Indian National Army (Azad Hind Fauj)/ INA - Revision history

Jyoti: /* The Indian National Army */

2025-11-01T07:41:29Z

‎The Indian National Army

Pdewan: Pdewan moved page Azad Hind Fauj (Indian National Army) to Indian National Army (Azad Hind Fauj)/ INA without leaving a redirect

2025-10-12T10:09:46Z

Pdewan moved page Azad Hind Fauj (Indian National Army) to Indian National Army (Azad Hind Fauj)/ INA without leaving a redirect

Jyoti: /* The Indian National Army */

2025-09-08T18:37:32Z

‎The Indian National Army

Jyoti: /* Impact */

2025-09-08T18:37:16Z

‎Impact

Jyoti: /* Triumphs */

2025-09-08T18:36:45Z

‎Triumphs

Pdewan: /* The Indian National Army */

2025-08-15T17:38:11Z

‎The Indian National Army

Pdewan: /* Authorship */

2025-08-15T17:36:38Z

‎Authorship

Jyoti: /* The Japanese connexion */

2024-07-22T19:38:20Z

‎The Japanese connexion

Jyoti: /* Legion Freies Indien */

2024-07-22T19:35:28Z

‎Legion Freies Indien

Jyoti: /* Triumphs */

2023-09-06T19:09:33Z

‎Triumphs

@@ Line 10: / Line 10: @@
 AZAD HIND FAUJ (INDIAN NATIONAL ARMY)]]
-= The Indian National Army=
+=The Indian National Army=
 ==Authorship==
 Research: Neelotpal Mishra
@@ Line 306: / Line 306: @@
 . Nehru Brigade : Commanding Col. G. S. Dhillon, 3,000 men.
 =Impact=

← Older revision		Revision as of 18:37, 8 September 2025
Line 306:		Line 306:

