Before the Second World War, the British Empire was the largest empire the world had ever seen.
The war was its undoing, and when the dust settled, the United States sat at the top of the
new world order. Encouraged by this drastic shake of the snowglobe, many states previously under
the British thumb vied for independence. Among the largest nations to do so was India, which
had been under British rule since the mid-1800s. However, one Indian faction refused to wait for
the dust to settle before making its stand. This was the Indian National Army, raised at the behest
of the Japanese but by no means in love with them. In this video, we tell the INA's tale.
While World War II may have added petrol to the fires of the Indian independence movement,
it did not start during the war; many Indians had been contesting the British Raj from the get-go.
In fighting for a free India, some Indian nationals were exiled from British India,
while others chose to leave. Many found refuge in Japan and South-East Asia. Among those who
chose to leave was the revolutionary leader Rash Behari Bose, who had grown up amidst the
famine and disease resulting from British rule, and despised them. During the First World War,
Rash Behari Bose fled to Japan after trying to start an uprising. Here, he married a Japanese
woman, became a Japanese citizen, and founded the Indian Independence League, or IIL, a political
organisation that aimed to rally anti-British Indian nationals living outside of India.
In the lead-up to the Second World War,
Japanese intelligence agents from units such as the Fujiwara Kikan and Minami Kikan worked
to gather support from people—including Indian nationals—in Burma, Thailand,
Malaya, and parts of China. The Fujiwara Kikan, or F Kikan, was established by Japanese Major
Iwaichi Fujiwara, who—in what was clearly a moment of great humility—later proclaimed
himself “Lawrence of the Indian National Army,” a nod to the famed Lawrence of Arabia.
On the 8th of December 1942, the Japanese began their lightning-fast invasion of Malaya;
their offensive in Burma began later that month.
During the Malayan campaign, the Japanese took thousands of Indians as POWs. When they crossed
the Johor Strait and crushed British forces in Singapore, a further 45,000 Indian troops
surrendered. This worked out great for Fujiwara and Rash Behari Bose, at least for a time.
Under the leadership of Indian military officer Mohan Singh, some 12,000 Indian POWs rallied to
the IIL's cause. They were sick of fighting in the British Army, where they suffered no small
amount of racial discrimination, and being a POW wasn't all that great either. These men became
the foundation of the First Indian National Army, or First INA, an army sponsored by the Japanese.
Relations between the INA and Japanese weren't perfect, however.
From the get-go, the Indians were concerned they would become puppets of the Japanese, when all the
INA really wanted was freedom for India. As such, Mohan Singh met with his officers at the POW camp
Bidadari in April 1942 and announced the Bidadari Resolutions, which basically stipulated that the
INA would only fight if and when the Indian National Congress and the Indian people
gave them the A-okay. At the meeting, Mohan Singh said, "Indians stood above all differences of
caste, community, or religion. Independence was every Indian's birthright. An Indian National Army
would be raised to fight for it." The Resolutions did not, however,
specify how the INA would interact with Japanese forces, and that was probably a mistake.
At around this time, Fujiwara and his F Kikan were replaced by Major General Hideo Iwakuro and his I
Kikan, which included some 250 officers. Iwakuro was essentially the middle-man between the INA
and the Japanese, and also worked to train the INA in sabotage and espionage and recruit volunteers,
Indian or otherwise, to fight for the interests of Japan. Mohan Singh worked to grow the INA as well,
searching for volunteers in Japanese POW camps and suppressing all who opposed him.
Soon the INA's ranks had swollen to include some 40,000 men. Much of their equipment was British,
having been captured by the Japanese and passed to them.
In April, another set of resolutions regarding the INA passed in Thailand. These became known as the
Bangkok Resolutions. These basically reinforced the Bidadari Resolutions and better defined the
INA's relationship with Japan, declaring it subordinate to the IIL and merely an ally
of Japan. Additionally, the Japanese couldn't ask the INA to engage in any battle that wasn't
directly tied to the liberation of India. This sounded alright to Mohan Singh, at least on paper.
Later in 1942, however, tensions rose between the INA and the Japanese because the Japanese
had been training and recruiting Indian volunteers without Mohan Singh's consent. They had also been
censoring Indian broadcasts in Singapore and otherwise straining the Bangkok Resolutions.
In response, INA started rejecting Japan's requests for the deployment of INA combat units,
and then Mohan Sing ordered the INA to disband. After this, Japanese exiled Mohan Sing to the
Singaporean island of Pulau Ubin, and thousands of his soldiers became POWs all over again.
