SUBHASH CHANDRA BOSE

Subhash Chandra Bose, byname Netaji (Hindi:

“Respected Leader”), (born c. January 23,
1897, Cuttack, Orissa [now Odisha], India—
died August 18, 1945, Taipei, Taiwan?), Indian
revolutionary prominent in the independence
movement against British rule of India. He also led an
Indian national force from abroad against the Western
powers during World War II. He was a contemporary
of Mohandas K. Gandhi, at times an ally and at other
times an adversary. Bose was known in particular for
his militant approach to independence and for his
push for socialist policies.

Early Life And Political Activity

The son of a wealthy and prominent Bengali lawyer,
Bose studied at Presidency College, Calcutta (Kolkata),
from which he was expelled in 1916 for nationalist
activities, and the Scottish Churches College
(graduating in 9191). He then was sent by his parents
to the University of Cambridge in England to prepare
for the Indian Civil Service. In 1920 he passed the civil
service examination, but in April 1921, after hearing of
the nationalist turmoils in India, he resigned his
candidacy and hurried back to India. Throughout his
career, especially in its early stages, he was supported
financially and emotionally by an elder brother, Sarat
Chandra Bose (1889–1950), a wealthy Calcutta lawyer
and Indian National Congress (also known as the
Congress Party) politician.
Bose joined the noncooperation movement started
by Mohandas K. Gandhi, who had made the Indian
National Congress a powerful nonviolent organization.
Bose was advised by Gandhi to work under Chitta
Ranjan Das, a politician in Bengal. There Bose became
a youth educator, journalist, and commandant of
the Bengal Congress volunteers. His activities led to his
imprisonment in December 1921. In 1924 he was
appointed chief executive officer of the Calcutta
Municipal Corporation, with Das as mayor. Bose was
soon after deported to Burma (Myanmar) because he
was suspected of connections with secret revolutionary
movements. Released in 1927, he returned to find
Bengal Congress affairs in disarray after the death of
Das, and Bose was elected president of the Bengal
Congress. Shortly thereafter he and Jawaharlal
Nehru became the two general secretaries of the Indian
National Congress. Together they represented the
more militant, left-wing faction of the party against the
more compromising, right-wing Gandhian faction.

A Falling-Out With Gandhi
Vocal support for Gandhi increased within the Indian
National Congress, meanwhile, and, in light of this,
Gandhi resumed a more commanding role in the party.
When the civil disobedience movement was started in
1930, Bose was already in detention for his
associations with an underground revolutionary group,
the Bengal Volunteers. Nevertheless, he was elected
mayor of Calcutta while in prison. Released and then
rearrested several times for his suspected role in
violent acts, Bose was finally allowed to proceed to
Europe after he contracted tuberculosis and was
released for ill health. In enforced exile and still ill, he
wrote The Indian Struggle, 1920–1934 and pleaded
India’s cause with European leaders. He returned
from Europe in 1936, was again taken into custody,
and was released after a year.
Meanwhile, Bose became increasingly critical of
Gandhi’s more conservative economics as well as his
less confrontational approach toward independence. In
1938 he was elected president of the Indian National
Congress and formed a national planning committee,
which formulated a policy of broad industrialization.
However, this did not harmonize with Gandhian
economic thought, which clung to the notion of cottage
industries and benefiting from the use of
the country’s own resources. Bose’s vindication came
in 1939, when he defeated a Gandhian rival for
reelection. Nonetheless, the “rebel president” felt
bound to resign because of the lack of Gandhi’s
support. He founded the Forward Bloc, hoping to rally
radical elements, but was again incarcerated in July
1940. His refusal to remain in prison at this critical
period of India’s history was expressed in a
determination to fast to death, which frightened the
British government into releasing him. On January 26,
1941, though closely watched, he escaped from his
Calcutta residence in disguise and, traveling
via Kabul and Moscow, eventually reached Germany in
April.

Activity In Exile
In Nazi Germany Bose came under the tutelage of a
newly created Special Bureau for India, guided by
Adam von Trott zu Solz. He and other Indians who had
gathered in Berlin made regular broadcasts from the
German-sponsored Azad Hind Radio beginning in
January 1942, speaking
in English, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati,
and Pashto.
A little more than a year after the Japanese invasion
of Southeast Asia, Bose left Germany, traveling by
German and Japanese submarines and by plane, and
arrived in May 1943 in Tokyo. On July 4 he assumed
leadership of the Indian Independence Movement in
East Asia and proceeded, with Japanese aid and
influence, to form a trained army of about 40,000
troops in Japanese-occupied Southeast Asia. On
October 21, 1943, Bose proclaimed the establishment
of a provisional independent Indian government, and
his so-called Indian National Army (Azad Hind Fauj),
alongside Japanese troops, advanced to Rangoon
(Yangon) and thence overland into India, reaching
Indian soil on March 18, 1944, and moving
into Kohima and the plains of Imphal. In a stubborn
battle, the mixed Indian and Japanese forces, lacking
Japanese air support, were defeated and forced to
retreat; the Indian National Army nevertheless for
some time succeeded in maintaining its identity as a
liberation army, based in Burma and then Indochina.
With the defeat of Japan, however, Bose’s fortunes
ended.
A few days after Japan’s announced surrender in
August 1945, Bose, fleeing Southeast Asia, reportedly
died in a Japanese hospital in Taiwan as a result of
burn injuries from a plane crash.