	4. Nehru Brigade : Commanding Col. G. S. Dhillon, 3,000 men.		4. Nehru Brigade : Commanding Col. G. S. Dhillon, 3,000 men.
		+
		+	=Impact=
		+	==Arjun Sengupta’s assessment==
		+	[https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-history/subhas-chandra-bose-ina-helped-win-india-independence-not-battlefield-9123486/?ref=newlist_hp Arjun Sengupta, Jan 24, 2024: ''The Indian Express'']
		+
		+
		+	Subhas Chandra Bose was born on January 23, 1897. His Indian National Army (INA), also called the Azad Hind Fauj (literally Free Indian Army), faced the British on the battlefield during World War II. While militarily unsuccessful, the INA played a crucial role in India’s struggle for independence. In what way? We explain.
		+
		+	''' Bose takes over the INA '''
		+
		+	The INA was formed on February 17, 1942, two days after the British surrendered to Japanese forces in Singapore. It mostly comprised Indian prisoners of war (PoWs) captured by the Japanese during their Southeast Asia campaign. The Japanese thought that a native Indian force would be a powerful weapon in its planned conquest of India.
		+
		+	By December, however, the army was in disarray, lacking vision and leadership. It would take the arrival of Subhas Chandra Bose to turn things around. Bose arrived in Singapore in July 1943, after courting both the Nazis and the Japanese for help in India’s independence struggle. He took charge of the 12,000-strong INA on July 4.
		+
		+	“For an enslaved people, there can be no greater pride, no higher honour, than to be the first soldier in the army of liberation,” he told his troops the next morning, and immediately rejuvenated the army.
		+
		+	Over the next few months, he would carry out a public relations masterpiece, gathering support — in both men and material — from the Indian diaspora in Japanese-occupied Southeast Asia. The INA’s strength eventually grew to more than 40,000 personnel, and many Indians donated their life savings for the cause.
		+
		+	''' A doomed fight for freedom '''
		+
		+	From the very beginning, Bose had pinned his hopes on a large-scale uprising within the country, to complement the INA’s attack at the border. “When the British government is thus attacked from both sides — from inside India and from outside — it will collapse, and the Indian people will then regain their liberty,” he said in speech on July 9, 1943.
		+	But to spark a countrywide revolution, the INA needed to first achieve some military successes of its own. Unfortunately, by the time Bose’s army was ready to fight, the tide of the war had turned.
		+
		+	Instead of a victorious romp into Assam and then to Delhi, as Bose had hoped, the Imphal offensive of 1944 was a deadly reality check. After being unable to take Imphal and Kohima, the supply starved INA, along with its Japanese allies, was forced to retreat, all while suffering heavy losses due to the enemy’s air superiority and gunpowder, as well as starvation and disease. The army would never set foot in India again.
		+
		+	By 1945, the British had launched their own campaign to retake Burma, and the INA once again found itself in retreat. Many perished or surrendered to the rampaging Allies, and by August, Bose and what was left of the INA were back in Singapore. After the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on August 15.
		+
		+	Bose wanted to stay with his troops for the surrender, but was persuaded to leave by his subordinates. He died in a plane crash three days later.
		+
		+	''' But Bose’s fight was not in vain '''
		+
		+	Even after the military defeat, Bose genuinely believed that the INA’s fight had not been in vain. “… I regret more than you do that your sufferings and sacrifices have not borne immediate fruit. But they have not gone in vain, because they…will serve as an undying inspiration to Indians all over the world. Posterity will bless your name, and will talk with pride about your offerings at the altar of India’s Freedom…,” he said in a message to his supporters on July 15. He was right.
		+
		+	After the war, Claude Auchinleck, the Commander-in-Chief of the British Indian army, decided to publicly prosecute senior INA officers for high treason. The trials would be held publicly at the Red Fort from November 1945 to May 1946, and unleash a wave of nationalist sentiment among the public.
		+
		+	Contrary to Auchinleck’s calculations, the Indian public overwhelmingly sympathised with Bose’s INA, hailing the soldiers as heroes in India’s national struggle. Shah Nawaz Khan, Prem Sahgal and Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon, facing the first and most high-profile of court martials, became a potent symbol of the unity of Indians.
		+
		+	So overwhelming was the national sentiment that the Indian National Congress — which had been highly critical of Bose and his decision to ally with the Japanese — decided to assume responsibility for defending the accused. Jawaharlal Nehru himself put on his barrister’s coat for the trial.
		+	For the British, particularly concerning was the sympathy that INA soldiers had aroused among men of the British Indian armed forces.
		+
		+	Between February 18-25, 1946, mutiny broke out in the Royal Indian Navy, spreading from Bombay to Karachi and Calcutta, and eventually involving more than 20,000 Indian personnel and 78 ships. Another mutiny broke out in the Army in late February in the Jabalpur Cantonment.
		+
		+	“Thus, in the aftermath of the trial, the very idea of a British Indian Army — an imperial army — became untenable: the identity of the armed forces had now come to be grounded in that of the nation to such an extent that there could only be either a British Army or an Indian Army,” the historian Mithi Mukherjee wrote. (‘The “Right to Wage War” against Empire: Anticolonialism and the Challenge to International Law in the Indian National Army Trial of 1945’ in Law and Social Enquiry, 2019).
		+
		+	For the British, losing control over the Indian soldiers in their armed forces effectively ended their ability to govern their colonial possessions in India — and maybe beyond.
		+
		+	The newly elected British Premier, Clement Atlee, announced the Cabinet Mission a day after the mutiny started. While multiple INA officers were found guilty on various charges, their sentences were never carried out.

	[[Category:Defence\|I		[[Category:Defence\|I

← Older revision		Revision as of 18:37, 8 September 2025
Line 325:		Line 325:
	Army into Burma.		Army into Burma.

−	~~=Impact=~~
−	~~==Arjun Sengupta’s assessment==~~
−	[https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-history/subhas-chandra-bose-ina-helped-win-india-independence-not-battlefield-9123486/?ref=newlist_hp Arjun Sengupta, Jan 24, 2024: ''The Indian Express'']

