Term paper

10 THE JAPANESE INVASION, SUBHAS CHANDRA BOSE AND INDIAN WARTIME NATIONALISM1

THE BACKGROUND: JAPANESE WAR AIMS

Throughout the 1930s the idea of creating an economic zone, later to be termed a Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, based on the pan-Asian ideal of universal brotherhood (hakko ichi’u — the eight corners of the world under one roof), gained wide currency in Japanese academic and political circles. Japan saw itself as the natural leader, indeed the dominant power, in any such regional grouping.2 This concept was more fully developed by the Japanese government and adopted as policy on 1 August 1940.3 The new order was to consist of a core economic unit centred on Japan, China and Manchukuo (Manchuria), and to include the mandated islands, French Indo-China, Thailand, Malaya, Borneo, and the Netherlands East Indies, and possibly Australia, New Zealand, and India.4 While the Japanese were prepared to grant nationhood to the Buddhist countries of the mainland, they intended to hold the “undeveloped” Islamic lands of the Malay Archipelago as permanent colonies.5 With regard to the Malay Peninsula, Singapore and the other Straits Settlements were to be placed

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under direct rule, the four northern states (Kelantan, Perlis, Kedah, and Terengganu) were to be ceded to Thailand, while the remaining states were to be maintained under the existing structure but subject to the close guidance of Japanese advisors.6

On 7 December 1941, Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, U.S. military installations in the Philippines, Guam, Midway and Wake, and British airfields in Hong Kong. On 8 December the Japanese landed forces in Singora (in Southern Thailand) and Kota Bharu in Kelantan. The Japanese fleet, carrying 24,000 combat troops,7 effected a landing at Kelantan within two hours, despite heavy seas. The town was fully occupied by 9 December. Another Japanese force made a virtually unopposed landing at a number of strategic points in the Kra Isthmus.8

BRITISH SOCIETY ON THE EVE OF THE INVASION

The Japanese invasion met a British administration and society both psychologically and militarily unprepared for war. Undoubtedly the major factor underlying the British sense of security was the massive Singapore naval base, the so-called arsenal of democracy.9 The base, a vast annexe covering twenty-one square miles, was widely viewed as impregnable, a bastion of the British Empire in the East, a guarantee of protection for both India and Australia, as well as the future site of the Royal Air Force headquarters in the East.10

But Singapore was more than just a strategic defence facility. It was a crucial hub in the overall commercial life of the British Empire. By 1930 nearly one-quarter of Empire trade passed through Singapore; for Australia the figure was sixty per cent.11 At the outbreak of the Pacific War, Malaya exported two-thirds of the world’s tin and accounted for about half the world’s production of rubber. Most of these exports were handled through the port of Singapore. The Malayan colonies and Singapore made significant contributions to the cumulative wealth of the sterling zone — rubber exports to the United States were worth $118 million per annum, with tin contributing an additional $55 million.12

British military strategists had long insisted that any attack on Singapore would necessarily consist of a seaborne assault.13 As a result, Peninsula defences were generally neglected, and Singapore itself was fortified by large seaward pointing guns.14 This strategy was based on the conviction that no military force could breach the “impenetrable” jungle

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which lay to the north of Singapore and that no attack could or would be made down the length of the Peninsula.15

Responding to military exercises which exposed the limitations of this approach, and which demonstrated Singapore’s vulnerability to a landward attack,16 the General Commanding Officer, Major-General (Sir) William Dobbie decided to construct a series of defence installations in Southern Johor and across the north coast of Singapore.17 In addition, he proposed to revise military policy to accommodate a whole of Malaya defence strategy. These measures were opposed and ultimately scuttled by the unyielding opposition of Governor Shenton Thomas. In early 1940, Thomas, supported by the Foreign Office, decided that since it was obvious that Japan was not strong enough to go to war with the British Empire, the Malayan economy would take precedence over defence considerations.18

