Talk:Subhas Chandra Bose

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Subhas Chandra Bose article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the subject of the article.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives (index): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5: 2 months

The contentious topics procedure applies to this article. This article relates to the region of South Asia (India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal), broadly construed, including but not limited to history, politics, ethnicity, and social groups, a contentious topic. Editors are advised to familiarise themselves with the contentious topics procedures before editing this page.

Editors who repeatedly or seriously fail to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behaviour, or any normal editorial process may be blocked or restricted by an administrator.

This article is written in Indian English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, analysed, defence) and some terms may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

Biography: Military / Politics and Government

	Biography portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography
	This article is supported by the military biography work group (assessed as Top-importance).
	This article is supported by the politics and government work group (assessed as High-importance).

Military history: Biography / Maritime / Asian / Indian / South Asia / World War II

This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.Military historyWikipedia:WikiProject Military historyTemplate:WikiProject Military historymilitary history

This article has been checked against the following criteria for B-class status:
Referencing and citation: criterion met Coverage and accuracy: criterion met Structure: criterion met Grammar and style: criterion met Supporting materials: criterion met

Associated task forces:
/
	Military biography task force
	Maritime warfare task force
	Asian military history task force
	Indian military history task force
	South Asian military history task force
	World War II task force

India: West Bengal / Odisha / History / Politics Top‑importance

	India portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject India, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of India-related topics. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page.IndiaWikipedia:WikiProject IndiaTemplate:WikiProject IndiaIndia
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by WikiProject West Bengal (assessed as Top-importance).
	This article is supported by WikiProject Odisha (assessed as Top-importance).
	This article is supported by WikiProject Indian history (assessed as Top-importance).
	This article is supported by WikiProject Indian politics (assessed as High-importance).
	This article was last assessed in March 2019.

Asia Mid‑importance

	Asia portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Asia, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Asia on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.AsiaWikipedia:WikiProject AsiaTemplate:WikiProject AsiaAsia
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Swami Vivekananda Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Swami Vivekananda, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Swami Vivekananda on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Swami VivekanandaWikipedia:WikiProject Swami VivekanandaTemplate:WikiProject Swami VivekanandaSwami Vivekananda
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article was last assessed in October 2013.

University of Cambridge

This article is within the scope of the University of Cambridge WikiProject, an attempt to improve articles relating to the University of Cambridge, and to standardize and extend the coverage of the University in the encyclopedia. If you would like to participate, you can help us by editing the article attached to this notice, or you could visit the project page, where you can join the project, learn more about it, see what needs to be done, or contribute to the discussion.University of CambridgeWikipedia:WikiProject University of CambridgeTemplate:WikiProject University of CambridgeUniversity of Cambridge

Politics: Libertarianism Mid‑importance

	Politics portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Politics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of politics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PoliticsWikipedia:WikiProject PoliticsTemplate:WikiProject Politicspolitics
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.
	Libertarianism portal This article is supported by WikiProject Libertarianism (assessed as High-importance).

Discrimination Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Discrimination, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Discrimination on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.DiscriminationWikipedia:WikiProject DiscriminationTemplate:WikiProject DiscriminationDiscrimination
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the importance scale.

Socialism Mid‑importance

	Socialism portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Socialism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of socialism on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SocialismWikipedia:WikiProject SocialismTemplate:WikiProject Socialismsocialism
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Alternative views High‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Alternative views, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of significant alternative views in every field, from the sciences to the humanities. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion.Alternative viewsWikipedia:WikiProject Alternative viewsTemplate:WikiProject Alternative viewsAlternative views
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

British Empire Mid‑importance

	British Empire portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject British Empire, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of British Empire on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.British EmpireWikipedia:WikiProject British EmpireTemplate:WikiProject British EmpireBritish Empire
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Spoken Wikipedia

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of articles that are spoken on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Spoken WikipediaWikipedia:WikiProject Spoken WikipediaTemplate:WikiProject Spoken WikipediaSpoken Wikipedia

Early life of shubhash Chandra Bose

Project School Angel Jaiswal (talk) 08:14, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

