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Subhash Chandra Bose (, 1897 – August 18 , 1945 ? Note ), also known as '''Netaji''', was one of the most prominent leaders of the Indian Independence Movement against the British Raj . Bose was elected president of the Indian National Congress for two consecutive terms. However, he had to resign from the post in the face of a motion of no-confidence, stemming from ideological conflicts with Gandhi . Bose felt that 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. His stance did not change with the outbreak of War, which he saw as an opportunity to take advantage of British weakness. He was imprisoned by the British authorities 11 times. At the outset of World War II , in a daring act of escape from the watchful eyes of the British , he fled from India, and reached Germany by a lengthy and dangerous route. He sought an alliance with the Axis powers with the aim of attacking the British in India from the Northwest. When this plan was foiled by the Nazi invasion of the USSR, he headed for Japan and and helped to organise— and later lead— the Indian National Army , put together from Indian Prisoners-of-war and plantation workers from Singapore and other parts of Southeast Asia , against British forces during the Second World War. His political views and the alliances he made with Nazi and other militarist regimes opposed to the British Empire have been the cause of arguments among historians and politicians, with some accusing him of Fascism. He is believed to have died on 18 August , 1945 in a plane crash over Taiwan , however, contradicting evidence exists regarding his death in the accident. Early life Subhas Chandra Bose was born to an affluent family in Cuttack , Orissa . His father, Janakinath Bose, was a public prosecutor who believed in orthodox nationalism, and later became a member of the Bengal Legislative Council. Bose was educated at Cambridge University . In 1920, Bose took the Indian Civil Service entrance examination and was placed second. However, he resigned from the prestigious Indian Civil Service in April 1921 despite his high ranking in the merit list, and went on to become an active member of India's independence movement. He joined the Indian National Congress , and was particularly active in its youth wing. However, Bose's ideals did not match with that of Mahatma Gandhi's belief in non-violence. He therefore returned to Calcutta to work under Chittaranjan Das , the Bengali freedom fighter and co-founder (with Motilal Nehru) of the Swaraj Party. In 1921, Bose organised a boycott of the celebrations to mark the visit of the Prince Of Wales to India, which led to his imprisonment. In April 1924, Bose was elected to the post of Chief Executive Officer of the newly constituted Calcutta Corporation. Later, in October that year, Bose was arrested as a suspected terrorist. At first, he was kept in Alipore jail and later he was exiled to Mandalay in Burma. On January 23 1930, Bose was once again arrested for leading an "independence procession", protesting against British rule in India. After his release from jail on September 25, he was elected as the Mayor of the City of Calcutta. Over a span of 20 years, Bose was incarcerated eleven times by the British, either in India or in Rangoon . He spent many years in various capacities as the Chief Executive Officer of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation , and later as Mayor himself. Along with Jawaharlal Nehru , he was one of the radical left wing leaders of the Congress Party. He was exiled from India by the British during the mid 1930s to Europe, where he championed India's cause for self-rule before gatherings and conferences. In 1934 he met the love of his life, Emilie Schenkl , in Vienna, and they were married in 1937 in Bad Gastein Bose, Sarmila.[http://www.telegraphindia.com/1050515/asp/look/story_4731863.asp Love in the time of war]. The Telegraph. 15 May, 2005. URL accessed on 7 April 2006. After his father's death, the British authorities allowed him to land at Calcutta's airport only for the religious rites, which would be followed by his swift departure. During this time he traveled extensively in India and in Europe before stating his political opposition to Gandhi. He became the president of the Haripura Indian National Congress in 1938 , against Gandhi's wishes. He was elected for a second term in 1939 in Tripuri Congress Session; Gandhi had supported Pattabhi Sitaramayya and commented "Pattabhi's defeat is my defeat" after learning the election results. Although Bose won the election, Gandhi's continued opposition led to the latter's resignation from the Working Committee. In the face of this gesture of no-confidence, Bose himself resigned. He then formed an independent party, the All India Forward Bloc . Bose also initiated the concept of the ''National Planning Committee'' in 1938. Actions during the Second World War Bose advocated the approach that the political instability of war-time Britain should be taken advantage of — rather than simply wait for the British to grant independence after the end of the war (which was the view of Gandhi, Nehru and a section of the Congress leadership) at the time. In this, he was influenced by the examples of Italian statesmen Giuseppe Garibaldi and Giuseppe Mazzini . During his stay in Europe from 1933 to 1936, he met several European leaders and thinkers, including Benito Mussolini , Eduard Beneš , Karl Seitz , Eamon De Valera , Romain Rolland and Alfred Rosenberg . He came to believe that India could achieve political freedom only if it had political, military and diplomatic support from outside, and that an independent nation necessitated the