Who was Rash Behari Bose? : The Forgotten Hero.

 Rash Behari Bose was born on the 25th of May, 1886 in the Bengal province of India. As a teenager, he was expelled out of school for questioning the ways of teaching in British India--the revolutionary zeal burned inside him from a young age. A few years later, he ran away from home; his objective was to enter the British army, learn their techniques and use it against them. After being denied entry into the infantry because of his Bengali lineage, he obtained a job as a clerk in Fort William (a British military station) but was forced to conceal his identity. Bose's secret was, however, discovered later and he was shamefully kicked out of his job; unmoved, Bose swore to take revenge. He went onto get a job at a research institute in Dehradun, where he taught other young men how to make bombs and use firearms. In 1912, he was forced to go incognito after being identified as one of the perpetrators of a bomb attack against the British Viceroy.

R.B. Bose

The uprising of 1915...

While in hiding, Bose was asked to take up the leadership of the motivated but scattered Ghadar party, a revolutionary group then based in Punjab. Seizing the opportunity, Rash Behari started planning a massive large-scale uprising in India. Disguised as an officer, Bose started to visit several garrisons in the hope to inspire Indian soldiers to align with the revolution. All set, Bose and his partners deiced upon the 21st of February, 1915 to be the starting date of a massive uprising in the North-Eastern part of the country. He and his associates also made elaborate arrangements to receive shipments of arms from Germany and Singapore. The group then moved to Lahore(then a part of British-India), to conduct the operation. But alas, the revolutionaries were betrayed by one of their associates(identified by the name of Kirpal Singh), who revealed all of the details of the operation to the police intelligence. Hot on their trail, the police raided Bose's safehouse in Lahore.  A lot of his companions were arrested but Rash Behari, urged by his comrades, managed to escape in the nick of time. After the escape, Rash Behari shifted across various cities in India, and was later advised by his colleagues to flee to Japan for the sake of the revolution--reluctantly he agreed. 

Members of the Ghadar Party

Early Efforts in Japan...

Bose landed in Japan on June 15th, 1915. There he met a European agent who was able to help him obtain arms and dispatch them to India, but all the shipments sent by Bose were seized and confiscated by the British. Determined, Bose did not give up and organized various meetings and conferences regarding Indian Independence in Tokyo, inviting glorious pro-independence leaders such as Lala Lajpat Rai among others. Meanwhile, the British government was able to convince Japan to issue an extradition address for Bose. This was a harsh time for Bose and his wife, Toshiko(whom he had married while in Japan), they had to keep changing locations constantly to put the Japanese police off their scent.

Bose with his Japanese friends

The Indian National Army(INA)...

Finally, In 1923, he was granted citizenship by the Japanese government, this meant that he could freely continue his efforts for the Indian Independence movement. In 1924, he founded the Indian Independence League(IIL) and started uniting Indians across the world for the common purpose of driving the British out of India. He was admired by the Indians and Japanese alike for his candor and strong resolve. He worked with the Japanese to organize Indians in East Asia into a formal military force. In 1942, at the Bangkok conference, the formation of the Indian National Army(INA), the military wing of the IIL, was formally announced.

Then in July 1943, citing his poor health, Rash Behari handed over the command of the IIL to the famous Subhas Chandra Bose.

Subhas Chandra Bose inspecting an INA battalion

The visionary R.B. Bose died on January 29th, 1945.

On August 15th, 1947, owing greatly to the efforts of the INA, India was able to gain its independence.