Today, January 23, we mark the 125th birth anniversary of Subhas Chandra Bose, a commemoration that arrives amidst a sharp contemporary fracture regarding the demand to depoliticise India’s campuses. This milestone is also characterised by the current regime’s efforts to misappropriate Bose’s legacy by framing him as a right-wing nationalist, a narrative that ignores his deep-rooted secular and socialist convictions. In an era where narratives asserting that student unions be abolished and hashtags like #ShutDownJNU gained traction, insisting that universities are spaces solely for degrees, not dissent, Bose’s legacy offers an uncomfortable counter-narrative. For Bose – more popular as Netaji – the student was never a passive recipient of education; rather, students were the vanguards of political change. This investigation into that forgotten history is reconstructed from private papers, old newspapers, journals, oral history transcripts from the Nehru Memorial (NMML), political files from the National Archives of India, and secondary scholarship like Rudrangshu Mukherjee’s Nehru and Bose: Parallel Lives, and Bhavuk Sharma’s article titled ‘Debunking ‘popular myths’ through a study of Bose’. Bose, the Congressman with differences but without animosityThe relations between Nehru and Bose were extremely friendly at a time and as argued by Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Bose had started to think of Nehru as an elder brother and mentor. Bose took great care of Kamla Nehru during her treatment in Europe and regularly kept himself updated regarding her health despite his peripatetic nature of stay. He was also with Nehru in his hour of bereavement and wrote a letter to him to that effect on March 4, 1936. On his return to India, Bose was detained and imprisoned. This did not go down well with the youth of the nation and their admiration for Bose was given expression by Nehru who declared that May 10 be celebrated as Subhas Day. When the infamous Tripuri incident took place and he saw no cooperation forthcoming from his Working Committee, Bose resigned. At the time, he wrote a letter to his nephew. This letter which is quoted by almost all the accusers as “evidence of Nehru’s malice towards Bose” should be read in context and in entirety. Though the letter says, no one had done more harm to me than Nehru in my cause, this comment was meant in the context of the Tripuri incident. This emerges from the fact that Bose despite his admiration for Gandhi was ready to part ways with him, which Nehru was not. Rudrangshu Mukherjee points out that at this time Bose even invited Nehru to discuss the situation. We must also not forget that Nehru was made the chairman of the Planning Committee during Bose’s tenure as Congress president and Nehru makes it a point to mention this in his Discovery of India. When the news of Bose’s death reached Nehru, he was moved to tears, one of the very few occasions when he cried in public. He even donned the lawyer’s coat after 25 years to defend the INA prisoners alongside Bhulabhai Desai. The myth that Bose was closer to Hindu communalists emanates from the fact that Bose had gone on a hunger strike in support of the Durga Puja celebration in a Burmese jail. The entire episode is reproduced in Bose’s own book An Indian Pilgrim. Bose wrote that “in October 1925, our national religious festival — the Durga Puja…we applied to the Superintendent for permission and for funds to perform the ceremony. Since similar facilities were given to Christian prisoners in Indian prisons, the Superintendent gave us the necessary facilities, in anticipation of Government sanction.”.The government, however, refrained from giving sanction and censured the Superintendent, Major Findlay, for acting on his own steam. Bose was forced to commence a hunger-strike in February 1926. Three days after the hunger-strike began, the Calcutta paper, Forward, published the news of the hunger-strike and also the ultimatum Bose had sent to the government. Bose further wrote, “About the same time Forward published extracts from the report of the Indian Jail Committee of 1919-21. Before this Committee a high official of the Prison Department, Lieutenant Colonel Mulvany, had given evidence to say that he had been forced by his superior officer, the Inspector-General of Prisons of Bengal, to withdraw the health reports he had sent of some state-prisoners in his jail and to send in false reports instead.”T.C. Goswami, a member of the legislature, moved an adjournment motion in the house over the hunger strike in Mandalay jail. This alongside the disclosures of the report and Lieutenant Colonel Mulvany’s evidence ensured that after 15 days of hunger strikes, Subhas Chandra Bose carried the day. This clearly shows he was rooting for fundamental rights of freedom and appealing to reason. Bose even gave the example of the cultural rights enjoyed by Christian prisoners. Like Gandhi and Nehru, he too was a staunch believer of Hindu-Muslim unity and believed in the shared cultural heritage of India. His appeal for the demolition of the Holwell monument and celebration of July 3, 1940 as Sirajuddaula Day was not just a tactical move to gain Muslim League support but came from a deep conviction in Hindu-Muslim unity that he firmly believed in. He named one of the battalions of the INA after Maulana Azad. He accorded a place of honour to General Shahnawaz in the INA and adopted as the slogan of the army, Jai Hind – a secular slogan praised by Mahatma Gandhi himself. Formative years and politicsIn 1913, Bose joined Presidency College in Calcutta, which served as a turning point in his life. He joined a student group that considered themselves spiritual followers of Vivekananda but was also critical of the college’s British atmosphere. The situation at the college became tense because of a history professor named E.F. Oaten, who was known for discriminating against Indian students racially. In January 1916, when Professor Oaten manhandled some students, Bose, as the class representative, demanded an apology. When the principal refused, Bose organised a successful strike, which was a very bold step for students at that time. The conflict reached its peak a few weeks later when Oaten assaulted another student, leading students to retaliate by surrounding Oaten on the college stairs and beating him severely. Although Bose never admitted to hitting the professor himself, he was present and was considered the ringleader by the principal. When a committee questioned him, Bose refused to name the other students involved. As a punishment, he was expelled from Presidency College and banned from studying at Calcutta University, which interrupted his education for a year. Bose returned to Cuttack and spent his time