Subhash Chandra Bose also well known as Netaji, revolutionized the freedom struggle with his ideas. He perused higher studies in Calcutta and at Cambridge University, after which he passed the Indian Civil Services Examination in England. He did not join the ICS and returned home to join the Non-Cooperation Movement. He became an active member of the Congress and was made the Chief Executive Officer of the Calcutta Corporation in 1924.

Bose was elected president of the Indian National Congress for two consecutive terms but resigned from the post following ideological conflicts with Mahatma Gandhi. Bose believed that Mahatma Gandhi's tactics of non-violence would never be sufficient to secure India's independence, and advocated violent resistance. He established a separate political party, the All India Forward Bloc and continued to call for the full and immediate independence of India from British rule. He was imprisoned by the British authorities eleven times.

It was during his association with Congress volunteers at the Congress session in Calcutta that communism had its impact on him. As a result, he developed thoughts and ideas of his own which were unsupportive of Gandhi’s programmes.

He left India in 1941 to carry out his revolutionary programmes and to seek the support of Soviet Union in India’s struggle. His stance did not change with the outbreak of the second world war, which he saw as an opportunity to take advantage of British weakness. At the outset of the war, he fled India and traveled to the Soviet Union, Germany and Japan seeking an alliance with the aim of attacking the British in India. He met Hitler to give a major impact on the Indian nationalist movement. In 1943 he reorganised Indian prisoners-of-war to raise the Indian National Army which he called Azad Hind Fauj.

The Indian National Army (INA) had been founded by Capt Mohan Singh in Singapore in September 1942 with Japan's Indian prisoners-of-war in the Far East. This was along the concept of and with support of Indian Independence League, headed by expatriate nationalist leader Rash Behari Bose.

The idea of a liberation army was revived with the arrival of Subhash Chandra Bose in the Far East in 1943. In July, at a meeting in Singapore, Rash Behari Bose handed over control of the organisation to Subhash Chandra Bose. Bose was able to reorganise the fledging army and organise massive support among the expatriate Indian population in south-east Asia, who lent their support by both enlisting in the Indian National Army, as well as financially in response Bose's calls for sacrifice for the national cause. He revived and led the INA with Japanese assistance, by recruiting 60,000 prisoners-of-war and plantation workers from Malaya, Singapore and other parts of Southeast Asia, against British forces.

Netaji coined the slogans “Delhi Chalo” and “Jai Hind” which proved to be a constant source of inspiration to INA men. As supreme commander of the INA, he established a provisional Indian Government. The INA was successful only in its initial phase. But the INA had achieved a unique distinction by succeeding in uniting people of different religions and backgrounds under its head.

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