Bharat Rakshak

Forgotten Warriors, ed. S. S. Yadav (published by Hope India [???], 3 vols.; Rs. 4500 for the set

A listing, by province, of soldiers who joined the INA. In some, but hardly all, cases he gives the regimental numbers in addition to usual name, rank, regiment, home village information, PLUS the person's INA rank.

T. R. Sareen, ed., Indian National Army: A Documentary Study, 5 vols. (New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House, [2004]; ISBN 81-212-0833-5 for the set), Rs. 4500

A set of poorly edited (typos ABOUND and sometimes do serious violence to the etxt) primary source volumes on the INA in Asia (Europe is totally ignored). While there are many items of interest to us, I have so far found nothing in any of direct relevance to awards, but many of these documents are interesting reading for the specialist, and maybe only for the specialist. If you translate Rs. 4500 into the basic currency unit, the BWM (British War Medal), you are left wondering if this is worth BWM 6?

Cover added.

Subhas Chandra Bose, The Indian National Army, and The War of India's Liberation

RANJAN BORRA

India's Army of Liberation in the West

The arrival of Subhas Chandra Bose in Germany in 1941 (during the turbulent period of World War II) and his anti-British activities in that country in co-operation with the German government, culminated in the formation of an Indian legion. This marks perhaps the most significant event in the annals of India's fight for independence. This event not only can be regarded as a historical link-up with what Bose himself chose to describe as "The Great Revolution of 1857," and which (in his words) "has been incorrectly called by English historians 'the Sepoy Mutiny,' but which is regarded by the Indian people as the First War of Independence."[1] It also represents the historical fact that, by that time persuasive methods conducted through a non-violent struggle under the leadership of Gandhi, had failed. An armed assault on the citadel of the British Empire in India was the only alternative left to deliver the country from bondage. While other leaders of the Indian National Congress fell short of realizing this fact and thus betrayed a lack of pragmatic approach to the turn of world events that provided India with a golden opportunity to strike at the British by a force of arms, Bose rose to the needs of the hour and was quick to seize that opportunity.

While Bose's compatriots in India remained totally wedded to an ideological creed (non-violence), which at that time could only serve the British and postpone the advent of independence, and while their ideological interpretations of the new revolutionary regimes in Europe-again largely influenced by British propaganda-prevented them from even harboring any thought of seeking their alliance and co-operation in the struggle against a common enemy, Sublias Chandra Bose alone had the courage to take the great plunge, thus risking his own life and reputation, solely in the interest and cause of his country. In January 1941, while under both house arrest, and strict British surveillance, he escaped. After an arduous trek through the rugged terrains of several countries, with an Italian passport under the assumed name of Orlando Mazzota - (in which he was aided by underground revolutionaries and foreign diplomatic agents) - Bose appeared in Berlin, via Moscow, on 28 March 1941.

Bose was welcome in Germany, although the news of his arrival there was kept a secret for some time for political reasons. The German Foreign Office, which was assigned the primary responsibility of dealing with Bose and taking care of him, had been well informed of the background and political status of the Indian leader through its pre-war Consulate-General at Calcutta and also by its representative in Kabul. Bose himself, naturally some what impatient for getting into action soon after his arrival in Berlin, submitted a memorandum to the German government on 9 April 1941 which outlined a plan for co-operation between the Axis powers and India. Among other things, it called for the setting up of a "Free India Government" in Europe, preferably in Berlin; establishment of a Free India broadcasting station calling upon the Indian people to assert their independence and rise up in revolt against the British authorities; underground work in Afghanistan (Kabul) involving independent tribal territories lying between Afghanistan and India and within India itself for fostering and aiding the revolution; provision of finances by Germany in the form of a loan to the Free India government-in-exile; and deployment of German military contingents to smash the British army in India. In a supplementary memorandum bearing the same date, Bose requested that an early pronouncement be made regarding the freedom of India and the Arab countries.[2] It is significant to note that the memorandum did not mention the need for formation of an Indian legion. Evidently the idea of recruiting the Indian prisoners of war for the purpose of establishing a nucleus of an Indian national army did not occur to him during his early days in Berlin.

At that time the German government was in the process of formulating its own plan for dealing with Sublias Chandra Bose in the best possible manner. The Foreign Office felt itself inadequate to discharge this awesome responsibility without referring the whole matter to Hitler. While this issue was being considered at the highest level of the government, Bose's own requests as set forth in the submitted memorandum, made it far too complicated and involved to be resolved at an early date. There was a long wait for Bose, during which period he often tended to become frustrated. Nevertheless, through several sympathetic officers of the Foreign Office, he continued to press his requests and put forth new ideas.

