Congress MP seeks creation of Subhash regiment in the Indian Army

A private member's bill seeking to raise a regiment in the Indian Army in the name of Subhash Chandra Bose was introduced in the Lok Sabha on Friday. Introducing "The Bose Regiment Bill, 2015", Congress MP from Rohtak Deepinder Singh Hooda said Netaji deserved to be bestowed upon this unique and greatest distinction of having an Indian Army regiment named after him.

"Let him be the first and the last individual to have this ultimate honor," he said, adding this honour will be even higher and a more unique distinction than any other highest civilian awards that a grateful nation can bestow upon its hero.

He said this would perhaps also be something with which Netaji's instinct may have been agreeable to. When Hooda was introducing the bill, Bose's grandnephew Sugata Bose was sitting next to him.
Hooda said the Indian National Army's (Aza  Hind Fauj) composition was such that it had four regiments, of which three were named after the political peers of Bose of the time - Mahatama Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Maulana Azad.

"INA bestowed upon these great leaders such an honor during their lifetime and retained these names till the very end of war and dismantling of the INA," he said. Hooda said raising the first-ever Indian Army regiment named after an individual would be "just one small way" to honour Bose under whose leadership the INA played a strong part in hastening India's independence.

The INA under Bose was a true model of diversity by region, ethnicity, religion and even gender and that in the World War II, it was the INA that was fighting for India's freedom and not the British Indian Army, he said. 

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