In the history of India’s freedom struggle, the Indian National Army occupies an important place. One of the foremost involvements of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, at the time when there were all round divisions on the Indian national scene, the INA exhibited complete national unity. The Indian soldiers fought unitedly for a united India. This armed struggle of the INA forced the British to realise that they could no longer depend upon the loyalty of the Indian Army for the maintenance of their rule in the country.
Eminent historian Irfan Habib delivered the following as the First Captain Abbas Ali Memorial Lecture of March 7, 2015, at the India Islamic Cultural Centre in New Delhi. The topic of his lecture was ‘The Legacy of INA or Azad Hind Fauj.
Below is the text, being produced on Bose’s birth anniversary, with edits for clarity.
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I was a schoolboy when information about INA burst upon India.
Indian people only knew about INA when Japan surrendered. The new character of national movement was recognised by the Karachi Resolution passed by the Indian National Congress session in March 1931 after the suspension of the Civil Disobedience movement. This became a new programme for the Congress. There should be adult franchise, worker rights should be protected, basic industries should be state controlled, land given to the cultivator, deep agrarian reforms should be made – all these were promised for the first time.
From then on, worker and peasant organisations gained in strength. This was reflected in the Tripuri Session of the Congress.
Subhas Chandra Bose was undoubtedly one of the major leaders of the left along with Jawaharlal Nehru. If somebody had asked who represented the national movement most, people would have answered Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru and Bose, perhaps in that order. This was not only a situation of individuals, but the character of the national movement. But there were differences within the left. Nehru had announced in Glimpses of World History and in his autobiography that he was an atheist, that only idiots believed in the afterlife, and that he did not believed in god. Subhas Bose, through the end of his life, remained a believer in god.
These were basic differences not peripheral. Nevertheless, they realised a kind of a socialist India would be the only goal that would bring the masses together. Their view about socialism might have been different but they recognised that the capitalist landlord system could not be attractive enough for the masses.
The left included the socialists and the communists at that time. At that time the world situation suddenly changed, the war began on October 1939, and the Congress ministries resigned because Britain included India in the declaration of war against Hitler. Hitler’s cause was unspeakable, the Nazi racialist theory could not appeal to non-Aryans or non-white Indians. Nevertheless because of the fact that India was enslaved by the British, there was an innate lack of sympathy in the ranks of the national movement for Britain.
And therefore, essence that this was not India’s war was quite rampant in the national movement. In fact, when Gandhiji spoke in favour of Britain in France he probably did not represent popular opinion. Here, the first rifts in the left were appearing.
Nehru knew about the nature of fascism and was hostile to Germany. In his autobiography, he said that there would be time when Russian and America would enter the war against Germany. This was not the opinion of Bose and his followers. He admired Mussolini and thought any enemy of England was a friend of India. This was the beginning of the opening of two strategies with in the nationalist left. Bose remained a friend of the Soviet Union, he didn’t have any sympathies with the Chinese resistance against Japan, but it seemed in the first one-and-a-half years of the war that there was an understanding within the anti-imperialist powers. Therefore Bose’s decision to escape India and go to Germany via Russia is understandable.
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We must remember that he left India in January 1941 when England was practically alone in standing up to Germany and Italy. Russia and Germany were bound together by the non-aggression pact of 1939. No outsider could know that Germany was preparing to invade Soviet Union. Soviet Union and Germany had fundamental differences. Bose could not have known it as he arrived in Berlin in April 1941. Things became immediately complicated when Hitler attacked Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. We now know that this put Bose in a mental crisis, his understanding of the two lines drawn during World War I were completely shattered. But he never did join Germany in any denunciation of the Soviet Union.
Of course, with Japan, it was another case, because Japan did not go to war with USSR. However, once he had arrived in Germany, he began to prepare an army. There were a large number of prisoners-of-war whom Italians had captured and who were transferred to Germany. An Indian division was being trained in Germany. The situation suddenly changed when early in December 1941, Japan too joined the war – not against Soviet Union but against America – by attacking the Pearl Harbour.
When the Indian Independence League formed in Thailand by Gyani Preetam Singh accompanied the Japanese into Malaya, Indian troops were surrendered by their British officials, so to speak, to the Japanese. They began to respond to Preetam Singh’s appeal that they should form a separate army, an army of the Independence League. Captain Mohan Singh was the major figure who first formed the Indian National Army. He belonged to the earliest detachment of the Indians who were surrendered to the Japanese by their British officers in Malaya.
Mohan Singh is sometimes forgotten but I think he is a very notable figure and ought to receive his due. British intelligence paid his own tribute to Mohan Singh. Singh we are told, “has got no weakness”.
They also say that he was an eloquent speaker, and certainly his speech two days after the fall of Singapore on February 15, 1942, was remarkable for the effect it had on Indian soldiers who were brought to listen to it in the thousands. With Rash Behari Bose, an old revolutionary who fled to Japan in order to escape prosecution in India and perhaps execution, he formed the INA.