Indian Independence
movement
The Indian Independence
Movement incorporated the efforts by Indians to
liberate the region from British, French
and Portuguese and form the nation-state of India. It
involved a wide spectrum of Indian political
organizations, philosophies, and rebellions between
1857 and India's emergence as an unified nation-state
on August 15, 1947.
The initial Indian Rebellion of 1857 was sparked when
soldiers serving in the British East India Company's
British Army and Indian kingdoms rebelled against the
British. After the revolt was crushed, the British
partitioned the region into British India and
the Princely States, focusing on the industrial
development of the former region. India developed a
class of educated elites whose political organizing
sought Indian political rights and representation.
However, increasing public disenchantment with the
British authority— their curtailing of Indian civil
liberties (such as the Rowlatt Act), political rights, and
culture as well as alienation from issues facing
common Indians — led to an upsurge in revolutionary
activities aimed at overthrowing the European colonial
powers, particularly the British.
The movement came to a head between 1918 and 1922
when the first series of non-violent campaigns of civil
disobedience were launched by the Indian National
Congress under the leadership of Mohandas Gandhi-
whose methods were inspired to a large extent by
the philosophy and methods of Baba Ram Singh,
a Sikh who led the Kuka Movement in the Punjab in
the 1870s. Gandhi's movement came to encompass
people from across India and across all walks of life.
These initial civil-disobedience movements soon came
to be the driving force that ultimately shaped the
cultural, religious, and political unity of a then still dis-
united nation. Committing itself to Purna Swaraj in
1930, the Congress led mass struggles between 1930
and 1932. By the late 1930s, however, with growing
disenchantments over the delaying tactics of the Raj
and the Congress's failure to extract commitment on
self-rule and political independence, a faction within
the movement turned towards more radical ideas of
Subhash Chandra Bose. Bose's actions proved
controversial among the congress party but popular
within the Indian populace, when Bose defeated in
Gandhi's candidate in leadership elections in the
Tripuri Session of the Congress Working Committee.
However, this was the parting of ways between the
radical and the conservatives. Bose left the Congress to
found his own party. During the war, who sought first
Soviet and then Axis help to raise a liberation force.
The raising of the Indian National Army in 1942
by Subhash Chandra Bose would see a unique military
campaign to end British rule. Following the trial of
Indian National Army officers at the Red Fort,
mutinies broke out in the navy, in the Air Force, and in
the army. The congress also led a civil disobedience
movement in 1942 demanding that the British leave
India (a movement called the Quit India Movement).
Following these and widespread communal rioting in
Calcutta, the Raj ended on the mid-night of 15th
August, 1947, but only at the expense of the Partition
of the country into India and Pakistan.

European rule
European traders came to Indian shores with the
arrival of Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama in 1498
at the port of Calicut in search of the lucrative spice
trade. After the 1757 Battle of Plassey, during which
the British army under Robert Clive defeated
the Nawab of Bengal, the British East India
Company established itself. This is widely seen as the
beginning of the British Raj in India. The Company
gained administrative rights over Bengal, Bihar,
and Orissa in 1765 after the Battle of Buxar. They then
annexed Punjab in 1849 after the death of
Maharaja Ranjit Singh d.1839 and the First Anglo-Sikh
War (1845–1846) and then Second Anglo-Sikh War
(1848-1849).
The British parliament enacted a series of laws to
handle the administration of the newly-conquered
provinces, including the Regulating Act of 1773, the
India Act of 1784, and the Charter Act of 1813; all
enhanced the British government's rule. In
1835 English was made the medium of instruction.
Western-educated Hindu elites sought to
rid Hinduism of controversial social practices,
including the varna (caste) system, child marriage,
and sati. Literary and debating societies initiated
in Bombay and Madras became fora for open political
discourse. The Educational attainment and skillful use
of the press by these early reformers meant that the
possibility grew for effecting broad reforms, all without
compromising larger Indian social values and religious
practices.
Even while these modernising trends influenced
Indian society, Indians increasingly despised British
rule. The memoirs of Henry Ouvry of the 9th Lancers
record many "a good thrashing" to careless servants. A
spice merchant, Frank Brown, wrote to his nephew
that stories of maltreatment of servants had not been
exaggerated and that he knew people who kept
orderlies "purposely to thrash them". As the British
increasingly dominated the continent, they grew
increasingly abusive of local customs by, for example,
staging parties in mosques, dancing to the music of
regimental bands on the terrace of the Taj Mahal,
using whips to force their way through
crowded bazaars (as recounted by General Henry
Blake), and mistreating sepoys. In the years after the
annexation of Punjab in 1849, several mutinies
among sepoys broke out; these were put down by force.

