A dramatic moment arrived in India’s freedom struggle, around 77 years ago, on October 21, 1943. Congressman-turned anti-imperialist warrior, the pugnacious prince among patriots-Subhash Chandra Bose, respectfully known as ‘Netaji’ among his countrymen had a single point agenda on his mind; to throw out the British by the use of military force run by Indian blood. On the Twenty first day of October in 1943, he announced the establishment of the Provisional Government of Free India.  India recently witnessed the 77^th anniversary of the formation of the first Indian government. The provisional government formed under the leadership of the supreme commander Subhash Bose was recognized by Germany, Empire of Japan, Italy, Independent state of Croatia, Wang Jingwei government, the state of Burma, Thailand, Manchuko, and the second Philippine republic. Azad hind under Bose had its own central bank, currency system, postal system, military in the form of INA, and international relations department.

A defiant child of destiny, who in the early 1920s , resigned from the coveted ICS job and joined INC under the guidance of Deshbandhu C.R. Das. It was the time when Indian nationalists were driven into exile, loaded into ships and sent to far off shores to rot away, thrown away in prison with next to zero life support and subjected to countless other humiliations and tortures. The tales of the fighters in the Ghadar party across countries, the pain of the victims in the Komagata maru incident still rings a bell in the hearts and minds of many people in the ripe age groups. After WWI, many Indian soldiers who were sent to the war to fight for the British never returned. This led to a larger number of Indians being enlisted in the armed forces under the British crown.

In the 1940s, through the efforts of Capt. Mohan Singh, Rashbehari Bose and Subhash Bose, an army grew out of such men and women who identified the true enemy, which was the tyrant British Empire, which used them in the battles in WWII and left them to rot in Japanese Prisoner of War camps. Another such army was formed by Subhash Bose in Germany, earlier under the name of Indian Legion using help from A. C. N.  Nambiar, and Abid Hassan. But bringing the legion into India through the northwest frontier did not materialize as the Nazi Germany had invaded Russia, cutting off access to central Asia.

The army formed in the Japanese occupied territories, named as the Indian National Army got to fight in India’s eastern front, after Netaji gave them the call ‘Give me blood and I shall give you freedom’. Though they suffered a shortage of food, medical supply, necessary transport, they did not abandon their brotherhood and even persuaded many Indians fighting from the British side to jump boat into INA.

In the 1940s, the Indian soil witnessed many operations and campaigns by INA for freedom from a loosening British hold. There were daring efforts made by INA in the form of reconnaissance teams being sent to India through Odisha using Japanese Submarines. These teams were sent under INA officers like Pabitra Mohan Roy, who were given the tasks to gather the support of local rebels in India for the INA and Azad Hind. The soldiers and officers of the INA had an inner storm of anti-colonialism brewing within their own minds. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose had given the INA the final shape after it was established by Capt Mohan Singh and Rashbehari bose, who just like Netaji had to leave the land to take the fight on a larger scale.

As World War II spread its fangs, close to 70,000 Indian troops, most of whom were Sikhs, were stationed in the Far East by the British. One of them was Mohan Singh, then a Battalion Captain in the British Indian Army, headed to Malaya (now Peninsular Malaysia) in 1941 with his unit. The backdrop of the Second World War provided a good opportunity for Bose to strike a blow against the British imperialists.

Bose after leaving the Congress had to go to Europe for medical treatment. In India, he was banned by the British because of his staunch anti-British stands and efforts everywhere, even when he was the Mayor and CEO in the Calcutta Metropolitan Corporation. When he returned to India, he was put under house arrest by the government and was monitored under the eyes of the local spooks. In 1941, using the help from his nephew Shishir Bose, Subhash escaped from the house arrest right under the noses of the CID spies placed outside his Elgin road home in Calcutta. He reached Germany through Afghanistan and Italy using multiple identities, passports and Visas provided by government who were in the Axis powers. The Indian community in Germany helped Bose to set up the Indian Independence League which led to the birth of the Indian Legion. After the Nazi Germany invaded Russia, closing the chance for Bose to take his troops into India, he took the arduous journey in a Submarine with Abid Hasan around the African continent to reach to the Japanese theatre of the war. The tales of Bose in Afghanistan on his way to Germany and in the submarine journey towards Japan make the study of his life feel like an adventure of a rarest of rare kind.

