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Subhas Chandra Bose

"Netaji" redirects here. For other uses, see Netaji (disambiguation).

Netaji
Subhas Chandra Bose
Bose, c. 1930s
Leader of Indian National Army[b]
In office
4 July 1943 – 18 August 1945
Preceded byMohan Singh and Iwaichi Fujiwara founders of the First Indian National Army
Succeeded byOffice abolished
President of the All India Forward Bloc
In office
22 June 1939 – 16 January 1941
Preceded byOffice established
Succeeded bySardul Singh Kavishar
President of the Indian National Congress
In office
18 January 1938 – 29 April 1939
Preceded byJawaharlal Nehru
Succeeded byRajendra Prasad
5th Mayor of Calcutta
In office
22 August 1930 – 15 April 1931
Preceded byJatindra Mohan Sengupta
Succeeded byBidhan Chandra Roy
Personal details
Born
Subhas Chandra Bose

(1897-01-23)23 January 1897
Cuttack, Bengal Presidency, British India
Died18 August 1945(1945-08-18) (aged 48)[4][5]
Taihoku, Japanese Taiwan
Cause of deathThird-degree burns from aircrash[5]
Resting placeRenkō-ji, Tokyo, Japan
Political partyIndian National Congress
All India Forward Bloc
Spouse(s)
​
(m. 1937)​

(secretly married without ceremony or witnesses, unacknowledged publicly by Bose)[6]
ChildrenAnita Bose Pfaff
Parents
Education
Alma mater
Known forIndian independence movement
SignatureSignature of Subhas Chandra Bose in English and Bengali

Subhas Chandra Bose[f] (23 January 1897 – 18 August 1945) was an Indian nationalist whose defiance of British authority in India made him a hero among many Indians,[g][h][i] but his wartime alliances with Nazi Germany and Fascist Japan left a legacy vexed by authoritarianism,[16][j][k][l] anti-Semitism,[19][m][n][o][p][q][24] and military failure.[r][27][28][s][t] The honorific 'Netaji' (Hindustani: "Respected Leader") was first applied to Bose in Germany in early 1942—by the Indian soldiers of the Indische Legion and by the German and Indian officials in the Special Bureau for India in Berlin. It is now used throughout India.[u][31]

Bose was born into wealth and privilege in a large Bengali family in Orissa during the British Raj. The early recipient of an Anglo-centric education, he was sent after college to England to take the Indian Civil Service examination. He succeeded with distinction in the first exam but demurred at taking the routine final exam, citing nationalism to be the higher calling. Returning to India in 1921, Bose joined the nationalist movement led by Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress. He followed Jawaharlal Nehru to leadership in a group within the Congress which was less keen on constitutional reform and more open to socialism.[v] Bose became Congress president in 1938. After reelection in 1939, differences arose between him and the Congress leaders, including Gandhi, over the future federation of British India and princely states, but also because discomfort had grown among the Congress leadership over Bose's negotiable attitude to non-violence, and his plans for greater powers for himself.[33] After the large majority of the Congress Working Committee members resigned in protest,[34] Bose resigned as president and was eventually ousted from the party.[35][36]

In April 1941 Bose arrived in Nazi Germany, where the leadership offered unexpected but equivocal sympathy for India's independence.[37] German funds were employed to open a Free India Centre in Berlin. A 3,000-strong Free India Legion was recruited from among Indian POWs captured by Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps to serve under Bose.[38][w] Although peripheral to their main goals, the Germans inconclusively considered a land invasion of India throughout 1941. By the spring of 1942, the German army was mired in Russia and Bose became keen to move to southeast Asia, where Japan had just won quick victories.[40] Adolf Hitler during his only meeting with Bose in late May 1942 agreed to arrange a submarine.[41] During this time, Bose became a father; his wife,[6][x] or companion,[42][y] Emilie Schenkl, gave birth to a baby girl.[43] Identifying strongly with the Axis powers, Bose boarded a German submarine in February 1943.[44][45] Off Madagascar, he was transferred to a Japanese submarine from which he disembarked in Japanese-held Sumatra in May 1943.[44]

