There have been few occasions in a nation's history when a feat of national glory has been ignored or belittled by the nation itself. The effort of the Indian National Army (INA) raised during World War II with Japanese cooperation to liberate its motherland from the British by launching an offensive first in the Arakans and then in the Kohima—Imphal sector of north-eastern India was one such occasion. The offensive was unique and unparalleled on several counts. First of all, it involved a fully trained army of 30,000 patriotically roused Indians, a reserve of 20,000 volunteers undergoing rigorous military training and a number of dedicated, British-trained, regular army officers. Secondly, it had the frenzied support of about three million Indians residing in South-East Asia and a number of overground and underground organisations striving long to achieve India's independence. Thirdly, a sizeable section of Congressmen and members of the Congress Socialist Party who were either disillusioned with the failure of the 'Quit India' Movement (1942) or were staunch supporters of Subhas Chandra Bose, members of the Forward Bloc, and a major segment of population stood by or were expected to support the move. Fourthly, the strategy of the offensive was astoundingly bold requiring the INA to traverse nearly a thousand kilometers on foot fighting the enemy, in a difficult, hilly terrain inhabited by wild and hostile tribes. Finally, a leader of the stature of Bose, whom the British administrative and intelligence reports rated very highly as an adversary for his intellectual ability, organisation prowess, very high-level exposure to international political and single-handed revolutionary zeal, was there to organize this freedom offensive.

The British were worried about the formation of the IN A, particularly for its potential to influence the freedom movements, both violent and nonviolent, inside India. On July 1, 1943, the home member alerted his colleagues at the meeting to the National Defence Council at New Delhi against "spies traitors and defeatists" among Indians who were indulging in so-called "fifth column activity" in India. He stressed the need "to the aware of the dangers that still surround us" and for "continued and increased effort to surmount them." (1) Though the British Government had by then developed a perceptibly softened attitude towards the Communist Party of India (which would later vilify the INA and its Netaji as a "puppet army" and "Tojo's dog"), it regarded some of its elements as potentially dangerous. "It is a pity that a party that contains much that is good among the younger generation in India should thus fail to pull its full weight in the struggle against a common enemy (italics mine); but we feel that our action in withdrawing the ban (on the organisation) last year was justified and that, at any rate for the present, we stand to gain more than we shall lose by allowing the party to continue a lawful existence."

Other potential subversives were the banned Khaksars led by Allama Mashriqui whose activities were closely watched by the British Indian intelligence and, of course, the Forward Bloc proscribed under the Defence of India Rules, many of whose leaders were then under detention. Since these organisations were anti-British, these were dubbed as pro-Nazi, Fascist and fifth columnist. The home member noted that the activities of the Forward Bloc were able "to make plans deliberately calculated to further Bose's conspiracy of assisting the Japanese." He reported that he had seen a recent circular letter issued by the absconding members of the Bloc which acknowledged the leadership of Subhas Bose and urged the party to seize power by armed force on behalf of the National Congress. The circular openly advocated simultaneous uprising in the event of a combined attack of the INA and the Japanese on the British in India in order to keep the police and military engaged and thus to hamper the British Government's defence against the enemy. To the British another party of similar kind was the Congress Socialist Party led by Jaiprakash Narayan, Ram Monohar Lohia, Achyut Patwardhan and others, "who now dominated the Congress under ground organisation." (2)

The British administration and intelligence were almost paranoid in the belief that Japan was responsible for all anti-British revolutionary activities of Indians in South-East Asia. While they considered themselves patriots for defending their interests in their colonies in South-East Asia, they could not imagine that the people of these colonies chafing under their rule had the same inalienable right to uphold their own interests and freedom. In fact, Indian revolutionary nationalists had sought help from many foreign powers from time to time depending on their relationship with Britain. During World War I they had looked up to Germany for help and a number of schemes had been formulated by them to get arms from Germany to fight the British in an uprising. After the Russian Revolution (1917) their eyes had turned to the Soviet Union for encouragement and help. Japan had earlier caught the fancy of the Indian youth after its triumph over Russia in the Russo-Japanese war of 1905. "It had not only thrilled the entire orient with new hope and ambition", but in the estimation of David Petrie, director, Criminal Intelligence, Government of India, Japan's success had inspired India to the realisation that it would only be a matter of time when Indians would also be able to hold their own as free people in their own country. Under its impact clubs and associations for promotion of physical culture proliferated, especially in Bengal, and the revolutionary zeal that lay virtually dormant since 1857 was roused and Indians began their activities with bombs, revolvers and organized conspiracies to overthrow the British rule.3 During the long struggle for freedom for forty years, the Indian revolutionary leaders had maintained more meaningful and enduring relationship with Japan which had created strains in the Anglo-Japanese relation during the First World War. After the termination of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1923, the support from Japan for India's freedom became more open and strident in her policy of creating Asia for the Asians.

