Foundational Narrative

So what is India’s founding myth? It was imposed upon us by the departing British and enthusiastically endorsed by the Brown sahibs to whom power was transferred. The myth was that India won its Independence by a unique non-violent freedom struggle waged by fasts, dharnas and spinning the charkha. In sum, India begged for its freedom and a benign Raj gifted it to us.

Was the British Raj benign? Utsa Patnaik has calculated that, by 1938, the British had looted some 44 trillion dollars of wealth to finance its industrial revolution. This systematic loot severely Impoverished an India, which was once generating 25 per cent of the world’s GDP. The British deliberately caused six major famines in a country that once overflowed with milk and honey. Some 18-20 million Indians perished in these famines.

Bose and the revolutionaries were clear – India would have to fight for its freedom. Germany and Japan had struck major blows against Britain. World War II was a golden opportunity to seek their help and drive out the British. It was now or never. Gandhi kicked Bose out of the Congress for his advocacy of violence. Bose went to Germany and raised a 3,000 strong Indesche Legion to fight for India’s freedom. When Germany began to lose the war in the West – Bose undertook a perilous submarine voyage to reach Japan and take command of the Indian National Army. He raised it to a strength of 60,000. He formed a provisional Government-in-exile in Singapore and declared war against Great Britain. He made a declaration of Indian Independence and along with the 15th Japanese Army attacked India via Imphal and Kohima. The INA lost the battles of Imphal and Kohima but strangely won the War for India’s Independence. How?

In a foolish gesture of triumphalism, the British decided to hold very public trials of INA prisoners to defame them and terrorise the rest of the British Indian Army. For the first time the people of India got to know that there was an army of Indians fighting heroically for their Independence. It led to an explosion of outrage in the major cities and deep unrest within the British Indian Army. The mathematics was brutally simple. There were 2.5 million armed and battle-hardened Indian soldiers in India and just around 40,000 British soldiers. The court-martials led to widespread rioting. Police firing failed to subdue the inflamed crowds. The accused had to be let off scot free. Intelligence reports indicated widespread resentment amongst the Indian troops and support for the INA.

It would be highly instructive for us to study the Transfer of Power Archives. In December 1945, Fd Mshl Auchinlek, C-in-C India wrote an appreciation of the situation. He apprehended that minor revolts would occur by Feb- Mar 1946 and a major revolt could erupt by June that year. He asked for five British Divisions and major air support to virtually re-conquer India. He made contingency plans to evacuate British families and personnel in Kabul-style actions from Indian cities with airports and harbours. The Viceroy, Fd Mshl Wavell endorsed his views. London was initially skeptical but panicked completely when the revolt started in the Royal Indian Navy on 18 Feb 1946. Revolts also broke out in army units in Jabalpur. In sheer panic, Lord Pethik Lawerence (Secretary of State for India) rushed to Delhi to start negotiations for transfer of power and partition of India.

Reclaiming our History

So, we are very certain now as to why the British left in 1947 in such panic. The sad fact is that the departing British handed over power to the Gandhi-Nehru combine and not the INA. They forced Gandhi to anoint Nehru as the prime minister. Nehru appointed Lord Mountbatten as the first Governor General of India (Pakistan chose Jinnah). Mountbatten barred the re-entry of INA personnel into the Indian armed forces. Treated as traitors they were denied their pay and pension and left to starve. Earlier, he had destroyed the INA war memorial in Singapore. The banishment of the INA was complete. Bose had vanished into thin air.

To gain political legitimacy, Nehru thumped the peaceful narrative of freedom and embarked upon global missions of peace and Ahimsa. In the bargain, India’s national security suffered enduring losses and setbacks. We almost lost Kashmir and failed to consolidate our borders with China in this rush for peace evangelism at the cost of the state’s security. Realism was forced on us after the 1962 debacle, yet there were occasional relapses to the peaceful narrative. Hopefully, the Bose statue and the making of an INA War Memorial in Delhi will signal a return of realism and a reclaiming of our history.

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This book is a 125th Anniversary tribute to Bose and his Indian National Army (INA). It is a path breaking book that seeks to evaluate Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose as a military leader and assess the combat performance of the INA in World War-II and its significant impact on the Freedom Struggle.

Netaji was instrumental in India getting her freedom. The book has gone into great details about each and every engagement fought by the INA. The INA was the primary catalyst that inspired the military revolts of 1946 that ultimately forced the British to quit. For the first time, the author has examined the events of 1946 – especially the revolts in the Royal Indian Navy and the British Indian Army in great detail. He has cited British sources to prove that these revolts were primarily instrumental in forcing the British to leave in such a tearing hurry merely two years after they won the Second World War.

This book seeks to reopen the significant historical debate about how India got her freedom. A succession of court historians have tried to craft a narrative that India had obtained her freedom entirely by the soft power of Ahimsa/non-violence; that hard power had no role to play, whatsoever. This is a huge sacrilege.

As per the INA’s official history, the force had a total strength of 60,000. Of these, 26,000 were killed in action. This is an enormous scale of sacrifice. The pity is that the Nehruvian dispensation treated these men as traitors. There is as yet no memorial for these martyrs. The INA veterans were not taken back into the Army (on Mountbatten’s advice) and denied their war time pensions. Any nation that seeks to gloss over the martyrdom of 26,000 of its soldiers erodes the very basis of its nationhood.

There is also the dark secret about what finally happened to Bose. The author is pessimistic about the unearthing of the real truth as many critical Indian files have been destroyed. To get at the whole truth, we need access to Russian, Japanese and British archives. The author has analysed a wealth of data. It leaves us with some most disconcerting and horrible speculations about what happened to the man who in truth, got us our freedom. This book seeks to carry out a professional assessment of the INAs stellar combat performance against overwhelming odds and analyses the visionary and inspiring leadership of Bose as a self -taught Military leader in the genre of Mao of China and Giap of Vietnam. The author concludes that Bose ranks on par with these globally famous self- taught military leaders who led from the front and proved to be great strategists.

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