Netaji: INA & Struggle for Independence

Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose (23 January 1897 – 18 August 1945) was an Indian nationalist whose defiant patriotism made him a hero in India but whose attempt during World War II to rid India of British rule with the help of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan left an ambivalent legacy. The honorific Netaji (Hindustani: Respected Leader) the name granted to him in the early 1940s by the Indian soldiers of the Indische Legion and by the German and Indian officials in the Special Bureau for India in Berlin was later used throughout India. Bose had been a leader of the younger radical wing of the Indian National Congress in the late 1920s and 1930s rising to become Congress President in 1938 and 1939. However he was ousted from Congress leadership positions in 1939 following differences with Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress high command. He was subsequently placed under house arrest by the British before escaping from India in 1940. With Japanese support Bose revamped the Indian National Army (INA) then composed of Indian soldiers of the British Indian army who had been captured in the Battle of Singapore. To these after Boses arrival were added enlisting Indian civilians in Malaya and Singapore. The Japanese had come to support a number of puppet and provisional governments in the captured regions such as those in Burma the Philippines and Manchukuo. Before long the Provisional Government of Free India presided by Bose was formed in the Japanese-occupied Andaman and Nicobar Islands.