Neither the British civilians nor the military took seriously the prospect of a Japanese military threat. On 4 September 1939, commenting on the outbreak of war in Europe, the Straits Times in Singapore advised its readers: “At this distance from the scene of battle, with our defences perfected and Japanese participation in the struggle on the side of Germany a remote possibility, Malaya has little to fear.”19 The widely held expatriate belief that Japan lacked the capacity to launch an assault on Malaya and Singapore,20 was shared by the British military. As late as 6 December 1941, a mere two days prior to the commencement of the invasion, Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, Commander-in-Chief, dismissed reports of Japanese convoys in Thai waters as “alarmist”, while Sir Shenton Thomas privately assured his cipher clerk, “You can take it from me there will never be a Japanese bomb dropped in Singapore, there will never be a Japanese set foot in Malaya.”21

British complacency was informed by a Social Darwinist perspective that embraced the crudest forms of racial stereotyping. Brooke-Popham regarded the Japanese as “sub-human” specimens,22 while the upper echelons of the RAF doubted that any “coloured” people would ever make good pilots or operate efficient air forces.23 British military intelligence provided a picture of an enemy so feeble and disorganized as to be beneath contempt.24 This view of the Japanese as a woefully inadequate foe persisted until the actual invasion.25

So sanguine were the colonial authorities, that few preparations had been made to meet a possible Japanese assault. No evacuation strategies had been devised for the 31,000-strong European population in Malaya

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and Singapore and, indeed, even discussion of this subject was regarded as “defeatist”.26 The authorities refused to countenance the construction of civilian defence facilities,27 and actively discouraged the employment of Asians within the defence forces.28 Those who did succeed in gaining entry met with resentment and open discrimination, especially in matters of pay and conditions of service.29 A later attempt to create “stay-behind” parties of guerrillas was disallowed “on the grounds that such a scheme which admitted the possibility of enemy penetration would have a disastrous psychological effect on the Oriental mind”.30

The European society which administered Singapore was politically insulated, socially hidebound and completely out of touch with rapidly changing political realities.31 Ian Morrison of the London Times reported that in European circles “the social round proceeded at the level of the least intelligent .... This state of affairs was symptomatic of the deadness of thought”.32 Indeed, right up until the final surrender, British civilians continued to observe all the petty snobberies and to insist upon official hierarchies of social life.33 This society was obsessed with distinctions of class and race and openly discriminated against the soldiers sent to protect them.34 Indian troops were subject to rampant racial prejudice. Officers were denied entry to local clubs and were even instructed not to ride in the same railway carriages as Europeans.35 However, this bigotry also extended to the “proletarian” white dominion troops, especially Australians.36

THE MILITARY CAMPAIGN

The Japanese campaign consisted of a series of rapid and decisive successes. It was aided by indifferent Allied resistance, constant retreats,37 and uninspired generalship.38 From the outset, hesitation and indecision cast the British campaign into a defensive posture and had a deleterious psychological impact upon British and Indian troops.39 On 10 December 1941, Japanese warplanes sank the British battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse, the so-called Force Z, off the east coast, thus leaving Malaya barren of naval support.40 With the destruction of Force Z, the Japanese enjoyed total and unchallenged sea and air supremacy for the remainder of the campaign.41 On 9 December, Duff Cooper, a senior British Cabinet Minister, was appointed Resident Minister for Far Eastern Affairs, but had no clear commission to assume overall control. He was repeatedly frustrated by Brooke-Popham and Shenton Thomas, especially the latter,

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who viewed his primary role as upholding the prestige of the Raj, and thus who wanted no disturbance to the normal routines of colonial life.42