The first anti-British centres were formed in London and Paris in 1905. The next decade saw establishment of such centres in France, the USA and Japan. The main aim of Indian revolutionaries abroad was to establish useful international contacts, expatiate on India's aspirations and endeavour to gain sympathy and help form countries having anti-colonial tradition for her fight for freedom. In 1910 anti-British activity was started in Japan by Barkatullah with his anti-British monthly paper The Islamic Fraternity. It received a positive thrust after the arrival of Rash Behari Bose in Japan five years later. Anti-British activities spread to Malaya, Thailand, Indonesia and Burma in the next two decades so much so that when the first INA was formed under Capt. Mohan Singh with the prisoners of war in 1943, the stage was almost set for an armed struggle for India's freedom with Japanese cooperation.

The British sought to counteract and undermine the activities of the Indian revolutionaries abroad, particularly those of Bose and the INA, by dint of propaganda, suspensive laws, technical operations and also subversive activities inside the Congress. The Indian civil and military bureaucracies were almost totally with them holding fast to their oath of allegiance to the British Raj as a matter of personal honour. Some of the top congress and Communist leaders were already close to the British Government; a few who were politically strongly opposed to Bose and expected to gain from the liaison with the British were even willing to work for them. The result was that the British Government in India was able to raise a maelstrom of public protests with their help against the "evil designs" of Japan and Bose as a "quisling". The Indian intelligentsia, particularly the progressive elements in them, which were generally sympathetic to China, already disapproved of Japan as an aggressor country and so now blithely fell into the trap of the British propaganda thinking that Bose, though undoubtedly a patriot, had recklessly fallen for Japanese guiles for his burning zeal for the freedom of his country.

The Anglo-Saxon world view is so strong that such a feeling persists even today among many Indians which is fostered by persistent British eulogies about their own war heroes and systematic denigration of the heroism of those who were on the other side. So much is the hold of the Anglo-Saxon thoughts on the Indian mind that a few books that have been written by Indians on the subjects from personal experience or research are not given much credence by them. In Kohima and Imphal the British and British-Indian soldiers who lost their lives during the combined Japanese and INA offensive in 1944; these have now become places of tourist interest. The road from Kohima to Imphal is strewn with plaques proclaiming British advances in recapturing the lost ground from the Japanese. On the contrary, the government of Free India has done nothing so far to commemorate the supreme sacrifices and exploits of the Indian patriots who laid down their lives in a dense struggle in very adverse circumstances to free their-motherland from the foreign yoke. If nothing else, it gives wrong signals to the posterity about their status as Indian freedom-fighters and neglects to uphold their cause. It does not do honour to those in power either for committing historical blasphemy.

II

It will be clear from a study of the available records that Bose gave a new shape and thrust to the Indo-Japanese cooperation in the armed effort to liberate India. The provisional government which was formed on October 21,1943, and received political recognition from nine countries including Germany, Croatia, China (Nanking), Manchukuo, Philippines, Burma, Italy, Japan and Siam and Cordial felicitation from Eamon de Valera, the president of the Irish Free State, was not a "puppet government" and the Azad Hind Fauj or the Indian National Army was not a phoney organisation foisted by the Japanese in their design to subjugate India. They were dependent, no doubt, on Japan for training of men, maintenance of the army and for launching an offensive against the British in a full-fledged war, without which neither the provisional government nor the INA had any chance of survival or success. But this was on the basis of an agreement with the Japanese government, according to which the Indian government would repay all loans to Japan after independence.

