Rash Bihari Bose’s amazing life, in India and Japan
They were both named Bose — one was Subhas Chandra, the other Rash Bihari. They were both committed to end the British rule in India — Subhas tried to get the Congress on to a more militant path before breaking away, Rash Bihari was an active revolutionary. Their paths met in Japan, but while Subhas was immortalised as Netaji, Rash Bihari was fated for obscurity.
Since Rash Bihari spent most of his active life in Japan, it is perhaps only fitting that his first complete biography has been penned by Hokkaido University’s Takeshi Nakajima (and ably translated by Prem Motwani), the result of scouring the archives in India and Japan, and benefiting from the family archive received from Rash Bihari’s daughter in Tokyo.

Born in the French enclave of Chandranagore, Rash Bihari was heavily influenced by Sri Aurobindo and his onetime disciple Moti Lal Roy. While working at Dehradun’s Central Forest Research Institute, he became adept at making bombs. Rash Bihari hurled one such bomb at the viceroy Lord Hardinge, in an unsuccessful attempt to kill him in Delhi in 1912. Rash Bihari escaped back to Dehradun, where he waxed eloquent at a reception for the convalescing Hardinge, which the viceroy wryly recalled in his memoirs. Found out, Rash Bihari went underground and escaped to Japan in 1915, posing as P.N. Tagore, a relative of the poet Rabindranath.

At that time members of the Ghadar Party were active. Rash Bihari immediately got in touch with them, and was introduced to influential people, with the police in tow. The British request for his deportation was ignored until November, when Rash Bihari was told to leave, following a reception for Lala Lajpat Rai. Rash Bihari went underground and Japanese supporters took him to Nakamuraya, a restaurant in Tokyo, where he hid for three months. After the deportation order was withdrawn, he became active in anti-British propaganda, and persuading the Japanese to support Indian independence. He also became the first foreigner to acquire Japanese citizenship.

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