With Japanese support, Bose revamped the Indian National Army (INA), which comprised Indian prisoners of war of the British Indian army who had been captured by the Japanese in the Battle of Singapore.[46][47] A Provisional Government of Free India (Azad Hind) was declared on the Japanese-occupied Andaman and Nicobar Islands and was nominally presided over by Bose.[48][2][z] Although Bose was unusually driven and charismatic, the Japanese considered him to be militarily unskilled,[27] and his soldierly effort was short-lived. In late 1944 and early 1945, the British Indian Army reversed the Japanese attack on India. Almost half of the Japanese forces and fully half of the participating INA contingent were killed.[aa] The remaining INA was driven down the Malay Peninsula and surrendered with the recapture of Singapore. Bose chose to escape to Manchuria to seek a future in the Soviet Union which he believed to have turned anti-British.

Bose died from third-degree burns after his plane crashed in Japanese Taiwan on 18 August 1945.[ab] Some Indians did not believe that the crash had occurred,[ac] expecting Bose to return to secure India's independence.[ad][ae][af] The Indian National Congress, the main instrument of Indian nationalism, praised Bose's patriotism but distanced itself from his tactics and ideology.[54] The British Raj, never seriously threatened by the INA, charged 300 INA officers with treason in the Indian National Army trials, but eventually backtracked in the face of opposition by the Congress,[ag] and a new mood in Britain for rapid decolonisation in India.[54][13] Bose's legacy is mixed. Among many in India, he is seen as a hero, his saga serving as a would-be counterpoise to the many actions of regeneration, negotiation, and reconciliation over a quarter-century through which the independence of India was achieved.[ah] Many on the right and far-right often venerate him as a champion of Indian nationalism as well as Hindu identity by spreading conspiracy theories.[57][58][59][60] His collaborations with Japanese fascism and Nazism pose serious ethical dilemmas,[m] especially his reluctance to publicly criticise the worst excesses of German anti-Semitism from 1938 onwards or to offer refuge in India to its victims.

