Netaji: The Forgotten Hero

Subhas Chandra Bose, also known as Netaji, was an Indian nationalist who dedicated his life to freeing India from British rule. During World War II, the British arrested him 11 times until he finally escaped. With the help of the Axis powers, Bose led thousands of people around the world to join forces in the fight for his country's freedom.

In 1945, Japan reported that a plane crash had claimed his life. Although most Indians believed that Netaji had faked his death, their hero never resurfaced. Since then, people have celebrated his bravery, patriotism, and willingness to die for India.

Youth

Netaji was born as Subhas Chandra Bose on 23 January 1897 in Cuttack, in the state of Odisha, but followed his brothers to their studies in Calcutta and then in England. One of 14 children, he acquired a decent education from a young age and pursued his studies at Presidency College. However, he did not complete his studies. After attacking a professor who allegedly denounced India, Netaji was expelled from school. He later pursued philosophy at Scottish Church College and managed to obtain a BA.

Later, when he was preparing for the Indian Civil Service examinations (to become an Indian civil servant of the British Empire), decided not to appear in the final exam. Inspired by the ideas of Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda, he realizes the spiritual and cultural heritage of India and considers that his country is being exploited by the English colonizers.

Freedom Activist

After graduation, Netaji moved to Britain and attended Fitzwilliam College. However, he returned home fairly quickly, as he did not want to work in Britain. The new graduate became involved in nationalist activities and found himself at odds with the British authorities. Back in India, Subhas Chandra Bose followed in the footsteps of his mentor Chittaranjan Das, a Bengali figure who had played an important role in the Indian independence movement, and joined the Congress Party.

He became its general secretary and worked with Nehru. However, his ideas on how to achieve independence were in opposition to the practice of non-violence advocated by Mahatma Gandhi. He was arrested several times by the British for civil disobedience and imprisoned.

In prison in 1925, he contracted tuberculosis. However, the disease did not hinder his determination to fight for a free India. In 1927, Netaji was released from prison. He became Mayor of Calcutta in 1930 and was even briefly President of the Indian National Congress. However, opposition from Mohandas Gandhi led to his resignation.

During the 1930s, Subhas Chandra Bose travelled to Europe, met Benito Mussolini and visited Soviet Russia, which inspired him to write his book on the struggle for Indian independence, The Indian Struggle 1920 - 1942.

In July 1940, Netaji organized a large demonstration and the authorities arrested him for inciting rebellion against the government. While in prison, he decided that he would ask the Axis powers for help, but first he needed to get out. After six days of his freedom fast during which he did not eat, he was released. He intended to flee India to Berlin.

Escape From India

While Netaji was awaiting trial on 26 January 1941, he arranged for a car to pick him up in the early hours of the morning. Disguised, he made his way to a train that would take him to Peshawar, Pakistan. From there, he met an associate who drove him with armed guards to Afghanistan.

Although Netaji sought help from the Japanese and Russian embassies in Afghanistan, it was ultimately the Italian ambassador who granted him an Italian passport and a car to transport him to Russia. The final leg of his escape involved a flight from Moscow to Berlin, where he finally arrived on 3 April 1941.

Destination: Germany

In Germany, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose received great support. He wrote a proposal to the Germans about his goals and how they could help each other. In response, the German Foreign Office allowed him to set up the Free India Centre, which allowed him to work and spread messages to rally support for his cause in Europe and India. Under this department, the charismatic leader founds Azad Hind Fauj (the Indian National Army) and an Indian government in exile.

Initially, the group consisted of a few Indian students in Germany. Then incredibly, Netaji convinced thousands of POWs captured fighting for Britain to now train under German officers. Along with the Germans, the Legion would unite in the common cause of crushing the British. Meanwhile, their leader intended to raise 100,000 soldiers who would prepare to parachute into India, fight the British and liberate the country. Bose managed to gather a group of about 3000 POWs.

Netaji met with men like Heinrich Himmler and eventually gained an audience with Adolf Hitler. Hitler initially appeared to support the idea of invading India once the Germans had defeated the Russians at Stalingrad. During their meeting, Hitler supported the idea of Bose going to Japan.

A Free India Centre army was already forming there and the Japanese had already expressed to Hitler their desire to invite this Indian leader, whom they greatly respected. They too wanted to free Asia from Western colonial rule.