History

Early life of subhash chandra bose Angel Jaiswal (talk) 08:15, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What is your point? -- Toddy1 (talk) 21:41, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is someone using the talk page as Google or ChatGPT in a failed attempt to cheat on their homework. Such comments should be removed per WP:NOTFORUM, not responded to and left to spam the page forever. Gnomingstuff (talk) 10:56, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Restoring the longstanding consensus version

I have restored the longstanding consensus version based on my close reading of the sources and my long association with the article's many prose incarnations. The bottom line is that "He received an education oriented towards British standards" is not accurate nor immediately comprehensible English. Please read the Early Life section I had written. An education in the Baptist Mission's Protestan European School did not merely meet British standards—for that was what Gandhi's had at the Alfred High School—it was overarchingly Anglo-centric. Most children who attended Bose's school were from domiciled British or Anglo-Indian families. No Indian languages were taught or spoken, but Latin was taught. The Bible was a subject as was British history and what is more, geography. By the time Bose reached school-going age, the British had opened hundreds (if not thousands) of schools in India, but the curriculum in almost all English-medium sechools, nevertheless, respected Indian traditions and backgrounds. Bose's education was unusual for most Indian nationalists of the era. The stark differences between the school's ethos (advocated by Bose's father) and the home environment (dominated by Bose's Bengali-speaking and religious Hindu mother) has been noted by scholars. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 12:30, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

PS For another example, you have changed "The early recipient of an Anglo-centric education, he was sent after college to England to take the Indian Civil Service examination. He succeeded with distinction in the vital first exam but demurred at taking the routine final exam, citing nationalism to be the higher calling." to: "He received an education oriented towards British standards, and was subsequently sent to England to take the Indian Civil Service examination. He succeeded with distinction in the first exam but chose not to proceed with the standard final exam."

The referees cited in Bose's ICS application included the Under-Secretary of State for India and a member of the Council of India. There were six vacancies that year. Bose placed fourth in the vital first exam. Everyone thought he was a shoe in for the more routine final exam. But Bose began to have doubts about a future in the civil service. By this time, Gandhi had begun to make his first polical waves in India. Letters were exchanged for nearly six months between Bose and his father and brother in India, who had invested much in the undertaking. Bose also exchanged letters with C. R. Das, the Bengali nationalist and Swaraj Party leader. In the end he stuck firm to his decision that nationalism was a higher calling for someone with his background, education, and, more importantly, mindset. He wrote anguished but firm letters to his father and to the Secretary of State for India withdrawing his application. He received a third from Cambridge. By the time of the convocation, he was already on his way to India, and he asked someone else to pick up his degree. That bit of history was an outlier for any Indian who had hitherto taken the ICS exam, and very likely for any after. You can't turn that into unmodulated, unemphatic, and inaccurate prose paraphrases, and I've written the above from memory.

PPS There are other issues with the paraphrase. "He receive an education oriented towards British standards." would apply a priori to any Indian who took the ICS exam. But would an education at Presidency College, Calcutta, originally Hindu College, and Bose's first college, which was attented by the privileged Hindus of Bengal, especially the Bhadraloks, be subsumed under the rubric of an education "oriented towards British standards?" Even Rajendra Prasad who was from rural Bihar, went to Presidency, I seem to recall, topping the matriculation exam for the college or the BA exam in Law, but he hardly had an Anglo-centric education in early childhood as did Bose. The history of Indian nationalism is complicated. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 13:19, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Fowler&fowler An apparently inaccurate paraphrasing in a mere two sentences does not justify a wholesale reversion of a version supported by many editors. The version you have restored includes extremely promotional, and at times outright hagiographic, paraphrasing throughout the article, such as "Among many in India, he is seen as a hero, his saga serving as a would-be counterpoise to the many actions of regeneration, negotiation, and reconciliation over a quarter-century through which the independence of India was achieved," or "From her, Subhas imbibed a nurturing spirit, looking for situations in which to help people in distress, preferring gardening around the house to joining in sports with other boys." These are only a few examples; none are remotely encyclopedic, and their inclusion is especially concerning given that the article is about a Nazi collaborator. You also reverted the inclusion of useful wikilinks. I will be restoring the edits, aside from the two cases you have highlighted. — EarthDude (Talk) 11:01, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You have turned precise idiomatic turns of phrase into coarse jerkily written rephrases, a far cry from what the sources say. Shenkl didn't give birth to Anita Bose Pfaff. During the middle of the second world war, she gave birth to a baby girl, who at the time, was just a baby girl. The best we can do is to wikilink baby girl to the adult she later became.

