India forgot revolutionary Rash Behari Bose. Abhishek Banerjee brought him back into focus

The Print

10-06-2025

Bose later fled to Japan, joined the Japanese in their fight against the British in World War II, and died there as a Japanese citizen on 21 January 1945, two years before India won freedom.
On 23 December 1912, Indian revolutionaries Basanta Kumar Biswas and Jorawar Singh Bareth threw a homemade bomb at then-Viceroy of India Lord Charles Hardinge during a procession in Delhi. The bomb only wounded Hardinge, killing instead the servant who was holding his parasol. The plan to assassinate the Viceroy was hatched by a group of underground revolutionaries in Bengal and Punjab. And the leader of that pack was Bengali revolutionary Rash Behari Bose.
Over 113 years before Operation Sindoor, a mission no less daring was launched from New Delhi to take out a foreign enemy. On 23 May 2025, Trinamool Congress national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee — visiting Japan for the Operation Sindoor global outreach — paid tribute to its mastermind, Rash Behari Bose.
Urging officials of the Indian High Commission in Tokyo to take steps for the restoration of the memorial, Banerjee brought focus back on a legendary revolutionary who the India outside West Bengal has long forgotten.
What no one asked, however, is why Bose has been relegated to the footnotes of India's history. He was a key organiser of the Ghadar Revolution and founded the Indian Independence League – a political organisation that operated between the 1920s and 1940s to mobilise Indians outside the country against British rule. Moreover, Rash Behari Bose didn't just lead the attack on Viceroy Hardinge; he also led the Indian National Army before Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose took over its reins.
It was, perhaps, inconvenient to talk about Bose or recount his achievements in Independent India, given his close associations with Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and the Hindu Mahasabha.
Revolutionaries' revolutionary
Sanjeev Sanyal, author of Revolutionaries: The Other Story of How India Won Its Freedom, recalled in a talk his primary motivation behind writing the book: the sense that the story of India's independence struggle was incomplete. 'This whole idea that we politely requested the British to leave and they gently left doesn't quite add up,' he said.
According to Sanyal, the armed revolutionary movement in India didn't just comprise random acts of violence; coordinated effort tied generations of revolutionaries from the late 19th century till 1946. In his book, Sanyal writes that the first generation of revolutionaries was led by Aurobindo Ghosh — who later came to be known as Sri Aurobindo — and VD Savarkar.
Just as the first wave of armed revolution was quashed by the British — through hangings and incarcerations at the Cellular (Kaala Pani) Jail in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands — a second wave, led by Rash Behari Bose, emerged.
'One of the disciples of Sri Aurobindo, Rash Behari Bose, created a new network of revolutionaries along with my grand uncle, Sachindranath Sanyal. After the attack on Lord Hardinge, Bose went back to Dehradun, where he was working at that time and organised an event where he condemned the attack in the harshest terms. So pleased were the British that six months later, when Hardinge was released from hospital, Rash Behari Bose was made the leader of the welcoming committee,' Sanyal said in his 2023 talk.
Prasun Roy, author of a biography titled A Samurai Dream of Azad Hind: Rash Behari Bose, said that he was no ordinary freedom fighter. Speaking to me over the phone, Roy said: 'He (Bose) knew a time would come when Japan and Southeast Asia would support the struggle for Indian independence. His vision gave birth to the Indian National Army, but he had no ego in welcoming Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose to lead it. Rash Behari Bose was a global Indian who created the blueprint for India's independence.'
But Roy has one grouse: 'India has forgotten Rash Behari Bose…Abhishek Banerjee paying tribute to Bose is commendable, but political parties should not use him to poke each other. Instead, a gallantry award should be named after him, and something should be done in the national capital so that India remembers him for who he was.'
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The 'othered' Bose
According to author Amrita Mukherjee, Rash Behari Bose has been forgotten even in his native Bengal. Not many Bengalis today know about his contribution to the Independence struggle, she told me. 'He was a relentless revolutionary who did not leave any stone unturned to fight for his motherland,' she said, adding that, while there is little about Bose in history books, Prasun Roy's in-depth research and writing style does justice to his life story.
In Japan, both Sanjeev Sanyal and Prasun Roy write in their books, Rash Behari Bose changed houses and identities many times as the British government pressured the Japanese to extradite him. Bose married a Japanese citizen, lived life as a journalist and writer, and even introduced the 'Indian curry' to Japan. And he accomplished all this while carrying out his revolutionary duties. The Japanese government honoured him with the Order of the Rising Sun – awarded to those who have rendered distinguished service to the state in various fields except military service.
But why is Rash Behari Bose a forgotten hero in India? One reason could be his association with Savarkar and the Japanese 'extreme Right'. 'Throughout 1938, Savarkar had a considerable exchange of letters with one of the historical leaders of the revolutionary movement abroad: Rash Behari Bose. Rash Behari, who had lived in Japan since 1915 and had obtained Japanese nationality in 1923, was in touch with Japanese extreme Right, in particular with the 'Association of the Black Dragon',' writes Italian scholar Marzia Casolari in an article titled 'Hindutva's Foreign Tie-Up in the 1930s: Archival Evidence', published in a January 2000 edition of the Economic and Political Weekly.
Savarkar and Bose were in touch at least from March 1938 onward, writes Casolari, citing letters exchanged between the two leaders. It was in one of these written exchanges that he informed Savarkar of his intention to open a branch of the Hindu Mahasabha in Japan.
Did Bose's idea not suit the politics of India after Independence? Academic Satanik Pal said that the revolutionary was sacrificed at the altar of Nehruvian socialism, which sought to suppress the Hindu Mahasabha's influence on India's freedom movement: 'It remains to be seen if Abhishek Banerjee's tribute to Bose in Japan brings him back into focus from the footnotes of history.'
Deep Halder is an author and a contributing editor at ThePrint. He tweets @deepscribble. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)