Subhas Chandra Bose: Difference between revisions

| office1            = 2nd Leader of [[Indian National Army]]{{efn|His formal title after 21 October 1943 was: Head of State, Prime Minister, Minister of War, and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the [[Provisional Government of Free India]], which was based in [[Japanese occupation of Singapore|Japanese-occupied Singapore]].{{efn|"the Provisional Government of Azad Hind (or Free India Provisional Government, FIPG) was announced on 21 October. It was based at Singapore and consisted, in the first instance, of five ministers, eight representatives of the INA, and eight civilian advisers representing the Indians of Southeast and East Asia. Bose was head of state, prime minister and minister for war and foreign affairs.{{Sfn|Gordon|1990|p=502}}}}{{efn|"[[Hideki Tojo]] turned over all Japan's Indian POWs to Bose's command, and in October 1943 Bose announced the creation of a Provisional Government of Free India, of which he became head of state, prime minister, minister of war, and minister of foreign affairs."{{Sfn|Wolpert|2000|p=339}}}} with jurisdiction, but without the sovereignty of [[Japanese occupation of the Andaman Islands|Japanese-occupied Andaman Islands]].{{efn|"Bose was especially keen to have some Indian territory over which the provisional government might claim sovereignty. Since the Japanese had stopped east of the Chindwin River in Burma and not entered India on that front, the only Indian territories they held were the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Indian Ocean. The Japanese navy was unwilling to transfer administration of these strategic islands to Bose's forces, but a face-saving agreement was worked out so that the provisional government was given a 'jurisdiction', while actual control remained throughout with the Japanese military. Bose eventually made a visit to Port Blair in the Andamans in December and a ceremonial transfer took place. Renaming them the ''Shahid'' (Martyr) and ''Swaraj'' (Self-rule) Islands, Bose raised the Indian national flag and appointed Lieutenant-Colonel Loganadhan, a medical officer, as chief commissioner. Bose continued to lobby for complete transfer, but did not succeed."{{Sfn|Gordon|1990|pp=502–503}}}}}}

With Japanese support, Bose revamped the [[Indian National Army]] (INA), which comprised Indian [[Prisoner of war|prisoners of war]] of the [[British Indian army]] who had been captured by the Japanese in the [[Battle of Singapore]].{{sfn|Lebra|2008a|pp=vii–ix, xvi–xvii, 210–212|ps=&nbsp;From the Abstract (pp vii–ix): It (the book) covers the beginnings of the Indian National Army, as part of a Japanese military intelligence operation under Major Iwaichi Fujiwara, ... From the Introduction (pp xvi–xvii): Major Fujiwara brought India to the attention of IGHQ (Imperial General Headquarters, Tokyo) and helped organize the INA. Fujiwara established the initial sincerity and credibility of Japanese aid for the Indian independence struggle. Captain Mohan Singh, a young Sikh POW from the British-Indian cooperated with Fujiwara in the inception of the INA. From pages 210–212: Two events forced India on the attention of IGHQ once hostilities broke out in the Pacific: Japanese military successes in Malaya and Thailand, particularly the capture of Singapore and with it thousands of Indian POWs, and reports by Major Fujiwara of the creation of a revolutionary Indian army eager to fight the British out of India. Fujiwara presided at the birth of the Indian National Army, together with a young Sikh, Captain Mohan Singh. Two generals sent by IGHQ to review Fujiwara's project reported favourably on his proposals to step up intelligence activities through the civilian and military arms of the independence movement.}}{{sfn|Lebra|2008b|p=100|ps=&nbsp; Hot-headed young Bengali radicals broke into the convention hall where Fujiwara, the founder of the INA, was to address the assemblage and shouted abuse at him.}}<ref name=gordon-ijss-ina>{{citation|last=Gordon|first=Leonard|author-link=Leonard A. Gordon|editor=William A. Darity Jr.|year=2008|chapter=Indian National Army|title=International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2nd Edition, Volume 3|pages=610–611|chapter-url=http://philosociology.com/UPLOADS/_PHILOSOCIOLOGY.ir_INTERNATIONAL%20ENCYCLOPEDIA%20OF%20THE%20SOCIAL%20SCIENCES_Second%20Edition_%20Darity_5760%20pgs.pdf|quote=The Indian National Army (INA) was formed in 1942 by Indian prisoners of war captured by the Japanese in Singapore. It was created with the aid of Japanese forces. Captain Mohan Singh became the INA’s first leader, and Major Iwaichi Fujiwara was the Japanese intelligence officer who brokered the arrangement to create the army, which was to be trained to fight British and other Allied forces in Southeast Asia.|access-date=1 November 2021|archive-date=1 November 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211101012423/http://philosociology.com/UPLOADS/_PHILOSOCIOLOGY.ir_INTERNATIONAL%20ENCYCLOPEDIA%20OF%20THE%20SOCIAL%20SCIENCES_Second%20Edition_%20Darity_5760%20pgs.