Rash Behari Bose
Rashbehari Bose (1885-1945) was a revolutionary leader against the
British Raj in
India and was one of the organisers of the
Indian National Army.
Bose was born in the Subaldaha village of Burdwan, in the province of
Bengal. He had his education in Chandannagar, where his father, Vinodebehari Bose, was stationed.
He was involved in revolutionary activities early in his life and was implicated in the
Alipore bomb case (1908). After being released from jail, he went to
Dehradun and worked there as a head clerk at the Forest Research Institute. At Dehradun, he secretly got involved with the revolutionaries of
Bengal, the United Provinces and the
Punjab. His involvement in many revolutionary activities aroused the suspicion of the government and ultimately he was obliged to leave the country. He was hunted by the colonial police due to his active participation in the failed bomb throwing attempt directed at the
Governor General and
Viceroy Lord
Charles Hardinge in
Delhi (the bomb was actually thrown by
Basanta Kumar Biswas, his disciple). But he managed to escape British intelligence and reached
Japan in
1915.
Bose was instrumental in persuading the Japanese authorities to stand by the Indian nationalists and ultimately to support actively the Indian freedom struggle abroad. Bose convened a conference in
Tokyo on March 28-30,
1942, which decided to establish the
Indian Independence League. At the conference he moved a motion to raise an army for Indian liberation. He convened the second conference of the League at
Bangkok on June 22, 1942. It was at this conference that a resolution was adopted to invite
Subhas Chandra Bose to join the League and take its command as its president.
The Indian prisoners of war captured by the Japanese in the
Malaya and
Burma fronts were encouraged to join the Indian Independence League and become the soldiers of the
Indian National Army (INA), the military wing of Bose's Indian National League. But his rise to actual power and glory was unfortunately terminated by an action of the Japanese military command, which expelled him and his general Mohan Singh from the INA leadership. But though he fell from grace, his organisational structure remained, and it was on the organisational spadework of Rashbehari Bose that Subhash Chandra Bose later built the Indian National Army (also called 'Azad Hind Fauj'). Before his death, the Japanese Government honoured him with the 'Second Order of the Merit of the Rising Sun'.
*
Indian independence movement*
Indian National Army*
Arzi Hukumate Azad Hind*
Revolutionary movement for Indian independence
