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Subhash Chandra Bose
Netajiposter in Thiruvananthapuram
Subhas Chandra Bose (January 23, 1897 - August 18,1945) also known as Netaji, was a prominent leader of the movement to win independencefrom British rule. Bose helped organize and later lead the Indian National Army puttogether with Indian prisoners-of-war and plantation workers from Singapore and SoutheastAsia.
Early life
He was educated at the Protestant European School and theRavenshaw Collegiate School in Cuttack, now in Orissa, the Presidency College, Calcutta,the Scottish Church College, Calcutta and the University of Cambridge . He resigned fromthe prestigious Indian Civil Service, despite placing fourth on the merit list, to jointhe freedom movement. Bose was once president of the Indian National Congress. He waselected for a second term against the wishes of Mahatma Gandhi, who supported PattabhiSitaramayya. Although Bose won the election, Gandhi's continued opposition led to theresignation of the Working Committee which further put pressure on Bose to finallyresign. After having left the Congress Bose formed a separate party, the All IndiaForward Bloc.
Actions during the Second World War
In Germany
At thestart of World War II, Bose traveled to Germany where he joined the Special Bureau forIndia under Adam von Trott zu Solz, broadcasting on the German-sponsored Azad Hind Radio.He founded the Free India Centre in Berlin and established the Indian Legion, (consistingof some 4500 soldiers) from Indian prisoners of war who had previously fought for theBritish in North Africa. The Azad Hind legion was attached to the Waffen SS, and theyswore their allegiance to Hitler and Bose for the independence of India. Recent researchhas shown that after the Normandy landings, the French resistance and military openlyshot unarmed and surrendered Indian legionaries who had tried to escape to neutralSwitzerland, in defiance of the norms of the Geneva Convention in 1944. Though there werea few incidents of the rape which its German liaison officers claimed that they wereunable to control, on the whole it was a disciplined unit.
Bose had openlycriticised Hitler's treatment of Jews, annulment of democratic institutions in Germanyand Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union.
Disappointed with the support forIndian independence from Hitler, he travelled by submarine around the Cape of Good Hopeto Imperial Japan, which helped him to raise his army. This was the onlycivilian-transfer across two different submarines of two different navies in World WarII.
In Japan
A testament to Bose's organizational acumen, the IndianNational Army consisted of some 85000 regular troops, a separate women's army unit namedafter Rani Lakshmi Bai (in a regular army, the women's army unit was the first of itskind in Asia), who gave her life in the First War of Independence in 1857. These wereunder the aegis of a regular government, with its own currency, court and civil code,named the "Provisional Government of Free India" (or the Arzi Hukumate Azad Hind) andrecognised by nine states: Germany, Japan, Italy, Croatia, Nationalist China, Siam,Burma, Manchukuo and the Philippines. On the declaration of its formation in Singapore,President Eamon de Valera of the neutral Irish Free State sent a note of congratulationsto Bose. This government had participated as a delegate or observer in theJapanese-controlled so-called Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
En routeto India, some of Bose's troops assisted in the Japanese victory over the British in thebattles of Arakan and Meiktila, along with the Burmese National Army led by Ba Maw andAung San. In the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal and India'snortheastern towns of Kohima and Imphal, where the Provisional Government wasestablished, the I.N.A. was forced to pull back due to sudden withdrawal of Japanese aircover with Japan's retreat following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Collaborationist or Patriot?
Though his role in collaborating with the Axis hasbeen criticised by many commentators, he is still considered by many, as having taken aheroic stance against oppressive British imperialism.
At the time of the startof the Second World War, great divisions existed in the Indian independence movementabout whether to exploit the weakness of the British to achieve independence. Many feltthat any distinctions between the political allegiances and ideologies of the warringfactions of Europe were inconsequential in the face of the possibility of Indianindependence, and that it was immensely hypocritical of the British to condemnpro-democracy Indians for allying themselves with anti-democratic Axis forces when theBritish themselves showed so little respect for democracy or democratic reforms in India.
Though Bose did ally himself with the Axis powers, there is little to suggest heshared anything approaching their doctrines of racial superiority; instead it appears hewas motivated to join them largely out of political pragmatism i.e., on the logic "Theenemy's enemy is a friend". It is perhaps best to view his actions through the prism ofrealpolitik, though whether he genuinely believed that a Japanese-occupied Asia wouldrespect the neutrality of an independent India is unfortunately unknown.
Re-evaluation of Netaji
Netaji mural in Kolkata
Bose and theunit's heroism is still remembered among many Indians. It is also fondly remembered bysome Japanese and Indian historians who see Japanese efforts to support Bose assupporting the view that it was fighting a war on behalf of the oppressed peoples ofAsia.
The projection of Bose as a collaborator has been criticised by manycommentators, who claim that what many fail to see is the fundamentally oppressive natureof the British rule in India. Nothwithstanding the democratic credentials of Britain andthe United States in their own countries, they did not extend it to their colonies. Bosehimself claimed he could see little difference between the fundamentally oppressivenature of either British imperialism or Axis's fascism despite having lived in ColonialIndia, democratic Britain and Fascist Germany.
What many Western and Westerninspired scholars fail to see was that the Indian National Army, or Azad Hind Fauz (inHindustani) was an organization devoid of any of the divisive energies of provincialism,casteism, communalism, bigotry, parochialism, religious fundamentalism, orthodoxy due tosocial obscurantism and social intolerance, which in their wake, have more often thannot, caused harm to India's secular and socio-cultural fabric. However certain degrees ofcaste and religious prejudice existed. There was also significant dissent among thevolunteers of the Free Indian Legion of the Waffen-SS because the Germans organised theunit on meritocratic rather than caste and religious lines.
Gandhi called Bosethe "Patriot of Patriots" (Bose had called Gandhi "Father of the Nation"). He has beengiven belated recognition in India, by renaming Calcutta's civil airport and a universityin his name. Many of the ideals of Bose have been adopted in independent India like theadoption of Rabindranath Tagore's "Jana Gana Mana", the national song of the ProvisionalGovernment of Azad Hind as independent India's National Anthem, the adoption of Hindi asIndia's national language, the tricolour of India's national flag (inspired partly fromthe flag of the Azad Hind Fauz).
Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose InternationalAirport, located in Dum Dum, West Bengal, near Kolkata (Calcutta) is named after him.Bose was posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award in 1992,but it was later withdrawn in response to a Supreme Court of India directive following aPublic Interest Litigation filed in the Court against the "posthumous" nature of theaward. The Award Committee could not give conclusive evidence of Bose's death and thus itinvalidated the "posthumous" award.
Death
Bose is supposed to have died in aplane crash over Taiwan while flying to Tokyo. However, his body was never recovered, andconspiracy theories concerning his possible survival abound. One such claims that Boseactually died in Siberia, while in Soviet captivity.
Mr. Harin Shah, an Indianjournalist, visited Taipei and was shown a plane crash site (supposedly of Bose's plane).Photos can be found at [1]
However, in an Indian investigation into his death,Taiwan told the inquiry that Bose could not have died in a plane crash in the country,stating that there "were no plane crashes at Taipei between 14 August and 20 September1945." [2]
Despite this testimony three separate Indian governmentinvestigations have concluded that Bose died in the plane crash, although a fourthone-man board convened in 1999, the Mukherjee Commission, will not issue its conclusionsuntil 14 May 2005.
Important people met by Bose
http://experts.about.com/e/s/su/Subhash_Chandra_Bose.htm