Subhas Chandra Bose

Subash Chandra Bose^[c] was an Indian nationalist, who worked with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan^[d][e] in World War II,^[5][f] backing the Nazi policy^[g][h] towards Jews,^[9][10] which he considered justified in the fight against British colonialism. This put him at odds with other Indian nationalists,^[i][j] making him controversial among mainstream historians due to his Nazi support.^[k][l] He was born in a large Bengali family on January 23, 1897 in Cuttack.

Netaji Subash Chandra Bose
सुभाष चंद्र बोस সুভাষ চন্দ্র বসু
Head of Azad Hind[b]
In office 21 October 1943 – 18 August 1945
Preceded by	Office created
Succeeded by	Office abolished
President of the Indian National Congress
In office 1938–1939
Preceded by	Jawaharlal Nehru
Succeeded by	Rajendra Prasad
Personal details
Born	(1897-01-23)23 January 1897 Cuttack, Bengal Presidency, British India (present-day Odisha, India)
Died	18 August 1945 (aged 48) Taihoku, Japanese Taiwan (present-day Taipei, Taiwan)
Political party	Indian National Congress Forward Bloc (1939–1940)
Spouse(s)	Emilie Schenkl
Children	Anita Bose Pfaff
Mother	Prabhavati Dutt
Father	Janakinath Bose
Education	Ravenshaw Collegiate Scottish Church College
Alma mater	University of Calcutta Fitzwilliam College
Known for	Indian nationalism
Signature

Career

He was the President of Indian National Congress from 1938 to 1939. He took over the INA from Rash Behari Bose in July 1943 who co-founded the Azad Hind Army or Indian National Army (now Bharat National Army) with the help of Japan in 1942.

Netaji meeting Adolf Hitler on 27 May 1942 at his headquarters, The Wolf's Lair in Rastenburng, Prussia

Death

He attempted to get rid of British rule in Bharat, but died in a plane crash in August 18, 1945 in Japanese-occupied Taiwan.^[m]