Regional movements prior to

1857
Several regional movements against foreign rule were
staged in various parts of pre-1857 India. However,
they were not united and were easily controlled by the
foreign rulers. Examples include the Sannyasi
Rebellion in Bengal in the 1770s an 1787 ethnic revolt
against Portuguese control of Goa known as
the Conspiracy Of The Pintos and uprisings by South
Indian local chieftains against British rule. Notable
among the latter is Veerapandya Kattabomman, who
ruled the present-day Tuticorin district of Tamil Nadu.
He questioned the need for native Indians to pay taxes
on agricultural produce to foreign rulers and battled
the British until the latter, victorious, hanged him.
Other movements included the Santal Rebellion and
the resistance offered to the British by Titumir
in Bengal, the Kittur rebellion led by Rani Chennamma
and Sangolli Rayanna
in Karnataka.

The Indian Rebellion of 1857

The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a period of uprising

in northern and central India against British rule in
1857–58.
The rebellion was the result of decades of ethnic and
cultural differences between Indian soldiers and their
British officers. The indifference of the British towards
Indian rulers like the Mughals and ex- Peshwas and
the annexation of Oudh were political factors
triggering dissent amongst Indians. Dalhousie’s policy
of annexation, the Doctrine of lapse or escheat, and the
projected removal of the descendants of the Great
Mughal from their ancestral palace to the Qutb, near
Delhi also angered some people. The specific reason
that triggered the rebellion was the rumoured use of
cow and pig fat in .557 calibre Pattern 1853 Enfield
(P/53) rifle cartridges. Soldiers had to break the
cartridges with their teeth before loading them into
their rifles, so if there was cow and pig fat, it would be
offensive to Hindu and Muslim soldiers. In February
1857, sepoys (Indian soldiers in the British army)
refused to use their new cartridges. The British claimed
to have replaced the cartridges with new ones and tried
to make sepoys make their own grease from beeswax
and vegetable oils, but the rumour persisted.
In March 1857, Mangal Pandey, a soldier of the 34th
Native Infantry, attacked his British sergeant and
wounded an adjutant. General Hearsay, who said
Pandey was in some kind of "religious frenzy," ordered
a jemadar to arrest him but the jemadar refused.
Mangal Pandey was hanged on 7 April along with the
jemadar. The whole regiment was dismissed as a
collective punishment. On May 10th, when the 11th
and 20th cavalry assembled, they broke rank and
turned on their commanding officers. They then
liberated the 3rd Regiment, and on 11 May, the sepoys
reached Delhi and were joined by other Indians. Soon,
the revolt spread throughout the northern India. Some
notable leaders were Ahmed Ullah, an advisor of the
ex-King of Oudh; Nana Sahib; his nephew Rao Sahib
and his retainers, Tantia Topi and Azimullah Khan;
the Rani of Jhansi; Kunwar Singh; the Rajput chief of
Jagadishpur in Bihar; and Firuz Saha, a relative of the
Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah.
The Red Fort, the residence of the last Mughal
emperor Bahadur, was attacked and captured by the
sepoys. They demanded that he reclaim his throne. He
was reluctant at first, but eventually agreed to the
demands and became the leader of the rebellion.
About the same time in Jhansi, the army rebelled and
killed the British army officers. Revolts also broke out
in places like Meerut, Kanpur, Lucknow etc. The
British were slow to respond, but eventually responded
with brute force. British moved regiments from
the Crimean War and diverted European regiments
headed for China to India. The British fought the main
army of the rebels near Delhi in Badl-ke-Serai and
drove them back to Delhi before laying a siege on the
city. The siege of Delhi lasted roughly from 1 July to 31
August. After a week of street fighting, the British
retook the city. The last significant battle was fought
in Gwalior on 20 June 1858. It was during this battle
that Rani Lakshmi Bai was killed. Sporadic fighting
continued until 1859 but most of the rebels were
subdued.
Rise of organised movements
The decades following the Sepoy Rebellion were a
period of growing political awareness, manifestation
of Indian public opinion and emergence of Indian
leadership at national and provincial levels.
The influences of socio-religious groups, especially
in a nation where religion plays a vital role cannot
be undermined. The Arya Samaj was an important
Hindu organization which sought to reform Hindu
society of social evils, counter-act Christian
missionary propaganda. Swami Dayanand
Saraswati's work was important in increasing an
attitude of self-awareness, pride and community
service in common Indian peoples. Raja Ram
Mohan Roy's Brahmo Samaj was also a pioneer in
the reform of Indian society, fighting evils like sati,
dowry, ignorance and illiteracy.
The inculcation of religious reform and social pride
was fundamental to the rise of a public movement
