Rash Behari Bose
Taste of Love and Revolution
I am a fighter. One fight more. The last and the best. Rash Behari Bose
It was the most unusual sight to see a Bengali man, serving chicken curry at a restaurant in Tokyo. At the beginning of the twentieth century, foreigners were frowned upon in Japan, but here was this man, serving customers in the restaurant at the top of the Nakamuraya Bakery in Shinjuku, a busy commercial area of Tokyo. He selected the ingredients himself and supervised the cooking of the delectable curry, which was a blend of Indian or more properly Bengali chicken curry and Japanese rice. The faltering business of the Nakamuraya Bakery perked up as more and more customers were attracted by the wafting aroma of the curry. It was named ‘Jun Indo Kari’ or ‘pure Indian curry’, so as to not confuse it with the then popular British-style curry. The western style curry cost was ten to twelve Sen and Nakamuraya’s curry cost eighty Sen, yet the Bengali man soon had a roaring business to run. What started as a small restaurant in 1927, was so popular by 1939, that Nakamuraya listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Also, what most Japanese at that time did not know was that this man was the Most Wanted Fugitive of the Empire, the Bengali revolutionary, Rash Behari Bose.
Bose arrived in Japan in June 1915. The arrival itself was extraordinarily cinematic. With a price on his head by the British, he travelled to Japan under the alias of Priya Nath Tagore, a distant relative of the Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, whom, later as it turned out, the poet had never heard of. Or, had he? That riddle has never been solved. That the ever alert British intelligence service failed to intercept him, was a testimony to the fact that he was a master of disguise. The sensational incident later inspired the great Bengali novelist Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay to create a hero modelled largely on Bose, in his novel ‘Pather Dabi’ (The Demands of the Road; 1926), which the British promptly banned, stating, ‘Almost every page of this book propagates sedition’. The hero Sabyasachi, a name of Arjuna in the Mahabharata, was indeed the first superman of Bengali novels, a person who besides being highly educated, could do almost anything in the world for the freedom of his country. In his correspondence with Tagore, Sarat Chandra later justified his creation as writing, ‘throughout India, large numbers of people are being imprisoned or externed by the government on flimsy grounds without trial or in flagrant miscarriage of justice’. Tagore maintained that the book was indeed seditious and was bound to have been banned, though he agreed that it caused the readers to become disenchanted by the British rule. After the death of Sarat Chandra, the ban was lifted in 1939, by a public meeting held in Calcutta’s Albert Hall, by the Fazlul Haque Ministry of Bengal.
Bose left Bengal in 1908, to avoid the trials of the Alipore Bomb Case. He went to Dehradun and joined British Government service as the head clerk of the Forest Research Institute. He spent about seven years in Dehradun, maintaining high secrecy, while secretly keeping in touch with the revolutionaries of Bengal through Amarendranath Chatterjee of the Jugantar group. He also was in touch with the revolutionaries of the Arya Samaj in the United Provinces and Punjab. In 1912, he planned a bomb attack to kill the Viceroy Lord Hardinge, which failed. The bomb was presumably hurled at Hardinge by Basanta Biswas, a sixteen year old youth from Chandernagore, disguised as a girl, on 23 December, 1912. Viceroy Hardinge was in a ‘howdah’ on an elephant in a procession celebrating the transfer of capital from Calcutta to Delhi. He managed to escape with only the shrapnel piercing his back. Bose had taken a leave of thirty-seven days from office and rejoined his duties in due time, as if nothing had happened. He even organised an honorary reception for Hardinge a few months later. By the time the Assistant Director of Criminal Intelligence (Delhi), David Peterson could figure out the mastermind behind this Delhi-Lahore conspiracy case, Bose had disappeared from Dehradun in August 1913 and was terminated from his services for long absence from duties on 14 May, 1914. He had fled to Chandernagore in Bengal, his hometown, then under the control of the French and therefore a revolutionary hotbed for the anti-British movement. He kept flitting between Chandernagore and Benaras, before leaving for Japan under an assumed name, after the failed Ghadar movement in 1915.
At Japan, Mitsuru Toyama, a prominent Pan-Asian leader and Japanese politician, gave refuge to Bose in his house. But, he had to shift to a safer hideout when the British ordered his extradition, since Japan then was an ally. He moved in with the owners of the famous Nakamuraya Bakery, the wealthy Soma family. While Aizo and Kokko Soma sheltered him in their bakery, he continued with his revolutionary activities. The staff of the bakery cooperated in maintaining the secrecy, while Rash Behari introduced the household to Indian dishes. Meanwhile, a British ship fired at a Japanese merchant carrier and relations between the two countries soured. Rash Behari became a beneficiary as his deportation order was withdrawn. He eventually married Soma’s daughter Toshiko in July 1918, who was more of a human shield for him. Despite having to change houses often and go into hideouts, the couple were happily married for about eight years, with two children. But the constant stress of living as a fugitive in fear of authorities took its toll and Toshiko succumbed to tuberculosis in 1925, at the age of merely twenty-eight. The grief-stricken Bose took some time to come to terms with his life, before he was seen at the restaurant at the top of the Nakamuraya Bakery, giving instructions in cooking Bengali chicken curry, which became an instant hit, surpassing even the fame of the custard buns of Nakamuraya.
