Indian nationalist
leader, who fought against the British in World War II.
Born in Cuttack, Bengal, and educated at the universities
of Calcutta and Cambridge, he left a career in the Indian
civil service to fight for India's independence and was
imprisoned a dozen times by the British. He shared
leadership of India's youth and peasant societies with
Jawaharlal Nehru and became president of the Indian
National Congress in 1938. Bose was opposed, however, by
Mohandas Gandhi, whose principle of nonviolence he did
not accept, and was forced to resign the following year.
In 1941, hoping to take advantage of the war to free
India of British rule, Bose fled to Germany. From there
he went to Malaya, where he set up (1943) a Provisional
Government of Free India and, with Japanese help,
organized the so-called Indian National Army. Bose led
his troops against the British on the Burma-India
frontier until 1945; he was killed in a plane crash while
fleeing to Japan in August of that year. |