Finally, after months of waiting and many moments of disappointment often bordering on despair for Bose, Germany agreed to give him unconditional and all-out help. The two immediate results of this decision were the establishment of a Free India Center and inauguration of a Free India Radio, both beginning their operations in November 1941. These two organizations played vital and significant roles in projecting Bose's increasing activities in Germany, but a detailed account of their operation lies outside the purview of this paper. It should suffice to say that the German government put at Bose's disposal adequate funds to run these two organizations, and he was allowed complete freedom to run them the way he liked at his own discretion.

In its first official meeting on 2 November 1941, the Free India Center adopted four historical resolutions that would serve as guidelines for the entire movement in subsequent months and years in Europe and Asia. First, Jai Hind or Victory to India, would be the official form of salutation; secondly, Nobel laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore's famous patriotic song Jana Gana Mona was to be the national anthem for the free India Bose was fighting for; thirdly, in a multi-lingual state like India, the most widely-spoken language, Hindustani, was to be the national language; and fourthly, Sublias Chandra Bose would hereafter be known and addressed as Netaji, the Indian equivalent of the "leader" or the "Fuehrer." In November 1941, Azad Hind Radio (or the Free India Radio) opened its program with an announcing speech by Netaji himself, which, in fact, was a disclosure of his identity that had been kept officially secret for so long. The radio programs were broadcast in several Indian languages on a regular basis.


When the new version of the history of the Twentieth Century India, and especially the episode of the country's unique struggle for independence comes to be written, it will no doubt single out but one person who made the most significant and outstanding contribution among all his compatriots toward the emancipation of his motherland from the shackles of an alien bondage. During World War II this man strode across two continents like a colossus, and the footsteps of his army of liberation reverberated through the forests and plains of Europe and the jungles and mountians of Asia. His armed assaults shook the very foundations of the British Empire. His name was Subhas Chandra Bose.

In Japan

The Indian National Army (INA) consisted of some 85,000 regular troops, including a separate women's army unit named after Rani Lakshmi Bai (the women's combat army unit was the first of its kind in Asia). These troops were under the aegis of a provisional government, with its own currency, court and civil code, called the Provisional Government of Free India (or, the Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind), and recognised by nine Axis states - Germany, Japan, Italy, the Independent State of Croatia, Wang Jingwei's Government in Nanjing, Thailand, a provisional government of Burma, Manchukuo and Japanese-controlled Philippines. Of those countries, five were states established by Axis occupation. This government participated as a delegate or observer in the so-called Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

En route to India, some of Bose's troops assisted in the Japanese victory over the British in the battles of Arakan and Meiktila, along with the Burmese National Army led by Ba Maw and Aung San. The Provisional Government and the INA were established in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal, part of the British Indian Empire under Japanese occupation. On the Indian mainland, an Indian Tricolour, modeled after that of the Indian National Congress, was raised for the first time in the town in Moirang, in Manipur, in northeastern India. The towns of Kohima and Imphal were placed under siege by divisions of the Japanese, Burmese and the Gandhi and Nehru Brigades of I.N.A. At the time of the Great Bengal Famine of 1943, during which millions died of starvation, Bose had offered (through radio) to provide Burmese rice to the victims of the famine. The British authorities in India (and in the UK) naturally refused the offer.

When the Japanese were defeated at the battles of Kohima and Imphal, the Provisional Government's aim of establishing a base in mainland India was lost forever. The INA was forced to pull back, along with the defeated Japanese Army. Japan's surrender also led to the eventual surrender of the Indian National Army.

Japan's surrender also led to the eventual surrender of the Indian National Army.


Why did the INA surrender with the surrender of Japan's Imperial Army?

Why did the INA surrender with the surrender of Japan's Imperial Army?

What choice did they have? The Japanese provided all the supply and support infrastructure. Most of the INA were not trained for guerilla warfare so the options were limited.

ramana:

I recall having read a book on the INA written by one of its top Generals - ShahNawaz, Sehgal, or Dhillon. It was a full narrative, including details of Units and the INA operations they participated in. I can't find it on Google, but I am sure the History section of any decent college library in India will have it. I remember that book truly had the 'other side of the story' - from the INA folks' perspective. You may want to look for it.

