Subhas Chandra Bose was an Indian freedom fighter and one of the causes to Indian freedom. He was known as Netaji. He was the President of Indian National Congress (INC) from 1938 to 1939. He attempted to get rid of the British rule in India during the World War II
Subhas Bose, aged 24 joined the non-cooperation movement led by Mahatma Gandhi, aged 51 and the Indian National Congress. In 1923, he became the President of the All India Youth Congress. During the mid 1930s he travelled in Europe and observed the political and social movements in various countries. By 1938 he became a leader of national stature and became the Congress president. After reelection in 1939, many differences arose between him and Gandhi. Gandhi was a firm believer of ahimsa and satyagraha while, for Bose Gandhi's strategy would be inadequate for securing independence. The senior leadership in the Congress supported Gandhi, and Bose resigned as president and was eventually ousted from the party. On January 17, 1941, though closely watched, he escaped from his Calcutta residence at Elgin Road in disguise as a Pathan and traveling via Kabul and Moscow, eventually reached Germany.
In April 1941 Bose arrived in Nazi Germany, where the leadership offered unexpected but equivocal sympathy for India's Independence and German funds were used to open a Free India Centre and Azad Hind Radio in Berlin. He was attached to the Special Bureau for India. The first troops of the Indian Legion were recruited from Indian prisoners of war (POWs) captured at El Mekili, Libya during the battle of Tobruk. 27 POWs as potential officers were flown to Berlin in May 1941.
Subsequently, a 3,000 strong force was recruited from among the POWs to serve under Bose. The Indian Legion or the 950th (Indian) Infantry Regiment was a military unit raised initially as part of the German Army and later the Waffen-SS from August 1944. Intended to serve as a liberation force for British ruled India, it was made up of prisoners of war and expatriates in Europe.
By the spring of 1942, the German Army was mired in Russia. Bose was keen to move to southeast Asia where Japan had just won quick victories and had invited him to revamp the Indian National Army. Adolf Hitler during his meeting with Bose in May 1942 offered to arrange a submarine.
Bose boarded a submarine in February 1943. Off Madagascar, he was transferred to a Japanese submarine from which he disembarked in Japanese held Sumatra in May 1943.This was the only civilian transfer between two submarines of two different navies in World War II.
He left behind his wife Emilie Schenki, (whom he married in 1937), an Austrian by birth who became a German subject and his daughter Anita Bose Pfaff in Europe.
With Japanese support, Bose revamped the Indian National Army (INA), which was first formed in 1942 under Captain Mohan Singh and comprised Indian POWs captured by the Japanese in the Malayan campaign and at Singapore. The INA revived under Subhas Chandra Bose comprised of a strength of about 50,000 with Subhas Brigade having three Infantry battalions, the Gandhi Brigade having two infantry battalions, the Azad Brigade with three infantry battalions, the Nehru Brigade and a special operations group called the Bahadur group. The INA was declared to be the army of Azad Hind.
INA had a separate women's unit, the Rani of Jhansi Regiment headed by Captain Lakshmi Swaminathan, which is seen as a first of its kind in Asia.
A Provisional Government of Free India or simply ''Azad Hind'' was declared in October 1943 in Japanese occupied Singapore and the Japanese handed over nominal authority of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands on 30 December, 1943. The Islands were renamed ''Shaheed and Swaraj'. However, the Japanese Navy remained in control of the Island's administration.
On the Indian mainland, an Indian Tricolour, modelled after the Indian National Congress, was raised for the first time in Moirang, in Manipur.
Azad Hind Government, which came to evolve its own currency, postage stamps, court and civil code was recognized by nine Axis states, the Independent State of Croatia, Wang Jingwei regime in Nanjing, China a provisional government of Burma, Manchukuo and Japanese controlled Philippines. This government participated in the so called Greater East Asia Conference in November 1943, as an observer.
Spoken as part of a motivational speech for the INA at a rally of Indians in Burma on 4 July 1944, Bose's most famous quote was ''Give me blood, and I shall give you freedom''.
In late 1944 and early 1945, the Indian Army reversed the Japanese attack (to include INA) on India. A number of Japanese and INA personals suffered casualties. The INA troops retreated with Bose towards Malaya or to Thailand. Bose then chose to seek a future in the Soviet Union which he believed to have turned anti-British.
His death in August 1945, in a plane crash in Taihoku (Japanese Taiwan), is doubted by many. The initial investigations carried out by the British Army, the government of British India, the government of Japan and the Allied Forces reached the conclusion that Netaji suffered severe burns during the crash and died in the hospital on the same day. The mystery grew after Netaji's brother Suresh Chandra Bose, who was part of the Shahnawaz Khan inquiry committee set up in 1956, to investigate his death refused to sign the report and accept that Netaji had died in an air crash, indicating this was a cover up. In 1970, Justice Khosla Commission also reached the conclusion as the others, that he had died in the air crash. However, in 1999, the Mukherjee Commission's report what the public had speculated that he did not die in the crash and the ashes in the Japanese temple are not his. However, Bose's daughter Anita did not approve of DNA test on the Ashes, even though some other members of his family were in favour. All the family members though request on bringing the ashes back to India. Thus the mystery continues.
Subhas Chandra Bose believed that the Bhagwat Gita was a great source of inspiration. His mother's stories of goddess Kali, Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda inspired him and set him apart from the majority of leaders who dotted the Indian landscape.
He expressed his admiration for the authoritarian methods he saw in Italy and Germany during the 1930s and thought they could be used to build an independent India.
Bose was featured on postage stamps in India from 1964, 1993, 1997, 2001, 2016 and 2018. He also featured in coins in 1996 and 1997., 2018 and 2021. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport at Kolkata, Neta Subhash Chandra Bose Island, formerly Ross Island. On 23 August 2007, Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe said that Japanese are deeply moved by Bose's strong will to have led the Indian Independence movement from British Rule and that Netaji is a much respected name in Japan.
Postage
Coins
In 2021, the Government of India declared 23 January a Parakram Divas to commemorate the birth anniversary of Bose. The Prime Minister of India unveiled a digital statue of Netaji at the India Gate, to mark his 125th birth anniversary. This would soon be replaced by a granite statue, as a tribute to the leader who gave everything for India's freedom.
Postage stamps, Subhas Chandra Bose