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref> A [[Azad Hind|Provisional Government of Free India]] was declared on the [[Japanese occupation of the Andaman Islands|Japanese-occupied]] [[Andaman and Nicobar Islands]] and was nominally presided by Bose.{{Sfn|Low|1993|pp=31–32|ps=&nbsp;But there were others who took a different course, perhaps out of expediency, perhaps in an effort to hold on to their existing gains, perhaps because they could see no end to the Japanese occupation. Thus as early as 1940, the erstwhile Chinese revolutionary and one-time leftist leader, Wang Ching-wei, became premier of a Japanese puppet government in Nanking. A few months later Subhas Bose, who had long been Nehru's rival for the plaudits of the younger Indian nationalists, joined the Axis powers, and in due course formed the Indian National Army to support the Japanese. In the Philippines, Vargas, President Quezon's former secretary, very soon headed up a Philippines Executive Commission to cooperate with the Japanese; in Indonesia both Hatta and Sukarno, now at last released, readily agreed to collaborate with them; while shortly afterwards Ba Maw, prime minister of Burma under the British, agreed to serve as his country's head of state under the Japanese as well. ... As the war turned against them so the Japanese attempted to exploit this situation further. In August 1943 they made Ba Maw prime minister of an allegedly more independent Burma. In October 1943 they established a new Republic of the Philippines under the presidency of yet another Filipino oligarch, José Laurel. In that same month Subhas Bose established under their auspices a Provisional Government of Azad Hind (Free India) }}{{Sfn|Wolpert|2000|p=339}}{{efn|"Tojo turned over all his Indian POWs to Bose's command, and in October 1943 Bose announced the creation of a Provisional Government of Azad ("Free") India, of which he became head of state, prime minister, minister of war, and minister of foreign affairs. Some two million Indians were living in Southeast Asia when the Japanese seized control of that region, and these emigrees were the first "citizens" of that government, founded under the "protection" of Japan and headquartered on the "liberated" Andaman Islands. Bose declared war on the United States and Great Britain the day after his government was established. In January 1944 he moved his provisional capital to Rangoon and started his Indian National Army on their march north to the battle cry of the Meerut mutineers: "Chalo Delhi!"{{Sfn|Wolpert|2000|p=339}}}} Although Bose was unusually driven and charismatic, the Japanese considered him to be militarily unskilled,{{efn|"At the same time that the Japanese appreciated the firmness with which Bose's forces continued to fight, they were endlessly exasperated with him. A number of Japanese officers, even those like [[Iwaichi Fujiwara|Fujiwara]], who were devoted to the Indian cause, saw Bose as a military incompetent as well as an unrealistic and stubborn man who saw only his own needs and problems and could not see the larger picture of the war as the Japanese had to."{{Sfn|Gordon|1990|p=517}}}} and his soldierly effort was short-lived. In late 1944 and early 1945, the British Indian Army reversed the Japanese [[Operation U-Go|attack on India]]. Almost half of the Japanese forces and fully half of the participating INA contingent were killed.{{efn|"Gracey consoled himself that Bose's Indian National Army had also been in action against his Indians and Gurkhas but had been roughly treated and almost annihilated; when the survivors tried to surrender, they tended to fall foul of the Gurkhas' dreaded kukri."{{Sfn|McLynn|2011|pp=295–296}}}}{{efn|Initially, INA troops in the Arakan stayed loyal to the INA and their IJA masters. However, as starvation and defeat began to take their toll, loyalties began to waver, and two companies from the Bose Brigade surrendered en masse to British forces in July 1944.{{sfn|Marston|2014|p=124}}}} The remaining INA was driven down the Malay Peninsula and surrendered with the [[Operation Tiderace|recapture of Singapore]]. Bose chose to escape to Manchuria to seek a future in the [[Soviet Union]] which he believed to have turned anti-British. [[Death of Subhas Chandra Bose|He died from third-degree burns]] received when his overloaded plane crashed in [[Japanese Taiwan]] on August 18, 1945.{{efn|"The good news Wavell reported was that the RAF had just recently flown enough of its planes into Manipur's capital of Imphal to smash Netaji ("Leader") Subhas Chandra Bose's Indian National Army (INA) that had advanced to its outskirts before the monsoon began. Bose's INA consisted of about 20,000 of the British Indian soldiers captured by the Japanese in Singapore, who had volunteered to serve under Netaji Bose when he offered them "Freedom" if they were willing to risk their "Blood" to gain Indian independence a year earlier. The British considered Bose and his "army of traitors" no better than their Japanese sponsors, but to most of Bengal's 50 million Indians, Bose was a great national hero and potential "Liberator". The INA was stopped before entering Bengal, first by monsoon rains and then by the RAF, and forced to retreat, back through Burma and down its coast to the Malay peninsula. In May 1945, Bose would fly out of Saigon on an overloaded Japanese plane, headed for Taiwan, which crash-landed and burned. Bose suffered third-degree burns and died in the hospital on [[Taiwan|Formosa]]."