What is important in Mohan Singh’s case was his ability to gather Indian soldiers despite the fact that they belonged to different regions and religions. His main colleague was Captain Akram. There was a very strong belief in the INA that religious differences should not come to anything. Unfortunately Akram was also killed, along with Preetam Singh, in an air crash. Mohan Singh was ultimately able to, according to the British Intelligence, build up the INA to the effective strength of 12,000.
You must remember that they had great financial difficulties, Japanese would not fund them sufficiently, would not give them arms, except small ones and except what they had from the British. Also the three million population of South East Asia was also not sure how far they should help the INA. Reports of the British agents suggested that there were differences, because Muslims of South East Asia supported the Muslim League, and Preetam Singh and Mohan Singh had declared their loyalty to the Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress.
Nevertheless, it was the farsightedness of Mohan Singh that he continued to make appeals to the Muslims. He made the song of the INA, Iqbal’s famous poem ‘Sare jahan se acha’, which despite its naiveté appeals to the fact that everyone considers their own country the best in the world. Today, owing to the INA, it is the army song of our country. How long it remains, I doubt now, under the present dispensation.
Mohan Singh was only able to send small groups to the front. British Intelligence reported in 1942 that in attacks on their frontier positions, there were war cries in Punjabi by Sikh and other soldiers. There were also desertions in the INA; one major desertion being by Major Dhillon with the complicity of his superior, Captain Gill, who was then imprisoned by the Japanese. This incident intensified Mohan Singh’s difference with the Japanese and ultimately Singh was dismissed by Rash Behari Bose on December 27, 1942.
Militarily, the best time for INA was late 1942. Britain and America had not been able to bring large numbers of troops into Assam. That was the time when any invasion of Assam had some chance of success. Germans were advancing towards Stalingrad, Japan seemed almost dominant in the Pacific and South East Asia. And within India, the Quit India Movement had taken place in August 1942. This was a great morale booster for INA. Gandhiji’s and Nehru’s arrests were shown by the INA as proof that these leaders were on the same side as INA. It was forgotten that in the Quit India resolution, it was made clear that the Congress was on the side of the allies in World War II. Just the fact that a movement against the British had been launched was an important morale booster for the INA, but unfortunately even that advantage was wasted.
We must remember the point that if Subhas Bose was present, things might have turned out differently. When Bose arrived in South East Asia, then that time of hope was over. Bose left Germany in a u-boat in February 1943. By that time, the tide of war had turned. Hitler had been defeated at Stalingrad; throughout 1943 his eastern front would crumble, the offensive Zitadelle would fail miserably, and much of Ukraine and Belorussia were to be regained by the Soviet Union. Japan would also begin to suffer air raids from USA, not only its possessions but Japan itself.
Subhas Bose was able to reach South East Asia only in May 1943 by submarine. On July 5, he took a salute of INA men at Singapore.
Bose, in Germany, was called Netaji. In Germany, the name Azad Hind Fauj had been coined. The INA flag, the Congress tricolour with the jumping tiger on it was invented. And ‘Jana Gana Mana’ also was taken as national anthem. Bose knew the Muslim hesitation to accept ‘Vande Matram’. The Pathans used to shout ‘Allahu Akbar Vande Matram’. Therefore ‘Jana Gana Mana’ was the song that Bose had to adopt.
Archival photo of Mahatma Gandhi and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose at a 1938 Congress event. Photo: Wikimedia
With this baggage of nomenclature, and with the slogan ‘Dilli chalo‘, Bose injected new life into the INA. He formed the provisional Azad Hind government on October 21, 1943. He obtained from Japan something which Mohan Singh had been unable to obtain, a recognition of the government of the Azad Hind, at par with other states like the government of Thailand, the Nanking government and so on. The point to remember is that Azad Hind government, despite having no territory under it, was perhaps the most independent and freest of all these governments.
It was now under Bose that INA began to enter military operations effectively, first in the Arakan and then on the Indian border of Assam, or what was then the province of Assam. Today the area of what was then called the Imphal Campaign, is partly that of Manipur and partly Nagaland. When the invasion of Manipur and Nagaland was undertaken by the Japanese, it was perhaps already too late for any military campaign. By 1944, Japan was harassed by American raids and invasions of its South East Asian possessions. With four effective divisions and no air cover, it was difficult to say why the Japanese, against the views of their own commander-in-chief in Burma, General Ayabe, launched this invasion.
It is now apparent that this was under the pressure of Bose himself. This shows influence that Bose had now come to exercise over Japan – that they were prepared to launch an invasion which was going to ultimately weaken very badly their military position in Burma. For two months, they did occupy Morang, south of Imphal, which is fairly deep into Manipur territory. That was one area which the INA controlled for two and half months and from where their flags flew. But the Japanese were defeated and badly mauled. Japanese soldiers fought to death. Perhaps this was another mistake – they retreated far too late. Because the INA did not have any heavy weapons, they asked INA to retreat first. So INA was not mauled as much as the Japanese themselves, and the road was therefore clear for the British advance into Burma.