But that was far from the end of the INA.
After Mohan Singh's exile, Rash Behari Bose fought to hold the remnants of the ILL and INA together;
however, the organisations' leaders would not revive the INA unless there was a shift
in leadership. Namely, they wanted Indian National Congressmen Subhas Chandra Bose to take the reins.
At the start of World War II, the British placed Bose under house arrest, so he escaped and fled
India, finding his way to Berlin in April 1941. While in Germany, he created the Free India
Legion, a unit of Indian POWs previously captured by Hitler's forces, as well as the Azad Hind Radio
in collaboration with the Führer, who—along with the Japanese—had a lot of respect for him.
After the collapse of the First INA, Bose took a long submarine trip to Singapore,
assuming control of the IIL and INA on the 4th of July. To the INA, Bose said, "Give me blood! I
will give you freedom," and they liked the sound of that, so they rallied to his side. Quickly,
some 12,000 troops swelled to as many as 40,000 or 50,000, and in October, Bose announced the
formation of the Provisional Government of Free India, which declared war on the US and Britain.
The Second INA fought abreast Imperial Japanese forces in a number of particularly bloody battles,
though Bose didn't place all of his hopes and dreams with Japan. His plan with the INA was to
fight more like a guerrilla force and encourage Indian troops serving in the British Army
to defect. This way, with enough men behind him, and even if Japan ultimately lost World War II,
Bose would still be in a better position to challenge the war-weakened British Raj.
For now, though, he relocated his HQ to Burma's capital, Rangoon.
Among the most famous battles in which the INA fought were the Battles of Imphal and Kohima,
which we covered in detail in a recent video, and where the INA went toe-to-toe with other Indians.
But INA troops bled and died on other battlefields too.
In the Burmese state of Arakan, the INA's 1st Guerrilla Regiment fought the British
and British Indian Armies in the February 1944 Battle of the Admin Box. Here, they advanced
along the Kaladan River to the Indian border and defeated some British Commonwealth African units
to seize the elevation of Mowdok. In April, an INA special forces unit known as the Bahadur Group,
led by Colonel Shaukat Malik, crushed the British in the town of Moirang in Northeast India,
allowing Free India to take control of the territory. Between February and May 1945, the INA
1st Division went toe-to-toe with British General Sir Frank Walter Messervy in the Battle of Pakokku
and a series of battles fought along Burma's Irrawaddy River. Messervy's 7th Indian Division
suffered heavy casualties when they faced off against some 400 troops of the INA's 4th Guerrilla
Regiment while trying to cross the Irrawaddy. British Field Marshal Bill Slim later described
this action as "the longest opposed river crossing attempted in any theatre of the Second
World War." To that, we say, "Stalingrad, bruh?" After that, during the Battles of Meiktila and
Mandalay, units of the INA, led by Lieutenant Colonel Prem Kumar Sahgal, were tasked with
defending Burma's Mount Popa. They were absolutely crushed by the British, as were the Japanese in
that theatre at large. At this point, things were looking bad for the Japanese in Burma.
The Allied invasion was successful, and as the INA withdrew to Rangoon, Allied forces pursued, taking
INA soldiers as POWs along the way; thousands more had been captured since the beginning
of the Allied campaign. Anticipating defeat, Bose's government fled Rangoon for Singapore
with the remnants of the INA 1st Division and some other units, leaving as many as 6,000 troops in
the Burmese capital. These soldiers surrendered to the Allies when they liberated Rangoon in May.
Before Japan surrendered in September 1945,
Bose departed Singapore for the city of Dailan in Japanese-occupied China or Manchuria,
though he burned to death after his plane crashed along the way.
After Japan's capitulation, the INA forces in Singapore surrendered to British Indian troops.
Many of them were repatriated to India after they were processed in transit camps.
The more fanatical INA personnel were put on trial
and punished by the British Indian Army. Many in India weren't happy about this,
perceiving these men as patriots, not Axis-loving war criminals, and people rioted in the streets.
The famous anti-colonialist Mahatma Gandhi later commented on the significance of this uproar:
"The whole country has been roused, and even the regular forces have been stirred
into a new political consciousness and have begun to think in terms of independence."
But what do you think? Had you heard of the Indian Independence League and the
Indian National Army before today? To what degree did these organisations contribute
to the end of British rule in 1947? Did Subhas Chandra Bose's plan work in the end?
And lastly, do you know anything about the INA that we didn't cover in this
video? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.