for complete nationhood. The work of men
like Swami Vivekananda, Ramakrishna
Paramhansa, Sri Aurobindo, Subramanya
Bharathy, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Sir Syed
Ahmed Khan, Rabindranath Tagore and Dadabhai
Naoroji spread the passion for rejuvenation and
freedom. Lokmanya Tilak, though with non-
moderate views, was very popular amongst
the masses. He gave the concept of Swaraj to the
Indian peoples while standing trial. His popular
sentence "Swaraj is my birthright, and I shall have
it" became the source of inspiration for Indians. The
flames of the spirit of freedom were ignited by
learned men like them, who gave reason for
common Indians to feel proud of themselves,
demand political and social freedom and seek
happiness. They were the teachers who sparked the
passion of learning and achievement for thousands
of Indians, and the poets expressing the inner fires
of the freedom-fighter's soul.
The Moplah Rebellion occurred in 1921. It was a
British-Muslim and Hindu-Muslim conflict
in Kerala. The reasons for the Moplah rebellion are
rooted in religious revivalism among the
Muslim Moplahs (also known as Mappilas),
disaffection with British governance, and
resentment at the land owning Hindu Nair
community. Events following the Khilafat
movement helped organize Moplahs and gave
impetus to their actions. During the early months of
1921, multiple events including the Khilafat
movement and the Karachi resolution fueled the
fires of rebellion. A rumour spread amongst the
Moplahs that the British rule had ended and
the Islamic Caliphate had been re-established
at Delhi. On Aug 20, the first incident of the
rebellion occurred at Tirurangadi when the District
Magistrate of Calicut with the help of troops
attempted to arrest a few Moplah leaders who were
in the possession of arms, resulting in clashes.
Arsonists took to the street, burning and destroying
government property. The initial focus was on the
British, but when the limited presence of the British
was eliminated, Moplahs turned their full attention
on the Hindus. By the end of 1921 the situation was
brought back under control by the British with the
help of a quasi-military battalion. According to
official records, the government lost 43 troops with
126 wounded while the Moplahs lost 3,000 (with
Moplah accounts putting the number at over
10,000). Though this was an act of courage against
British rule, it was also an act of savagery against
the Hindus, on whom unspeakable crimes were
committed, especially the women. Due to this, it is
also considered as a jihad against all non-Muslims
(Hindu and British) to impose Islamic rule in the
area.
Inspired by a suggestion made by A.O. Hume, a
retired British civil servant, seventy-three Indian
delegates met in Bombay in 1885 and founded
the Indian National Congress. They were mostly
members of the upwardly mobile and successful
western-educated provincial elites, engaged in
professions such as law, teaching, and journalism.
They had acquired political experience from
regional competition in the professions and by
securing nomination to various positions in
legislative councils, universities, and special
commissions.
It should be noted that Dadabhai Naoroji had
already formed the Indian National
Association a few years before the Congress. The
INA merged into the Congress Party to form a
bigger national front.
At its inception, the Congress had no well-defined
ideology and commanded few of the resources
essential to a political organization. It functioned
more as a debating society that met annually to
express its loyalty to the British Raj and passed
numerous resolutions on less controversial issues
such as civil rights or opportunities in government,
especially the civil service. These resolutions were
submitted to the Viceroy's government and
occasionally to the British Parliament, but the
Congress's early gains were meagre. Despite its
claim to represent all India, the Congress voiced the
interests of urban elites; the number of participants
from other economic backgrounds remained
negligible.
By 1900, although the Congress had emerged as an
all-India political organization, its achievement was
undermined by its singular failure to
attract Muslims, who felt that their representation
in government service was inadequate. Attacks by
Hindu reformers against religious conversion, cow
slaughter, and the preservation of Urdu in Arabic
script deepened their concerns of minority status
and denial of rights if the Congress alone were to
represent the people of India. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan
launched a movement for Muslim regeneration that
culminated in the founding in 1875 of the
Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh,
Uttar Pradesh (renamed Aligarh Muslim University
in 1921). Its objective was to educate wealthy
students by emphasizing the compatibility
of Islam with modern western knowledge. The
diversity among India's Muslims, however, made it
impossible to bring about uniform cultural and
intellectual regeneration.
The Gandhian generation .