creation of a national army to secure its sovereignty. His correspondence reveals that despite his clear dislike for British subjugation, he was deeply impressed by their methodical and systematic approach and their steadfastedly disciplinarian outlook towards life. In England, he exchanged ideas 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 on the future of India. He came to believe that a free India needed Socialist authoritarianism, on the lines of Turkey 's Kemal Atatürk , for at least two decades. "The Great Escape" On the outbreak of war, Bose advocated a campaign of mass civil disobedience to protest against the Viceroy, . Bose had never been to Afghanistan, and could not speak the local tribal language ( Pashto ). For this reason, he enlisted the help of Mian Akbar Shah, then a Forwad 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. ]] On January 19 1941 , accompanied by his nephew Sisir K. Bose, Bose gave his watchers the slip and journeyed to Peshawar where he was met at Peshawar Cantonment station by Akbar Shah, Mohammed Shah and Bhagat Ram Talwar. Bose was taken to the home of Abad Khan, a trusted friend of Akbar Shah's. On the 26th January, 1941, Bose began his journey to reach Europe. In Germany Having escaped incarceration at home by assuming the guise of a Pathan insurance agent ("Ziaudddin") to reach Afghanistan , Bose travelled to Moscow on the passport of an Italian nobleman "Count Orlando Mazzotta". From Moscow, he reached Rome , and from there he traveled to Germany , where he instituted the Special Bureau For India under Adam Von Trott Zu Solz , broadcasting on the German-sponsored Azad Hind Radio . He founded the ''Free India Centre'' 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 Rudolf Hartog ''The Sign of the Tiger'' (Delhi: Rupa) 2001 pp159-60 ; its members swore their allegiance to both Hitler and Bose to secure India's independence. At a time, when no one in Germany dared criticise Hitler, Bose was openly critical of Hitler's treatment of Jews, the destruction of democratic institutions in Germany and the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. He was also, however, prepared to envisage an invasion of India via the U.S.S.R. 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 would also have resulted in an Axis victory in the War.Sen, S. 1999. Subhas Chandra Bose 1897-1945 . From webarchive of this URL . URL accessed on 7 April, 2006. The lack of interest shown by Hitler in the cause of Indian independence eventually caused Bose to become disillusioned with Hitler and he decided to leave Nazi Germany in 1943. He travelled by the German submarine ''U-180'' around the Cape Of Good Hope to Imperial Japan (via Japanese submarine ''I-29'' ), which helped him raise his army in Singapore . This was the only civilian transfer across two submarines of two different navies in World War II. In Japan and South East Asia The Indian National Army (INA) was originally founded by the expatriate nationalist leader Rash Behari Bose , who handed over control of the organisation to Subhas Chandra Bose after his arrival in the Far East in 1943. At its height it consisted of some 85,000 regular troops, including a separate women's army unit named after Rani Lakshmi Bai (the women's combat army unit was the first of its kind in Asia). These troops were under the aegis of a provisional government, with its own currency, court and civil code, called the Provisional Government of Free India (or, the Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind ), and recognised by nine Axis states — Germany, Japan, Italy , the Independent State Of Croatia , Wang Jingwei's Government In Nanjing , Thailand , a provisional government of Burma , Manchukuo and Japanese-controlled Philippines . Of those countries, five were puppet states established by Axis occupation. This government participated as a delegate or observer in the so-called Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere . As the Japanese pressed forward through Burma towards India, some of the INA's troops assisted in the Japanese victory over the British in the battles of Arakan and Meiktila , along with the Burmese National Army led by Ba Maw and Aung San . A year after the Islands Were Taken By The Japanese , the Provisional Government and the INA were established in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay Of Bengal , part of the British Indian Empire under Japanese occupation, which he renamed ''Shaheed'' (Martyr) and ''Swaraj'' (Self-rule). Bose visited the islands on just one occasion late in 1943, when he was carefully screened from the local population by the Japanese authorities, who 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. N. Iqbal Singh ''The Andaman Story'' (Delhi: Vikas Publ.) 1978 p249; Jayant Dasgupta ''Japanese in Andaman & Nicobar Islands. Red Sun over Black Water'' (Delhi: Manas Publications) 2002 pp67, 73-5. With reference to this it is interesting to note that during the 1970s the leader of the Communist Party in the Lok Sabha, Samar Guha, proposed renaming the Islands once again as ''Shaheed'' and ''Swaraj'', as Bose would have wanted. This was strongly opposed by K.R. Ganesh, a Minister in Indira Gandhi's Government, and the one prominent Indian politician to have hailed from the Andamans, on the grounds that Bose had failed the people of the islands in 1943. When asked in debate by Guha whether atrocities had been committed before or after Bose's visit, Ganesh replied "Before, during and after" Dasgupta ''Red Sun over Black Water'' p77 On the Indian mainland, an Indian Tricolour, modeled after that of the Indian National Congress, was raised for the first time in the town in Moirang , in