was defeated in the disastrous Japanese attempt to invade India from Burma.
By the end of World War II, Bose turned to the Soviet Union. A few days after Japan’s surrender in 1945, Bose reportedly died in a Japanese hospital in Formosa (Taiwan) because of burn injuries from a plane crash while fleeing Southeast Asia en route to the Soviet Union.
The British Army intelligence officer Hugh Toye wrote the popular biography The Springing Tiger: A Study of a Revolutionary (1959.) Other notable biographies include Subbier Appadurai Ayer’s Unto Him a Witness (1951) and Shri Ram Sharma’s Netaji: His Life and Work (1948.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Subhas Chandra Bose
Reality is, after all, too big for our frail understanding to fully comprehend. Nevertheless, we have to build our life on the theory which contains the maximum truth. We cannot sit still because we cannot, or do not, know the Absolute Truth.
—Subhas Chandra Bose
You give me your blood and I will give you Independence!
—Subhas Chandra Bose
One individual may die for an idea, but that idea will, after his death, incarnate itself in a thousand lives.
—Subhas Chandra Bose
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