On 12 December a force of 500 Japanese troops broke through the British defences at Jitra in northern Kedah, routing 8,000 British and Indian troops,43 destroying in fifteen hours a line that their own military planners had calculated would hold for three months.44 The Japanese advanced swiftly, taking Penang on 19 December and Ipoh on 28 December. The continual British retreats created chaos and often resulted in the abandonment of vast quantities of military stores.45 On Boxing Day 1941, General Percival’s Chief Engineer, Brigadier Simson, submitted a detailed proposal for the construction of fixed defences in Johor and on the northern coastline of Singapore, but Percival rejected this, claiming that “Defences are bad for morale — for both troops and civilians.”46 On 11 January 1941, Japanese forces took a hastily abandoned Kuala Lumpur, in the process acquiring detailed survey maps.47 The Japanese subsequently occupied Malacca on 16 January, and after crossing the Singapore Strait, Churchill’s “splendid moat”, in a mere six minutes,48 Singapore on 15 February. The final capitulation, “a gigantic and wholly successful piece of bluff” on the part of the Japanese,49 who were not only defending overextended lines of communication but were also critically short of men and ammunition,50 was in keeping with the inept British conduct of the entire campaign. As a consequence, a defending garrison of over 85,000 surrendered to an assault force of around 30,000 Japanese troops.51

The invasion shattered the myth of British invincibility, the prestige or izzat upon which the British Empire was largely based. Lee Kuan Yew states that “In 70 days of surprises, upsets and stupidities, British colonial society was shattered, and with it the assumption of the Englishman’s superiority.”52 The precipitate collapse, the feeble and confused British resistance, had a profound impact upon local opinion.53

The loss of British prestige was magnified by several notorious incidents which occurred during the course of the invasion. These included the failure of the British authorities to highlight the contributions made by Asian troops and civilians to the defence of Malaya and Singapore;54 brawls among European civilians over the distribution of cigarettes and other commodities;55 and squalid scenes of drunkenness, desertion and cowardice among demoralized European troops at the time of the final surrender.56

However, the episode which most profoundly damaged British prestige and which most clearly revealed the stark racial ideologies

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which underpinned the dynamics of British Malaya was the clandestine evacuation of the European population of Penang. Following the decision not to defend Penang, the British administration secretly ordered all Europeans to leave the island.57 While Europeans made good their escape, Asian volunteers remained on duty and the news of the surrender of the island was delivered to the Japanese by a Eurasian.58 The betrayal of the Malayan population was compounded by a subsequent broadcast in which Duff Cooper, Churchill’s special advisor in Singapore, stated, “It has been necessary to evacuate many of the civilian population. We can only be thankful so many people have been safely removed.”59 His listeners were aware that this did not refer to the Asian population, which had been deserted by the British.60

The Allied collapse also demolished the myth of the British as “protectors” of the Malays.61 As noted in the previous chapters, the British had consistently portrayed their presence in Malaya as necessary to guard the welfare of the Malays from the supposedly avaricious and naked commercial ambitions of the immigrant races. The bitterness felt at the British “desertion” continued to rankle with many Malays for years after the event.62

The loss of prestige struck a terminal blow at the European empires of the East. Peter Elphick sets the defeat in a wider context:

When the Japanese took control of Indo-China from the French in July 1941, captured Malaya and Singapore from the British and drove the Dutch from Indonesia in February and March 1942, they shattered the myth of white superiority. Their victories were the death knell of the European empires in the East. They removed from the Asian mind for ever notions of white supremacy and European hegemony.63

THE JAPANESE OCCUPATION

Apart from the Chinese, many Malayans were not initially antagonistic to the invading Japanese, seeing in them a successful Asian power which would respect local aspirations.64 However, Japanese promises of partnership within the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere were quickly replaced with the reality of the ruthless exploitation of occupation — an occupation which was characterized by harshness, arrogance and incompetence. The Japanese administration showed little understanding of the ambitions or cultural sensitivities of the constituent groups of the colonial society they had acquired, and their regime of casual brutality

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and insistence on inherent Japanese superiority rapidly alienated those they now ruled.65

Subjected to months of colonial propaganda which had caricatured the Japanese in terms of crude racial stereotypes, Malayans were left unprepared for the full ferocity which accompanied the initial entry of battle-hardened troops conditioned by a training regime which could only be described as barbarous.66 From the outset, the undisciplined and savage behaviour of the Japanese troops alienated many of the civilian population.67 Their arrival often heralded an orgy of rape, looting and theft, sometimes accompanied by murder and sadistic cruelties.68

