TOKYO, JAPAN, May 9, 2020 (CNN, by Emiko Jozuka): On December 23, 1912, an explosion rocked Delhi just as Lord Hardinge, the British viceroy of India, entered the new capital on the back of an elephant. The bomb was meant to kill him, but instead it peppered Hardinge’s back with shrapnel, killed his attendant and cast a shadow over a day that was meant to mark the transition of India’s capital to Delhi from Kolkata. The mastermind of the attack was Rash Behari Bose, a 26-year-old Bengali revolutionary who initially posed as a British loyalist while secretly working to overthrow colonial rule. The attack failed, but it gave Bose the opportunity to show the hundreds of people in attendance — and the world — that some Indians were prepared to expel the British by force.
With a bounty on his head, Bose managed to flee India in 1915 to Japan, where he became a significant activist, reportedly introduced one of the country’s most popular curries and laid the foundations for the Indian National Army. Today, the names of prominent Indian freedom fighters such as Mohandas Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose have found their place in world history, but few have heard of Rash Behari Bose (though Subhas Chandra Bose built upon his work). Yet in Japan his story has become something of a legend. As a British ally, Japan may seem like an odd safe haven for a Bengali freedom fighter fleeing British retribution. But Japan had a long history of pro-Indian sentiment, dating back to India’s exportation of Buddhism to Japan via the Korean peninsula in the 6th century. Even though Japan was a British ally between 1902 to 1923, it had kept its doors open to revolutionaries who wanted to end British rule in India.
Much more of this interesting account at “source” above.