You and others have engaged in this sort of silliness and misinterpretations again and again. And yes, Indian independence was achieved over a period of a quarter of a century by many acts of regeneration, negotiation, and reconciliation.

I am wise to WP:Sealioning and will consider administrative action if you continue. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 12:21, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For the final time, Bose was more than just a Nazi collaborator. That was established on Talk:Indian National Army in a consensus overseen by editors at WP:RS/N. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 12:25, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Fowler&fowler: Please can we have a little flexibility. Though in general I probably agree with you, in specific instances what Earthdude did was an improvement. For example, Earthdude found that two of the citations were only dead links because the newspaper had changed their URLs. It would be sensible for you to accept them. I have updated the access date (and commented out the original date) for Earthdude's updates to the citation templates.

old Loiwal, Manogya (18 January 2017a), President Pranab Mukherjee unveils Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose's 1937 Wanderer W24 in Kolkata, India Today, archived from the original on 15 May 2017, retrieved 20 February 2017
new Loiwal, Manogya (18 January 2017a), President Pranab Mukherjee unveils Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose's 1937 Wanderer W24 in Kolkata, India Today, archived from the original on 15 May 2017, retrieved 30 Nov 2025
old Loiwal, Manogya (19 January 2017b), "Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose's favourite car restored; unveiled in Kolkata", India Today, archived from the original on 3 January 2018, retrieved 20 February 2017
new Loiwal, Manogya (19 January 2017b), "Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose's favourite car restored; unveiled in Kolkata", India Today, archived from the original on 3 January 2018, retrieved 30 November 2025

~~-- Toddy1 (talk) 13:40, 30 November 2025 (UTC)~~[reply]

Sorry I got the above wrong. The Fowler&fowler version is the one that uses URLs to www.indiatoday.in that work correctly.^[1],[2] Whereas EarthDude's version evidently copied citation templates from an old version of the article, which had dead links.^[3],[4] It had not occurred to me that someone would edit the article to replace live links with dead links.-- Toddy1 (talk) 13:40, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What. That must have been someone else's edit, I didn't touch the sourcing in my edits. — EarthDude (Talk) 17:09, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Death is not proven

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

~2025-37819-45 (talk) 20:49, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Cannolis (talk) 21:02, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Citation overkill in the first sentence

I know that this is one of the most contentious figures in a very contentious topic area, to say the least, and there have been previous discussions about the lede before. However, do we seriously need clusters of, in that order, three, four, seven and five footnotes in the first sentence as of now? I think through merging and, in the case of the anti-Semitism cluster, possibly moving some to the last sentence of the lede, we could achieve a cleaner-looking result while preserving the current sentence. As it is, the formatting leaves some inconsistencies as some notes are treated as references of their own while other are shown as separate footnotes [some with quotes, some without, though as I haven't read the sources I don't know which ones are direct quotes and which ones aren't] with their own reference inside, so setting a consistent style would be helpful as well. MSG17 (talk) 23:04, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that reaching note aw in a list of a to z notes is kind of crazy. Yue🌙 (talk) 23:52, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Overall, I'd argue the whole lede needs to be rewritten. Some parts of that stand out:

Although peripheral to their main goals, the Germans inconclusively considered a land invasion of India throughout 1941

During this time, Bose became a father; his wife, or companion, Emilie Schenkl, gave birth to a baby girl.

Some Indians did not believe that the crash had occurred, expecting Bose to return to secure India's independence.

The British Raj, never seriously threatened by the INA, charged 300 INA officers with treason in the Indian National Army trials, but eventually backtracked in the face of opposition by the Congress, and a new mood in Britain for rapid decolonisation in India.

Frankly, these parts of the lede should be cut as it does not have that close of relation to Bose himself and some parts (I.e. Bose becoming a father) shouldn't be repeated again in the lede. The whole lede is mired with a memorial-like tone and is way too long in length. SpyroeBM (talk) 08:23, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]