{{Sfn|Wolpert|2009|p=69}}}} Some Indians did not believe that the crash had occurred,{{efn|"The retreat was even more devastating, finally ending the dream of gaining Indian independence through military campaign. But Bose still remained optimistic, thought of regrouping after the Japanese surrender, contemplated seeking help from Soviet Russia. The Japanese agreed to provide him transport up to Manchuria from where he could travel to Russia. But on his way, on 18 August 1945 at Taihoku airport in Taiwan, he died in an air crash, which many Indians still believe never happened."{{sfn|Bandyopādhyāẏa|2004|p=427}}}} expecting Bose to return to secure India's independence.{{efn|"There are still some in India today who believe that Bose remained alive and in Soviet custody, a once and future king of Indian independence. The legend of 'Netaii' Bose's survival helped bind together the defeated INA. In Bengal it became an assurance of the province's supreme importance in the liberation of the motherland. It sustained the morale of many across India and Southeast Asia who deplored the return of British power or felt alienated from the political settlement finally achieved by Gandhi and Nehru.{{Sfn|Bayly|Harper|2007|p=22}}}}{{efn|"On 21 March 1944, Subhas Bose and advanced units of the INA crossed the borders of India, entering Manipur, and by May they had advanced to the outskirts of that state's capital, Imphal. That was the closest Bose came to Bengal, where millions of his devoted followers awaited his army's "liberation". The British garrison at Imphal and its air arm withstood Bose's much larger force long enough for the monsoon rains to defer all possibility of warfare in that jungle region for the three months the British so desperately needed to strengthen their eastern wing. Bose had promised his men freedom in exchange for their blood, but the tide of battle turned against them after the 1944 rains, and in May 1945 the INA surrendered in Rangoon. Bose escaped on the last Japanese plane to leave Saigon, but he died in Formosa after a crash landing there in August. By that time, however, his death had been falsely reported so many times that a myth soon emerged in Bengal that Netaji Subhas Chandra was alive—raising another army in China or Tibet or the Soviet Union—and would return with it to "liberate" India.{{Sfn|Wolpert|2000|pp=339–340}}}}{{efn|"Subhas Bose was dead, killed in 1945 in a plane crash in the Far East, even though many of his devotees waited—as Barbarossa's disciples had done in another time and in another country—for their hero's second coming."{{Sfn|Chatterji|2007|p=278}}}} The [[Indian National Congress]], the main instrument of Indian nationalism, praised Bose's patriotism but distanced itself from his tactics and ideology.{{efn|"The thrust of Sarkar's thought, like that of Chittaranjan Das and Subhas Bose, was to challenge the idea that 'the average Indian is indifferent to life', as R. K. Kumaria put it. India once possessed an energised, Machiavellian political culture. All it needed was a hero (rather than a Gandhi-style saint) to revive the culture and steer India to life and freedom through violent contentions of world forces (''vishwa shakti'') represented in imperialism, fascism and socialism."{{Sfn|Bayly|2012|p=283}}}}{{Sfn|Bayly|Harper|2007|p=21}} The [[British Raj]], never seriously threatened by the INA, charged 300 INA officers with treason in the [[INA trials]], but eventually backtracked in the face of opposition by the Congress,{{efn|As cases began to come to trial, the Indian National Congress began to speak out in defence of INA prisoners, even though it had vocally opposed both the INA's narrative and methods during the war. The Muslim League and the Punjab Unionists followed suit. By mid-September, Nehru was becoming increasingly vocal in his view that trials of INA defendants should not move forward.{{sfn|Marston|2014|p=129}}}} and a new mood in Britain for rapid decolonisation in India.{{efn|"The claim is even made that without the Japanese-influenced 'Indian National Army' under Subhas Chandra Bose, India would not have achieved independence in 1947; though those who make claim seem unaware of the mood of the British people in 1945 and of the attitude of the newly-elected Labour government to the Indian question."{{Sfn|Allen|2012|p=179}}}}{{Sfn|Bayly|Harper|2007|p=21}}{{sfn|Metcalf|Metcalf|2012|p=210}}

