The All India Forward Bloc (abbr. AIFB) is a left-wing nationalist political party in India. It emerged as a faction within the Indian National Congress in 1939, led by Subhas Chandra Bose. The party re-established as an independent political party after the independence of India. During the 1951-1952 and 1957 Indian general election, the party was known as Forward Bloc (Marxist). It has its main stronghold in West Bengal. The party's current Secretary-General is G. Devarajan. Veteran Indian politicians Sarat Chandra Bose (brother of Subhas Chandra Bose) and Chitta Basu had been the stalwarts of the party in independent India.
Founder, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose
Subhas Chandra Bose was an Indian nationalist whose defiance of British authority in India made him a hero among many Indians, but his wartime alliances with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan left a legacy vexed by authoritarianism, anti-Semitism, and military failure. 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.
Bose, c. 1930s
Janakinath Bose, Prabhabati Bose, and their family, ca. 1905. Sarat Chandra Bose (standing, centre) and Subhas Bose (aged 8, standing, extreme right).
A photograph (1851) of Presidency College, Calcutta which Subhas Bose entered in 1913, but from which he was expelled in 1916
Subhas Bose (standing, right) with friends in England, 1920
