Rash Behari Bose: Hardinge Bomb, Ghadar Plot and the INA in Japan
Rash Behari Bose explained: the Delhi bomb of 1912, the failed Ghadar rising of 1915, thirty years in Japan and the 1943 handover of the INA to Subhas Bose.
Rash Behari Bose (1886 to 1945) was a Bengali revolutionary who planned the bomb thrown at Viceroy Lord Hardinge in Delhi on 23 December 1912, led the Ghadar plan for an army mutiny in February 1915 and then escaped to Japan. From Tokyo he spent thirty years building support for Indian independence, and in 1942 he founded the Indian Independence League, the political body that raised the first Indian National Army (INA).
Most readers know him only as the man who handed the INA to Subhas Chandra Bose in 1943, as if he were a caretaker keeping a seat warm. That picture leaves out two-thirds of his life. This note puts the three phases in order (Delhi, Punjab, Japan), shows how each one fed the next and keeps the record apart from the stories that grew around a man who spent most of his life in hiding.
Who Was Rash Behari Bose?
Rash Behari Bose was a revolutionary of the Bengal school who became the bridge between the pre-1915 bomb-and-mutiny phase of Indian revolutionary nationalism and the Axis-backed armed struggle of the Second World War. The table gives the anchor facts.
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Born | 25 May 1886, Subaldaha village, Bardhaman district, Bengal |
| Died | 21 January 1945, Tokyo, Japan |
| Early base | Head clerk at the Forest Research Institute, Dehradun |
| Delhi bomb | 23 December 1912, attack on Viceroy Lord Hardinge’s state entry |
| Ghadar role | Leader of the planned army rising of February 1915 |
| Exile | Reached Japan in 1915 as “Priyanath Thakur”; Japanese citizen from 1923 |
| Organization | Indian Independence League, Tokyo and Bangkok conferences of 1942 |
| Handover | 4 July 1943, Singapore: League presidency passed to Subhas Chandra Bose |
From Bengal to Dehradun: The Making of a Revolutionary
Bose came out of the same Bengal world that produced the secret societies after the 1905 partition. He grew up partly in Chandannagar, the French enclave near Calcutta, where a teacher drew him toward revolutionary politics, and he moved north around the time of the Alipore bomb trial of 1908.
His cover was ordinary. He worked as a head clerk at the Forest Research Institute in Dehradun, a government job that gave him a reason to be in the United Provinces and Punjab and no reason to look suspicious. Through Amarendra Chatterjee of the Jugantar group he stayed connected to Bengal while building contacts with Punjabi and Arya Samaj radicals.
That double network is the key to his whole career. The Anushilan Samiti and Jugantar had the bomb-making skill and the organization; Punjab had soldiers and returning emigrants. Bose was one of very few men who moved comfortably in both, and that’s why both the Delhi attack and the Ghadar plan ran through him.
The Delhi Conspiracy of 1912
On 23 December 1912, as Lord Hardinge rode an elephant in the state procession marking the transfer of the capital from Calcutta to Delhi, a bomb was thrown at him in Chandni Chowk. The Viceroy was wounded, and an attendant on the howdah was killed. IGNOU’s history unit on the revolutionaries credits Rash Behari Bose with organizing the attempt.
Who actually threw the bomb is a separate question, and a common trap. The young Basanta Kumar Biswas is usually named as the thrower, and he was later hanged in the trial known as the Delhi Conspiracy Case (also the Delhi-Lahore Conspiracy Case). Bose was the planner. He returned quietly to Dehradun and is even said to have joined a public meeting condemning the attack, a story worth reading as part of his legend rather than as a documented fact.
The case matters for what it showed the government. The attack struck at the symbol of the new imperial capital in the year it was proclaimed, and the man behind it was never caught. That failure shaped how hard the police hunted him in 1915.
The Ghadar Plan of 1915
By 1914 the Ghadar Party, founded by Punjabi emigrants on the Pacific coast of North America, was sending thousands of men home to start a rising during the First World War. The returning Ghadarites had passion and numbers but no plan, and a first attempt at revolt in November 1914 fell apart for want of central leadership.
The movement then turned to Rash Behari Bose. IGNOU’s account is plain: a more organized attempt was made in February 1915 after Bose was entrusted with leadership and organization. The plan rested on three elements:
- Indian regiments in cantonments across north India, especially Lahore, Ferozepur and Meerut, were to mutiny on a fixed date.