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.{{efn|"Despite any whimsy in implementation, the clarity of Gandhi's political vision and the skill with which he carried the reforms in 1920 provided the foundation for what was to follow: twenty-five years of stewardship over the freedom movement. He knew the hazards to be negotiated. The British must be brought to a point where they would abdicate their rule without terrible destruction, thus assuring that freedom was not an empty achievement. To accomplish this he had to devise means of a moral sort, able to inspire the disciplined participation of millions of Indians, and equal to compelling the British to grant freedom, if not willingly, at least with resignation. Gandhi found his means in non-violent [[satyagraha]]. He insisted that it was not a cowardly form of resistance; rather, it required the most determined kind of courage.{{sfn|Stein|2010|p=297}}}}{{efn|What he is remembered for is his vigor, his militancy, his readiness to trade blood (his own if necessary) for nationhood. In large parts of Uttar Pradesh, the historian Gyanendra Pandey has recently remarked, independence is popularly credited not to 'the quiet efforts at self¬regeneration initiated by Mahatma Gandhi,' but to 'the military daring of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.'{{sfn|Fay|1995|p=522}}}}{{efn|" 'The transfer of power in India ,' Dr [[Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan|Radhakrishnan]] has said, 'was one of the greatest acts of reconciliation in human history.'"<ref name=radhakrishnan>{{citation|last1=Corbett|first1=Jim|last2=Elwin|first2=Verrier|last3=Ali|first3=Salim|title=Lives in the Wilderness: Three Classic Indian Autobiographies|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2004|quote= }}</ref>}} His collaborations with Japanese Fascism and Nazism pose serious ethical dilemmas,{{efn|"The most troubling aspect of Bose's presence in Nazi Germany is not military or political but rather ethical. His alliance with the most genocidal regime in history poses serious dilemmas precisely because of his popularity and his having made a lifelong career of fighting the 'good cause'. How did a man who started his political career at the feet of Gandhi end up with Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo? Even in the case of Mussolini and Tojo, the gravity of the dilemma pales in comparison to that posed by his association with Hitler and the Nazi leadership. The most disturbing issue, all too often ignored, is that in the many articles, minutes, memorandums, telegrams, letters, plans, and broadcasts Bose left behind in Germany, he did not express the slightest concern or sympathy for the millions who died in the concentration camps. Not one of his Berlin wartime associates or colleagues ever quotes him expressing any indignation. Not even when the horrors of Auschwitz and its satellite camps were exposed to the world upon being liberated by Soviet troops in early 1945, revealing publicly for the first time the genocidal nature of the Nazi regime, did Bose react."{{sfn|Hayes|2011|p=165}}}} especially his reluctance to publicly criticize the worst excesses of German anti-Semitism from 1938 onwards or to offer refuge in India to its victims.{{efn| Between 1938 and 1939 the reactions of the Anti-Nazi League, the Congress, and the progressive press toward German anti-Semitism and German politics showed that Indian public opinion and the nationalist leaders were fairly well informed about the events in Europe. If Bose, Savarkar and others looked favourably upon racial discrimination in Germany or did not criticise them, it cannot be said, to justify them, that they were unaware of what was happening. The great anti-Jewish pogrom known as "the Night of Broken Glass" took place on 9 November 1938. In early December, pro-Hindu Mahasabha journals published articles in favour of German anti-Semitism. This stance brought the Hindu Mahasabha into conflict with the Congress which, on 12 December, made a statement containing clear references to recent European events. Within the Congress, only Bose opposed the party stance. A few months later, in April 1939, he refused to support the party motion that Jews might find refuge in India.{{sfn|Casolari|2020|pp=89–90}}}}{{efn|Leaders of Indian National Congress (INC), which led the anti-colonial movement, responded in different ways to the plight of Jews. In 1938, Gandhi, the nationalist icon, advised the Jews to engage in non-violent resistance by challenging "the gentile Germal" to shoot him or cast him in dungeon. Jawaharlal Nehru, the future first prime minister of independent India, was sympathetic towards the Jews. The militant nationalist leader Subhas Chandra Bose, who escaped to German in 1941 with the aim of freeing India through military help from the Axis nations, remained predictably reticent on this issue.<ref name=roy-holocaust>{{citation|last=Roy|first=Baijayanti|editor1-last=Ballis|editor1-first=Anja|editor2-last=Gloe|editor2-first=Markus|year=2019|page=108|isbn=978-3-658-24204-6|location=Wiesbaden, Germany|publisher=Springer VS|chapter=The Past is Indeed a Different Country: Perception of Holocaust in India|title=Holocaust Education Revisited}}</ref>}}{{efn|Jawaharlal Nehru called the Jews 'People with a home or nation' and sponsored a resolution in the Congress Working Committee. Although the exact date is not known, yet it can be said that it probably happened in December 1938 at the Wardha session, the one that took place shortly after Nehru returned from Europe. The draft resolution read: 'The Committee sees no objection to the employment in India of such Jewish refugees as are experts and specialists and who can fit in with the new order in India and accept Indian standards.' It was, however, rejected by the then Congress President Subhas Chandra Bose, who four years later in 1942 was reported by the ''Jewish Chronicle'' of London as having published an article in ''Angriff'', a journal of Goebbels, saying that "anti-Semitism should become part of the Indian liberation movement because Jews had helped the British to exploit Indians (21 August 1942)" Although by then Bose had left the Congress, he continued to command a strong influence within the party.