Manipur , in northeastern India. The towns of Kohima and Imphal were placed under siege by divisions of the Japanese, Burmese and the ''Gandhi'' and ''Nehru'' Brigades of I.N.A. At the time of the Great Bengal Famine of 1943 , during which millions died of starvation as a consequence of British inefficiency and indifference, Bose had offered (through radio) to provide Burmese rice to the victims of the famine. The British authorities in India (and in the UK) refused the offer, arguing that it was made for propaganda purposes. Bose had hoped that large numbers of soldiers would desert from the Indian Army when they would discover that INA soldiers were attacking British India from the outside. Bose, Subhas Chandra. Speech at a mass rally, Singapore, 9 July 1943 . ''Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose & India's Independence''. Tanilnation.org. URL accessed on 7 April 2006 However, this did not materialise on a sufficient scale. Instead, as the war situation worsened for the Japanese, troops began to desert from the INA. At the same time Japanese funding for the army diminished, and Bose was forced to raise taxes on the Indian populations of Malaysia and Singapore, sometimes extracting money by force.Toye, H. "The Springing Tiger", pp. 112, 113, 115. Collected from Montgomery,A. ''Subhas Chandra...'' . JHR. When the Japanese were defeated at the battles of Kohima and Imphal , the Provisional Government's aim of establishing a base in mainland India was lost forever. The INA was forced to pull back, along with the defeated Japanese Army. Japan's surrender also led to the eventual surrender of the Indian National Army . Political views Bose advocated complete freedom for India at the earliest, whereas most of the Congress Committee wanted it in phases, through a Dominion status. Subhas Chandra Bose .''Itihas''.sify.com. URL accessed on 7 April 2006 Even though Bose and , whilst Bose saw it as the only route to making India strong and self-sufficient (in this he may have been influenced, like many other Indian intellectuals of the time, by reports of the success of the Soviet Five-year Plan s). Nehru disagreed with Gandhi on this point as well, though not over the tactics of protest. At the time the Second World War began, great divisions existed in the Indian independence movement about whether to exploit the weakness of the British to achieve independence. Some felt that any distinctions between the political allegiances and ideologies of the warring factions of Europe were inconsequential in the face of the possibility of Indian independence, given the fact that the British themselves showed so little respect for democracy or democratic reforms in India. Others felt that it was inappropriate to seek concessions when Britain itself was in peril, or else that pressure was better applied within India and in peaceful fashion, and found that their distaste for Nazi Germany and Japan outweighed any possibility that an alliance with them would bring India's independence closer. Bose, in particular, was accused of 'collaborating' with the Axis, after he fled to Germany in 1941 and offered Hitler an alliance. He criticized the . Bose's judgment in allying with the Japanese has been questioned, as many argue that he would have been unable to ensure an independent India had he ridden to power on Japanese bayonets, and was in danger of being turned into a puppet ruler like Pu-yi, the last Chinese Emperor in meted out by the Japanese to the Asian inhabitants of the lands they conquered as part of the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity sphere, which included the forcible recruitment of labour from the overseas Indian population to build projects such as the Burma Railway , and massacres of Malayan Chinese in Singapore where he spent most of the War. Nicholas Tarling (Ed.) ''The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia'' Vol.II part 2. ''From World War II to the Present'' (Cambridge) 1999 p8 Bose has been branded as a fascist in some quarters. In fact, the British called him the ''Indian 's offer of full independence after the war was the point at which the British departure became inevitable Judith Brown ''Modern India. The Origins of an Asian Democracy'' 2nd Edition (Oxford) 1994 pp293-316, 328 . Britain's weakness after the war, and domestic political pressure on the Labour Government also meant that the British were bound to leave India after 1945. Publicly at least, Bose never believed that this would happen unless they were driven out by force: as late as 1944 he announced that "I am honestly convinced that the British Government will never recognise India's demand for independence" "Father of Our Nation" (Address to Mahatma Gandhi over the Rangoon Radio on 6th July 1944) ''The Essential Writings of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose'' Edited by Sisir K Bose & Sugata Bose (Delhi: Oxford University Press) 1997 p301. In this he was mistaken. There is no doubt that Bose was a patriot of almost fanatical zeal Montgomery, A. ''Subhas Chandra Bose and India's Struggle for Independence'' . pp2-5. Journal of Historical Review. March-April 1994. (Vol. 14, No. 2), and was considered as such even by his rivals in the Congress: Gandhi himself wrote that Bose's "... patriotism is second to none" Gandhi, Mohandas K.'' The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi'' (Ahmedabad: The Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, Navajivan Trust, 1972-78), Volume LXXXIII, p. 135, and he was moved to proclaim after Bose's death that he was the "prince among patriots" - a reference to Bose's achievement in integrating women and men from all the regions and religions of India in the Indian National Army. Bose, Sugata - Maximum Leader, India Today Bose wanted freedom for India at the earliest opportunity, and to some extent, he didn't care who he had to approach for assistance Sen, S.