Gandhi had been a prominent leader of

anti apartheid movement in South Africa and had
been vocal basic discrimination and abusive labour
treatment as well as suppressive police control akin
to the Rowlatt Acts. During these protests Gandhi
had perfected the concept of satyagraha, on which
he had been inspired by the philosophy of
Baba Ram Singh(famous for leading the Kuka
Movement in the Punjab in 1872). The end of the
protests in the country saw repeal of the legislations
and release of political prisoners by Gen. Jan Smuts,
head of the South African Government of the time.
However Gandhi, a stranger to India and it’s politics
after twenty years, had initially entered the fray not
with calls for a nation-state, but in support of the
unified commmerce-oriented territory, that the
Congress Party had been asking for. Gandhi,
however, was of the opinion that the industrial
development and educational development that the
Europeans brought with them was required to uplift
India's problems.
A veteran Congressman and Indian leader Gopal
Krishna Gokhale became Gandhi's mentor. Gandhi's
ideas and strategies of non-violent civil
disobedience initially appeared impractical to some
Indians and veteran Congressmen. In Gandhi's own
words, "civil disobedience is civil breach of unmoral
statutory enactments," but as he viewed it, it had to
be carried out non-violently by withdrawing
cooperation with the corrupt state. Gandhi's ability
to inspire millions of common people was initiated
when he used satyagraha during the anti-Rowlatt
Act protests in Punjab.
Gandhi’s vision would soon bring the population of
millions into the movement. In Champaran, Bihar,
the Congress Party brought forth the plight of
desperately poor sharecroppers, landless farmers
who were being forced to grow cash crops at the
expense of crops which formed their food supply,
and pay oppressive taxes. Neither were they
sufficiently paid for sustenance. It was at this time
also that the nationalist cause was integrated to the
interests and industries that formed the economy of
common Indians. The first satyagraha movement
urged the use of Khadi and Indian material as
alternatives to those shipped from Britain. It also
urged the boycott of British educational institutions,
law courts,; to resign from government
employment; to refuse to pay taxes; and to forsake
British titles and honours. Although this came too
late to influence the framing of the new Government
of India Act of 1919, the magnitude of disorder
resulting from the movement was unparalleled and
presented a new challenge to foreign rule. These
movements found widespread support among a
people awakening to a new sense of nationalism.
However, the movement was called off by Gandhi
following the Chauri Chaura incident, which saw the
death of twenty two policemen in the hands of an
angry mob.
In 1920, the Congress was reorganized and given a
new constitution, whose goal
was Swaraj (independence) . Membership in the
party was opened to anyone prepared to pay a token
fee, and a hierarchy of committees was established
and made responsible for discipline and control
over a hitherto amorphous and diffuse movement.
The party was transformed from an elite
organization to one of mass national appeal and
participation.
Gandhi was imprisoned in 1922 for six years, but
was released after serving two. On his release from
prison, he set up the Sabarmati Ashram
in Ahmedabad, on the banks of river Sabarmati,
established the newspaper Young India, and
inaugurated a series of reforms aimed at the socially
disadvantaged within Hindu society - the rural poor,
and the untouchables.
This era saw the emergence of new generation of
Indians from within the Congress Party,
including C. Rajagopalachari, Jawaharlal
Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel, Subhash Chandra Bose
and others- who would later on come to form the
prominent voices of the Indian Independence
Movement, whether keeping with Gandhian Values,
or diverging from it.
Apart from a few stray incidents, the armed
rebellion against the British rulers were not
organized before the beginning of the 20th century.
The revolutionary philosophies and movement
made its presence felt during the 1905 Partition of
Bengal. Arguably, the initial steps to organize the
revolutionaries were taken by Aurobindo Ghosh, his
brother Barin Ghosh, Bhupendranath Datta etc.
when they formed the Jugantar party in April
1906. Jugantar was created as an inner circle of
the Anushilan Samiti which was already present
in Bengal mainly as a revolutionary society in the
guise of a fitness club.
The Jugantar party leaders like Barin Ghosh
and Bagha Jatin initiated making of explosives.
The Alipore bomb case, following the Muzaffarpur
killing tried several activists and many were
sentenced deportation for life, while Khudiram Bose
was hanged. Madan Lal Dhingra, a student in
London, murdered Sir Curzon Wylie, a British M.P.
on 1 July 1909 in London.
The Anushilan Samiti and Jugantar opened several
branches throughout Bengal and other parts
of India and recruited young men and women to
participate in the revolutionary activities. Several
murders and looting were done, with many
revolutionaries being captured and imprisoned.
During the First World War, the revolutionaries
planned to import arms and ammunitions
from Germany and stage an armed revolution
against the British.
The Ghadar Party operated from abroad and
cooperated with the revolutionaries in India. This
party was instrumental in helping revolutionaries
inside India catch hold of foreign arms.
After the First World War, the revolutionary
activities suffered major setbacks due to the arrest
of prominent leaders. In 1920s, the revolutionary
activists started to reorganize. Hindustan Socialist
Republican Association was formed under the
leadership of Chandrasekhar Azad. Bhagat Singh
and Batukeshwar Dutt threw a bomb inside the
Central Legislative Assembly on 8 April 1929
protesting against the passage of the Public Safety
Bill and the Trade Disputes Bill. Following the trial
(Central Assembly Bomb Case), Bhagat
Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were hanged in 1931.
Surya Sen, along with other activists, raided