Foototes

1. "Tojo turned over all his Indian POWs to Bose's command, and in October 1943 Bose announced the creation of a Provisional Government of Azad ('Free') India, of which he became head of state, prime minister, minister of war, and minister of foreign affairs. Some two million Indians were living in Southeast Asia when the Japanese seized control of that region, and these emigrees were the first 'citizens' of that government, founded under the 'protection' of Japan and headquartered on the 'liberated' Andaman Islands. Bose declared war on the United States and Great Britain the day after his government was established."^[1]
2. Azad Hind was a provisional government formed to liberate India with Japanese support, and based initially in the Japanese occupied Andaman Islands and later in Japanese-occupied Singapore during World War II.^[a][1][2]
3. Bengali: সুভাষ চন্দ্র বসু
4. "To many [Congress leaders], Bose's programme resembled that of the Japanese fascists, who were in the process of losing their gamble to achieve Asian ascendancy through war. Nevertheless, the success of his soldiers in Burma had stirred as much patriotic sentiment among Indians as the sacrifices of imprisoned Congress leaders."^[3]
5. "Marginalized within Congress and a target for British surveillance, Bose chose to embrace the fascist powers as allies against the British and fled India, first to Hitler's Germany, then, on a German submarine, to a Japanese-occupied Singapore. The force that he put together ... known as the Indian National Army (INA) and thus claiming to represent free India, saw action against the British in Burma but accomplished little toward the goal of a march on Delhi. ... Bose himself died in an aeroplane crash trying to reach Japanese-occupied territory in the last months of the war. ... It is this heroic, martial myth that is today remembered, rather than Bose's wartime vision of a free India under the authoritarian rule of someone like himself."^[4]
6. Not all Indians, even within the Congress, agreed with the anti-fascist position of the CFD (Congress Foreign Department), and no foreign policy initiative went without contestation. There remained many in India who formally and informally challenged this position by supporting fascist regimes over anti-fascist solidarity. Most prominent was Subhas Chandra Bose, a left-leaning Congressmen from Bengal who famously aligned with and raised an Indian army to support the Axis powers in the Second World War. Well before the war and at the same time that the CFD championed the anti-fascist cause in Spain and Abyssinia, Bose argued in letters to Nehru that his foreign policy was 'nebulous' and filled with 'frothy sentiments and pious platitudes' that failed to prioritise the 'nation's self-interest'.°' He appealed to Nehru to abandon 'lost causes' like Spain and instead leverage the international situation for India's advantage by serving the British a strong ultimatum at a moment when their power in Europe is threatened. He added that 'condemning countries like Germany and Italy', served no purpose for Indian nationalist goals.'^[6]
7. None of the works that deal with ... Subhas Chandra Bose, or his Indian National Army has engaged either Bose's reaction to German mass killing of Sinti and Roma (Gypsies) because their ancestors came from India or the reaction of the soldiers in his army to the sex slaves kidnapped in Japanese-occupied lands and held in enclosures attached to the camps in which they were being trained to follow their Japanese comrades in the occupation of India.^[7]
8. Bose requested a declaration from the Germans that they supported the movement for freedom in India – and in Arab countries. He had opposed Nehru in permitting political asylum to Jews fleeing Europe in 1939. He was prepared to ingratiate himself with Nazi ideology by writing for Goebells's Der Angriff in 1942. He argued that anti-Semitism should become a factor in the struggle for Indian freedom since the Jews had collaborated with British imperialism to exploit the country and its inhabitants.^[8]
9. Jawaharlal Nehru called the Jews 'People without a home or nation' and sponsored a resolution in the Congress Working Committee. Although the exact date is not known, yet it can be said that it probably happened in December 1938 at the Wardha session, the one that took place shortly after Nehru returned from Europe. The draft resolution read: 'The Committee sees no objection to the employment in India of such Jewish refugees as are experts and specialists and who can fit in with the new order in India and accept Indian standards.' It was, however, rejected by the then Congress President Subhas Chandra Bose, who four years later in 1942 was reported by the Jewish Chronicle of London as having published an article in Angriff, a journal of Goebbels, saying that "anti-Semitism should become part of the Indian liberation movement because Jews had helped the British to exploit Indians (21 August 1942)" Although by then Bose had left the Congress, he continued to command a strong influence within the party.^[11]
10. As a heterogeneous empire, Bose observed, the British had to be pro-Arab in India and pro-Jewish elsewhere and accused that London "has to please Jews because she cannot ignore Jewish high finance." ... Bose's anti-Jewish slur was no different from the anti-Semitic remarks in the League deliberations referred to earlier. Bose also opposed Nehru's efforts to provide asylum to a limited number of European Jewish refugees who were fleeing from Nazi persecution. Despite the opposition led by Bose, Nehru "was a strong supporter of inviting (Jewish refugees) to settle down in India... (and felt that) this was the only way by which Jews could be saved from the wrath of the Nazis... Between 1933 and the outbreak of the War, Nehru was instrumental in obtaining the entry of several German Jewish refugees into India."^[12]
11. "The most troubling aspect of Bose's presence in Nazi Germany is not military or political but rather ethical. His alliance with the most genocidal regime in history poses serious dilemmas precisely because of his popularity and his having made a lifelong career of fighting the 'good cause'. How did a man who started his political career at the feet of Gandhi end up with Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo? Even in the case of Mussolini and Tojo, the gravity of the dilemma pales in comparison to that posed by his association with Hitler and the Nazi leadership. The most disturbing issue, all too often ignored, is that in the many articles, minutes, memorandums, telegrams, letters, plans, and broadcasts Bose left behind in Germany, he did not express the slightest concern or sympathy for the millions who died in the concentration camps. Not one of his Berlin wartime associates or colleagues ever quotes him expressing any indignation. Not even when the horrors of Auschwitz and its satellite camps were exposed to the world upon being liberated by Soviet troops in early 1945, revealing publicly for the first time the genocidal nature of the Nazi regime, did Bose react."^[13]
12. Between 1938 and 1939 the reactions of the Anti-Nazi League, the Congress, and the progressive press toward German anti-Semitism and German politics showed that Indian public opinion and the nationalist leaders were fairly well informed about the events in Europe. If Bose, Savarkar and others looked favourably upon racial discrimination in Germany or did not criticise them, it cannot be said, to justify them, that they were unaware of what was happening. The great anti-Jewish pogrom known as Kristallnacht ("the Night of Broken Glass") took place on 9 November 1938. In early December, pro-Hindu Mahasabha journals published articles in favour of German anti-Semitism. This stance brought the Hindu Mahasabha into conflict with the Congress which, on 12th December, made a statement containing clear references to recent European events. Within the Congress, only Bose opposed the party stance. A few months later, in April 1939, he refused to support the party motion that Jews might find refuge in India.^[14]
13. The deaths of Subhas Chandra Bose in August 1945 and Vallabhbhai Patel in December 1950 removed not only Nehru's principal competitors for national leadership but also powerful competitors for authoritarian state ideologies. On the eve of World War II, Bose successfully challenged Gandhi's hold on Congress by being elected its president in 1938 and again in 1939. Bose, like Nehru, had been shaped by a Cambridge education and exposure to European events in the 1930s. For a time they worked together in Congress's socialist left. By 1938, they diverged on the prospects and value of fascism and on political means. Bose thought Hitler and Mussolini represented the wave of the future and would win the war they both anticipated. Nehru believed that the Soviet experiment provided economic lessons for independent India, fascism should be opposed and would be defeated, and Gandhi's and the liberal state's concerns for right means was essential. ... In ... 1943, Bose arrived ... in Singapore where, with Japanese support, he formed a government in exile (Azad Hind or Free India) and took command of the Indian National Army (INA), composed of twenty-thousand of the eighty-thousand Indian officers and men captured by the Japanese when Singapore fell. Styling himself Netaji (leader on the Fuhrer mode), he declared his objective to be liberation of India by military means.^[15]