- Ghadarites and local revolutionaries were to seize arms and cut communications as the units rose.
- Bengal revolutionaries under Jatin Mukherjee (Bagha Jatin), whom Bose had met during flood relief work in 1913, were to act in the east.
It failed before it began. The government had planted an informer, learned the date and disarmed or moved suspect units in advance. Bose escaped, but most of the other leaders were arrested. The repression that followed was severe: 42 men were sentenced to death and 200 to long prison terms in the Lahore conspiracy trials, and an entire generation of Punjab’s radical leadership was removed. The voyage of the Komagata Maru in 1914 is the other half of this story, since it hardened emigrant anger just before the rising.
Here’s the point aspirants tend to miss. Ghadar was a Punjabi and emigrant movement, and Bose was its organizer inside India in 1915, not its founder. Lala Har Dayal and Sohan Singh Bhakna belong to the founding in America; Bose belongs to the attempted rising at home.
Thirty Years in Japan
Bose left India in 1915 under the name Priyanath Thakur, posing as a relative of Rabindranath Tagore, and reached Japan. Britain pressed Tokyo to hand him over. Japanese pan-Asianists, the nationalists who wanted Asia free of Western empires, hid him instead, most famously at the house of the Soma family, owners of the Nakamuraya bakery in Shinjuku.
He married Toshiko, the Somas’ daughter, and became a Japanese citizen in 1923, which ended the threat of extradition. Toshiko died in 1924. In the two decades that followed Bose wrote, lectured and kept up contacts with Indians across East and Southeast Asia, from merchants to exiles. To British intelligence he was a fugitive; to his Japanese hosts he was an Indian voice they could trust.
That long residence is why he mattered in 1942. When Japan entered the war and took Malaya and Singapore, it needed an Indian leader it already knew. Bose was the obvious choice, and the Japanese connection that made him useful also became the main charge against him later.
Building the Indian Independence League and the First INA
The Second World War gave Bose the opening he had waited for since 1915. After Singapore fell in February 1942, tens of thousands of Indian soldiers of the British Indian Army became prisoners of war in Japanese hands. Bose moved quickly to give their discontent a political shape.
The Tokyo and Bangkok conferences
Two conferences built the organization in 1942:
- Tokyo, 28 to 30 March 1942: Indian representatives, convened by Bose, resolved to form the Indian Independence League and to raise an army for Indian independence.
- Bangkok, 15 to 23 June 1942: the League was formally inaugurated with Bose at its head, Captain Mohan Singh was named commander of the army and a resolution invited Subhas Chandra Bose to come East and lead.
The first INA took shape under Mohan Singh from prisoners of war captured in Malaya and Singapore. It ran into trouble within months. Mohan Singh clashed with the Japanese over control of the army, and in December 1942 he was removed and the first INA was largely dissolved. Bose kept the League alive through that crisis, and that is a real achievement that the caretaker image hides.
The handover of 1943
Subhas Chandra Bose reached Southeast Asia from Germany by submarine in 1943. On 4 July 1943, at the Cathay building in Singapore, Rash Behari Bose handed him the presidency of the Indian Independence League. Subhas revived the army the next day and later made Rash Behari supreme adviser to the Provisional Government of Free India.
The handover reads best as a judgment rather than a defeat. Rash Behari was 57 and in poor health, and he knew the soldiers needed a leader with Subhas’s standing in India. He gave up the post; he kept the structure he had built, which became the base of the Azad Hind movement.
He died of tuberculosis in Tokyo on 21 January 1945, seven months before Japan’s surrender and before the INA trials at the Red Fort turned the soldiers he had helped organize into national heroes.
What Historians Debate About Rash Behari Bose
Three questions keep coming back, and each has a fair answer.
- Patriot or Japanese instrument? His closeness to Japanese nationalists such as Toyama Mitsuru makes some historians see him as dependent on Japanese imperial aims. The fairer reading, developed in Joseph McQuade’s Fugitive of Empire (Oxford University Press, 2024), treats him as an anti-colonial exile who used pan-Asianism as the only shelter available, while knowing the risk.