the Chittagong armoury on 18 April 1930 to capture
arms and ammunition and to destroy government
communication system to establish a local
governance. Pritilata Waddedar led an attack on
European club in Chittagong in 1932, while Bina
Das attempted to assassinate Stanley Jackson, the
Governor of Bengal inside the convocation hall
of Calcutta University. Following the Chittagong
armoury raid case, Surya Sen was hanged and
several other were deported for life to the Cellular
Jail in Andaman.
The Bengal Volunteers started operating in 1928.
On 8 December 1930, the Benoy- Badal- Dinesh trio
of the party entered the secretariat Writers' Building
in Kolkata and murdered Col NS Simpson, the
Inspector General of Prisons.
On 13 March 1940, Udham Singh shot Sir Michael
O'Dwyer, generally held responsible for
the Amritsar Massacre, in London. However, as the
political scenario changed in the late 1930s — with
the mainstream leaders considering several options
offered by the British and the religious politics
coming into play — the revolutionary activities
gradually declined. Many past revolutionaries
joined mainstream politics by joining Congress and
other parties, especially communist ones, while
many of the activists were kept under hold in
different jails across the country.
 The climax: war, Quit India,
INA and Post-war revolts
Indians throughout the country were divided
over World War II, as the Lord Linlithgow, without
consulting the Indian representatives had unilaterally
declared India a belligerent on the side of the allies. In
opposition to Linlithgow's action, the entire congress
leadership resigned from the local government
councils. However, many wanted to support the British
war effort, and indeed the British Indian Army was one
of the largest volunteer force during the war. Especially
during the Battle of Britain, Gandhi resisted calls for
massive civil disobedience movements that came from
within as well as outside his party, stating he did not
seek India's freedom out of the ashes of a destroyed
Britain. However, like the changing fortunes of the war
itself, the movement for freedom saw the rise of two
movements that formed the climax of the 100-year
struggle for independence.
The first of these, the Azad Hind movement led by
Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, saw it's inception early
in the war and sought help from the Axis Powers. The
second saw its inception in August 1942 led by Gandhi
and began following failure of the Cripps' mission to
reach a consensus with the Indian political leadership
over the transfer of power after the war.
The Indian National Army
Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.
The arbitrary entry of India into the war was
strongly opposed by Subhash Chandra Bose, who
had been elected President of the Congress twice, in
1937 and 1939. After lobbying against participation
in the war, he resigned from Congress in 1939 and
started a new party, the All India Forward Bloc.
When war broke out, the Raj had put him under
house arrest in Calcutta in 1940. However, at the
time the war was at it's bloodiest in Europe and
Asia, he escaped and made his way
through Afghanistan to Germany to seek Axis help
to raise an army to fight the shackles of the
Raj.Here, he raised with Rommel's Indian PoWs
what came to be known as the Free India Legion.
This came to be the conceptualisation in embryonic
form of Bose's dream of raising a liberation Army to
fight the Raj. However, the turn of tides in the
Battlefields of Europe saw Bose make his
way ultimately to Japanese South Asia where he
formed what came to be known as the Azad Hind
Government as the Provisional Free Indian
Government in exile, and organized the Indian
National Army with Indian POWs and
Indian expatriates at South-East Asia, with the help
of the Japanese. Its aim was to reach India as a
fighting force that would build on public resentment
to inspire revolts among Indian soldiers to defeat
the Raj.
The INA was to see action against the allies,
including the British Indian Army, in the forests
of in Arakan, Burma and Assam, laying siege on
Imphal and Kohima with the Japanese 15th Army.
During the war, the Andaman and Nicobar
islands were captured by the Japanese and handed
over by them to the INA; Bose renamed
them Shahid (Martyr) and Swaraj (Independence).
The INA would ultimately fail, owing to disrupted
logistic, poor arms and supplies from the Japanese,
and lack of support and training . The INA's efforts
ended with the surrender of Japan in 1945. The
existence of Azad Hind was essentially coterminous
with the existence of the Indian National Army.
While the government itself continued until the civil
administration of the Andaman Islands was
returned to the jurisdiction of the British towards
the end of the war, the limited power of Azad Hind
was effectively ended with the surrender of the last
major contingent of INA troops in Rangoon.
The supposed death of Bose is seen as culmination
of the entire Azad Hind Movement.
Following the surrender of Japan, the troops of the
INA were brought to India and a number of them
charged with treason. However, Bose's audacious
actions and radical initiative had by this time
captured the public imagination and also turned the
inclination of the native soldiers of the British
Indian Forces from one of loyalty to the crown to
support for the soldiers that the Raj deemed as
collaborators..
After the war, the stories of the Azad Hind
movement and its army that came into public
limelight during the trials of soldiers of the INA in
1945 were seen as so inflammatory that, fearing
mass revolts and uprisings — not just in India, but
across its empire —, the British Government forbid
the BBC from broadcasting their story. Newspapers
reported the summary execution of INA soldiers
held at Red Fort. During and after the trial, mutinies
broke out in the British Indian Armed forces, most
notably in the Royal Indian Navy which found
public support throughout India,
from Karachi to Bombay and from Vizag to Calcutta.
Many historians have argued that it was the INA
and the mutinies it inspired among the British
Indian Armed forces that were the true driving force
for India's independence.