In the meantime Bose had to leave Rangoon and come to Bangkok, and then owing to the atom bombs dropped on Japan, first on Hiroshima and then on Nagasaki, and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, Japan surrendered in August 1945. The fact that it would be surrendering came to be known to Bose three days earlier. We know that Bose wanted to go to Russia; he still though that Soviet Union would be the only power that could stand to British and American imperialism, but this particular adventure of his was never brought to test. He had been accompanied in his u-boat journey to Japan, by a Muslim officer from Germany, Abid Hasan; he would now be accompanied by another Muslim officer Habib-ur-rahman from INA, who lived to tell the tale.
There were great reasons why when INA prisoners began to arrive to India, and the news about INA organisation and INA’s Azad Hind government began to be popularised in India, every newspaper printed it, along with details of its secular character, its exhibition of organising abilities of Indians, and its ability to fight the British. As we know now, British intelligence reports also indicated from the fronts that fighting qualities of the INA were good. The Japanese noted that desertions from INA were few and far between, that many people in South East Asia, poor and rich, donated to INA. The greatest donor to INA, we are told, was one Habib of Rangoon, who donated all his property.
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In a polity which was then so far divided into two communal camps – as Gandhiji freely admitted – despite its secular views, the Congress in effect had become a caste Hindu party. So despite its trying, the Muslims had rejected it, as they would in 1946. And over 80% would vote for the Muslim League. Then there was the virulence of the Hindu Mahasabha. To all this the INA posed a totally different model. Their mode of salutation, ‘Jai Hind’ had become normal in Indian political discourse. The British had their discussions on how to treat the INA. Not because they wanted to wash off what in their views was treason but because of Indian public opinion.
They first tried a direct trial of the early prisoners of INA headed by Major General Shah Nawaz, Colonel P. K Sehgal and Colonel Gurubaksh Singh Dhillon. They were to be tried in Red Fort and public opinion gauged. What it would evoke from the public opinion was shown by the unanimous decision of the Congress working committee to go for a defence committee which was headed by the most moderate of moderate leaders, Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru. Sapru had been a consistent collaborator of the British government. He was a very fine Urdu scholar, had very good secular views, but was a sincere admirer of British constitutionalism. He was in the committee with Jawaharlal Nehru, Bhoola Bhai Desai, K. N. Katju, P. Saran, Badridaas and Asif Ali.
I think that the congress working committee deserves our praise: they made it clear that their opinion was different from opinion of the INA, but they also made it clear that the INA men were patriots. This feeling was shared on the ground, and I think one of the major contributions of INA was – apart from its resistance, apart from its martyrs in the fight – its effect on Indian national opinion.
On November 21-23, Calcutta demonstrations, in which Forward Bloc, Congress and communist demonstrators took part against INA trials and for their release, showed that Britain could not rule in the old way. For the first time British troops were used against Indian crowds. And it was found that despite firing, in which 33 were killed, that the crowd would not disperse. This was followed in Calcutta by Abdul Rashid’s sentencing of seven years rigorous imprisonment. He had been put on a separate trial and his defence was undertaken by the Muslim League. This also resulted in a common demonstration in Calcutta from February 11-13, 1946, in which 84 were killed.
We know that in the meantime Shah Nawaz Khan had been sentenced to life imprisonment, but that had been reduced to a mere dismissal by the Commander-in-Chief. It was clear that such imprisonments would have enormous consequences. But there was another event which only INA could have brought about, and that was the Royal Indian Mutiny in Bombay on February 18-23 involving 78 ships of the Indian navy, a total strike and crowd violence against the British in Bombay. The British brought in the British troops; the Leicester regiment, the Essex regiment, the British artillery and the royal marines to suppress it. Mutineers not only called for unconditional release of INA men, apart from their own demands, but in their final statement when they said they were surrendering to India and not Britain, their statement ended with the cry ‘Jai-Hind’. It was an extension of the INA struggle.
One of the tragedies in India is that after this mutiny we seemed to have forgotten the INA. The Navy mutineers also raised both the Congress and Muslim league flags. Their leader was one M.S. Khan, a sailor. Hindus and Muslims fought together in the navy mutiny, as did the crowds in Bombay. A cousin of mine who was in Bombay told me later that the crowds wanted all ties to be removed. One could only walk on the streets on Bombay in this period if you didn’t wear a tie, so he had to remove his tie and keep it in his pocket – so strong was the anti-British feeling in Bombay among all Indians. But soon, within a year, the Hindus and Muslims would be at each other’s throats, and within a year and a half, the country would be partitioned.
One must remember that the INA always spoke of a united and undivided India, both under Mohan Singh and Subhas Bose. Bose too would want all the concessions given to Muslims, but not the partition of the country. Clearly the mutual slaughter was a kind of a rejection, a rebuff of all that the INA stood for. Therefore today, I think it is doubly important that we continue to pay tribute to the INA, and also to hold high the banners that Azad Hind Fauj had raised, the banners of national dignity, unity, communal brotherhood, and also secularism. This is not the kind of secularism of the Supreme Court, but real secularism, in which every community, every section of the population has a place.
So for that reason I particularly welcome the fact that we are celebrating the memory of one INA soldier Captain Abbas Ali, and through that celebration we are also celebrating INA and its great achievements.
Irfan Habib is an eminent historian.