- How much credit for the INA? The INA that fought at Imphal and Kohima in 1944 was Subhas Bose’s army. The League, the idea of a prisoner-of-war army and the first conferences were Rash Behari’s.
- Hero stories versus record. Tales of disguises and narrow escapes are many and mostly unverifiable. The documented core is short: the Delhi plan, the 1915 leadership, the exile, the League and the handover.
His name had force at home even during his absence. During the Quit India Movement, leaflets in Mymensingh claimed that Indian soldiers headed by Rashbehari Bose had occupied Imphal, a rumor that ran two years ahead of events.
Rash Behari Bose Today
Rash Behari Bose is remembered in both countries he lived in. India Post issued a commemorative stamp in his honor in 1967, and Kolkata’s Rash Behari Avenue carries his name. In Japan his association with Nakamuraya, which still trades in Shinjuku, is part of the bakery’s own history. His birth anniversary on 25 May is marked under the Ministry of Culture’s commemoration program.
He returns to the news each January with Subhas Chandra Bose’s birth anniversary, now observed as Parakram Diwas. The Parakram Diwas 2026 coverage is a reminder that the INA story is still taught through Netaji, which is exactly why the prehistory of the League deserves a separate place in your notes. Growing scholarly interest, including McQuade’s 2024 book, has pushed the Japanese chapters of his life back into view.
How to Study Rash Behari Bose for Exams
Rash Behari Bose sits in GS Paper I under the freedom struggle, at two points: revolutionary nationalism before 1918 and the INA during the Second World War. Questions rarely name him alone. Mains 2016 GS Paper I asked candidates to “Highlight the differences in the approach of Subhash Chandra Bose and Mahatma Gandhi in the struggle for freedom.”, and a strong answer on the INA side needs the League’s origin. In the Prelims bank, History accounts for 184 of the 1,403 questions on the topic-wise Prelims archive, and revolutionary figures are tested through matching pairs.
Revise these facts:
- Delhi bomb on Lord Hardinge: 23 December 1912, Chandni Chowk, planned by Rash Behari Bose.
- Ghadar rising planned for February 1915 under his leadership; betrayed by an informer.
- Escape to Japan in 1915 as Priyanath Thakur; Japanese citizenship in 1923.
- Tokyo conference: 28 to 30 March 1942. Bangkok conference: June 1942.
- First INA under Mohan Singh, formed in 1942 and dissolved after December 1942.
- Handover of the League to Subhas Chandra Bose: 4 July 1943, Singapore.
- Death: 21 January 1945, Tokyo.
The confusions to keep apart:
- Rash Behari Bose versus Rash Behari Ghosh. Ghosh was a Moderate lawyer who presided over the Congress sessions of 1907 (Surat) and 1908 (Madras). Different man, different politics.
- Founder versus organizer. The Ghadar Party was founded in America in 1913; Bose organized the 1915 rising in India.
- League versus army. The Indian Independence League was the political body; the INA was its army.
| Figure | Phase | Base | What to remember |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rash Behari Bose | 1912 to 1945 | Delhi, Punjab, then Tokyo | Hardinge bomb, Ghadar 1915, Indian Independence League |
| Subhas Chandra Bose | 1943 to 1945 in the East | Singapore, Rangoon | Revived INA, Provisional Government of Free India |
| Mohan Singh | 1942 | Malaya, Singapore | First INA commander, removed December 1942 |
| Lala Har Dayal | 1913 onward | San Francisco | Ghadar Party founder, propagandist |
Rash Behari Bose is the thread that ties the revolutionary wave of 1905 to 1915 to the INA of 1943 to 1945. If you can explain that link in two sentences, your answers on revolutionary nationalism stop being lists of names and start showing continuity, which is what examiners reward.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Rash Behari Bose?
Rash Behari Bose was a Bengali revolutionary who planned the 1912 bomb attack on Viceroy Lord Hardinge in Delhi and led the failed Ghadar rising of February 1915. He escaped to Japan the same year and lived there until his death in 1945. In 1942 he founded the Indian Independence League, which raised the first Indian National Army.
Did Rash Behari Bose found the INA?
He founded the Indian Independence League, the political body under which the first INA was raised in 1942 with Mohan Singh as its commander. The INA that fought in 1944 was revived and led by Subhas Chandra Bose. The fair answer is that Rash Behari Bose laid the organizational foundation and Subhas Bose built the fighting army on it.