Bose arrived in Singapore on the invitation of Rashbehari Bose. Netaji Bose was appointed as the leader and the Supreme Commander of the INA or ‘Azad Hind Fauj’. Bose, in this stage, gave his famous battle cry ‘DilliChallo’. It is said that the troopers and the officers were not at first convinced of the efforts being put in by Bose. Gradually through meticulous planning and playing the right emotional chords helped Bose to amalgamate the soldiers into a common unitary fighting machine. One such example was when he paid his tributes to the mortal remains of the Last Mughal ruler Bahadur Shah Zafar II (in Yangon), who was the symbolic leader of the rebels of the 1857 revolt. It is said that when Bose was paying his tributes to the late Mughal ruler on his tomb, Shah Nawaz khan, an officer in the newly formed INA, present there, found his faith, and will back to fight for India. Bose, on another occasion, took all of his officers irrespective of their religions into the Chettiar temple (Singapore) when he went to raise funds for the INA. This event also had a huge impact on his officers.

The approach taken by Bose in his government and INA was that of cultural unification of the various sections of the population which meant to bring cultural intimacy in between various sections. One example was rewriting the Jan Gana Mana of R.N. Tagore in the simpler format of Subh Sukh Chain using the help from Abid Hasan. His next step was the formation of a women’s regiment in the INA. The Rani of Jhansi Regiment was announced by him on July 12, 1943. This force of several hundred was led by late Captain Lakshmi Swaminathan. Immediately after the formation of the government-in-exile, Azad Hind under Bose declared war against the Britishers and allied forces on the Indo-Burma Front. The Azad Hind Fauj also fought against the British Indian Army and the allied forces as part of the Imperial Japanese Army in the Imphal-Kohima sector.

The existence of the Azad Hind Government had given India’s independence struggle against the British a greater legitimacy. The politically unorthodox and bold actions of Subhash Chandra Bose and his decision to set up the country’s first government had directly or indirectly triggered a chain of events that eventually forced the British to leave India in August 1947.

Though the achievements of the INA were less than anticipated, but the impacts it had on the independence movement in India were massive. The first INA trial in the Red fort of its three officers from different religions- Sehgal, Dhillon, and Shah Nawaz became a rallying point for the Indian independence movement in 1945. It froze the spine of the British when they found that the actions by the INA under Bose had led to the breaking of the command and the authority structure of the armed forces in India. British were ruling primarily on the strengths of the military that they were controlling. This control was broken by the actions of INA under Bose. The disaffection and the anger against the British in the armed forces, especially among the lower ranks who were discriminated against, took the shape of the various mutinies that took place in Navy, Airforce, and Army. The most prominent of these was the Naval Mutiny at Bombay in February 1946, which saw the Indian sailors giving left-handed salute (a mark of disrespect) to the British officers and hoisting the flags of the Congress, the Muslim league and the CPI together.

British historian Christopher Bayly had stated that the INA had become a much more powerful enemy to the British after its fall in 1945. Also, the political effects of the trials of the INA officers were massive and were felt as late as 1948. When Clement Atlee, the PM who had signed the Indian Independence Act 1947, had visited India in the 1950s, he had paid visits to Justice P B Chakraborty, his Indian friend in Calcutta. In his discussions with Justice Chakaraborty, Atlee had confessed that it was the efforts of the INA and Bose which had forced the British to leave India as it had broken the command structure in the armed forces. He had also stated that the impact of Gandhi in the freedom struggle was nothing but minimal.

After so many decades, the public memory of the INA has shrunk considerably, and the death of Bose, the supreme commander of INA and essentially the first PM is still an endless soup of contradictions and a mish-mash of facts and tales. It is ironic that the country has still not identified its true liberator, and that the officers and diplomats who chew and grow fat out of public exchequer on a thankless gluttony do not have the spine to admit the truth about the independence which has given them such privileges. Maybe it is a preordained result that the country which has historically abandoned the liberator who vouched for secularism and welfare, has been cursed with an endless cycle of hunger, deprivations, and communal tensions.

The author is a student member of Amity Centre of Happiness.

Editor Opinion, Biswarup Mukhopadhyay has given important inputs for the article.