Indian National Army
Indian armed force fighting on the Axis side in World War II
The Indian National Army (INA; Azad Hind Fauj /ˈɑːzɑːð ˈhinð ˈfɔːdʒ/; lit. 'Free Indian Army') was an armed force formed by Indian collaborators and Imperial Japan on 1 September 1942 in Southeast Asia during World War II. Its aim was to secure Indian independence from British rule. It fought alongside Japanese soldiers in the latter's campaign in the Southeast Asian theatre of WWII. The army was first formed in 1942 under Rash Behari Bose by Indian PoWs of the British Indian Army captured by Japan in the Malayan campaign and at Singapore.
Quotes
edit- What Gandhi had not achieved in decades of campaigning, Bose’s INA achieved postumously in less than two years: making the British decide to quit India. And this, in fact, without firing too many bullets: if you radiate power, you often don’t have to use it. The court historians have always downplayed the role of the INA and attributed the merit for the achievement of independence to the Mahatma.
- The Japanese encountered resistance from some indigenous peoples, to be sure, and not only from those ethnic groups and elites that had done relatively well under Western colonial rule. The overwhelming majority of Indians showed no interest in the kind of liberation the Japanese had in mind for them. In the Philippines the peasant Hukbalahap movement waged a guerrilla war against them; in Burma the Karen and Kachin hill tribes also resisted Japanese rule. Nevertheless, the Japanese had no difficulty in finding collaborators among both anti-European nationalists and opportunists. Indian nationalists had not forgotten the 1919 Amritsar Massacre; it was in March 1940 that Udham Singh assassinated Sir Michael O'Dwyer, who had been Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab at that time. Though the majority of Congress leaders eschewed collaboration with the Japanese - in practice, 'Quit India' meant neutrality, albeit with a great deal of circumlocution - Subhas Chandra Bose enthusiastically hailed 'the end of the British Empire' and called on Indians to join the Axis side. Around 3,500 answered the initial call from Berlin of the self-proclaimed Netaji ('leader') to form an Indian Army of Liberation, most of them Indians who had been taken prisoner by the Germans in North Africa. When he reached Asia - having travelled by U-boat from Kiel to Sumatra - Bose was able to recruit a further 45,000 men (again mostly prisoners from Singapore and elsewhere) to his Indian National Army and the Axis cause.
- Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (2006), p. 500-501
