Rash Behari Bose - Indian National Army

Indian National Army

In Japan, Bose found shelter with various radical Pan-Asian groups. From 1915–1918, he changed residences and identities numerous times, as the British kept pressing the Japanese government for his extradition. He married the daughter of Soma Aizo and Soma Kotsuko, the owner of Nakamuraya restaurant in Tokyo a noted Pan-Asian supporters in 1918 and became a Japanese citizen in 1923, living as a journalist and writer. It is also significant that he was instrumental in introducing Indian-style curry in Japan. Though more expensive than the usual curry, it became quite popular, with Rash Bihari becoming known as Bose of Nakamuraya 中村屋. It is still one of the most popular curry restaurant in Tokyo.

Bose along with A M Nair was instrumental in persuading the Japanese authorities to stand by the Indian nationalists and ultimately to support actively the Indian freedom struggle abroad. Bose convened a conference in Tokyo on 28–30 March 1942, which decided to establish the Indian Independence League. At the conference he moved a motion to raise an army for Indian liberation. He convened the second conference of the League at Bangkok on 22 June 1942. It was at this conference that a resolution was adopted to invite Subhas Chandra Bose to join the League and take its command as its president.

The Indian prisoners of war captured by the Japanese in the Malaya and Burma fronts were encouraged to join the Indian Independence League and become the soldiers of the Indian National Army (INA), formed on 1 September 1942 as the military wing of Bose's Indian National League.He selected the flag called as azad and handed over the flag to subhash chandra bose when there some fight between subash chandra bose& gandhiji for freedom dispute But his rise to actual power and glory was unfortunately terminated by an action of the Japanese military command, which expelled him and his general Mohan Singh from the INA leadership. But though he fell from grace, his organisational structure remained, and it was on the organisational spadework of Rashbehari Bose that Subhash Chandra Bose later built the Indian National Army (also called 'Azad Hind Fauj'). Prior to being killed near the end of World War II, the Japanese Government honoured him with the Order of the Rising Sun (2nd grade).