−
−	Subhas Chandra Bose was born on January 23, 1897. His Indian National Army (INA), also called the Azad Hind Fauj (literally Free Indian Army), faced the British on the battlefield during World War II. While militarily unsuccessful, the INA played a crucial role in India’s struggle for independence. In what way? We explain.
−
−	~~''' Bose takes over the INA '''~~
−
−	The INA was formed on February 17, 1942, two days after the British surrendered to Japanese forces in Singapore. It mostly comprised Indian prisoners of war (PoWs) captured by the Japanese during their Southeast Asia campaign. The Japanese thought that a native Indian force would be a powerful weapon in its planned conquest of India.
−
−	By December, however, the army was in disarray, lacking vision and leadership. It would take the arrival of Subhas Chandra Bose to turn things around. Bose arrived in Singapore in July 1943, after courting both the Nazis and the Japanese for help in India’s independence struggle. He took charge of the 12,000-strong INA on July 4.
−
−	“For an enslaved people, there can be no greater pride, no higher honour, than to be the first soldier in the army of liberation,” he told his troops the next morning, and immediately rejuvenated the army.
−
−	Over the next few months, he would carry out a public relations masterpiece, gathering support — in both men and material — from the Indian diaspora in Japanese-occupied Southeast Asia. The INA’s strength eventually grew to more than 40,000 personnel, and many Indians donated their life savings for the cause.
−
−	~~''' A doomed fight for freedom '''~~
−
−	From the very beginning, Bose had pinned his hopes on a large-scale uprising within the country, to complement the INA’s attack at the border. “When the British government is thus attacked from both sides — from inside India and from outside — it will collapse, and the Indian people will then regain their liberty,” he said in speech on July 9, 1943.
−	~~But to spark a countrywide revolution, the INA needed to first achieve some military successes of its own. Unfortunately, by the time Bose’s army was ready to fight, the tide of the war had turned.~~
−
−	Instead of a victorious romp into Assam and then to Delhi, as Bose had hoped, the Imphal offensive of 1944 was a deadly reality check. After being unable to take Imphal and Kohima, the supply starved INA, along with its Japanese allies, was forced to retreat, all while suffering heavy losses due to the enemy’s air superiority and gunpowder, as well as starvation and disease. The army would never set foot in India again.
−
−	By 1945, the British had launched their own campaign to retake Burma, and the INA once again found itself in retreat. Many perished or surrendered to the rampaging Allies, and by August, Bose and what was left of the INA were back in Singapore. After the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on August 15.
−
−	~~Bose wanted to stay with his troops for the surrender, but was persuaded to leave by his subordinates. He died in a plane crash three days later.~~
−
−	~~''' But Bose’s fight was not in vain '''~~
−
−	Even after the military defeat, Bose genuinely believed that the INA’s fight had not been in vain. “… I regret more than you do that your sufferings and sacrifices have not borne immediate fruit. But they have not gone in vain, because they…will serve as an undying inspiration to Indians all over the world. Posterity will bless your name, and will talk with pride about your offerings at the altar of India’s Freedom…,” he said in a message to his supporters on July 15. He was right.
−
−	After the war, Claude Auchinleck, the Commander-in-Chief of the British Indian army, decided to publicly prosecute senior INA officers for high treason. The trials would be held publicly at the Red Fort from November 1945 to May 1946, and unleash a wave of nationalist sentiment among the public.
−
−	Contrary to Auchinleck’s calculations, the Indian public overwhelmingly sympathised with Bose’s INA, hailing the soldiers as heroes in India’s national struggle. Shah Nawaz Khan, Prem Sahgal and Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon, facing the first and most high-profile of court martials, became a potent symbol of the unity of Indians.
−
−	So overwhelming was the national sentiment that the Indian National Congress — which had been highly critical of Bose and his decision to ally with the Japanese — decided to assume responsibility for defending the accused. Jawaharlal Nehru himself put on his barrister’s coat for the trial.
−	~~For the British, particularly concerning was the sympathy that INA soldiers had aroused among men of the British Indian armed forces.~~
−
−	Between February 18-25, 1946, mutiny broke out in the Royal Indian Navy, spreading from Bombay to Karachi and Calcutta, and eventually involving more than 20,000 Indian personnel and 78 ships. Another mutiny broke out in the Army in late February in the Jabalpur Cantonment.
−
−	“Thus, in the aftermath of the trial, the very idea of a British Indian Army — an imperial army — became untenable: the identity of the armed forces had now come to be grounded in that of the nation to such an extent that there could only be either a British Army or an Indian Army,” the historian Mithi Mukherjee wrote. (‘The “Right to Wage War” against Empire: Anticolonialism and the Challenge to International Law in the Indian National Army Trial of 1945’ in Law and Social Enquiry, 2019).
−
−	~~For the British, losing control over the Indian soldiers in their armed forces effectively ended their ability to govern their colonial possessions in India — and maybe beyond.~~
−
−	The newly elected British Premier, Clement Atlee, announced the Cabinet Mission a day after the mutiny started. While multiple INA officers were found guilty on various charges, their sentences were never carried out.

