Subhas Chandra Bose

Lore & Background

Bose was born into wealth and privilege in a large Bengali family in Orissa during the British Raj. He was sent after college to England to take the Indian Civil Service examination, succeeded with distinction in the vital first exam but demurred at taking the routine final exam, citing nationalism to be the higher calling. Returning to India in 1921, Bose joined the nationalist movement led by Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress. He became Congress president in 1938.

After reelection in 1939, differences arose between him and the Congress leaders, including Gandhi, over the future federation of British India and princely states, and discomfort over Bose's negotiable attitude to non-violence and his plans for greater powers for himself. After the large majority of the Congress Working Committee members resigned in protest, Bose resigned as president and was eventually ousted from the party. In April 1941 Bose arrived in Nazi Germany. German funds were employed to open a Free India Centre in Berlin.

A 3,000-strong Free India Legion was recruited from among Indian POWs captured by Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps to serve under Bose. By the spring of 1942, the German army was mired in Russia and Bose became keen to move to southeast Asia. Adolf Hitler during his only meeting with Bose in late May 1942 agreed to arrange a submarine. Bose boarded a German submarine in February 1943.

1943–1945: Japanese-occupied Asia

Off Madagascar, he was transferred to a Japanese submarine from which he disembarked in Japanese-held Sumatra in May 1943. With Japanese support, Bose revamped the Indian National Army (INA), which comprised Indian prisoners of war of the British Indian army who had been captured by the Japanese in the Battle of Singapore. A Provisional Government of Free India (Azad Hind) was declared on the Japanese-occupied Andaman and Nicobar Islands and was nominally presided over by Bose. In late 1944 and early 1945, the British Indian Army reversed the Japanese attack on India.

Almost half of the Japanese forces and fully half of the participating INA contingent were killed. The remaining INA was driven down the Malay Peninsula and surrendered with the recapture of Singapore. Bose chose to escape to Manchuria to seek a future in the Soviet Union. Bose died from third-degree burns after his plane crashed in Taiwan on 18 August 1945.

The Great Escape from Calcutta

Following a political break with Mahatma Gandhi, Subhas Chandra Bose was arrested, released, and placed under tight British surveillance in Calcutta. On the night of 16 January 1941, after growing a beard and disguising himself as a Pathan, he slipped out of his home in a car with his nephew Sisir K. Bose. The Abwehr arranged his passage to Peshawar, where Akbar Shah and Bhagat Ram Talwar—secretly a Soviet agent—received him. Because Bose spoke no Pashto, Shah devised a clever ruse: Bose would pretend to be deaf and mute, his beard mimicking local tribesmen.

With help from supporters of Aga Khan III, he crossed into Afghanistan, where an Abwehr unit disguised as Organization Todt road engineers escorted him through Kabul to the Soviet border. There he shed the Pashtun identity of 'Ziauddin' and assumed the Italian passport of Count Orlando Mazzotta. The NKVD carried him to Moscow, where he hoped Soviet enmity toward British rule would fund an Indian uprising. Instead, he was swiftly handed to the German ambassador and flown to Berlin in early April on a special courier plane.

Building the Indian Legion in Berlin

In Berlin, Bose was attached to the Special Bureau for India under Adam von Trott zu Solz, which oversaw the German-sponsored Azad Hind Radio broadcasts. He established the Free India Center and recruited the Indian Legion from roughly 3,000 to 4,500 Indian prisoners of war who had previously served the British in North Africa before falling into Axis hands. The Legion was formally attached to the Wehrmacht and later transferred to the Waffen SS. Its members swore a dual oath of allegiance to Hitler as commander of the German armed forces in the fight for India and to Bose as India's leader.

Despite this arrangement, Bose harbored a troubling vision: he contemplated a Nazi-led invasion of India spearheaded by his legion, a plan many later questioned as imprudent given the likelihood German forces would not simply withdraw. His admiration for Russia was shattered when Hitler's tanks crossed the Soviet border, rendering the retreating German army useless for any Indian campaign. A May 1942 meeting with Hitler confirmed his deepest fears: the Nazi leader valued Bose's men for propaganda rather than genuine military purpose. By February 1943, Bose abandoned his legionnaires in Germany and slipped away aboard a submarine bound for Japan.

The Submarine Voyage and the INA's Frontline

Leaving his recruited soldiers leaderless and demoralized in Germany, Bose embarked on a perilous sea voyage in 1943. He sailed aboard the German submarine U-180 around the Cape of Good Hope, southeast of Madagascar, before transferring to the Japanese submarine I-29 for the final leg to Imperial Japan. Once in Japanese-occupied Asia, the Azad Hind Fauj—born from the events of Bose's exile—made its first military commitment in the Japanese push toward the eastern Indian frontiers of Manipur. The INA's special forces, known as the Bahadur Group, were heavily engaged in operations behind enemy lines during diversionary attacks in Arakan.

They also participated in the Japanese thrust toward Imphal and Kohima, fighting alongside the Burmese National Army under Ba Maw and Aung San. This period, spanning 1943 to 1945, represented the most active military phase of Bose's independence struggle, transforming his political vision into armed resistance on the ground. The Japanese Navy's role in sustaining these operations, however, remained a point of ongoing tension throughout the campaign.

Cinematic Commemoration and National Recognition

Shyam Benegal's 2004 epic biographical war film, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero, brought Bose's wartime years to the screen with an ensemble cast including Sachin Khedekar, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Rajit Kapur, Arif Zakaria, and Divya Dutta. Benegal both wrote and directed the production, which depicted Bose's German and Japanese periods and the birth of the Azad Hind Fauj. Samir Chanda handled production design, while A. R. Rahman composed the soundtrack and background score.

The film earned wide critical acclaim at the BFI London Film Festival and went on to collect the National Film Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration as well as the National Film Award for Best Production Design in its year of release. Its significance was reaffirmed on 14 August 2016, when the Indian Directorate of Film Festivals and the Ministry of Defence jointly presented a retrospective screening at the Independence Day Film Festival, marking the seventieth anniversary of Indian Independence. The film thus stands as both a cinematic achievement and a national act of remembrance.

Reader's Guide

Bose's legacy is mixed. Among many in India, he is seen as a hero, his saga serving as a would-be counterpoise to the many actions of regeneration, negotiation, and reconciliation over a quarter-century through which the independence of India was achieved. His collaborations with Japanese fascism and Nazism pose serious ethical dilemmas, especially his reluctance to publicly criticise the worst excesses of German anti-Semitism from 1938 onwards or to offer refuge in India to its victims.