<ref name=afreedi-2021-bose>{{citation|last=Aafreedi|first=Navras J.|chapter=Holocaust education in India and its challenges|title=Conceptualizing Mass Violence: Representations, Recollections, and reinterpretatons|location=Abington and New York|editor1-last=Aafreedi|editor1-first=Navras J.|editor2-last=Singh|editor2-first=Priya|publisher=Routledge|year=2021|isbn=978-1-00-314613-1|page=154}}</ref>}}

Subhas Bose, aged 24, arrived ashore in India at Bombay on the morning of 16 July 1921 and immediately set about arranging an interview with Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi, aged 51, was the leader of the [[non-cooperation movement]] that had taken India by storm the previous year and in a quarter-century would evolve to secure its independence.{{efn|"Despite any whimsy in implementation, the clarity of Gandhi's political vision and the skill with which he carried the reforms in 1920 provided the foundation for what was to follow: twenty-five years of stewardship over the freedom movement. He knew the hazards to be negotiated. The British must be brought to a point where they would abdicate their rule without terrible destruction, thus assuring that freedom was not an empty achievement. To accomplish this he had to devise means of a moral sort, able to inspire the disciplined participation of millions of Indians, and equal to compelling the British to grant freedom, if not willingly, at least with resignation. Gandhi found his means in non-violent [[satyagraha]]. He insisted that it was not a cowardly form of resistance; rather, it required the most determined kind of courage.{{sfn|Stein|2010|p=297}}}}{{efn|Rt. Hon. [[Clement Attlee|C. R. Attlee]], Prime Minister of Great Britain. Broadcast from London after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, 30 January 1948: "For a quarter of a century, this one man has been the major factor in every consideration of the Indian problem."<ref name=Attlee-Gandhi-1948-1-30>{{citation|publisher=Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) Archives|date=30 January 1948|author=C. R. Attlee|title=Speech on the Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi|location=London, UK|url=https://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/india-the-assassination-of-mahatma-gandhi|access-date=30 January 2021|archive-date=25 February 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210225183920/https://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/india-the-assassination-of-mahatma-gandhi|url-status=live}}</ref>}} Gandhi happened to be in Bombay and agreed to see Bose that afternoon. In Bose's account of the meeting, written many years later, he pilloried Gandhi with question after question.{{sfn|Gordon|1990|p=69}} Bose thought Gandhi's answers were vague, his goals unclear, his plan for achieving them not thought through.{{sfn|Gordon|1990|p=69}} Gandhi and Bose differed in this first meeting on the question of means—for Gandhi non-violent means to any end were non-negotiable; in Bose's thought, all means were acceptable in the service of anti-colonial ends.{{sfn|Gordon|1990|p=69}} They differed on the question of ends—Bose was attracted to totalitarian models of governance, which were anathematized by Gandhi.{{sfn|Hayes|2011|p=2}} According to historian Gordon, "Gandhi, however, set Bose on to the leader of the Congress and Indian nationalism in Bengal, C. R. Das, and in him Bose found the leader whom he sought."{{sfn|Gordon|1990|p=69}} Das was more flexible than Gandhi, more sympathetic to the extremism that had attracted idealistic young men such as Bose in Bengal.{{sfn|Gordon|1990|p=69}} Das launched Bose into nationalist politics.{{sfn|Gordon|1990|p=69}} Bose would work within the ambit of the Indian National Congress politics for nearly 20 years even as he tried to change its course.{{sfn|Gordon|1990|p=69}}

During this operation, on 6 July 1944, in a speech broadcast by the [[Azad Hind Radio]] from Singapore, Bose addressed Mahatma Gandhi as the "Father of the Nation" and asked for his blessings and good wishes for the war he was fighting. This was the first time that Gandhi was referred to by this appellation.<ref>"Father of Our Nation" (Address to Mahatma Gandhi over the Rangoon Radio on 6 July 1944) {{harvnb|Bose|Bose|1997a|pp=301–302}}</ref> The protracted Japanese attempts to take these two towns depleted Japanese resources, with Operation U-Go ultimately proving unsuccessful. Through several months of Japanese onslaught on these two towns, Commonwealth forces remained entrenched in the towns. Commonwealth forces then counter-attacked, inflicting serious losses on the Axis led forces, who were then forced into a retreat back into Burmese territory. After the Japanese defeat at the battles of Kohima and Imphal, Bose's Provisional Government's aim of establishing a base in mainland India was lost forever.{{Citation needed|date=August 2021}}

