evidence: The Congress and associated parties were not unified in their position. At one end of the spectrum was Subhas Chandra Bose, the Bengali leader and former Congress president, who had drifted away from Gandhi and the Congress leadership, and established his own Forward Bloc party, yet possessed great influence. Pursuing a long-standing strategy of Indian revolutionaries from the First World War, Bose was convinced that the outbreak of the European war was India’s opportunity to overthrow Britain, that independence could be achieved only through armed struggle, and that India should pragmatically align with its enemy’s enemy. Bose’s Pan-Asianism centred on Japan, which had gained Indians’ admiration following Japan’s modernization and astounding victory over Russia in 1905. Bose would escape from India in January 1941, stay in Berlin under Nazi patronage for nearly two years, and eventually move to East Asia to take command of the Indian National Army (INA) from 1943 to 1945 with Japanese support.Footnote 56