Destination: Japan

The Indian freedom fighter left the Legion behind in Germany and in February 1943 he went in a German submarine to Madagascar where he was transferred to a Japanese submarine. Once in Japan, he took control of the Indian National Army and provided it with the leadership it desperately needed.

Unfortunately for him, the fate of this army was tied to that of Japan. After Japan's defeat, they surrendered to the Allies on 15 August 1945. So did the Indian National Army. As a result, Japan could no longer provide assistance to the cause of free India.

Once again looking for a government that could possibly defeat the British, Netaji contemplated leaving Japan to ally himself with the Soviets, whose relations with the British seemed to be deteriorating.

Plane Crash Theory

A few days after Japan's surrender, Netaji boarded a Mitsubishi Ki-21 bomber in Saigon. He planned to land at Dalian in Manchuria. The Japanese still controlled the city, but the Soviets had taken control of the rest of the region and were moving rapidly south. Bose would make contact with the Soviets and be transferred to their territory with the help of Japanese officers.

Historians still debate whether he ever made it to Dalian. The official report says that his plane crashed on August 18, 1945, while taking off from a pit stop in Taiwan, and that the Indian leader suffered fatal burns. The Japanese reported the incident on August 23 and later cremated Bose and took his ashes to Renkō-ji temple. There is some doubt.

Justice MK Mukherjee Commission clarified that the data collected indicated that Bose had been secretly sent to the Soviet Union with the consent of the Japanese authorities and that the ashes kept in the Japanese shrine of Renkoji belonged to a Japanese soldier who died of a heart attack.

Consequently, stories trying to explain his disappearance broke out among the freedom fighters. After all, he had demonstrated his mastery of secret maneuvers to evade even the most powerful governments.

Theories about Netaji

There are two main theories as to what may have happened to the man, assuming he did not die in the plane crash. Some believe that he faked his own death and hid in the Soviet Union. Others believe that the Soviet Union imprisoned him and that he may have died in prison or lived out the rest of his days in Russia.

The Consequences

After the end of World War II, Indian citizens could focus on independence. In 1947, the British vowed to leave India. The country was free just two years after Netaji's predicted death. Although others were committed to India's freedom, Netaji had abilities that few others had. He shaped the minds and hearts of thousands of men according to his own ideals to fight to the death if necessary. In his fight for an independent India, he became the unsung hero and still remains a mystery today.

Subhas Chandra Bose, a contemporary of Gandhi and Nehru in the struggle for Indian independence, was long overlooked due to his alliance with the Germans and Japanese during World War II. But since the mid-1990s, his name has resurfaced and many public places have been named in his honour. 

In the mid-1990s, with the rise to power in some states of nationalist parties such as the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, several public places were renamed in honour of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, most notably the iconic Marine Drive in Bombay in 1996. In Calcutta, it was the government of the time that renamed the Dum Dum International Airport as Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Airport in 1995.

In 2004, director Shyam Benegal's film Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero depicts the life of Subhas Chandra Bose in Nazi Germany: 1941–1943 and Japanese-occupied Asia from 1943–1945 and the events leading to the formation of Azad Hind Fauj (Indian National Army). The film won awards in India and was critically acclaimed in Britain at the BFI London Film Festival. It was screened at the Indian Independence Day ceremony on 14 August 2016.

Several quotes from Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose are regularly used by Indian politicians and in particular, Jai Hind (glory to India) adopted by the Indian government.

In 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared his birthday, January 23, as Parakram Diwas.

Declassified Files

In 2015, the West Bengal government opened its archives on Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, and by the end of the same year, the national government had done the same. The documents shed little new light on the independence leader's disappearance, but his family did discover that his siblings and their descendants (he had 13 brothers and sisters) had been under surveillance by the Indian government until 1972.

Records also show that the Indian government paid a pension to Subhas Chandra Bose's widow, Emily Schenkl, an Austrian woman with whom he had a daughter, Anita Bose Pfaff, and whom he left in Austria with no income to join the Japanese front in 1942.

Documents seem to prove that Netaji did not die in a plane crash in Manchuria (or over Taiwan according to some sources) on 18 August 1945, but continued to live abroad for years, particularly in Beijing, in circumstances known to the leadership. This was confirmed, on the 70th anniversary of Bose's presumed death, by the Chief Minister of the Indian state of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, who claims that 64 letters and other documents now made available indicate that the independence leader survived much longer than previously believed or suggested.