An Indian Revolutionary Gains Favor Posthumously
Film Boosts Interest In Anti-Colonial Fighter

By John Lancaster
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, May 23, 2005; Page A12

CALCUTTA -- Asha Pachiasia has a problem with Gandhi.

Sure, she said, the frail, cotton-robed independence leader -- known as "the Mahatma" -- did his part and then some, leading the nonviolent rebellion that drove British colonial rulers from the subcontinent in 1947.

But as a hero and symbol of India's freedom movement, Pachiasia said, Mohandas K. Gandhi leaves something to be desired.

"I don't believe so much in Gandhi's policy of just showing the other cheek," said Pachiasia, a 47-year-old Montessori teacher. "I think now Indians are more aware that we should have fought for our freedom. I see how the Americans celebrate the Fourth of July. Mentally, we are still in the chains of the British Raj."

FYG - Only Shah Nawaz was a General in the INA.

The book you refer to is

FROM MY BONES" memoirs of Col. Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon (1998)
: ARYAN BOOKS INTERNATIONAL,
Pooja Aptts, 4B,
Ansari Road,
New Delhi-110002. FAX-91-11-3270385.
ISBN 81-7305-148-8


An amazing read and a very interesting account of the Red fort trials - including some elements on the contribution by Nehru and other prominent lawyers.

Should we think of renaming the Andaman and Nicobar islands as "Shaheed" and "Swaraj" respectively." as named by Netaji?

Alas, had the Axis powers overpowered India, the Azad hind Fauj would have been relegated, at best, to the status of varioous other collaborator states such as Manchukuo, and Vichy France, policing over their own people.

Wasn't the British Indian Army (BIA) fulfilling the same role for the British?

If the INA was a tool in the hands of a foreign power (Japan), wasn't the BIA similarily a tool in the hands of another power (Britain)?

I agree that after WWII, the BIA and the INA could not have been merged, there was too much bad blood between them and there would have been morale issues. But how was the BIA morally superior to the INA?

Had the Japanese won the WWII, the BIA would have been disbanded. Some years down the line, when India would have obtained its independence from the Japanese, the INA would have become the IA.

The victors write the history, and to them go the spoils.

JMT.

Japanese behaviour initially was correct and even friendly towards the remaining Indian population. This soon changed and many gruesome atrocities took place. Some nationalist Indians sympathized with the Japanese as the alleged liberators from the British joke. They were soon to be disillusioned. Subhas Chandra Bose set up his "independent India" at Port Blair and unrolled there what some Indian nationalists still regard as a turning point in Indian history, the "first flag of an independent India". Wishful hindsight, controversy and confusion is stil obvious at Port Blair as any visitor to the Cellular Jail and monuments to the war dead can testify. It is difficult to discover on the monuments or exhibits who precisely killed the dead mourned there. Responsibility is deliberately obfuscated so that it comes as a shock to find out , eventually, that the baddies were not the British but Bose's allies and friends, the Japanese.

Having spoken with several WW2 veterans, I can vouch for it that a number of them joined up with the BIA because it was the Indian Army. Very few saw themselves as tools of the British and almost everyone joined up because they saw soldiering as a honorable profession, or were patriotic, or thought it was the right thing to do.

It would sound difficult for us to understand today - because we grew up in sixty years of freedom and now know the british as Occupiers. But for many who had joined up then, they had only seen the british run administration - it was but a natural decision to consider the armed forces as their own and not some tool of colonialism, even if it meant serving under british officers.

The same logic can be applied to other services as well. Why did people join the railways? or the ICS? or the Indian Medical Services? What about the local policemen - many were indians. very few were brits. Because they saw it as their own. The introduction of Indian Officers in the 30s was all the more reason to believe that it was on its way to becoming 'truly indian'.

Otherwise Its very hard to explain why the British Indian Army would grow from 300k to two million strong - all volunteers. It certainly cant be the lure of money or power...

Having spoken with several WW2 veterans, I can vouch for it that a number of them joined up with the BIA because it was the Indian Army. Very few saw themselves as tools of the British and almost everyone joined up because they saw soldiering as a honorable profession, or were patriotic, or thought it was the right thing to do.

http://forum.axishistory.com/

Many rare photographs too.Request BR ( Jagan saar!!) follow up with that forum and get the info and the pics to be reproduced here.

Also, the Japanese did not cover themselves with Glory after occupation of the Andaman Islands. There ruled with a iron hand there.

http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/reviews/rev ... ta2003.htm