Soon, in spite of the treatment, Bose went into a coma.{{Sfn|Gordon|1990|p=542}}{{Sfn|Lebra|2008a|pp=196–197}} A few hours later, between 9 and 10&nbsp;pm (local time) on Saturday, 18 August 1945, Bose died aged 48.{{Sfn|Gordon|1990|p=542}}{{Sfn|Lebra|2008a|pp=196–197}}

Bose later criticized Nehru's 1933 statement that there is "no middle road" between [[communism]] and fascism, describing it as "fundamentally wrong". Bose believed communism would not gain ground in India due to its rejection of nationalism and religion and suggested a "synthesis between communism and fascism" could take hold instead.{{sfn|Bose|2011|p=98}} In 1944, Bose similarly stated, "Our philosophy should be a synthesis between [[National Socialism]] and communism."{{sfn|Shanker Kapoor|2017}}

Since before the beginning of the World War II, Bose was opposed to the attempts to grant Jewish refugees asylum in India.{{sfn|Hayes|2011|pp=165–166}}<ref>{{citation|last=Kumaraswamy|first=P. R.|title=Squaring the Circle: Mahatma Gandhi and the Jewish National Home|publisher=Routledge|page=153|year=2020|quote=In his presidential address, Subhas Chandra Bose highlighted the contradictory nature of the British Empire and its inconsistent policy over Palestine. As a heterogeneous empire, Bose observed, the British had to be pro-Arab in India and pro Jewish elsewhere, and accused that London "has to please Jews because she cannot ignore Jewish high finance. On the other hand, the India Office and Foreign Office have to placate the Arabs because of the Imperial interests in the Near East and India."' While his reasoning was logical, Bose's anti-Jewish slur was no different from the anti-Semitic remarks in the (Muslim) League deliberations referred to earlier. Bose also opposed Nehru's efforts to provide asylum to a limited number of European Jewish refugees who were fleeing from Nazi persecution. Despite the opposition led by Bose, Nehru "was a strong supporter of inviting (Jewish refugees) to settle down in India... (and felt that) this was the only way by which Jews could be saved from the wrath of the Nazis... Between 1933 and the outbreak of the War, Nehru was instrumental in obtaining the entry of several German Jewish refugees into India"}}</ref> The great anti-Jewish pogrom called "[[Kristallnacht|the Night of Broken Glass]]" happened on 9 November 1938. In early December, the pro-[[Hindu Mahasabha]] journals published articles lending support to German anti-Semitism. This stance brought Hindu Mahasabha into conflict with the Congress which, on 12 December, issued statement containing references to recent European events. Within the Congress, only Bose opposed this stance of the party. After some months in April 1939, Bose refused to support the party motion that Jews can find refuge in India.{{sfn|Casolari|2020|pp=89–90}}<ref name=combined-antisemetic>{{citation|last=Bruckenhaus|first=Daniel|location=Oxford|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2017|isbn=978-0-19-066001-7|lccn=2016042217|page=213|title=Policing Transnational Protest: Liberal Imperialism and the Surveillance of Anticolonialists in Europe, 1905–1945|quote=Epilogue and conclusion: Finally, however, the example of Germany also demonstrates that their work in Europe frequently forced anticolonialists to make difficult moral choices, as their presence in that continent required them to take a position not only on colonialism worldwide, but also on inner-European political and ideological conflicts. This was true, especially, during World War II. The war situation brought to stark light, one last time, the contradictions within the western political model of rule, leading to a rift among the anticolonialists then present in Europe.  As the western empires fought against Nazi Germany, most anticolonialists felt that they could no longer support, simultaneously, the emancipatory projects of anticolonialism and antifascism. Some, such as Subhas Chandra Bose, began to cooperate with the radically racist Nazis against colonialism, while others decided to work against Nazism with the very western authorities who had been engaged, over the previous decades, in creating a widespread network of trans-national surveillance against them.}}</ref><ref>{{citation|last=Roland|first=Joan G.|title=Jewish Communities in India: Identity in a Colonial Era|publisher=Routledge|year=2017|isbn=978-0-7658-0439-6|page=342|quote=On 21 August 1942 the Jewish Chronicle of London reported that Bose was anti-Semitic and had published an article in Angriff, the organ of Goebbels, in which he described Indians as the real ancient Aryans and the brethren of the German people. He had said that the swastika was an old Indian sign and that anti-Semitism must become a part of the Indian freedom movement, since the Jews, he alleged, had helped Britain to exploit and oppress the Indians. The Jewish Advocate expressed horror at Bose's statement about a Jewish role in India's exploitation but added, "one may expect anything from one who has traveled the road to Berlin in search of his country's salvation." Norman Shohet pointed out how insignificant a part in the economic and political life of the country the Jews of India actually played. He also mentioned that other Indian leaders had so far not shown any anti-Semitic leanings, but that on the contrary, Gandhi, Nehru, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, and others had been positively friendly to the Jews.