Bose, Subhas Chandra

Bose, Subhas Chandra

(sho͝obhäsh` chŭn`drə bōs), 1897–1945?, Indian nationalist also known as Netaji. He began his political career in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and soon became the leader of the left wing of the Indian National CongressIndian National Congress,
Indian political party, founded in 1885. Its founding members proposed economic reforms and wanted a larger role in the making of British policy for India.
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. He was president of the party in 1938–39 but was forced to resign after a dispute with Mohandas GandhiGandhi, Mohandas Karamchand
, 1869–1948, Indian political and spiritual leader, b. Porbandar. In South Africa

Educated in India and in London, he was admitted to the English bar in 1889 and practiced law unsuccessfully in India for two years.
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; he advocated militancy to achieve independence for India and believed in dictatorship to unify the country. Jailed by the British for his Axis sympathies in World War II, he escaped (1941) and fled to Germany. In 1943 he headed in Singapore a Japanese-sponsored "provisional government of India" and organized an "Indian national army." Although sympathetic to totalitarianism, his collaboration was principally directed toward freeing India from British rule and the establishment of an independent regime. He was said to have died in an airplane crash in Taiwan, but in 2005 the Taiwanese government said that an investigation showed that no crash had occurred.

Bibliography

See his collected writings and letters, ed. by J. S. Bright (2d ed. 1947); biography by S. Bose (2011); L. Gordon, Brothers against the Raj (1990).

Bose, Subhas Chandra

 

Born Jan. 23, 1897, in Cuttack, Orissa; died Aug. 18, 1945, in Taiwan. Figure of the Indian national liberation movement.

In 1924–25, Bose was a member of the Swarajist Party. In 1928, together with J. Nehru, he was the leader of the “left” in the Indian National Congress. In 1939 he founded the petit bourgeois party of the Forward bloc. Believing that any opponent of England was an ally in the Indian national struggle, Bose sought aid in Germany and Japan. In 1941 he fled to Germany, and in 1942 in Japanese-occupied Burma he became the leader of the so-called Free India government; from Indian prisoners of war he created the Indian National Army, which fought against England on the side of Japan. Bose perished in an airplane crash.