Calcutta, the night of 16 January 1941. The house on Elgin Road is under police watch; its owner has not been seen for weeks and is said to be in religious seclusion.
In the small hours, a bearded man in a long coat, a fez and loose trousers, an insurance agent from the north-west by the name on his card, walks out to a waiting car.
By the time anyone notices, Subhas Chandra Bose is gone.
That escape, the Mahanishkraman, is the most famous night in the life of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, and it was only the beginning. Over the next four years he would cross Afghanistan to Europe, go halfway round the world by submarine, and lead an army towards India.
Cuttack, Calcutta, Cambridge
Subhas was born in Cuttack on 23 January 1897, the ninth child of a lawyer, Janakinath Bose. He studied at Presidency College in Calcutta, was expelled in 1916 over his alleged part in an assault on a British professor, E. F. Oaten, finished his degree at the Scottish Church College, and went to Cambridge. In 1920 he passed the Indian Civil Service examination, fourth in order of merit, the most coveted job an Indian could have under the Raj. The next year he resigned it, saying he could not serve the British government.
Rebel in the Congress
Back in Calcutta he became the protégé of Chittaranjan Das and one of the most popular leaders in Bengal, jailed again and again by the British. In 1938 he was elected president of the Indian National Congress. In 1939 he stood again against Gandhi’s wishes and won, defeating Gandhi’s candidate Pattabhi Sitaramayya. But Gandhi’s followers would not work with him, and he resigned within months and founded the Forward Bloc.
The great escape
When war broke out, Bose saw Britain’s difficulty as India’s opportunity. The British put him under house arrest at 38/2 Elgin Road. On the night of 16–17 January 1941, disguised as Muhammad Ziauddin, he slipped out and was driven by his nephew Sisir to Gomoh, where he caught a train north. From Peshawar he crossed into Afghanistan on foot, and from Kabul, with the help of the Axis powers, reached Berlin.
Germany, and a submarine to Asia
In Germany he broadcast to India over radio, set up the Free India Centre and raised the Indian Legion from Indian prisoners of war. But Europe was too far from India. In February 1943 he boarded a German U-boat; in the Indian Ocean, south-east of Madagascar, he was transferred at sea to a Japanese submarine, one of the very few such transfers of the war. He landed in Sumatra in May 1943.
Azad Hind
In Singapore he took command of the Indian National Army, the Azad Hind Fauj, raised from Indian soldiers captured by Japan and from Indians living in Southeast Asia. On 21 October 1943 he proclaimed the Provisional Government of Azad Hind. The army included one of the first all-women fighting units of the time, the Rani of Jhansi Regiment, led by Captain Lakshmi Swaminathan, later Lakshmi Sahgal.
His words still ring out on every 23 January: “Delhi Chalo!”, on to Delhi; “Jai Hind”, the greeting he popularised; and, in Burma in 1944, “Give me blood, and I will give you freedom.”
In 1944 the INA marched with the Japanese into northeast India, to Imphal and Kohima. The campaign failed, starved and rain-soaked, and the INA fell back through Burma as Japan’s war collapsed.
August 1945: what happened?
Days after Japan surrendered, Japanese news reported that Bose had died of burns after a plane crash at Taihoku, in Taiwan, on 18 August 1945. Many Indians refused to believe it, and the question has been investigated three times:
- The Shah Nawaz Committee (1956) and the Khosla Commission (1970) both concluded that he died in the crash.
- The Mukherjee Commission (2005) concluded that he did not die in a plane crash at Taihoku; the government did not accept its report.
The ashes said to be his are kept at the Renkoji temple in Tokyo. The debate goes on, and this page will not pretend to settle it.
What he left
Militarily, the INA lost. Politically, it may have won. When the British put three INA officers, a Hindu, a Muslim and a Sikh, on trial at the Red Fort in 1945–46, the whole country rose in their defence, and unrest spread into the British Indian armed forces themselves. Many historians see that as one of the moments the British understood they could no longer hold India.
Where to find him in Kolkata
- Netaji Bhawan, 38/2 Elgin Road (now Lala Lajpat Rai Sarani): his room, left as it was, and the Wanderer car.
- Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport, Kolkata’s airport, named after him.