}}</ref><ref>{{citation|last=Aafreedi|first=Navras J.|chapter=Holocaust education in India and its challenges|title=Conceptualizing Mass Violence: Representations, Recollections, and reinterpretatons|location=Abington and New York|editor1-last=Aafreedi|editor1-first=Navras J.|editor2-last=Singh|editor2-first=Priya|publisher=Routledge|year=2021|isbn=978-1-00-314613-1|page=154|quote=Jawaharlal Nehru called the Jews 'People without a home or nation' and sponsored a resolution in the Congress Working Committee.  Although the exact date is not known, yet it can be said that it probably happened in December 1938 at the Wardha session, the one that took place shortly after Nehru returned from Europe.  The draft resolution read: 'The Committee sees no objection to the employment in India of such Jewish refugees as are experts and specialists and who can fit in with the new order in India and accept Indian standards.' It was, however, rejected by the then Congress President Subhas Chandra Bose, who four years later in 1942 was reported by the ''Jewish Chronicle'' of London as having published an article in ''Angriff'', a journal of Goebbels, saying that "anti-Semitism should become part of the Indian liberation movement because Jews had helped the British to exploit Indians (21 August 1942)"  Although by then Bose had left the Congress, he continued to command a strong influence within the party.}}</ref><ref>{{citation|last=Weinberg|first=Gerhard L.|title=A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II|publisher=Cambridge University Press, 2nd Edition|isbn=978-0-521-61826-7|location=Cambridge and New York|year=2011|page=xx|quote=None of the works that deal with ... Subhas Chandra Bose, or his Indian National Army has engaged either Bose’s reaction to German mass killing of Sinti and Roma (Gypsies) because their ancestors came from India or the reaction of the soldiers in his army to the sex slaves kidnapped in Japanese-occupied lands and held in enclosures attached to the camps in which they were being trained to follow their Japanese comrades in the occupation of India.}}</ref><ref>{{citation|last=Shindler|first=Colin|title=Israel and the European Left: Between Solidarity and Deligitimization|publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing, Continuum|location=New York|page=112|year=2010|isbn=978-1-4411-8898-4|quote=Bose requested a declaration from the Germans that they supported the movement for freedom in India—and in Arab countries.  He had opposed Nehru in permitting political asylum to Jews fleeing Europe in 1939.  He was prepared to ingratiate himself with Nazi ideology by writing for Goebells's ''Der Angriff'' in 1942.  He argued that anti-Semitism should become a factor in the struggle for Indian freedom since the Jews had collaborated with British imperialism to exploit the country and its inhabitants.}}</ref>

Bose' defiance of [[British raj|British authority in India]] made him a hero among many Indians,{{efn|"His romantic saga, coupled with his defiant nationalism, has made Bose a near-mythic figure, not only in his native Bengal, but across India."{{sfn|Metcalf|Metcalf|2012|p=210}}}}{{efn|"Bose's heroic endeavor still fires the imagination of many of his countrymen. But like a meteor which enters the earth's atmosphere, he burned brightly on the horizon for a brief moment only."{{sfn|Kulke|Rothermund|2004|p=311}}}}{{efn|"Subhas Bose might have been a renegade leader who had challenged the authority of the Congress leadership and their principles. But in death he was a martyred patriot whose memory could be an ideal tool for political mobilization."{{sfn|Bandyopādhyāẏa|2004|p=427}}}} however his wartime alliances with [[Nazi Germany]] and [[Empire of Japan|Imperial Japan]] left a legacy fraught with [[authoritarianism]], [[anti-Semitism]], and [[military incompetence|military failure]].{{efn|(p.117) the INA was raised during the Second World War, with the support of the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA); lasted less than three years; and went through two different configurations during that period. In total, it numbered some 40,000 men and women, half of whom are estimated to have been recruited from Indian Army prisoners of war (POWs). The INA's battlefield performance was quite poor when assessed either alongside the IJA or against the reformed Fourteenth Army on the battlefields of Assam and Burma. Reports of its creation in 1942/3 caused consternation among the political and military leadership (p. 118) of the GOI, but in the end its formation did not constitute a legitimate mutiny, and its presence had a negligible impact on the Indian Army.