Essays

'Patriot of Patriots' as described by Gandhiji, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose was born on January 23, 1897 at Cuttack, in Orissa, He was born to Janakinath and Prabhavati Bose and was the ninth child among the fourteen children. Rai Bahadur, Jankinath Bose was a public lawyer by profession. He was a public prosecutor in Cuttak and later became a member of the Bengal Legislative Council. The family of Subhash Chandra Bose was a large one consisting of eight brothers and six sisters. At school, he was always serious, reserved and did not take much interest in sports. The sadhus and pilgrims visiting Puri, the famous shrine near his dwelling place, fascinated him. He was an intelligent kid and stood second in the school examination and took admission in Presidency College, Calcutta. In 1916, he beat an English professor because of his racist attitude towards Indians. As a result he was expelled from the college. But his father refused to admit him to another college. Over the course of time he got readmitted in the same University in Philosophy- He passed with flying colours and achieved first class Honours in Philosophy. Recognizing his son's intellect, his father was determined that Bose should become d member of high ranking Indian Civil Service (ICS). So he sent him to England for further studies. In 1920, Bose passed the Civil Service. But, by this time the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre had taken place, which had disturbed him greatly. Even though he passed the ICS, he was not interested in serving the colonial masters.

By this time, Gandhiji had established himself as a leader of the masses. Like many others, Bose was also influenced by Gandhiji, So he went to Gandhiji and offered himself to work for the Indian National Congress. Gandhiji was not able to turn down this humble request and sent him to Calcutta to work under Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das. During the period 1921-25, he was mainly involved in the activities around Calcutta and was arrested on numerous occasions. This led to his being imprisoned. Later, he was again imprisoned along with Deshbandhu and the two lived together in jail, where Bose served his leader humbly, even cooking his food. From this time, Bose considered Deshbandhu as his guru. When Deshbandhu became the Mayor of Calcutta, Bose became its Chief Executive, While holding this office, Bose freely mixed with revolutionaries, which made the British Government arrest him and deport. Now he had ample time to think for his future course of action and he decided on the path of open revolution. In June 1925, Bose was deeply struck by the sudden loss of his leader Deshbandhu. But he continued to work. In 1928, during the Congress meeting the main agenda that was presented was to get a Dominion Status for India. This was prepared by Motilal Nehru. But the Youth leaders rejected this. Bose and Jawaharlal Nehru wanted complete freedom for India at the earliest, whereas the Congress Committee wanted it in phases, through a Dominion Status. To avoid any problems, Gandhiji suggested to give the British government a time period of one year to give Dominion Status to India, failing which he himself would present a bill of complete freedom. Everybody accepted this. Gandhiji tried very hard to get the-Dominion Status for India but failed miserably. So at the next meeting the Bill of Complete Freedom (Purna Swaraj) was passed.

On 23rd March 1932, Shaheed Bhagat Singh was hanged. Bhagat Singh's martyrdom and the inability of the Congress leaders to save his life made Bose very angry and in a sense this made him realize that aggression was the best form of defence. Bose was arrested in 1931 for visiting the disturbed parts of Bengal. He was re-arrested on Jan 2, 1932 and subsequently expelled from India, In 1932, he went to Vienna and there he was deeply influenced by Vithaldas Patel. Another Indian fighter. They recognized the need for collaboration between Indian nationalists and countries opposed to Britain and in their joint manifesto, they proclaimed, "Non-cooperation cannot be given up but the form of non-cooperation will have to be changed into a more militant one and the fight for freedom waged on all fronts". In October 1933, Vithaldas Patel died. After the death of Vithaldas Patel, Subhash fought against tin; injustices. He organized Students' Association. In November 1934, Bose published a book- on Indian Nationalism called "The Indian Struggle", During the period of 1932-36, he met reputed personalities like Mussolini in Italy, Folder in Germany, D Valera in Ireland and Roma Rolland in France, Some reports suggests that he also met Hitler, a meeting which provided no support to Netaji, The Irish nationalist leader De Valera in Dublin impressed him. He was arrested and was later released on March 17, 1937.

By that time, Subhash had became very famous and Gandhiji proposed him to become the President of the Congress. In 1938, he became the President of the Indian National Congress and presided over the Haripur session, a post he held for two years. During this period, he was honoured at Shantiniketan by Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore as 'Deshnayak,'

In 1939, when the Second World War started, Gandhiji and other leaders were against doing anything anti-Britain. But Subhash thought differently. He knew. For instance, that the fall of the Roman Empire had led to the freedom of its colonies. He decided to seek foreign help for his cause of freeing India. He was arrested and kept in his house under detention. On January 17, 1941, while everyone was asleep, Bose slipped out of his house into a waiting car. Disguised as a Muslim religious teacher, Bose managed to reach Peshawar two days later. Bose went to Italy, Germany and even Russia to seek help but without much use. Subhash decided to organize Indians on his own and ho landed in Singapore and became the commander of the Indian National Army or the Azad Hind Fauj and declared himself the prime minister of India. The whole of India rejoiced. The 1NA marched to Andaman and Nicobar Islands, liberating and  renaming them as Shaheed and Swaraj Islands. On March 18, 1944, it crossed the Burmese border and reached Manipur where free India's banner was raised with the shouts of 'Jai Hind' and 'Netaji Zindabad.’ But heavy rain prevented any further movement and the units had to fall back. Even then Netaji was determined. He wanted to go to Russia to seek Soviet help to fight the British, But the ill-fated plane, in which he was flying. crashed in Taipei on August 18/ 1945 resulting in his death.

Netaji, will always be remembered and revered as the great patriot who risked his life, career. name, fame and everything else for one sole cause in which he believed passionately—the freedom of his country He will continue to inspire posterity to lead the nation to greater heights and make it the India of his dreams.