	[[Category:Defence\|I		[[Category:Defence\|I

@@ Line 320: / Line 320: @@
 Japanese armies joined them in the plains of Imphal. Their allied forces first cut off the road to Dinapur and
 thereafter captured Eishenpur and Kohima.
 The renewed campaign of the Indian National Army lasted from January to August 1945. The Subhas,
 Gandhi and Nehru Brigades fought bravely and suffered great losses to stem the tide of the British 14th
 Army into Burma.
 =Imphal=

@@ Line 11: / Line 11: @@
 = The Indian National Army=
 The Indian National Army was very well constituted and fully organized in every sense of the word, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was the Supreme Commander, who was assisted by a ''' War Council ''' consisting of the following eleven members :
@@ Line 296: / Line 306: @@
 . Nehru Brigade : Commanding Col. G. S. Dhillon, 3,000 men.
 =Triumphs=

← Older revision		Revision as of 17:36, 15 August 2025
Line 1:		Line 1:
−	~~=Authorship=~~
−	~~Research: Neelotpal Mishra~~

−	~~Neelotpal's sources~~

−	i)~~S. Subuhey, '' The Story Of~~ I~~. N A., Being An Account Of The Indian National Army, The Azad Hind Government And The Trial Of Their Officers In The Red Fort ''~~ (~~for the INA details~~).	+	[[Category:Defence\|I
		+	AZAD HIND FAUJ (INDIAN NATIONAL ARMY)]]
		+	[[Category:History\|I
		+	AZAD HIND FAUJ (INDIAN NATIONAL ARMY)]]
		+	[[Category:India\|I
		+	AZAD HIND FAUJ (INDIAN NATIONAL ARMY)]]
		+	[[Category:Pages with broken file links\|AZAD HIND FAUJ (INDIAN NATIONAL ARMY)AZAD HIND FAUJ (INDIAN NATIONAL ARMY)AZAD HIND FAUJ (INDIAN NATIONAL ARMY)
		+	AZAD HIND FAUJ (INDIAN NATIONAL ARMY)]]

−	~~ii) The information on Freies Indien: Neelotpal got from articles about the German Army.~~
−
−	~~iii) The Medals and ribbons: courtesy research on antique auctions and the Imperial War Musuem, London .~~
	= The Indian National Army=		= The Indian National Army=

@@ Line 387: / Line 387: @@
 Hospital / Convalescent Home
-=The Japanese connexion=
+=The Japanese connection=
 ==Spies trained by the Japanese==
 [https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/trained-as-spies-by-the-japanese-the-indian-patriots-executed-as-enemy-agents-by-the-british/articleshow/111678823.cms  Muskaan Ahmed, July 12, 2024: ''The Times of India'']
@@ Line 437: / Line 437: @@
 AZAD HIND FAUJ (INDIAN NATIONAL ARMY)]]
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 AZAD HIND FAUJ (INDIAN NATIONAL ARMY)]]

← Older revision		Revision as of 19:35, 22 July 2024
Line 387:		Line 387:
	Hospital / Convalescent Home		Hospital / Convalescent Home

