Indian nationalist leader, Subhash Chandra Bose 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.  Subhas Chandra 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.

 

Subhas Chandra Bose was born in 1897 to an affluent Bengali Brahmin family in Cuttack, Orissa. His father, Janakinath Bose, was a public prosecutor who believed in orthodox nationalism, and later became a member of the Bengal Legislative Council. Bose was educated at Ravenshaw Collegiate School, Cuttack, Scottish Church College, Calcutta and Fitzwilliam College at Cambridge University. In 1920, Subhash Chandra Bose took the Indian Civil Services entrance examination and was placed fourth with highest marks in English. However, he resigned from the prestigious Indian Civil Service in April 1921 despite his high ranking in the merit list, and went on to become an active member of India's independence movement. He joined the Indian National Congress, and was particularly active in its youth wing.

Still, Bose's ideals did not match those of Mahatma Gandhi's single belief in non-violence[citation needed]. He therefore returned to Calcutta to work under Chittaranjan Das, the Bengali freedom fighter and co-founder (with Motilal Nehru) of the Swaraj Party.

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