Japan's track record about her treatment of the occupied or semi-occupied states like Burma, Malaya and Siam was without much blemish. It was also a fact that the INA enjoyed an independent, allied status with the Japanese army. Its campaigns in the Arakans, Nagaland and Manipur were organized with its own funds and its troops were commanded by its own officers under the overall supervision of the Japanese war department. Moreover, the captured Indian territories came into the possession of the Azad Hind Government which was responsible for their government according to the agreement made with Japan. Earlier, in the open meeting Bose had instructed the INA soldiers to shoot their Japanese counterparts if the latter committed any atrocity against any Indian citizen or went against the interest of India's freedom during the campaign.

Since his early years in politics Bose was aware of the importance of keeping friendly relations with Germany and Japan for fighting the British. He maintained regular contact with useful foreign diplomats and had even friends in the British intelligence set-up in Calcutta who used to cater political assessments regularly to him. An avid student of international politics, he knew about the importance for India of the Japanese foreign policy in the Far East. He was of the opinion that the overthrow of the British power could, in its last stages be materially assisted by the Japanese foreign policy in the Far East and indicated so in a secret memorandum to the German Government on April 9, 1941, in which he dilated on the significance of India in the British empire and on the future of the empire in the Indian viewpoint. In his recommendation he welcomed Japan's southward expansion that would lead to a clash with Britain and expedite a settlement of the China affair. (3)

When Japan declared war on British forgetting about the past honeymoon Bose knew that time had now come to take India's freedom struggle to the final stage of fruition. It had to be a no-holds-bar struggle particularly when British was then taking a severe beating in the hands of Japan in South-East Asia, Being a pragmatic politician (perceptive intellectuals from Romain Rolland to Tom Moraes have all noted his pragmatic approach to politics), Bose knew about the pitfalls of responding too much trust in Japanese politicians and war leaders. In his broadcast to Gandhi from the Azad Hind Radio in Tokyo on July 6, 1944, he said, "I can assure you, Mahatmaji, that before I finally decided to set out on this hazardous mission, I spent days, weeks and months in carefully considering the pros and cons of the case…By going abroad on a perilous quest, I was risking not only my life and my whole future career, but what was more, the future of my party. If I had the slightest hope that without action from abroad we could win freedom, I would never have left India during a crisis. If I had any hope that within our lifetime we could get another chance…another golden opportunity...for winning freedom as during the present war, I doubt if I would have set out from home. There remains but one question for me to answer with regard to the Axis Powers. Can it be possible that I have been deceived by them? I believe it will be universally admitted that the cleverest and the most cunning politicians are to be found amongst Britishers. One who has worked with and fought British politicians all his life cannot be deceived by any other politicians in the world. If British politicians have failed to coax or coerce me, no other power can hope to do so....There was a time when Japan was an ally of our enemy. I did not come to Japan so long as there was an Anglo-Japanese alliance...It was only after Japan took what I considered to be the most momentous step in her history, namely declaration of war on Britain and America, that I decided to visit Japan of my free will. Like so many of my countrymen my sympathies in 1937 and 1938 were with Chungking. You may remember that as President of the Congress I was responsible for sending out medical mission to Chungking in December 1938. Mahatmaji, you know better than anybody else how deeply suspicious the Indian people are of mere promises. I would be the last man to be influenced by Japan if their declarations of policy had been mere promises." (4)

Bose's early experiences in Japan were far from satisfactory. He arrived in Tokyo from Germany via Sabang, an isolated offshore islet north of Sumatra, on May 16, 1943, one year after he had planned to do so. The journey from Sabang to Tokyo took ten exasperating days. According to the Japanese Government's account, when the news of his proposed submarine journey to Japan was conveyed to him, "He was besides himself with joy, and this was somewhat strange for Bose, because he could supress his feelings easily." (5) Despite Japan and Germany losing the war at all vital points by February -1943, a hardheaded realist like Bose calculated that India's success did not depend entirely on the victory of the Axis Powers. As a matter of fact, he once told his trusted German friend Admiral Canaris (the creator of the efficient German intelligence outfit Abwehr who later was forced to commit suicide like Romel for plotting to assassinate Hitler) that "this time a victorious Britain will lose India." (6)

