Early Career of Subhash Chandra Bose

Netaji was born on 23 January 1897 at Cuttack. His father Jankinath Bose was an advocate and his mother’s name was Prabhavati Devi. He finished his schooling from Cuttack and graduated from the Scottish Church College of the University of Calcutta in 1918. Later, he went to University of Cambridge for higher studies and passed the Indian Civil Services Examination with high marks.

He resigned from Civil services in 1920 and remarked “The best way to end a Government is to withdraw from it”.

After he returned to India, he started writing for Swaraj and then worked towards the publicity of the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee.

• Chitaranjan Das was his mentor.
• In early 1920s he mobilized the All-Bengal Young Men’s Conference. His ideology was very much influenced with Swami Vivekananda and Arubindo Ghosh.

  In 1925, he was arrested and sent to Burma (Mandalay Jail) where he is said to have contracted the Tuberculosis.

  He was released in 1927 and then was appointed the General Secretary of the Congress. He worked closely with Jawahar Lal Nehru. In participated in the Civil Disobedience Movement and then was again sent to Jail.

• In Jail itself, he was elected as Mayor of Calcutta.

  He was then released and in 1930, he was again arrested for organizing demonstrations. Most of the early 1930s he spent in Europe, travelled Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Ireland and other countries of the Eastern Europe and got influenced by the preparations of the Axial Powers. He met Mussolini during these visits.

  In 1938, he returned from Europe. His philosophy was entirely different from that of Gandhi and Nehru, which reflects in the saying “If somebody slaps you once, slap him twice“.