doing social work until he was finally allowed to return to his studies. He then joined Scottish Church College, where he finished his degree in Philosophy with high honors. Interestingly, during this time, he also joined a university military unit called the India Defence Force, noting that the military training and the feeling of wearing a uniform gave him a sense of confidence and power he had not felt before.The ‘total life’ philosophyAt age 32, while delivering an address at a student conference in Lahore, Bose challenged the notion that students should have nothing to do with politics. He argued that in a dependent country, every problem, when analysed properly, is fundamentally a political problem, and therefore politics cannot be separated from education. All aspects of national life are interrelated, and shortcomings can be traced to political causes; consequently, students cannot afford to be blind to the problem of political emancipation. Bose questioned why a special ban should be imposed on student participation in politics in India when it is encouraged in free countries to cultivate future political thinkers and workers. He championed a ‘Total Life’ philosophy, arguing against the youth to stick only to their studies. To him, life could not be split into compartments, and students were the vanguard of the revolution.PoliticsDuring the 1930s, Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose shared a very close friendship but differences emerged in their approaches to attaining freedom at the onset of the World War II, as Nehru remained opposed to fascism while Bose sought support from Germany and Japan. By the late 1930s, Bose grew impatient with the hesitant attitude of some factions of the Congress party on World War II. Believing the other factions were too compromising, Bose turned his attention to the students as the force that could deliver freedom.The All India Students’ Federation (AISF) conference of January 1940 was held in Delhi under the chairmanship of Bose. Prior to this, Bose had served as the Congress president in 1938 and was re-elected in 1939, where he resigned following ideological differences with Gandhi and the Congress Working Committee. This AISF conference became a witness to the practical application of his philosophy and marked a sharp departure from Gandhian methods. In the controversy arising over the mandatory spinning of Khadi in the ‘Independence Pledge,’ Bose supported the revisionist students, arguing that spinning alone could not defeat the British Empire in an age of modern warfare. He urged youth to adopt modern political strategies rather than spiritual symbolism. Furthermore, Bose addressed the Leftist majority of the students, who were inclined toward communism and socialism. While some student factions leaning towards left within AISF wanted to pass a resolution demanding peace in World War II, Bose disagreed with them, viewing the conflict instead as a golden opportunity for India to strike while the British Empire was in crisis. He mandated militancy, instructing students that if senior leaders failed to act, the youth must provide an alternative leadership.Following this conference, the rift with the Gandhi-led Congress deepened, and Bose sought allies like Prabodh Chandra, a prominent AISF leader in Punjab, to maintain pressure on the British from within. In January 1941, days before his escape, Bose summoned Chandra to Calcutta to instruct him to keep the student movement active and create internal chaos while Bose sought military help abroad. However, the affection between Bose and Nehru-Gandhi never faded away, which was proved by the fact of the creation of regiments named after Nehru and Gandhi in his INA. ImpactBose’s influence extended beyond India; for instance, he requested Prabodh Chandra to attend the Burma Student Conference. At the time, Burma was part of India, and students like U Aung Sen were leading movements for autonomy and liberation from external debts. During Romesh Chandra’s tenure at Cambridge University in 1938-39, leftist students supported India’s independence struggle, while conservatives opposed it. Leaders like Gandhi, Nehru, and Bose held varying degrees of popularity among students. Bose was noted as a significant hero for the Indian populace, standing for crucial ideals. After his escape to Southeast Asia, Bose’s relationship with the youth evolved from political mentorship to military command. Upon taking charge of the Indian National Army (INA) in Burma, he shifted his message, asking students to abandon their books entirely to serve in organizations like the “Baal Sena” (Youth Corps) and the “Jhansi Rani Regiment”. His philosophy reached its ultimate conclusion: the “duty to learn” became secondary to the “duty to liberate”. Bose did not view students merely as future citizens but as immediate soldiers of the revolution, empowering them to become the revolutionary conscience of the nation.An enduring relevanceBose’s legacy provides a profound historical foundation for understanding the role of the university as a site of political transformation rather than just a degree-granting institution. In the past, Bose’s work was instrumental in shifting the identity of the Indian student from a passive recipient of colonial education to a vanguard of the revolution. By rejecting the notion that students should remain apolitical, he legitimised the student movement as a professional training ground for the nation’s future leadership. His actions at Presidency College and his later leadership at the 1940 AISF conference demonstrated that students’ activity was not a distraction from national goals but a necessary catalyst for them. In the current context, where debates frequently arise regarding the depoliticisation of campuses and the abolition of student unions, Bose’s philosophy remains strikingly relevant. His principled stand for a pluralistic and egalitarian India contradicts the modern political attempt to co-opt him into a right-wing nationalist framework, which is a fundamental distortion of his actual history. His argument that human life cannot be split up into compartments serves as a counter-narrative to modern assertions that students should focus strictly on academics. Bose’s conviction that every educational or social issue is ultimately a political one provides a framework for modern students to engage with contemporary challenges. By viewing students as responsible men and women rather than irresponsible boys and girls, Bose’s work continues to validate the agency of the youth in shaping the democratic and political fabric of the nation.Akhilesh Yadav is a research scholar at the Centre for Historical Studies, JNU, and former vice-president of the Allahabad University Students’ Union.