Subhas Chandra Bose was an Indian nationalist whose defiant patriotism made him a hero in India, but whose attempts during World War II to rid India of British rule with the help of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan left a troubled legacy. The honorific Netaji was first applied to Bose in Germany in early 1942—by the Indian soldiers of the Indische Legion and by the German and Indian officials in the Special Bureau for India in Berlin. It is now used throughout India.
Subhas Bose was born into wealth and privilege in a large Bengali family in Orissa during the high noon of the British Raj. The early recipient of an unusually Anglocentric education, his teenage and young adult years were interspersed with brilliant academic success, oversize religious yearning, and stark rebellion against authority. In a college in which his five brothers had preceded him, he was expelled for participating in an assault on a professor. He was also rusticated from the University of Calcutta, but after reinstatement 18 months later he managed to study blamelessly and excel academically.