What was Rash Behari Bose’s role in the Delhi Conspiracy Case?
He was the planner of the bomb attack on Lord Hardinge’s state entry into Delhi on 23 December 1912. The bomb itself is usually said to have been thrown by Basanta Kumar Biswas, who was later hanged in the case. Bose was never caught for it.
Why did Rash Behari Bose go to Japan?
The Ghadar rising he led in February 1915 was betrayed, and the police were hunting him. He left India in 1915 under the alias Priyanath Thakur and reached Japan, where pan-Asian nationalists sheltered him from British extradition demands. He became a Japanese citizen in 1923.
When did Rash Behari Bose hand over the INA to Subhas Chandra Bose?
On 4 July 1943, at the Cathay building in Singapore, he handed the presidency of the Indian Independence League to Subhas Chandra Bose. Subhas revived the army the next day. Rash Behari was later made supreme adviser to the Provisional Government of Free India.
Is Rash Behari Bose the same as Rash Behari Ghosh?
No. Rash Behari Ghosh was a Moderate lawyer and Congress president at the Surat session of 1907, while Rash Behari Bose was a revolutionary. The similar names make them a favorite trap in matching questions.
When and where did Rash Behari Bose die?
He died of tuberculosis in Tokyo on 21 January 1945, before Japan’s surrender in August 1945. He never returned to India after leaving in 1915.
Practice Questions
Prelims
1. Consider the following statements about Rash Behari Bose: 1. He planned the bomb attack on Lord Hardinge in Delhi in December 1912. 2. He founded the Ghadar Party in San Francisco in 1913. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
- (a) 1 only
- (b) 2 only
- (c) Both 1 and 2
- (d) Neither 1 nor 2
Answer: (a) He planned the Delhi bomb; the Ghadar Party was founded in America by Har Dayal, Sohan Singh Bhakna and others, and Bose led its 1915 rising in India.
2. The Indian Independence League was formally inaugurated with Rash Behari Bose at its head at a conference held in June 1942 in
- (a) Tokyo
- (b) Singapore
- (c) Bangkok
- (d) Rangoon
Answer: (c) The Bangkok conference of June 1942 inaugurated the League; the earlier Tokyo meeting of March 1942 had resolved to form it.
3. Consider the following statements: 1. The first Indian National Army was commanded by Mohan Singh. 2. Rash Behari Bose handed the presidency of the Indian Independence League to Subhas Chandra Bose in Singapore in July 1943. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
- (a) 1 only
- (b) 2 only
- (c) Both 1 and 2
- (d) Neither 1 nor 2
Answer: (c) Mohan Singh led the first INA in 1942, and the handover took place on 4 July 1943 in Singapore.
4. The alias under which Rash Behari Bose left India for Japan in 1915 was
- (a) Orlando Mazzotta
- (b) Priyanath Thakur
- (c) Ziauddin
- (d) Kartar Singh
Answer: (b) Priyanath Thakur; Orlando Mazzotta and Ziauddin were aliases used by Subhas Chandra Bose.
5. Which one of the following events is correctly matched with its year?
- (a) Bomb attack on Lord Hardinge: 1908
- (b) Ghadar rising planned under Rash Behari Bose: 1915
- (c) Tokyo conference forming the Indian Independence League: 1943
- (d) Death of Rash Behari Bose: 1947
Answer: (b) The Ghadar rising was planned for February 1915; the other years are wrong (1912, 1942 and 1945).
Mains
- Trace the career of Rash Behari Bose and explain how it connects the revolutionary nationalism of 1905 to 1915 with the Indian National Army of the Second World War. (15 marks, 250 words)
- Subhas Chandra Bose and the Indian National Army awakened an unprecedented sense of national consciousness among both the Indian armed forces and masses. Evaluate. (20 marks, 250 words) Previous year: 2026, History Optional Paper II.
- Why did the Ghadar rising of February 1915 fail? Discuss the role of organization and intelligence in its collapse. (10 marks, 150 words)
- Was Rash Behari Bose’s dependence on Japanese support a strategic necessity or a political liability? Critically examine. (15 marks, 250 words)
- Examine the contribution of Indians living abroad to the freedom struggle in the first half of the twentieth century. (15 marks, 250 words)