Bose became active in Pan-Indian circles, founding the ‘Indian Club’ in Tokyo. Meanwhile, he was following the Indian nationalist leaders closely, especially Mahatma Gandhi and Subhas Chandra Bose, the latter hailed as the leader of the youth. Meanwhile, the Second World War was raging and in February 1942, the Japanese routed the British garrison at Singapore. The captured Indian soldiers, under the leadership of Mohan Singh, formed the Indian National Army (INA), pledging to fight for freedom from the British with the help of Japan. Bose reached Bangkok (then under Japanese occupation) and it was decided to place the INA under Indian Independence League, whose Chairman would be Rash Behari Bose. As subsequent events unfolded, Subhas Chandra Bose reached Japan by submarine from Germany in May 1943 and Rash Behari transferred the leadership of the Indian Independence League to Subhas, due to his failing health.
Bose suffered a collapse of his lungs in February 1944, after which he suffered a rapid deterioration of health and passed away on 21 January, 1945, at the age of fifty-eight. During his last days at the hospital, when he was asked by the doctor about what he would like to eat, he answered that it had to be his favourite curry only. He was buried beside his beloved wife Toshiko. Though he could never return to his motherland India, the Japanese eventually adopted him as one of their own. In 1943, the Japanese government honoured Bose with the highest honour which could be given to a foreigner, the Order of the Rising Sun, 2nd Class.
Karē Raisu or Curry Rice is still one of the most crazily popular dishes in Japan. Nakamuraya still exists and has multiple restaurants. The Japanese seem to have grown as fond of spices as the Indians are. In recent times, Indian cuisine has outnumbered the largest pizza chains in Japan. A faded photograph of Rash Behari and Toshiko, soon after their marriage in 1918, remains as a testament to the times when a concoction of love and revolution created an enduringly alluring taste. Legacies sometimes, do find strange alleys of remaining in force!
It was the most unusual sight to see a Bengali man, serving chicken curry at a restaurant in Tokyo. At the beginning of the twentieth century, foreigners were frowned upon in Japan, but here was this man, serving customers in the restaurant at the top of the Nakamuraya Bakery in Shinjuku, a busy commercial area of Tokyo. He selected the ingredients himself and supervised the cooking of the delectable curry, which was a blend of Indian or more properly Bengali chicken curry and Japanese rice. The faltering business of the Nakamuraya Bakery perked up as more and more customers were attracted by the wafting aroma of the curry. It was named ‘Jun Indo Kari’ or ‘pure Indian curry’, so as to not confuse it with the then popular British-style curry. The western style curry cost was ten to twelve Sen and Nakamuraya’s curry cost eighty Sen, yet the Bengali man soon had a roaring business to run. What started as a small restaurant in 1927, was so popular by 1939, that Nakamuraya listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Also, what most Japanese at that time did not know was that this man was the Most Wanted Fugitive of the Empire, the Bengali revolutionary, Rash Behari Bose.
Bose arrived in Japan in June 1915. The arrival itself was extraordinarily cinematic. With a price on his head by the British, he travelled to Japan under the alias of Priya Nath Tagore, a distant relative of the Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, whom, later as it turned out, the poet had never heard of. Or, had he? That riddle has never been solved. That the ever alert British intelligence service failed to intercept him, was a testimony to the fact that he was a master of disguise. The sensational incident later inspired the great Bengali novelist Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay to create a hero modelled largely on Bose, in his novel ‘Pather Dabi’ (The Demands of the Road; 1926), which the British promptly banned, stating, ‘Almost every page of this book propagates sedition’. The hero Sabyasachi, a name of Arjuna in the Mahabharata, was indeed the first superman of Bengali novels, a person who besides being highly educated, could do almost anything in the world for the freedom of his country. In his correspondence with Tagore, Sarat Chandra later justified his creation as writing, ‘throughout India, large numbers of people are being imprisoned or externed by the government on flimsy grounds without trial or in flagrant miscarriage of justice’. Tagore maintained that the book was indeed seditious and was bound to have been banned, though he agreed that it caused the readers to become disenchanted by the British rule. After the death of Sarat Chandra, the ban was lifted in 1939, by a public meeting held in Calcutta’s Albert Hall, by the Fazlul Haque Ministry of Bengal.