{{sfn|Marston|2014|pp=117–118}}}}{{refn|"At the same time that the Japanese appreciated the firmness with which Bose's forces continued to fight, they were endlessly exasperated with him. A number of Japanese officers, even those like [[Iwaichi Fujiwara|Fujiwara]], who were devoted to the Indian cause, saw Bose as a military incompetent as well as an unrealistic and stubborn man who saw only his own needs and problems and could not see the larger picture of the war as the Japanese had to."{{resfn|Gordon|1990|p=517}}}}<ref name=combined-military-lead>*{{citation|last=Markovits|first=Claude|title=India and the World: A History of Connections, c. 1750–2000|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge and New York|pages=79, 113, 114|isbn=978-1-107-18675-0|lccn=2021000609|doi=10.1017/9781316899847|year=2021|s2cid=233601747|quote=(p. 79) This was owing to Japan’s own ambivalent attitude towards Indians: on the one hand, the Japanese saw them as potential allies in the fight against Britain, and they made an alliance with the dissident nationalist leader Subhas Chandra Bose; on the other hand, they despised them as a ‘subject race’ enslaved by the British. Thanks to this alliance, however, the Indians escaped some of the harshest measures that the Japanese took against the Chinese population in the region. That said, 100,000 Indian coolies, mostly Tamilian plantation workers, were conscripted as forced labour and put to work on various infrastructure projects for the Japanese Imperial Army. Some were sent from Malaya to Thailand to work on the infamous Thailand–Burma railway project, resulting in 30,000 deaths of fever and exhaustion (Nakahara 2005). Thousands of war prisoners who had refused to join the Indian National Army (INA) of Subhas Bose were sent to faraway New Guinea, where Australian troops discovered them hiding in 1945.|doi-access=free}}

Bose was featured on the stamps in India from 1964, 1993, 1997, 2001, 2016, 2018 and 2021.<ref></ref> Bose was also featured in ₹2 coins in 1996 and 1997, ₹75 coin in 2018 and ₹125 coin in 2021.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Netaji fan with error coin in pocket|url=https://www.telegraphindia.com/jharkhand/fan-of-netaji-subhas-chandra-bose-with-error-coin-in-pocket/cid/1682378|access-date=27 January 2021|website=www.telegraphindia.com|archive-date=6 February 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210206030935/https://www.telegraphindia.com/jharkhand/fan-of-netaji-subhas-chandra-bose-with-error-coin-in-pocket/cid/1682378|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|title=Rs 75 commemorative coin to mark 75th anniversary of Tricolour hoisting by Bose|url=https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/rs-75-commemorative-coin-to-mark-75th-anniversary-of-tricolour-hoisting-by-bose/articleshow/66608885.cms|access-date=27 January 2021|website=The Times of India|date=14 November 2018|language=en|archive-date=4 February 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210204091958/https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/rs-75-commemorative-coin-to-mark-75th-anniversary-of-tricolour-hoisting-by-bose/articleshow/66608885.cms|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=नेताजी की 125वीं जयंती पर लॉन्च होगा 125 रुपये का सिक्का, जानें क्या होगा खास|url=https://www.zeebiz.com/hindi/economy/government-to-issue-rupee-125-coin-to-mark-125th-anniversary-of-netaji-subhash-chandra-bose-parakram-diwas-42057|access-date=27 January 2021|website=Zee Business|language=Hindi|archive-date=31 January 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210131175722/https://www.zeebiz.com/hindi/economy/government-to-issue-rupee-125-coin-to-mark-125th-anniversary-of-netaji-subhash-chandra-bose-parakram-diwas-42057|url-status=live}}</ref> [[Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport]] at Kolkata, [[Ross Island, South Andaman district|Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Island]], formerly Ross Island, [[Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Gomoh railway station|Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Junction Gomoh]] railway station, [[Netaji Express]] (formerly known as [[Netaji Express|Kalka Mail]]), a train runs between [[Howrah railway station|Howrah]] and [[Kalka]] and many other institutions in India are named after him. On 23 August 2007, [[Japanese Prime Minister]], [[Shinzō Abe]] visited the [[Netaji Bhawan]] in [[Kolkata]].{{sfn|Roche|2007}}{{sfn|The Hindu|2007}} Abe, who is also the recipient of Netaji Award 2022,<ref>{{cite web|url=https://m.economictimes.com/news/india/ex-japan-pm-shinzo-abe-given-netaji-award-2022/amp_articleshow/89072417.cms|title=Ex-Japan PM Shinzo Abe given Netaji Award 2022|agency=[[Press Trust of India]]|website=economictimes.com|publisher=[[The Economic Times]]|date=23 January 2022|access-date=8 July 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220123080747/https://m.economictimes.com/news/india/ex-japan-pm-shinzo-abe-given-netaji-award-2022/amp_articleshow/89072417.cms|archive-date=23 January 2022}}</ref> said to Bose's family "The Japanese are deeply moved by Bose's strong will to have led the [[Indian independence movement]] from British rule. Netaji is a much respected name in Japan."{{sfn|Roche|2007}}{{sfn|The Hindu|2007}}