On his arrival in Tokyo Bose did not get an appointment with the Japanese Prime Minister Gen. Tojo till June 10, 1943. His old acquaintance Col. Satoshi Yamamoto, the new head of Hikari Kikan created to maintain liaison with the INA and the Indian revolutionaries who had received him at Sabang, was clearly embarrassed at this delay and at one point of time contemplated to resign his post to avoid the embarrassment. Nevertheless, Bose utilised the time by making acquaintance with the Army Chief of Staff Sugiyama, Foreign Minister Maroru Shigemitsu, Navy Minister Yonai and, after that, with the chiefs of various sections of the army, navy and the foreign ministry, whose help he would be needing subsequently in his bid to send an Indian liberation army to India and rouse an armed insurrection there against the British rule. (7) Till then his idea was to reach Chitagong in Bengal through the Arakans for the purpose. Moreover, he visited factories, military installations and even schools and hospitals to judge the nation's morale and war potential. One effect of these visits was that he was soon able to build a strong lobby in his favour because of his personality and intellectual eminence which helped him in his future negotiations with the" Japanese bureaucracy.

Tojo's initial reluctance to meet Bose was due to his dissatisfaction with the Indian leaders of the liberation movement in South-East Asia and flagging of his interest in opening another front with Britain. For nearly half a century Japan's public opinion was strongly in favour of India's freedom and Japan's military leadership could not afford to ignore it. Besides, they trusted Rash Behari Bose who had married a Japanese lady and was in their eyes more Japanese than Indian. R. B. Bose had his own strong lobby in Japan's top political circle and he incessantly strove for obtaining Japan's help in India's freedom movement. The Japanese government was neither ignorant of the Indian political movements in India in particular and in South-East Asia in general, nor averse to extend its sphere of influence to these parts, especially to India where it had economic interests. But the Japanese Government was characteristically careful in its approach. When Japan's decisive victory in the pacific war enlarged her horizon of influence in South-East Asia she felt that time was now propitious to encourage the Indian nationalists to organise an armed uprising inside India or launch an assault from outside to put pressure on the British. The Japanese government was lucky to get at such a time an intelligence operative like Major Iwaich Fujiwara who had tremendous drive and zeal had a good understanding of the Indian psyche. The Indian nationalists were then operating in different groups in Malaya, Thailand and Japan. It was Fujiwara's task to bring them together and form a common forum. He was helped in this task by R. B. Bose, Pritam Singh, Baba Amar Singh, Swami Satyananda Puri, Ananda Mohan Sahay, Debnath Das and others. Fujiwara's interest suited the Indian leaders too, for they had all along been dreaming about forming a liberation army and organising an armed insurrection to wrest India's freedom. The result of their effort was resuscitation of the Indian Independence League (one such organisation was already existing in Tokyo under R. B. Bose), which was now joined by all independence groups, and formation of the Indian National Army in December, 1941, with Indian prisoners of war under Capt. Mohan Singh.

Though the newly formed INA was never given an independent status by the Japanese government, Singh enjoyed some freedom in selection of men and management of its affair. However the main task of the INA was to penetrate the enemy lines and gain friends from the British army for the Japanese. (8) Initially Mohan Singh did not protest much and even handpicked some volunteers form the INA for operation behind the enemy lines at Batu Pahat just before the Japanese finally closed in on Singapore towards the end of January 1942.

But soon differences cropped up, first, with the Japanese authorities for their alleged interferences and particularly for their refusal to enlarge the INA and then with the civilian leaders of the Indian Independence League... especially Rash Behari Bose, who was looked down upon by Mohan Singh as a Japanese puppet. In fact, such differences were inevitable. In the first place, Mohan Singh and his army comrades had no way of knowing about the past revolutionary activities of Rash Behari Bose and his fellow nationalists and their sacrifices for their country. Secondly, the INA under Mohan Singh could not shake off the group mentality of the soldiers whose decisions to join the liberation army were not individual decisions but were orchestrated by the community or racial groups they belonged to. (9) Col. Shah Nawaz Khan, for instance, was initially opposed to the formation of the INA and in late February of 1942 he organised at Neesoon "a bloc of officers approximately 20 in number" to resist Mohan Singh.' (10) Khan was also apprehensive that the interests of the Muslims would not be protected under a Sikh.