		+	=The Japanese connexion=
		+	==Spies trained by the Japanese==
		+	[https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/trained-as-spies-by-the-japanese-the-indian-patriots-executed-as-enemy-agents-by-the-british/articleshow/111678823.cms Muskaan Ahmed, July 12, 2024: ''The Times of India'']
		+
		+
		+	Penang, 1942. Indian cadets, driven by patriotism, were brought into the Penang Free School and given a singular mission — to overthrow the British. The cadets, who were part of the Indian National Army (INA), were trained by the Japanese military to decipher coded messages, write in invisible ink, identify British aircraft and evade surveillance to help with propaganda during the 1942 Quit India movement.
		+
		+	Last week, the Death Railway Interest Group organised an event in Malaysia to commemorate these cadets and honour their legacy.
		+
		+	So, who were these cadets? “They were Indian soldiers persuaded by INA founder Mohan Singh, to join the Japanese in their fight against the British,” says Chandrasekaran Tonnusamy, a teacher in Malaysia and chairman of the Death Railway Interest Group, which has been spreading awareness on the workers who died making the railway line for the Japanese from Thailand to Burma that was used to transport cadets, prisoners of war, medicines and food to those fighting the British in India.
		+
		+	“After colonising Malaysia in 1941, the Japanese established an administration office at Penang Free School. They saw the British military presence in India as a threat, with planes constantly flying over Japanese-occupied territories such as Thailand, Burma, Singapore and Malaysia via Ceylon. The Japanese sought to make India an ally and convinced Mohan Singh to help,” says Tonnusamy.
		+
		+	During the First World War, Britain promised dominion status for India if it helped in war efforts. Hopeful Indian leaders motivated jawans across the country to join the British forces. However, when Britain failed to keep its promise, several angry patriots left India for Thailand and Malaysia and began harbouring rebels working towards the freedom struggle. This was how the recruitment process for the spy school began.
		+
		+	Among those recruited was TP Kumaran Nair, who worked with the Malabar Special Force, a British police group set up to disband uprisings in the capital. Nair, who worked in Madras Presidency, was told to disperse a group of women rallying for India’s freedom on the Marina Beach in Madras, but refused to follow these orders.
		+
		+	Kumaran left for Singapore, where he met KP Kesava Menon, an activist who led the Vaikom Satyagraha in 1924. Menon convinced Kumaran to join the spy school, where he later became an instructor and trained the cadets.
		+
		+	“The 34 Indian cadets, the youngest being an 18-year-old named Ramu Thevar from Ramanathapuram, were trained by Japanese intelligence to do recon missions, navigate rubber boats to beach shores after travelling in a submarine and fire small hand rifles. They were also given combat and endurance training,” says Vijay Balan, grandnephew of Nair.
		+
		+	Balan authored the book Swaraj Spy, on Nair’s life with information from his extended family and documents and letters that his granduncle had written.
		+
		+	“The Japanese trained cadets to evade British checkpoints to go through India by foot. The Japanese would conduct the training at real checkpoints to see if they could cross without getting caught,” says Balan.
		+
		+	Given his paramilitary experience and having worked in the Malabar Special Force, Nair was one of the only two cadets to have successfully crossed the checkpoints out of the 34 cadets, says Balan.
		+
		+	“Cadets also researched the problems workers faced in British run-factories in India. They were then deployed to start strikes to create trouble for the British and strengthen the sense of hatred against them,” says Balan.
		+
		+	In 1942, during the Quit India movement, Hideo Iwakuro, a Japanese colonel, decided to send the cadets to India, hoping to deploy them across the country. Iwakuro did not consult the INA before doing this, and the operation failed as the cadets were underprepared and the Japanese failed to take into account India’s linguistic diversity. South Indian cadets were deployed in North India and vice versa, creating a language barrier that led to the operation failing.
		+
		+	“Three groups were deployed,” says MS Annamalai, a Chennai-based professor and writer with an interest in INA. “The first group came by a submarine to Kannur, the second to Gujarat and the third came through Burma, crossing a jungle. However, they were all caught and brought to Madras.”
		+
		+	A double agent had revealed the plan to the British that led to their capture. This made the Japanese suspect the Indians were loyal to the British. “It created a sense of distrust for both the Japanese and the Indians, and the school was closed in 1942,” says Chandrasekaran.
		+
		+	Mohan Singh was arrested by the Japanese the same year, and Subash Chandra Bose became its new leader in 1943. The cadets were tried under the Enemy Agent Act which came into effect in 1943. Nair and 18-year-old Ramu were among those hanged on July 7, 1944.
		+
		+	The book, Vakkom Abdul Kader, by S Diwan has a letter by one of the cadets, Abdul Kader, to his father explaining the pain the cadets felt having died without seeing their loved ones: ‘In this struggle of freedom which resembles a full moon; I am a candle. May Allah give you the strength to realise that your son will breathe his last at 6am and you won’t see him tomorrow.’
		+
		+	“When we speak of the INA and the freedom struggle, we often forget the sacrifices of these unnamed cadets who put their lives on the line for our country. While we are unsure what happened to the others, Ramu and Nair were buried in unmarked graves in Otteri [Tamil Nadu],” says Vijay.
		+
		+	The Penang Free School functions as a regular school today.
		+
		+	[[Category:Defence\|I
		+	AZAD HIND FAUJ (INDIAN NATIONAL ARMY)]]
		+	[[Category:History\|I
		+	AZAD HIND FAUJ (INDIAN NATIONAL ARMY)]]
		+	[[Category:India\|I
		+	AZAD HIND FAUJ (INDIAN NATIONAL ARMY)]]
		+	[[Category:Pages with broken file links\|AZAD HIND FAUJ (INDIAN NATIONAL ARMY)
		+	AZAD HIND FAUJ (INDIAN NATIONAL ARMY)]]

	= Bank of Independence=		= Bank of Independence=