Subhas Chandra Bose

Early Life and the Indian Civil Service

Bose was born on 23 January 1897 in Cuttack, Odisha, to Janakinath Bose, a lawyer, and Prabhavati Devi. As a student at Presidency College, Calcutta, he was drawn to the teachings of Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda, an influence he later credited with shaping his sense of nationalist purpose; he was briefly expelled from the college in 1916 for his role in an altercation involving a professor accused of racial insult toward Indian students. He went on to Cambridge University, where he prepared for the Indian Civil Service examination, placing fourth in the 1920 examination. He resigned before taking up the post, choosing instead to return to India and enter nationalist politics.

Congress Career and Break with Gandhi

Bose entered Bengal politics as a protégé of Chittaranjan Das, becoming chief executive officer of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation in 1924 while Das served as mayor, and was imprisoned without trial in Mandalay, Burma, from 1925 to 1927, where he contracted tuberculosis. He rose within the Indian National Congress through the 1930s, advocating a more confrontational, and where necessary armed, path to independence than Gandhi's non-violent civil disobedience. Elected Congress President at the 1938 Haripura session, he was re-elected in 1939 at Tripuri against Gandhi's preferred candidate, Pattabhi Sitaramayya, but the resulting split within the Congress working committee left him unable to govern effectively; he resigned within months and founded the All India Forward Bloc to organize the party's left wing independently.

Escape to Germany and the Free India Legion

During an earlier period in Europe in the mid-1930s, spent partly for health treatment following repeated British imprisonment, Bose met Emilie Schenkl in Vienna; the two married privately in 1937, a marriage kept out of public view, and their daughter, Anita Bose Pfaff, was born in Vienna in November 1942 while Bose was based in Germany. Placed under British house arrest at his Calcutta home in 1940, Bose staged a disguised escape in January 1941, travelling overland through Peshawar, Kabul and Moscow to reach Berlin in April. There he established the Free India Centre and Azad Hind Radio, and organized the Free India Legion from roughly 3,000 Indian prisoners of war captured by German forces in North Africa. He met Hitler once, in May 1942, in a brief and unproductive encounter, and grew increasingly frustrated as Germany's priorities shifted to the war against the Soviet Union.

Journey to Southeast Asia and Command of the INA

In February 1943 Bose left Kiel aboard the German submarine U-180 and, in a mid-ocean transfer off Madagascar in April, moved to the Japanese submarine I-29 for the remainder of the journey to Sumatra and then Tokyo. In Southeast Asia he took over the leadership of the Indian Independence League and the Indian National Army from Rash Behari Bose, who had reorganized the movement after an earlier INA raised by Mohan Singh from Indian prisoners of war in 1942 had collapsed amid disputes with Japanese commanders. Assuming command at Singapore in July 1943, Bose proclaimed the Provisional Government of Free India (Azad Hind) on 21 October 1943, which received diplomatic recognition from Japan, Germany, Italy and other Axis-aligned states and was granted nominal control of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, briefly renamed Shaheed and Swaraj Islands. He also raised the Rani of Jhansi Regiment, an all-women combat unit commanded by Captain Lakshmi Sahgal.

Military Campaign and Retreat

At its peak the INA numbered somewhere in the tens of thousands, drawn from Indian prisoners of war and from the Indian expatriate community in Southeast Asia. Addressing INA recruits in Burma in July 1944, Bose delivered the line for which he is most remembered: "Give me blood, and I shall give you freedom." In 1944 INA units advanced into Manipur alongside the Japanese 15th Army as part of the Imphal-Kohima campaign, planting the Indian flag at Moirang. Monsoon conditions, collapsed supply lines and sustained resistance from the British-Indian 14th Army under General William Slim turned the campaign into one of the largest defeats suffered by Japanese forces in the war, and INA units retreated through Burma alongside the Japanese through 1944 and 1945.

Disappearance and Subsequent Inquiries

Bose was reported to have died on 18 August 1945, after a Japanese heavy bomber crashed shortly after takeoff from Taihoku airfield in Taiwan; he reportedly suffered severe burns and died hours later, was cremated in Taipei, and his ashes were later moved to the Renkoji Temple in Tokyo, where they remain. Persistent public doubt led to three Indian government inquiries: the Shah Nawaz Committee (1956) and the Khosla Commission (1970) both concluded he died in the crash, while the Justice Mukherjee Commission (2005) concluded the crash account was not established, a finding the Government of India rejected as unsupported. No account commands universal acceptance.

Legacy

Bose is known honorifically as Netaji. His wartime slogan Jai Hind has since been adopted as a salutation used by the Indian armed forces and public officials. Kolkata's international airport is named for him, and the surviving officers and men of the INA became a major political issue in the final years before independence through their trial at the Red Fort in 1945–46.