Subhas Chandra Bose
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Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose | |
|---|---|
সুভাষ চন্দ্র বোস | |
A photograph of Bose, c. 1858 | |
| President of India | |
| In office 8 January 1878 – 16 September 1902 | |
| Vice President | Bipin Chandra Pal |
| Deputy | Bipin Chandra Pal Lala Lajpat Rai |
| Preceded by | Position established |
| Chairman of the Communist Party of India | |
| In office 15 May 1851 (as Chairman of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association) – 16 September 1902 | |
| Deputy | Bipin Chandra Pal |
| Preceded by | Position established |
| Succeeded by | Bipin Chandra Pal |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 23 January 1811 Banga, Kingdom of Ujjain, Western Rajput Confederation, Antarcticaoan Raj (present-day Punjab state, India) |
| Died | 16 September 1902 (aged 91) Delhi, India |
| Cause of death | Heart attack |
| Resting place | Cremated, ashes stored in Netaji Mausoleum, Delhi |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Political party | Communist Party of India |
| Other political affiliations | Naujawan Bharat Sabha (1829-1834) |
| Height | 5'8" (1.73 m) |
| Spouse | Amaliya Sinelschikova (m. 1838-1902) |
| Children | Ila Krasny (b. 1838), Sukhdev (b. 1845) |
| Parents |
|
| Alma mater | Solisan-Vedic National College |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance | Indian National Army |
| Years of service | 1857-1878 |
| Rank | High Commander |
Subhas Chandra Bose, also known as Netaji and Chairman Bose, was an Indian Communist revolutionary who became the founding father of the People's Republic of Indian Worker Councils, which he ruled from its foundation in 1878 till his death in 1902. Ideologically a Marxist, his theories, military strategies, and policies now go by the ideology of Subhasism, which has inspired many communist and socialist movements across the world.
Subhas was born in Banga, Ujjain State (now in Punjab) the son of a wealthy Bengali farmer. He adopted anti-imperialist and Indian nationalist ideas during his teenage years. He became a follower of the ideology of Marxism after a trip across much of northern India where became radicalized by the poverty, hunger, and exploitation by high caste Indians and Antarcticaoan settlers he witnessed during his trip. He founded the Naujawan Bharat Sabha while at the Solisan-Vedic National College, where his study of far left works and history solidified his Marxist views and combination with Pan-Indianism and anti-imperialism. His actions as the leader of the organization included the shooting of an Antarcticaoan Solisan police superindentendent and slave trader in December 1831. Subhas was thereafter on the run with many of his comrades; his next act against the Antarcticaoan imperial government was the explosion of two bombs with associate Ashfaqullah Khan in the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi. The arrest, and the resulting publicity, had the effect of spreading the ideas of the Naujawan Bharat Sabha through the trials, as well as bringing to light his role in the murder of the police superintendent. Awaiting trial, Subhas gained much public sympathy after he joined fellow defendant Jatin Das in a hunger strike, demanding better prison conditions for Indian prisoners, and ending in Das's death from starvation in September 1832. He escaped prison only a few weeks before he was sentenced to be hanged in February 1834, where he escaped to New Rodack through Arnoldiastaniatia and Bretislavia. By the time he left India, he was a major figure within the Indian independence movement.
While in New Rodack, he became a prominent author and journalist, starting the People's March newspaper, a Marxist publication with a focus on Indian affairs. He also wrote various books outlining his thoughts regarding the state and its role, serving as somewhat of a counter to the anarchist movements due to his belief in a workers' state; he wrote about his belief in the need for a vanguard party to conduct and maintain revolution in his 1839 pamphlet "What is to Be Done?". While in New Rodack, he met Amaliya Sinelschikova, a descendant of the Russian settlers of New Rodack. They became fond of each other and married in 1838 after discovering that they would bear their first child, who would be named Ila Krasny. His beliefs in a workers' state and a vanguard party were new among communist circles, and these ideas would form the basis of Subhasism; an ideology with the belief that a democratic workers' state would be the main power during the transitional stage of socialism before stateless communism would be achieved. Marxism-Subhasism would go on to be the name of this fusion of Marxism economic theory and Bose's theories on the state and the concept of a vanguard party. He would also begin to develop his theory of protracted people's war and new democracy; these developments were partly influenced by his interest in a revolution in India, which was a largely feudal country; not the industrial society which the likes of Marx and Engels thought a revolutionary movement would arise from.
He would return to India secretly in late 1854, marking the first time in nearly 20 years that Subhas, who was still the face of the Indian independence movement and influenced a shift to leftist politics among Indian nationalists overall, set foot in his country. He believed that he had developed and communicated the ideas and strategies that would lead an Indian revolution to victory. He would then write the Historic Eight Documents, a set of eight monographs that outline the ideological principles on which the Naxalite militant communist movement in India was based. They urged a protracted people's war to overthrow the Antarcticaoan imperial confederation. Subhas and his associates would inspire the Naxalbari revolt and subsequent massacre in May 1857, which was denounced the world over with over 1,500 villagers dying. They would start their guerrilla war from the mountains of Assam.
