Giants
and Myths
Milestones on the Road to Partition-Part 9
By Professor Nazeer
Ahmed
CA
The formation of
the Indian National Army (INA) during World War
II was a major event in India’s struggle
for independence. Subash Chandra Bose, a senior
member of the Congress party, was forced to resign
as President of the party in 1939 over policy
differences with Gandhi.
Bose believed that only armed resistance would
compel the British to quit India while Gandhi
emphasized nonviolence and non-cooperation. In
1941, when Japan entered the War, Bose made his
way in disguise first to Germany where he met
Hitler, and then to Japan where he formed the
Indian National Army under Japanese patronage.
The advancing Japanese armies overran Singapore
and Malaya in March-April 1942. A large portion
of the British army in the Pacific was Indian
in origin. Over forty thousand Indian soldiers
surrendered to the Japanese along with the British,
the Australians and the New Zealanders. Of these,
over thirty five thousand Indian soldiers, Muslim,
Sikhs and Hindus alike, joined the Indian National
Army under Bose.
The Japanese promised independence for India once
the British were defeated and expelled. An Azad
Hind (free India) government was set up under
Bose as an Indian government in exile. The INA
was the vanguard of a military force spearheading
an attack on India from Burma. The INA brigades
did advance toward Kohima and Imphal in Assam
but were stopped by allied forces. As the Japanese
came under increasing pressure from the Americans
in the Pacific theater, they pulled back logistic
and air support from the Burma-India theater to
defend their operations further east. Heavy rain
and diseases took their toll. The INA was unable
to advance any further than the hills of Assam.
Bose died in an air crash on Taiwan in early 1945.
Even though the INA was unsuccessful in pushing
the British out of India, its exploits caught
the imagination of the Indian population. One
may argue that it was the inspiration offered
by the INA and the armed rebellions it fostered
that was responsible for the ultimate British
decision to quit India. News of an Asian power
defeating the entrenched Europeans in Indonesia,
Vietnam, Malaya and Burma convinced many Indians
that the British were not invincible after all.
More than two million Indians served in the British
Indian army. They fought valiantly in North Africa,
southern Europe and the Far East. When the war
was over they returned home to an India that was
still a British colony. These soldiers had tasted
victory in distant lands and were not inclined
to accept a permanent colonial status for their
motherland.
India was seething with resentment. The subcontinent
was like a boiling pot where the steam was contained
with difficulty by the Gandhian lid. The resentment
did burst out soon after the war. The captured
INA soldiers were put on trial in Delhi “for
waging war on the King Emperor”. Among those
accused of treason were Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs.
The trial of General Shah Nawaz Khan, Colonel
Prem Sehgal and Colonel Gurbux Singh Dhillon at
the Red Fort in Delhi attracted national attention.
They were defended at the trial by Pandit Jawaharlal
Nehru and Bhulabhai Desai who took the position
that the INA soldiers were soldiers of the Arizi
Hukumate Azad Hind or the Provisional Government
of Free India and as such should be treated as
citizens of a free and sovereign Indian state.
Jinnah appealed to the British to treat the prisoners
with leniency.
The trial caused mass uproar. In February 1946,
a section of the Indian Navy based in Bombay,
observed a hartal (passive non-cooperation) ostensibly
over the condition of food served to them. The
hartal soon mushroomed into a full-blown mutiny
involving over 70 ships and 20,000 sailors stationed
in Karachi, Bombay, Vishakhapatnam and Calcutta.
The Congress tricolor and the League green flag
were jointly hoisted over the commandeered ships.
Elements of the Royal Indian Air Force joined
in. The Indian army contingents based in Jabalpur
were the next to defy orders from their British
officers. Industrial workers from Bombay went
on strike followed by workers in Ahmadabad. The
situation was ominous for the colonial authorities.
The rebellion caught the attention of the British
Prime Minister Clemente Attlee who ordered that
it be crushed. Squadrons of the British navy surrounded
the Bombay harbor. British heavy guns were trained
on the Indian ships. Crack British army units
were called out. Indian navy personnel in Karachi
were fired upon, killing and injuring dozens.
British pilots of the Royal Indian Air Force flew
in formation over the Bombay harbor in a show
of force.
The stand of the Indian sailors attracted widespread
support among the masses, seething with discontent
over the apparent lack of progress towards independence
by the major political parties. It caught the
Indian leadership by surprise. Gandhi distanced
himself from the uprising, admonishing the sailors
that they ought to address their grievances through
established political leaderships. Jinnah urged
the armed personnel to call off the strike. Nehru
was equally unequivocal that the strike should
be called off. Patel traveled to Bombay to ensure
that the uprising ended peacefully. The apparent
concern of the Congress and League leadership
was that an uprising without a leader would lead
to anarchy and would draw India into the whirlpool
of cold war politics emerging after the Second
World War. It might have invited intervention
by the United States and the Soviet Union, as
happened in the Korean Peninsula and Vietnam.
The Communist Party of India, never far behind
whenever there was an opportunity for anarchy,
fully backed the uprising and their flag was hoisted
along with those of the Congress and the League.
Bereft of political backing from the national
leadership, the valiant stand of the sailors ended
in failure and the mutiny was put down by the
force of colonial bayonets. However, it demonstrated
that as far as the Indian army was concerned,
the communal question did not exist. This was
in February 1946, at a time when the Congress
and the League were deadlocked in negotiations
over the constitutional future of India. Hindus,
Muslims and Sikhs of the armed forces demonstrated
that they were willing to stand up as one and
challenge the British.
The British took the uprising more seriously than
did Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah, and Patel.
An exhausted Britain, licking its wounds from
a near mortal bout with Hitler’s Germany,
realized that the Indian armed forces which were
the mainstay of the British Raj could not be counted
on to put down a mass insurrection in the subcontinent.
The mutiny of 1857 had started under similar circumstances,
ostensibly over Sepoy discontent over cartridge
wrappings. The British barely escaped a forcible
exit from India in 1857 thanks to the support
of the Sikhs, the Nizam and some of the nawabs
and maharajahs. The situation in 1946 was different.
India was now aware of itself. It was no longer
willing to tolerate a foreign yoke under which
it had toiled for over 150 years. (To be continued)
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