  1. ^ Gordon 1990, p. 502.
  2. ^ a b c Wolpert 2000, p. 339.
  3. ^ Gordon 1990, pp. 502–503.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference dod-combined was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference gordon-bose-death was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ a b c Hayes 2011, p. 15.
  7. ^ Gordon 1990, p. 32.
  8. ^ Gordon 1990, p. 33.
  9. ^ a b Gordon 1990, p. 48.
  10. ^ Gordon 1990, p. 52.
  11. ^ a b The_Open_University.
  12. ^ Bose, Subhas Chandra (26 June 1943). "Speech of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Tokyo, 1943". Prasar Bharati Archives. Archived from the original on 30 January 2021. Retrieved 26 January 2021.
  13. ^ a b c Metcalf & Metcalf 2012, p. 210.
  14. ^ Kulke & Rothermund 2004, p. 311.
  15. ^ a b Bandyopādhyāẏa 2004, p. 427.
  16. ^ Lal, Vinay (2025). "Gandhi, the Indian National Congres, and the Jewish Question". In Lal, Vinay (ed.). Gandhi, Truth, and Nonviolence: The Politics of Engagement in Post-Truth Times. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198936626. (p. 240) Such a hagiographic narrative is without a shred of credibility: Bose's involvement with fascism ran deep... the principal episodes in the narrative of Bose's complicity with Nazism—and, it may be noted at least in passing, Japanese militarism—are equally well established.
  17. ^ Rudolph, Lloyd I.; Rudolph, Suzanne Hoeber (1987), In Pursuit of Lakshmi: The Political Economy of the Indian State, University of Chicago Press, pp. 69–70, ISBN 0-226-73138-3
  18. ^ Louro, Michele L. (2021), "Anti-fascism and anti-imperialism between the world wars: The perspective from India", in Braskin, Kasper; Featherstone, David; Copsey, Nigel (eds.), Anti-Fascism in a Global Perspective: Transnational, Routledge, ISBN 9781138352186
  19. ^ Lal, Vinay (2025). "Gandhi, the Indian National Congres, and the Jewish Question". In Lal, Vinay (ed.). Gandhi, Truth, and Nonviolence: The Politics of Engagement in Post-Truth Times. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198936626. (p. 242) But one might also think that his close proximity to the administrative heart of the killing machine—his last stay in Berlin lasted nearly two years—would at least have elicited a few tears of remorse. Bose's silence in all these respects, one is tempted to say, is deafening.
  20. ^ Casolari 2020, pp. 89–90.
  21. ^ Aafreedi, Navras J. (2021), "Holocaust education in India and its challenges", in Aafreedi, Navras J.; Singh, Priya (eds.), Conceptualizing Mass Violence: Representations, Recollections, and reinterpretatons, Abington, UK and New York, NY: Routledge, p. 154, ISBN 978-1-003-14613-1
  22. ^ Shindler, Colin (2010), Israel and the European Left: Between Solidarity and Deligitimization, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, Continuum, p. 112, ISBN 978-1-4411-8898-4
  23. ^ Kumaraswamy, P. R. (2010), Squaring the Circle: Mahatma Gandhi and the Jewish National Home, Digital version, Routledge, p. 153, ISBN 9781000097856, archived from the original on 26 April 2022, retrieved 22 January 2025
  24. ^ Cronin, Joseph (2025). "Affiliations, Entanglements, and 'Otherness': The Experiences of German-Speaking Jewish Refugees in India, 1938–1948". In Cho, Joanne Miyang; Kurlander, Eric; McGechin, Douglas (eds.). German-Speaking Jewish Refugees in Asia, 1930–1950: Shelter from the Storm?. London and New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781003517795-18. Bose's views on the Nazis' main victims, the Jews, and specifically on the Jewish refugees, were also ambiguous. He wrote to his wife in 1937: "The Jews in Europe have attained so many positions because they are very skilful and the Aryans are very stupid [dumm] - otherwise, how could the foreigners [sic] in Europe make such progress?" Bose also accused his Congress colleague Nehru of "seeking to make India an asylum for Jews" in early 1939, knowing full well that their number would, at most, amount to a few thousand in a population of three hundred million. So, while Bose's opinions did not stem from a place of deep ideological antisemitism, his partial ignorance of the situation for Jews in Germany and Europe at that time, combined with his political allegiances and priorities, led him to suspect that Jewish refugees being sent to India was just another manifestation of Britain flexing its colonial might, of political power play, rather than a reluctant and insufficient response to a rapidly escalating humanitarian crisis.
  25. ^ Marston 2014, pp. 117–118.
  26. ^ Gordon 1990, p. 517.
  27. ^ a b "A number of Japanese officers... saw Bose as a military incompetent as well as an unrealistic and stubborn man who saw only his own needs and problems and could not see the larger picture of the war as the Japanese had to."[26]
  28. ^
