The nation celebrates Subhas Chandra Bose 125th birth anniversary, and PM unveils Netaji’s statue with floral tributes at Central Hall.
On Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the government’s plan to install a grand granite statue of Subhas Chandra Bose at India Gate. Till the grand statue is completed, PM Modi said, a hologram statue would be present at the place identified for the granite statue.
“This would be a symbol of India’s indebtedness to him,” the prime minister said in a tweet. “I will unveil the hologram statue on 23rd January, Netaji’s birth anniversary,” he wrote.’
He said, “I bow to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose on his Jayanti. Every Indian is proud of his monumental contribution to our nation.”
सभी देशवासियों को पराक्रम दिवस की ढेरों शुभकामनाएं।
नेताजी सुभाष चंद्र बोस की 125वीं जयंती पर उन्हें मेरी आदरपूर्ण श्रद्धांजलि।
I bow to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose on his Jayanti. Every Indian is proud of his monumental contribution to our nation. pic.twitter.com/Ska0u301Nv
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) January 23, 2022
India celebrates the 125th birth anniversary of iconic freedom fighter Subhas Chandra Bose, popularly known as Netaji and the central government will start the Republic Day celebrations from January 23 to include Bose’s anniversary, which will be celebrated as ‘Parakram Diwas’ (day of valor) commencing this year, 2022. Floral tributes will be paid to Subhas Chandr Bose on his birth anniversary in the Central Hall of the Parliament House.
“On the occasion of the birth anniversary of Subhash Chandra Bose a function to pay floral tributes to him will be held in the Central Hall of Parliament House on January 23 at 1030 hours,” the LS Secretariat said in a notice.
Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s statue to be installed at India Gate
Netaji’s statue would be 28 feet in height and 6 feet in breadth. The jade black stone to be used for the construction of the statue will be brought from Telangana. The statue will be placed in the canopy replacing the Amar Jawan Jyoti, the “eternal flame” of which was merged with the National War Memorial Torch on Friday.
The statue will be carved by Odia sculptor Adwaita Gadanayak who heads the government-run National Modern Art Gallery in New Delhi.
About Subhash Chandra Bose
Subhas Chandra Bose was 23 January 1897 – 18 August 1945. He was an Indian nationalist who defied British colonial rule, rising to become an iconic hero among Indians.
One of his controversial steps was his wartime alliances with Nazi Germany and Fascist Japan with showed intimations of authoritarianism and anti-Semitism.
The honorific Netaji (Hindustani: “Respected Leader”) was first applied to Bose in Germany in early 1942—by the Indian soldiers of the Indische Legion and by the German and Indian officials in the Special Bureau for India in Berlin. It is now used throughout India.
Subhas Bose was born into an affluent family Bengali family in Orissa during the British Raj. The early recipient of an Anglocentric education, he was sent after college to England to take the Indian Civil Service examination. He succeeded with distinction in the vital first exam but hesitated to take the routine final exam, citing nationalism to be a higher calling.
He returned back to India in 1921 to join the nationalist movement led by Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress, Bose followed Jawaharlal Nehru to leadership in a group within the Congress which was less keen on constitutional reform and more open to socialism. He became Congress president in 1938.
After reelection in 1939, differences arose between him and Gandhi. The senior leadership in the Congress supported Gandhi, and Bose resigned as president and was eventually ousted from the party due to differences of opinion.
In April 1941, Netaji reached Nazi Germany, where the leadership offered unexpected but equivocal sympathy for India’s independence. German funds were employed to open a Free India Centre in Berlin. A 3,000-strong Free India Legion was recruited from among Indian POWs captured by Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps to serve under Netaji.
At that time, the Germans were thinking of a land invasion of India throughout 1941. By the spring of 1942, the German army was stationed in Russia. Netaji was keen to move to southeast Asia, where Japan had just won swift victories. Adolf Hitler during his only meeting with Netaji in late May 1942 offered to arrange a submarine. During this time, Netaji also became a father; his wife, or companion, Emilie Schenkl, gave birth to a baby girl. Knitted strongly with the Axis powers, Bose boarded a German submarine in February 1943. Off Madagascar, he was transferred to a Japanese submarine from which he disembarked in Japanese-held Sumatra in May 1943.
With Japanese support, Bose revamped the Indian National Army (INA), which comprised Indian prisoners of war of the British Indian army which had been captured by the Japanese in the Battle of Singapore. A Provisional Government of Free India was declared on the Japanese-occupied Andaman and Nicobar Islands and nominally presided by Bose.
Although Netaji was powerful and charismatic, the Japanese considered him to be militarily unskilled, and his soldierly effort died out fast. and in late 1944 and early 1945, the British Indian Army reversed the Japanese attack on India. Almost half the Japanese forces and the participating INA contingent were killed. The remaining INA was driven down the Malay Peninsula and surrendered with the recapture of Singapore.
Netaji had to flee for his life and escaped to Manchuria to seek a future in the Soviet Union which he believed to have turned anti-British. He died from third-degree burns received when his overloaded plane crashed in Japanese Taiwan on August 18, 1945.
However, some Indians did not believe that the crash had occurred, and were expecting Netaji to return to establish India’s independence. The Indian National Congress, the main instrument of Indian nationalism, praised Bose’s patriotism but distanced itself from his tactics and ideology where he linked with Nazism and fascism with German and Japanese ties.
The British Raj, never seriously threatened by the INA charged 300 INA officers with treason in the INA trials, but eventually backtracked in the face of opposition by the Congress and a new mood in Britain for rapid decolonization in India.
Thus Subhas Chandra Bose legacy is mixed where in India, he is the strong iconic hero looked upon as one of India’s greatest freedom fighters balancing out tough ends with his negotiation skills, revival, and reconciliation through which the independence of India was achieved, along with the efforts of many other great freedom fighters.
His collaborations with Japanese Fascism and Nazisim brought complexity to his stands and ideological ties with fascism and Nazism with his reticence to publicly criticize the barbaric executions of German anti-Semitism from 1938 onwards or to offer refuge in India to its victims even though he was fully aware of it. He is greatly celebrated through India as a hero and his legacy of greatness stands and his role is never forgotten as one of the great key freedom fighters.
