Subhash Chandra Bose was one of the greatest freedom fighters of India. He was born on January 23, 1897 at Cuttack in Orissa. His father, Jankinath Bose was a renowned lawyer of the area. His mother, Prabhavati, was a highly learned religiously-minded lady.
Subhash Chandra imbibed many of his religious views from her. Some other persons who influenced him greatly were his teacher Beni Prasad Madho, C.R. Das and Swami Vivekananda. He was a very intelligent, precocious, patriotic child with revolutionary ideas in his mind from the very beginning. He did his graduation from the Presidency College in 1919. Later, he appeared and passed the ICS examination only to please his father.
But actually his heart was framed for serving his motherland and getting it liberated from the foreign rule. In politics, his real mentors were Lokmanya Tilak and Sri Aurobindo Ghose more than Gandhi. Hence he was not much attracted towards the Non-Cooperation Movement which was started by Gandiji in the 1920s.
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In Bengal, the National Movement was being spearheaded by C.R. Das and Subhash Chandra was especially attracted towards him. The young Subhash arranged demonstration in Calcutta and was put behind the bars. Later, he had to be released. He was appointed the Chief Executive Officer of the Calcutta Corporation.
Earlier in 1924, he had been arrested under the special ordinance and sent to Mandalay. He was elected President of The Congress at the 1938 Haripur Session. Thereafter, he formed the Forward Bloc. Actually, he was in favor of fixing a deadline for freedom and giving an ultimatum to the British government to leave India.
He led the Indian National Army. On July 2, 1943, he gave the famous slogan “Delhi Chalo”. His words, “Give me your blood and I will give you freedom” can never be forgotten by his Countrymen.
He went in disguise as a Pathan first to Germany and then managed to reach Japan. The radio Tokyo declared that Netaji died in an air crash in 1945. His death is still a matter of controversy for some people.