Subhas Chandra Bose

Subhas Chandra Bose (1897-1945), Indian nationalist leader, who fought against the British in World War II. Born in Cuttack, Bengal, and educated at the universities of Calcutta and Cambridge, he left a career in the Indian civil service in 1921 to fight for India's independence and was imprisoned a dozen times by the British. He shared leadership of India's youth and peasant societies with Jawaharlal Nehru and became president of the Indian National Congress in 1938. Bose was opposed, however, by Mohandas Gandhi, whose principles of non-violence and anti-industrialism he did not accept, and was forced to resign the following year. In 1940 he was imprisoned by the British, but was released after a hunger strike. In 1941, hoping to take advantage of the war to free India of British rule, Bose evaded British surveillance and fled to Germany. He was warmly received by the Nazi authorities and began regular propaganda broadcasts for the Germans. From there he went to Malaya, where he set up (1943) a Provisional Government of Free India and, with Japanese help, organized the so-called Indian National Army, recruited from Indians in occupied South East Asia. Bose led his troops against the British on the Burma-India frontier until 1945 with little success; he died after a plane crash while fleeing to Japan in August of that year following the Japanese surrender.