Singh's relationship with the Japanese again sourced when a detachment of the INA under Captain Mahabir Singh Dhillon, which had been sent to the Indo-Burma border for intelligence work, went over to the British and divulged many vital information about the INA. (11) Their betrayal helped the British to set up a "fully developed organisation on the land frontier between Burma and India by means of which all arrivals are (were) organised, and, if found in any way suspicious, sent to other centres for further interrogation." (12) Mohan Singh was not equipped to handle such a crisis of confidence. As Lakshmi Sehgal, the chief of the Rani of Jhansi Regiment of the later INA, confided, "Somehow you felt Mohan Singh was not big enough". (13) The distrust between Singh and the Japanese authorities came to such a pass that on the morning of December 29, 1942, he was dismissed as the chief of the INA and taken into custody by the Japanese Military Police. According to the British army intelligence report, when the INA was disbanded, General Percival sent a letter of congratulations to Mohan Singh. (14) After this, the INA was placed under the Military Bureau of the Indian Independence League headed by Rash Behari Bose and Lt. Col. J. K. Bhosale was made its director. The stature and importance of the organisation were by then much diminished.

The developments over the INA had exacerbated Tojo's xenophobic distrust. When Subhas Chandra Bose could finally meet him on June 10, 1943, he was faced with an uphill task. But with his extraordinary personality and charisma he could change Tojo's attitude towards him completely and Tojo himself asked for a second meeting four days later when he agreed to most of Bose's requests. (15) This was the beginning of a relationship that lasted throughout and caused much annoyance to a powerful section of the Japanese military bureaucracy led by Field Marshal Count Terauchi which felt that Japan was needlessly dissipating her resources for Bose's ideas and later held him partly responsible for the reverses of the Japanese fortune in South-East Asia, lt would be naive to think that Tojo's overture to Bose was all due to his hypnotic personality and caliber. Unfortunately no reliable account of the first meeting of the two leaders has been published so far. It is possible that Bose was able to convince Tojo about the soundness of an investment in him and that his track record dispelled the fear of his betrayal or volte-face in course of his relentless struggle against British imperialism. (16)

Notes:

1. Statement made by the Home Member at the National Defence Council meeting held on July 1. 1943 on "Filth Column Activity in India", which was circulated vide Government of Assam Memorandum No. C. 230/41 of H.G. Dannehy, Chief Secretary Government of Assam, dated September 4/9. 1942, to all Deputy Commissioners and Superintendents of Police, Assam.

2. Ibid.

3. Op. cit.,H. N. Pandit. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose— From Kabul to the Battle of Imphal Sterling Publishers Private Ltd. p. 317.

4. Selected Speeches of Subhas Chandra Bose, Government of India Publications, pp. 233-34.

5. Gaimusho (Japanese Foreign Office): Subhas Chandra Bose and Japan (Tr. Historical Research Section. Ministry of Defence. GOI), p. 55.

6. H. N. Pandit. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: From Kabul to the Battle of Imphal, p. 151.

7. Ibid,p. 163.

8. C. S.D. I. C.: A Note on the Fujiwara Kikan Volunteers.

9. Peter Ward Fay. The Forgotten Army, India's Armed Struggle for Independence, 1942-1945, the University of Michigan Press, p, 226.

10. Ibid, p. 227.

11. T. R. Sareen. Japan and the Indian National Army, p. 126.

12. Statement made by the Home Member at the National Defence Council held on 1st of July 1943.

13. Peter Ward Fay, The Forgotten Army, p. 111.

14. Memo no. SC/INT-A/2/514 dated November 23. 1943, of the Commanding Security Corps. HO Eastern Army, 12 Adv. Base, P.O. India, to officers in charge nos. 2 and 5 F. I. Os.

15. Gaimusho, p. 100. The magic of Bose enchanted Tojo immediately. It had been the same with Sungiyama, Shingemitsu and nearly everyone Bose met in Japan. Not only Bose's words and passions but his eyes and voice enthralled Tojo.

16. H. N. Pandit, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, p. 165.

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