[http://web.archive.org/web/20050305012751/http://www.andaman.org/book/app-m/textm.htm Subhas Chandra Bose 1897-1945 . From webarchive . It is thus quite understandable that he remains a controversial figure to this day. His Most Famous Quote Bose's famous words "Give me blood and I shall give you freedom" whereby he urged the people of India to join him in his fight against the British Raj. Spoken at a rally of Indians in Burma, July 4, 1944. A close parallel would be Patrick Henry's "Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death". Spoken in Hindi, Bose's words are highly evocative and are considered an important milestone in the Indian freedom struggle. His other famous quote was, ''Dilli chalo'', meaning ''on to Delhi''. This was the call he used to give the INA armies to motivate them. ''Jai Hind'' , or, ''Victory to India'' was another epithet used by him and later adopted by the Government of India. Assassination Attempts In 1941 , when the British learned that Bose had sought the support of the Axis Powers , they ordered their agents to intercept and kill Bose before he reached Germany. A recently declassified intelligence document refers to a top-secret instruction to the Special Operations Executive (SOE) of British intelligence to murder Bose. The decision was extraordinary, unusual and rare, and it seemed that the British took Bose much more seriously than many had thought. In fact, the plan to liquidate Bose has few parallels, and appears to be a last desperate measure against a man whose uncompromising radicalism had seriously worried the leadership of the British Empire Bhaumik S, ''British "attempted to kill Bose"'' BBC news. 15 August 2005. URL accessed on 6 April 2006. Re-evaluation of Netaji ]] The INA is fondly remembered by some Japanese historians, who see the Japanese efforts to support Bose as proof of their view that Japan really was fighting on behalf of the oppressed peoples of Asia. In addition, the INA is seen by some as an organisation devoid of the divisive energies of parochialism that have since plagued Indian politics. Bose's portrait hangs in the Indian Parliament , and a statue has been erected in front of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly. Bose was posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna , India's highest civilian award in 1992, but 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 of Bose's death and thus it invalidated the "posthumous" award. Kolkata 's civil airport and a university have been named after him. Disappearance and alleged death See Also: Death mystery of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Bose was believed to have died in a plane crash over Taiwan , while flying to Tokyo in August 1945. However, his body was never recovered, and theories concerning his possible survival abound. One such claim is that Bose actually died in Siberia , while in Soviet captivity. Several committees were set up by the government of India to probe into this matter. In May 1956, a four-man Indian team (known as Shah Nawaz Committee) visited Japan to probe the circumstances of Bose's alleged death in the crash of a military aircraft at Taipei on August 18, 1945. However, India had ever asked the government of Taiwan, the country where the air crash allegedly took place, for any assistance in the matter. India has never had any diplomatic relations with the Republic of China, and the Indian Government has consistently used this as an excuse not to do so. The G D Khosla Commission (1970-1974) too could not reach to any conclusion as it failed to take inputs from Taiwan. However, the Inquiry Commission under Justice Mukherjee , which investigated the Bose disappearance mystery in the period 1999-2005, did approach the Taiwanese government after a journalist Anuj Dhar (with the Hindustan Times ) obtained information from the Taiwan Government that no plane carrying Bose had ever crashed in Taipei Dhar also a wrote a book ''Back from Dead: Inside the Subhas Bose Mystery'' [http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/8170492378/qid%3D1121604747/026-9270549-3746805 discrediting the plane crash theory. The Mukherjee Commission also received a report originating from the US State Department, supporting the claim of the Taiwan Government that no such air crash took place during that time frame [http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1236063.cms]. There are theories of political effort to classify information on the death mystery. In fact, according to some, Nehru did not wish to unveil the mystery behind Bose's disappearance and led to hushing of some important documents. Namboodiri, U. Despite Formosa probe, Nehru closed chapter on Netaji . The Pioneer. URL accessed on 7 April 2006 It has been reported that a conversation reportedly took place between Josef Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov in 1946 about whether Bose should remain in the Soviet Union, although he is supposed to have died the year before. There are theories that Bose had kept contact with the Soviets after the defeat of the Axis powers became apparent, and travelled to Manchuria instead of Taiwan (Manchuria was occupied by the Soviets in the final days of the war). Very recently, on November 8, 2005, the Mukherjee Commission has submitted its report to the Indian Government. The report is to be tabled in the budget session of the Parliament in early 2006. In media Cinema
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