Who among the following founded the Forward Bloc in 1939?

The correct answer is A, Singapore. Bose reached South-East Asia in 1943, took charge of the Indian Independence League and the Indian National Army at Singapore on 4 July 1943, and on 21 October 1943 proclaimed the Provisional Government of Free India, the Azad Hind Government, in the same city. He became its Head of State, Prime Minister and Minister of War and Foreign Affairs, and the government soon declared war on Britain and the United States.

Option B, Russia, is wrong: Bose only passed through Moscow in 1941 on his way to Germany and got no help there. Option C, Japan, was the ally that recognised the Azad Hind Government first, and Bose reached Tokyo in May 1943, but the proclamation was not made there. Option D, Germany, is where he spent 1941 and 1942, setting up the Free India Centre and the Indian Legion, two years before the Provisional Government was formed.

The correct answer is B, Subhash Chandra Bose. In a broadcast on Azad Hind Radio in 1944, Bose addressed Mahatma Gandhi as the Father of the Nation and asked for his blessings for the Indian National Army's fight. Though the two differed sharply on method, Bose always treated Gandhi as the leader of the nation, and the title has stuck in common use ever since.

Option A, Jawaharlal Nehru, worked closely with Gandhi and called him many things in his writings, but not this title first. Option C, Sarojini Naidu, is remembered as the Nightingale of India and as the person who called Gandhi a Mickey Mouse in jest; she did not coin this title. Option D, Chandra Shekhar Azad, died in 1931 at Alfred Park in Allahabad, well before the broadcast. A related fact worth remembering is that Rabindranath Tagore is credited with giving Gandhi the title Mahatma.

The correct answer is C, Mohan Singh. The first Indian National Army was raised in 1942 by Captain Mohan Singh from Indian prisoners of war captured at the fall of Singapore, with the support of the Japanese army. It was dissolved in December 1942 after a breakdown of trust with the Japanese command.

Option A, Rash Behari Bose, was the revolutionary of the Ghadr days who led the Indian Independence League from Bangkok and handed over its leadership and the army to Subhas Chandra Bose, but he did not raise the force. Option B, Bhagat Singh, was hanged in 1931, eleven years before the INA was formed. Option D, Subhas Chandra Bose, revived and reorganised the army after taking charge at Singapore on 4 July 1943, and became its supreme commander, which is why he is often wrongly named as the one who raised it.

The correct answer is C, the Rani of Jhansi Regiment. Bose raised this all-women fighting unit in 1943 and named it after Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi, the heroine of the revolt of 1857. It was commanded by Captain Lakshmi Swaminathan, a doctor from Singapore who is better known by her later name, Lakshmi Sahgal, and its recruits came mostly from Indian families settled in Malaya and Burma.

Options A, B and D name queens who have no connection with the Indian National Army. Rani Padmini, or Padmawati, belongs to the traditions of Chittor; Didda was a queen of Kashmir in the tenth century; and Ahilyabai Holkar ruled Malwa from Maheshwar in the eighteenth century and is remembered for rebuilding temples. None of them gave a name to any INA formation, whose other units were the Gandhi, Nehru, Azad and Subhas brigades.

The correct answer is A, Cuttack, in present-day Odisha. Bose was born there on 23 January 1897, the ninth child of Janakinath Bose, a lawyer who practised in the town, and his school years were spent at the Protestant European School and the Ravenshaw Collegiate School in Cuttack. The Government of India declared 23 January as Parakram Diwas in 2021.

Option B, Calcutta, is where he studied at Presidency College and the Scottish Church College, where he lived at Elgin Road and from where he escaped in 1941, and where he was Mayor in 1930, but it is not his birthplace. Option C, Dhaka, had no part in his life, though the family's ancestral village of Kodalia lay in undivided Bengal. Option D, Midnapore, is a district of West Bengal that figures in revolutionary history for other reasons altogether.