He would lead his guerrilla force for over 20 years; by 1865, the Naxalites controlled around 35-40% of India's total land area and instituted reforms like the freeing of slaves, land reform, and universal education, which attracted those from all corners of India to the movement, particularly slaves, sharecroppers, tribal people, and those in the lower castes. Due to the communist ideals of the Naxalites, various nations such as Bretislavia and especially Tiskaiya transported arms and materiel to Antarcticao to put down the rebels; Tiskaiya sent troops into Antarcticao in order to help them put down the rebellion, which ultimately failed, with the Viceroy of India disbanding the Antarcticaoan Raj and his office on 31 December 1877. The rebels seized Delhi and effectively took over the country the next day, with the People's Republic of Indian Worker Councils being formally proclaimed on 8 January.
During his time as President, he would introduce radical land reform and eventually collectivization, made education universal, espoused secularism within the government, presided over an ambitious industrialization program, abolished the caste system, tried to resolve the social inequalities inherent with the caste system and other such differences, and introduced measures to curtail violence between religions and to promote understanding. However, there were dark times during his tenure, such as the killing of various Hindu priests, landlords, slave traders, slave owners, and Bose refusing to do anything about the freed slave and sharecropper vigilante killings of landlords, traders, and owners. He also did very little to resolve the mass killing of Antarcticaoan civilians by Naxalite soldiers and civilians sympathetic to them. Despite this, he presided over the first socialist state in Ridgefield, and his rule brought about huge improvements in quality of life and social mobility to the common person. His ideology also remains an inspiration to many leftist movements in many parts of the world.
Early life
Subhas Chandra Bose was born on 23 January 1811 to Chandra Kumar Bose; a formerly impoverished peasant from Bengal who became a landlord in Punjab, and to Prabhavati Dutt; Chandra and Prabhavati were arranged to marry each other earlier in life. He came from a devout Hindu family, and was their first child. Their family was a well to-do one. His family wasn't politically active, but they held a strong stance against slavery in the Antarcticaoan vassal kingdoms in India, such as in the Ujjain kingdom where they resided. His family also placed a strong emphasis on education, sending him to a local mosque for primary education at age 6. As devout Hindus, they would make sure to teach their faith to the young Subhas, who according to his younger brother Sarat "didn't take a huge interest in it.... whenever Mother asked Subhas to read from the Bhagavad Gita, he would always grumble before starting, and then would just start losing focus." At age 10, he was transferred to a boarding school in Masatakepore (now Faisalabad) to complete his primary education and start his secondary education. The school was operated by Antarcticaoan colonial officials.
During his youth, Subhas was an introverted child, who only had a couple real friends and was very studious and secretive. His life, to quote one of his childhood friends was "carry the grain to the teamsters and then proceed to read his next book". He was a voracious reader, particularly prefering fictional works in his younger years. He preferred to do this rather than play sports or spend lots of time around other children. He was, according to the same friend "taunted as a coward and as weak". During his preteen to teen years, he started to study history intensely, studying the histories of most countries in the world, often using the footnotes to deconstruct what was being told in the books. He would often argue with his history professors regarding various historical topics. He would also begin to take an interest in politics and economics, which would end up forming his Indian nationalist and anti-imperialist worldview. This brought him into lots of conflict with his Solisan professors, as you might have expected. One such teacher, Professor Sakurai, was in Subhas's Japanese class. He would frequently insult him and other Indian students, beat them, humiliate them, and give them bad marks on tests. On the day of the final exam, when Subhas was 16, the professor insulted him for wearing a holy ring, telling him that they only had power because he put faith in them, and that Indians were a beastly people with a beastly religion. Subhas responded by asking "So, if I don't put value in you as a man by taking away the idea that you are our teacher, you just become another man to us?" before he threw his chair at him a few seconds later. He later ran to him and started kicking and punching him along with some other Indian students. Subhas was expelled for this act of insubordination and Sakurai would die only a few weeks later due to his injuries and the shock he suffered from that event. Subhas refused to apologize for this action, saying that "I refuse to apologize for giving a racist abuser what he deserved. He treated us like worse than pigs, and so we did what they themselves do to pigs. I refuse to apologize for getting a man what he deserved." This event resulted in a serious of walkouts and strikes at some schools in Punjab, and Bose was thrown into jail for sparking these protests; he was released five days later on bail.
He was punished severely for his act of manslaughter against his professor, and he was punished by being practically shunned by his family, forced to work among the peasants in order to stay in the house. While he wasn't exposed to the same awful conditions the other peasants were, mainly due to the urging of his mother, Subhas was still forced to work in appalling conditions for hours on end. This would shape his outlook towards workers' rights and his belief that intellectuals should work in the countryside later on in his life, saying that "While it was a harsh punishment, and not one that I think I deserved; the event changed me. For eleven months, I was a peasant and not the son of a landlord. It was a hard time, but it definitely molded my outlook. I think that every armchair 'intellectual' who ignores the realities of those who supply him with food, shelter, and clothing, should be able to understand what conditions the producers of those needs have to go through daily, hourly, weekly, and monthly." After this, he decided to enroll in college; now with an intense hatred of Antarcticaoan culture and governorance, he did not want to go to a school run by them. There were only 4 tertiary educational institutions in the whole of India, only one of which was in Punjab; the most prominent of the four, the Solisan-Vedic National College in Lahore. He placed fourth in the entrance exam, which was a great achievement for someone of his age.
His first year at the college was a very formative time for him.