Do You Know Rash Behari Bose?

An Indian revolutionary and freedom fighter he fought against the British all his life and founded the Indian Independence League.

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Today, January 21, is Rash Behari Bose's death anniversary, whose revolutionary acts shook the British empire.

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He planned a bomb attack on Viceroy Hardinge in 1912 when he was entering the new capital, Delhi, seated on an elephant.

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...And took the night train to Dehradun where he worked as a clerk at the Forest Research Institute for 8 years.

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He had taken a month's leave from the FRI to plan the viceroy's assassination.

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He was also involved in the Ghadar Mutiny, which tried to stoke rebellion in army cantonments during WWI, but failed. Most of the mutiny's leaders were arrested, but Bose escaped to Japan in 1915.

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He was a master of disguise and recruited revolutionaries from his native Bengal and Punjab while employed as a clerk at the FRI.

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Anticipating arrest, he sailed to Japan in 1915 and took refuge in the Soma bakery in Tokyo to evade arrest.
Taught the staff to make Indian food. He introduced curry to Japan.

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He wed Toshiko Soma, the bakery owner's elder daughter, in 1918.
Bose and Toshiko had 2 children; he also managed the family's Nakamura bakery.

The first head of the Indian National Army, he handed over charge to Subhas Chandra Bose in 1943.

He built a global network of anti-colonialists, radicals, smugglers and intellectuals, according to Joseph McQuade in Rash Behari Bose, Fugitive of Empire.

Japan's wartime government awarded him The Second Order of Merit of the Rising Sun, a rare honour for a foreigner.
Rash Behari Bose died of TB in January 1945, aged 60, and was buried in Tokyo.

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