{"id":40408,"date":"2024-04-08T08:22:03","date_gmt":"2024-04-08T02:52:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=40408"},"modified":"2025-10-11T11:08:56","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T05:38:56","slug":"first-prime-minister-of-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/first-prime-minister-of-india\/","title":{"rendered":"Was Subhash Chandra Bose the First Prime Minister of India?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>What\u2019s in today\u2019s article?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Why in News?<\/li>\n<li>The Azad Hind government<\/li>\n<li>Azad Hind \u2013 Not the first provisional government<\/li>\n<li>Provisional governments &#8211; Acts of defiance &amp; political necessity, not actual governments<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Why in News?<\/h2>\n<p>Recently, an actress, who is also contesting this year\u2019s Lok Sabha election, claimed that <a href=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/nscb\/\" target=\"_blank\">Subhas Chandra Bose<\/a>, not Jawaharlal Nehru, was the first prime minister of independent India.<\/p>\n<p>After being criticised for the historicity (or lack thereof) of her comments, she cited the provisional government setup by Bose in 1943 as evidence of her claim.<\/p>\n<h2>The Azad Hind Government<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Provisional govt in 1943<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>Subhas Chandra Bose proclaimed the formation of the Provisional Government of Azad Hind (\u201cFree India\u201d) in Singapore on October 21, 1943.<\/li>\n<li>Bose was the Head of State of this provisional government and held the foreign affairs and war portfolios.<\/li>\n<li>A C Chatterjee was in charge of finance, S A Ayer became minister of publicity and propaganda, and Lakshmi Swaminathan was given the ministry of women\u2019s affairs.<\/li>\n<li>A number of officers from Bose\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/upsc-exam\/azad-hind-fauj-and-indian-national-army\/\" target=\"_blank\">Azad Hind Fauj<\/a> were also given cabinet posts.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Authority of the govt<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>The <a href=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/azad-hind-government\/\" target=\"_blank\">Azad Hind government<\/a> claimed authority over all Indian civilian and military personnel in Britain\u2019s Southeast Asian colonies.\n<ul>\n<li>These colonies primarily included Burma, Singapore, and Malaya which had fallen into Japanese hands during World War II.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>It also claimed prospective authority over all Indian territory that would be taken by Japanese forces, and Bose\u2019s Azad Hind Fauj, as they attacked British India\u2019s northeastern frontier.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Steps to gain legitimacy<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>To give legitimacy to his government, Bose chose the Andamans.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>The Azad Hind government obtained de jure control over a piece of Indian territory when the Japanese handed over the Andaman and Nicobar islands in late December 1943.\n<ul>\n<li>Although de facto military control was not relinquished by the Japanese admiralty.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>The government also handed out citizenship to Indians living in Southeast Asia.\n<ul>\n<li>As per a historian, 30,000 expatriates pledged allegiance to it in Malaya alone.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Diplomatically, Bose\u2019s government was recognised by the Axis powers and their satellites.<\/li>\n<li>These included Germany, Japan, and Italy, as well as Nazi and Japanese puppet states in Croatia, China, Thailand, Burma, Manchuria, and the Philippines.\u00a0\n<ul>\n<li>Immediately after its formation, the Azad Hind government declared war on Britain and the United States.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Azad Hind \u2013 Not the First Provisional Government<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Provisional Government of India was formed in Kabul<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>28 years before the Azad Hind government came into existence, the Provisional Government of India was formed in Kabul by a group known as the <strong>Indian Independence Committee (IIC)<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Formed during World War I<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>During World War I, Indian nationalists abroad, along with revolutionaries and Pan-Islamists from India, tried to help India gain independence.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>They sought aid from the Central Powers, much like Bose did with the Axis powers in World War II.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>The IIC, with support from the Ottoman Caliph and the Germans, aimed to start a rebellion in India.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>They focused on Muslim tribes in Kashmir and the northwestern frontier of British India.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Government-in-exile in Kabul<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>The IIC established a government-in-exile in Kabul under the <strong>presidency of Raja Mahendra Pratap<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Maulana Barkatullah was appointed as the <a href=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/upsc-exam\/prime-minister\/\" target=\"_blank\">Prime Minister<\/a>.\n<ul>\n<li>Barkatullah was revolutionary <a href=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/upsc-exam\/freedom-fighters-of-india\/\" target=\"_blank\">freedom fighters<\/a> who spent decades outside India trying to gather international support for Indian independence.<\/li>\n<li>Barkatullah was also one of the founders of the Ghadar movement, which began in California in 1913, and aimed to overthrow British rule in India.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Provisional governments &#8211; Acts of defiance &amp; political necessity, not actual governments<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Part of resistance movements<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>Setting up provisional governments, and governments-in-exile, has long been a way for resistance movements to gain political legitimacy.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>E.g., the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) in Dharamshala.<\/li>\n<li>The very purpose of this government-in-exile is to challenge the legitimacy of the Chinese occupation of Tibet.<\/li>\n<li>Similarly, both the 1915 and 1943 provisional governments were, more than anything else, symbolic acts of defiance against British rule in India.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Azad Hind govt of 1943<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>Bose proclaimed the Azad Hind government in order to legitimise his armed struggle against the British.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>By proclaiming a provisional government, he gave his army legitimacy in the eyes of international law \u2014 they were not just mutineers or revolutionaries, but soldiers of a duly constituted government.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Crucially, citizenship oaths taken by Azad Hind Fauj officers were produced during the 1945-46 Red Fort trials as evidence of legality of their actions.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>The Kabul provisional government of 1915<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>The Kabul provisional government was, on the other hand, proclaimed to establish the seriousness of IIC\u2019s intentions.\n<ul>\n<li>It hoped that this would help gain the support of the Afghan Emir, who remained neutral.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>In 1917, it even reached out to the Soviets, and as a government-in-exile right on India\u2019s borders, posed a looming threat to the British.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Neither of these two governments can be called the Government of India<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>Both these governments failed to gain widespread international recognition.\u00a0\n<ul>\n<li>While some countries did recognise and support them, they did so for their own motives.<\/li>\n<li>After the World Wars (in which the British emerged victorious), this support swiftly vanished.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Both these governments never controlled Indian territory.\u00a0\n<ul>\n<li>While Bose did officially hold the Andamans, effectively, the islands were still under Japanese occupation.<\/li>\n<li>The Kabul government never set a foot on Indian soil, and, was a government only on paper until its dissolution in 1919.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Q.1. What is Indian Independence Committee (IIC)?<\/h3>\n<p>The Indian Independence Committee (IIC) was established in 1915 by Indian expatriates in Berlin, Germany. The committee&#8217;s purpose was to promote Indian independence and was part of the Hindu-German Conspiracy.<\/p>\n<h3>Q.2. Who was Maulana Barkatullah?<\/h3>\n<p>Maulana Barkatullah (1854 &#8211; 1927) was a freedom fighter and Prime Minister of the first Provisional Government of India. He was a journalist, orator, scholar, and author who fought for India&#8217;s independence from outside the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Subhas Chandra Bose formed the Provisional Government of Azad Hind in Singapore on October 21, 1943.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":40409,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-40408","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-mains-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}