Quit India
The Quit India Movement (Bharat Chhodo
Andolan) or the August Movement was a civil
disobedience movement in India launched
in August 1942 in response to Gandhi's call for
immediate independence of India. The aim was
to bring the British Government to the
negotiating table by holding the Allied War Effort
hostage. The call for determined but passive
resistance that signified the certitude that Gandhi
foresaw for the movement is best described by his
call to Do or Die, issued on 8 August at
the Gowalia Tank Maidan in Bombay, since re-
named August Kranti Maidan (August
Revolution Ground). However, almost the entire
Congress leadership, and not merely at the
national level, was put into confinement less than
twenty-four hours after Gandhi's speech, and the
greater number of the Congress leaders were to
spend the rest of the war in jail.
At the outbreak of war, the Congress Party had
during the Wardha meeting of the working-
committee in September 1939, passed a
resolution conditionally supporting the fight
against fascism, but were rebuffed when they
asked for independence in return. The draft
proposed that if the British did not accede to the
demands, a massive Civil Disobedience would be
launched. However, it was an extremely
controversial decision. The Congress had lesser
success in rallying other political forces under a
single flag and mast.
On August 8, 1942 the Quit India resolution was
passed at the Bombay session of the All India
Congress Committee (AICC). At Gowalia
Tank, Mumbai Gandhi urged Indians to follow a
non-violent civil disobedience. Gandhi told the
masses to act as an independent nation and not
to follow the orders of the British. The British,
already alarmed by the advance of the Japanese
army to the India–Burma border, responded the
next day by imprisoning Gandhi at the Aga Khan
Palace in Pune. The Congress Party's Working
Committee, or national leadership was arrested
all together and imprisoned at the Ahmednagar
Fort. They also banned the party altogether.
Large-scale protests and demonstrations were
held all over the country. Workers remained
absent en masse and strikes were called. The
movement also saw widespread acts of sabotage,
Indian under-ground organisation carried out
bomb attacks on allied supply convoys,
government buildings were set on fire, electricity
lines were disconnected and transport and
communication lines were severed.
The British swiftly responded by mass detentions.
A total over 100,000 arrests were made
nationwide, mass fines were levied, bombs were
airdropped and demonstrators were subjected to
public flogging.
The movement soon became a leaderless act of
defiance, with a number of acts that deviated
from Gandhi's principle of non-violence. In large
parts of the country, the local underground
organisations took over the movement. However,
by 1943, Quit India had petered out.
RIN Mutiny
The RIN Mutiny (also called the Bombay
Mutiny) encompasses a total strike and
subsequent mutiny by the Indian sailors of
the Royal Indian Navy on board ship and
shore establishments at Bombay (Mumbai)
harbour on 18 February 1946. From the initial
flashpoint in Bombay, the mutiny spread and
found support through India,
from Karachi to Calcutta and ultimately came
to involve 78 ships, 20 shore establishments
and 20,000 sailors.
The RIN Mutiny started as a strike by ratings
of the Royal Indian Navy on the 18th February
in protest against general conditions. The
immediate issues of the mutiny were
conditions and food, but there were more
fundamental matters such as racist behaviour
by British officers of the Royal Navy personnel
towards Indian sailors, and disciplinary
measures being taken against anyone
demonstrating pro-nationalist sympathies.
The strike found immense support among the
Indian population already in grips with the
stories of the Indian National Army. The
actions of the mutineers was supported by
demonstrations which included a one-day
general strike in Bombay. The strike spread to
other cities, and was joined by the Air Force
and local police forces. Naval officers and men
began calling themselves the Indian National
Navy and offered left handed salutes to British
officers. At some places, NCOs in the British
Indian Army ignored and defied orders from
British superiors. In Madras and Pune, the
British garrisons had to face revolts within the
ranks of the British Indian Army. Widespread
riotings took place from Karachi to Calcutta.
Famously the ships hoisted three flags tied
together — those of the Congress, Muslim
League, and the Red Flag of the Communist
Party of India (CPI), singnifying the unity and
demarginalisation of communal issues among
the mutineers.
The true judgment of contributions of each of
these individual events and revolts to India’s
eventual independence, and the relative
success or failure of each, remains open to
historians. Some historians claim that the Quit
India Movement was ultimately a failure and
ascribe more ground to the destabillisation of
the pillar of British power in India — the
British Indian Armed forces. Certainly
the British Prime Minister at the time of
Indepence, Clement Atlee, deemed the
contribution of Quit India as minimal,
ascribing stupendous importance to the revolts
and growing dissatisfaction among Royal
Indian Armed Forces as the driving force
behind the Raj’s the decision to leave India.
Some Indian historians however argue that, in
fact, it was Quit India that succeeded. In
support of the latter view, without doubt, the
War had sapped a lot of the economic, political
and military life-blood of the Empire, and the
powerful Indian resistance had shattered the
spirit and will of the British government.
However, such historians effectively ignore the
contributions of the radical movements to
transfer of power in 1947 Regardless of
whether it was the powerful common call for
resistance among Indians that shattered the
spirit and will of the British Raj to continue
ruling India, or whether it was the ferment of
rebellion and resentment among the British
Indian Armed Forces , what is beyond doubt,
is that a population of millions had been
motivated as it never had been before to say
ultimately that independence was a non-
negotiable goal, and every act of defiance and
rebel only stoked this fire. In addition, the
British people and the British Army seemed
unwilling to back a policy of repression in
India and other parts of the Empire even as
their own country lay shattered by the war's
ravages.
The INA trials in 1945 ( The Red Fort Trial)
and the Bombay mutiny had already shaken
the pillars of the Raj in India. By early 1946, all
political prisoners had been released. British
openly adopted a political dialogue with the
Indian National Congress for the eventual
independence of India. On August 15, 1947, the
transfer of power took place.
A young, new generation responded to
Gandhi's call. Indians who lived through Quit
India came to form the first generation of
independent Indians — whose trials and
tribulations may be accepted to have sown the
seeds of establishment of the strongest
enduring tradition of democracy and freedom
in post-colonial Africa and Asia — which, when
seen in the light of the torrid times of Partition
of India, can be termed one of the greatest
examples of prudence of humankind.
Independence, 1947 to 1950

