Bose, Subhas Chandra
(1897–1945), Indian freedom fighter. Subhas Chandra Bose, called "Netaji," has a semimythical status today as an Indian freedom fighter who sided with the Japanese against the British in World War II. Born into a large family in Cuttack, Orissa, on 23 January 1897, Bose studied in Calcutta, where he spent much time in meditation and graduated in philosophy. He then studied for two years at Cambridge, England, and placed fourth in the Indian Civil Service examinations. He soon resigned from the civil service and then met Mohandas Gandhi (1869–1948) in Bombay.
Bose became a Calcutta municipal official but was soon arrested for terrorism and jailed for three years. He was released in 1927 because of continuing ill health. He disagreed with Gandhi over nonviolence but continued on in the Indian National Congress. He was again arrested in 1940 by the British authorities but was soon released after threatening to fast unto death. He was still under house arrest when he disappeared in January 1941.
Bose with British Labour Party politician George Lansbury in London in January 1938. (HULTON-DEUTSCH COLLECTION/CORBIS)After walking to Afghanistan, in November 1941 he surfaced in Berlin, broadcasting Nazi propaganda and arguing, "our enemy's enemy is our friend." Bose met Hitler in May 1942, and the latter approved plans for Bose to go to Myanmar (Burma). He left a year later and took command of the Azad Hind Fauj (AHF), or Indian National Army (INA), in fact a ragtag army made up of deserters from the Indian army and other Indians, mainly Japanese prisoners of war. These men fought near the Indian border against the British but soon became a liability to their imperial Japanese sponsors, who were then retreating in Southeast Asia just as the INA was falling back on Mandalay, then Rangoon (now Yangon), then Bangkok. Bose died in the crash of a Japanese aircraft in Taiwan, in August 1945.
Further Reading
Mehra, Parshotam. (1987) "Subhas Chandra Bose (1897–1945)." In A Dictionary of Modern Indian History 1707–1947, edited by Parshotam Mehra. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 103–105.
Toye, Hugh. (1959) Subhash Chandra Bose: The Springing Tiger: A Study of a Revolutionary. Bombay, India: Jaico Publishing House.
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