    • Markovits, Claude (2021), India and the World: A History of Connections, c.1750–2000, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, pp. 79, 113, 114, doi:10.1017/9781316899847, ISBN 978-1-107-18675-0, LCCN 2021000609, S2CID 233601747, (pp. 113–114) y. Amongst the 16,000 Indian prisoners taken by the Axis armies in North Africa, some 3,000 joined the so-called 'Legion of Free India' ('Freies Indien Legion'), in fact the 950th Infantry Regiment of the Wehrmacht, formed in 1942 in response to the call of dissident Indian nationalist leader Subhas Chandra Bose (1897–1945)... As a fighting force, however, the legion proved singularly ineffective...from a strictly military point of view, Bose's attempt was a total fiasco
  29. ^ Moreman 2013, pp. 124–125.
  30. ^ McLynn 2011, p. 429.
  31. ^ Gordon 1990, pp. 459–460.
  32. ^ Stein 2010, pp. 305, 325.
  33. ^ Matthews, Roderick (2021), Peace, Poverty, and Betrayal: A New History of British India, Oxford University Press, By this point the Congress leadership was in turmoil after the election of Subhas Chandra Bose as president in 1938. His victory was taken, principally by Bose himself, as proof that Gandhi's star was in decline, and that the Congress could now switch to his personal programme of revolutionary change. He set no store by non-violence and his ideals were pitched a good deal to the left of Gandhi's. His plans also included a large amount of leadership from himself. This autocratic temperament alienated virtually the whole Congress high command, and when he forced himself into the presidency again the next year, the Working Committee revolted. Bose, bitter and broken in health, complained that the 'Rightists' had conspired to bring him down. This was true, but Bose, who seems to have had a talent for misreading situations, seriously overestimated the strength of his support—a significant miscalculation, for it led him to resign in order to create his own faction, the Forward Bloc, modelled on the kind of revolutionary national socialism fashionable across much of Europe at the time.
  34. ^ Haithcox, John Patrick (1971), Communism and Nationalism in India: M. N. Roy and Comintern Policy, 1920–1939, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 282–283, ISBN 0-691-08722-9, LCCN 79120755, One of the principal points of dispute between Bose and the Congress high command was the attitude the party should take toward the proposed Indian federation. The 1935 Constitution provided for a union of the princely states with the provinces of British India on a federal basis...Following his election for a second term, Bose charged that some members of the Working Committee were willing to compromise on this issue. Incensed at this allegation, all but three of the fifteen members of the Working Committee resigned. The exception was Nehru, Bose himself, and his brother Sarat. There was no longer any hope for reconciliation between the dissidents and the old guard.
  35. ^ Low 2002, pp. 297, 313.
  36. ^ Gordon 1990, pp. 420–428.
  37. ^ Hayes 2011, pp. 65–67, 152.
  38. ^ Hayes 2011, p. 76.
  39. ^ Hayes 2011, p. 162.
  40. ^ Hayes 2011, pp. 87–88.
  41. ^ Hayes 2011, pp. 114–116.
  42. ^ a b Gordon 1990, pp. 344–345.
  43. ^ Hayes 2011, pp. 15, 65–67.
  44. ^ a b Hayes 2011, pp. 141–143.
  45. ^ Bose 2005, p. 255.
  46. ^ Lebra 2008a, pp. vii–ix, xvi–xvii, 210–212...the capture of Singapore and with it thousands of Indian POWs, and reports by Major Fujiwara of the creation of a revolutionary Indian army eager to fight the British out of India. Fujiwara presided at the birth of the Indian National Army, together with a young Sikh, Captain Mohan Singh.
  47. ^ Gordon, Leonard (2008), "Indian National Army" (PDF), in William A. Darity Jr. (ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2nd Edition, Volume 3, pp. 610–611, archived (PDF) from the original on 1 November 2021, retrieved 1 November 2021, The Indian National Army (INA) was formed in 1942 by Indian prisoners of war captured by the Japanese in Singapore.
  48. ^ Low 1993, pp. 31–32 A few months later Subhas Bose, who had long been Nehru's rival for the plaudits of the younger Indian nationalists, joined the Axis powers, and in due course formed the Indian National Army to support the Japanese. ... In October 1943 ... Subhas Bose established under their auspices a Provisional Government of Azad Hind (Free India)
  49. ^ McLynn 2011, pp. 295–296.
  50. ^ Wolpert 2009, p. 69.
  51. ^ Bayly & Harper 2007, p. 22.
  52. ^ Wolpert 2000, pp. 339–340.
  53. ^ Chatterji 2007, p. 278.
  54. ^ a b Bayly & Harper 2007, p. 21.
  55. ^ Marston 2014, p. 129.
  56. ^ Fay 1995, p. 522.
  57. ^ "'Bose appreciated the role of RSS in nation building'". The Times of India. 5 August 2024. ISSN 0971-8257. Retrieved 26 June 2025.
  58. ^ PTI (23 January 2025). "Parakram Diwas 2025: PM Modi, VP Dhankar pay tributes to Subhash Chandra Bose on his birth anniversary". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 26 June 2025.
  59. ^ Nag, Jayatri (23 January 2024). "Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose had clear vision for India: RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat". The Economic Times. ISSN 0013-0389. Retrieved 26 June 2025.
  60. ^ "'Way ahead of your IQ': Kangana Ranaut, mocked over 'Netaji first PM' remark". India Today. 5 April 2024. Retrieved 26 June 2025.
  61. ^ Hayes 2011, p. 165.


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