On 3 June 1947, Viscount Lord Louis

Mountbatten, the last British Governor-
General of India, announced the
partitioning of the British Indian Empire
into a secular India and a Muslim Pakistan.
At midnight, on 15 August 1947, India
became an independent nation. Violent
clashes between Hindus, Muslims,
and Sikhs followed. Prime Minister Nehru
and Deputy Prime Minister Sardar
Vallabhbhai Patel invited Lord Mountbatten
to continue as Governor General of India.
He was replaced in June 1948
by Chakravarti Rajagopalachari. Patel took
on the responsibility of unifying 565
princely states, steering efforts by his “iron
fist in a velvet glove” policies, exemplified
by the use of military force to
integrate Junagadh, Jammu and Kashmir,
and Hyderabad state into India.
The Constituent Assembly completed the
work of drafting the constitution on 26
November 1949; on 26 January 1950
the Republic of India was officially
proclaimed. The Constituent Assembly
elected Dr. Rajendra Prasad as the
first President of India, taking over from
Governor General Rajgopalachari.
Subsequently, a free and sovereign India
absorbed two other
territories: Goa (liberated from Portuguese
control in 1961) and Pondicherry (which the
French ceded in 1953–1954). In 1952, India
held its first general elections, with a voter
 turnout exceeding 62%; this made it the
world’s largest democracy.

SUMMARY
Contribution of Subhash Chandra Bose

A Brief History
 Subhash Chandra Bose
was twice elected President of the Indian
National Congress, (1938-Haripur and 1939-
 Tripuri) the country’s most important political
force for freedom from the Raj or British rule.
 Owing to political differences,
he resigned from the Congress Presidentship in 1939
and organised the All India Forward Bloc a
faction within the Congress in Bengal. The purpose
was to consolidate the political left and major
support base in his home state Bengal.
 In Calcutta, Bose organised
mass protests and was arrested. He was later put
under house arrest from where he escaped. He went
to Germany via Afghanistan.
 However, in 1943 Bose lost
hope that Germany could be of any help in gaining
India's independence. He then turned to Asia where
he finally came at the helm of the Indian National
Army (INA).
 INA found support among
expatriate Indians and under its aegis Bose formed
the Azad Hind government which came to produce
its own currency, postage stamps, court and civil
code. It was recognised by Axis states.
 While his memory is still held
in high esteem in India, in the West Bose is much
less revered, largely because of his wartime
collaboration with the Axis powers.
 During the final two years of
the war, Bose with considerable Japanese backing-
 led the forces of the Indian National Army into
battle against the British.

Azad Hind
 In 1940’s the major inspiration for carrying on a
relentless struggle against Britain came from Subhas
Bose’s adventures abroad.
 Bose had set up an Indian Legion in Berlin in
1941, but developed difficulties with the Germans
when they tried to use it against Russia, and decided
to go to South East Asia.
 He reached Japanese-controlled Singapore from
Germany in July 1943, issued from there his famous
call, ‘Delhi Chalo’, and announced the formation of
the Azad Hind Government and the Indian National
Army on 21st October 1943.
 The link with the old revolutionary tradition was
emphasized by giving a post of honour in the
government to Rashbehari Bose, who had been
living in exile in Japan since 1915.
 Despite all his differences with Gandhiji, Bose did
not forget to ask for the blessings of the ‘Father of
the Nation’ while starting his enterprise.
 Indian prisoners of war in Japanese camps
provided a ready recruiting ground for the I.N.A.,
which was able to rally about 20,000 out of the
60,000 prisoner of wars, and financial aid and
 volunteers came from Indian trading communities
settled in South East Asia.
 The I.N.A. was essentially non-communal, with
Muslims quite prominent among its officers and
ranks, and it also introduced the innovation of
a women’s detachment named after the Rani
of Jhansi.
 Between March and June 1944, the I.N.A. was in
action on Indian soil, besieging Imphal (Manipur)
along with Japanese troops in a campaign which
ended in total failure.
 The Japanese collapse in 1945 made the I.N.A.
men prisoners again, while Bose mysteriously
disappeared, allegedly killed in an air-crash which
some still believe to have been faked.
 In November, 1945, a British move to put
the I.N.A. men on trial immediately sparked off
massive demonstrations all over the country.
 Even more significant was the probable link
between the I.N.A. experience and the wave of
disaffection in the British Indian army
during the winter of 1945-46, which culminated
in the great Bombay naval strike of February
1946 and was quite possibly one of the
most decisive reasons behind the British
decision to make a quick withdrawal.
Contribution of Bose
 The INA revealed Subhash Bose’s greatness as
a military leader and an organizer too. One of
the INA Brigades advanced with the Japanese army
upto the frontiers of India. The Indian national
flag was hoisted in Kohima (Nagaland) in
March 1944.
 However with the change of fortune in the war
and the retreat and defeat of the Japanese the INA
collapsed. The role of INA had far reaching
influences on the Indian political scene.
 When the stories of their remarkable courage
and sacrifice came to the knowledge of the
Indian people at the end of the war, the nation
came under a wave of revolutionary upsurge.
 The British Government could realise that
patriotism for Indians was greater than their service
to a foreign power.
 In spite of his principle of violence Subhash
Chandra Bose’s grand scheme of India’s liberation
and the high idealism through INA movement
inspired the people of India in an unprecedented
manner.