Bose left Bengal in 1908, to avoid the trials of the Alipore Bomb Case. He went to Dehradun and joined British Government service as the head clerk of the Forest Research Institute. He spent about seven years in Dehradun, maintaining high secrecy, while secretly keeping in touch with the revolutionaries of Bengal through Amarendranath Chatterjee of the Jugantar group. He also was in touch with the revolutionaries of the Arya Samaj in the United Provinces and Punjab. In 1912, he planned a bomb attack to kill the Viceroy Lord Hardinge, which failed. The bomb was presumably hurled at Hardinge by Basanta Biswas, a sixteen year old youth from Chandernagore, disguised as a girl, on 23 December, 1912. Viceroy Hardinge was in a ‘howdah’ on an elephant in a procession celebrating the transfer of capital from Calcutta to Delhi. He managed to escape with only the shrapnel piercing his back. Bose had taken a leave of thirty-seven days from office and rejoined his duties in due time, as if nothing had happened. He even organised an honorary reception for Hardinge a few months later. By the time the Assistant Director of Criminal Intelligence (Delhi), David Peterson could figure out the mastermind behind this Delhi-Lahore conspiracy case, Bose had disappeared from Dehradun in August 1913 and was terminated from his services for long absence from duties on 14 May, 1914. He had fled to Chandernagore in Bengal, his hometown, then under the control of the French and therefore a revolutionary hotbed for the anti-British movement. He kept flitting between Chandernagore and Benaras, before leaving for Japan under an assumed name, after the failed Ghadar movement in 1915.
At Japan, Mitsuru Toyama, a prominent Pan-Asian leader and Japanese politician, gave refuge to Bose in his house. But, he had to shift to a safer hideout when the British ordered his extradition, since Japan then was an ally. He moved in with the owners of the famous Nakamuraya Bakery, the wealthy Soma family. While Aizo and Kokko Soma sheltered him in their bakery, he continued with his revolutionary activities. The staff of the bakery cooperated in maintaining the secrecy, while Rash Behari introduced the household to Indian dishes. Meanwhile, a British ship fired at a Japanese merchant carrier and relations between the two countries soured. Rash Behari became a beneficiary as his deportation order was withdrawn. He eventually married Soma’s daughter Toshiko in July 1918, who was more of a human shield for him. Despite having to change houses often and go into hideouts, the couple were happily married for about eight years, with two children. But the constant stress of living as a fugitive in fear of authorities took its toll and Toshiko succumbed to tuberculosis in 1925, at the age of merely twenty-eight. The grief-stricken Bose took some time to come to terms with his life, before he was seen at the restaurant at the top of the Nakamuraya Bakery, giving instructions in cooking Bengali chicken curry, which became an instant hit, surpassing even the fame of the custard buns of Nakamuraya.
Bose became active in Pan-Indian circles, founding the ‘Indian Club’ in Tokyo. Meanwhile, he was following the Indian nationalist leaders closely, especially Mahatma Gandhi and Subhas Chandra Bose, the latter hailed as the leader of the youth. Meanwhile, the Second World War was raging and in February 1942, the Japanese routed the British garrison at Singapore. The captured Indian soldiers, under the leadership of Mohan Singh, formed the Indian National Army (INA), pledging to fight for freedom from the British with the help of Japan. Bose reached Bangkok (then under Japanese occupation) and it was decided to place the INA under Indian Independence League, whose Chairman would be Rash Behari Bose. As subsequent events unfolded, Subhas Chandra Bose reached Japan by submarine from Germany in May 1943 and Rash Behari transferred the leadership of the Indian Independence League to Subhas, due to his failing health.
Bose suffered a collapse of his lungs in February 1944, after which he suffered a rapid deterioration of health and passed away on 21 January, 1945, at the age of fifty-eight. During his last days at the hospital, when he was asked by the doctor about what he would like to eat, he answered that it had to be his favourite curry only. He was buried beside his beloved wife Toshiko. Though he could never return to his motherland India, the Japanese eventually adopted him as one of their own. In 1943, the Japanese government honoured Bose with the highest honour which could be given to a foreigner, the Order of the Rising Sun, 2nd Class.
Karē Raisu or Curry Rice is still one of the most crazily popular dishes in Japan. Nakamuraya still exists and has multiple restaurants. The Japanese seem to have grown as fond of spices as the Indians are. In recent times, Indian cuisine has outnumbered the largest pizza chains in Japan. A faded photograph of Rash Behari and Toshiko, soon after their marriage in 1918, remains as a testament to the times when a concoction of love and revolution created an enduringly alluring taste. Legacies sometimes, do find strange alleys of remaining in force!