The Japanese military administration was governed by three fundamental objectives, namely the restoration of public order, the production of resources needed for national defence, and self sufficiency for the military.69 These objectives were designed to consolidate Japanese control of Malaya and Singapore, and in particular to extract from these territories the materials needed to promote the war effort.70

Japanese educational and cultural policies for the indigenous peoples of the southern region aimed at rapid Nipponization of the population. These consisted of fostering Nippon-Go (the Japanese language as the lingua franca of East Asia); the inculcation of Nippon Seishen (the Japanese spirit), comprising an amalgam of rigid discipline, unquestioning compliance with Japanese direction, and unconditional loyalty to Tenno Heika (the Emperor); and the mental and physical drilling of younger Malayans who would be thus prepared to serve the Japanese Empire in any capacity — military or civil — as required by the occupying authorities.71

Economically, the Japanese had to contend with the dislocation created by the scorched earth policy undertaken by the retreating British who destroyed many key installations and facilities. Early economic measures included the gradual withdrawal of the Straits dollar and its replacement with Japanese military scrip, and the creation of an opium monopoly. The War Ministry transferred large sectors of the economy, including the rubber estates, to largely inefficient public corporations, often directly run by the Gunseibu (Military Administration).72 The Japanese policies not only resulted in the creation of monopolies, but also resulted in widespread corruption and a series of flourishing black markets.73 The Japanese lacked the expertise required to run a modern economy and proved maladroit as managers and technicians.74 The Malayan economy’s buoyancy was heavily dependent upon its exports of rubber and tin, especially to the United States, a market which was lost in the wake of the Japanese occupation.75

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Malaya was reliant upon imports of a range of raw materials, especially rice which was traditionally supplied by Thailand and Burma.76 In 1939 Malaya had imported 983,000 tons of rice, and at the time of the Japanese invasion had stockpiled sufficient rice to provision the country for six months.77 In late 1942 rice imports fell well below actual needs and continued to decline precipitously throughout the remainder of the occupation.78 From 1943 onwards Malaya faced calamitous food shortages. In response the military authorities urged people to grow their own food. Tapioca became a widely consumed rice supplement, but it was deficient as a source of nourishment and inadequate to meet dietary requirements. Food shortfalls created widespread malnutrition and resulted in increased levels of morbidity and death.79

Japanese economic policies resulted in high inflation, and an ultimately worthless military scrip.80 By the end of the war the economies of Singapore and Malaya were in a parlous state. There were widespread shortages of food, clothing, medicine and other daily necessities, while the major industries — rubber and tin — lay in ruins.81 Indeed, rubber production, which had totalled 500,000 tons in 1940, had shrunk to a mere 100,000 tons in 1945.82

Japanese Polices on Ethnicity

The most far-reaching changes produced by the Japanese occupying forces involved the politics of ethnicity. In general the Japanese attempted to reach accommodation with the Malays, encourage the growth of nationalism among the Indians, while actively discriminating against the Chinese as despised and reviled enemies.83 The Japanese ultimately failed to capture the allegiance of any local nationalist movements. Their relations with all ethnic groups were studded with incidents of casual violence and permeated with incessant insistence upon inherent Japanese superiority, and the need for Japanese tutelage of “lesser” Asian races. Japanese anti- Westernism, its most effective mode of propaganda, was undermined by the clumsiness of Japanese political practices, and although used endlessly during the war, brought ever-diminishing returns.84

Japanese policies towards the Chinese were charged from the beginning with barbed hostility. Throughout the late 1930s the Nanyang communities had formed a National Salvation movement which had mobilized support for the regime of Chiang Kai Shek in its fight against the invading Japanese.85 Japanese failure to cultivate Chinese opinion provoked extreme distrust

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of the Chinese en bloc. As a result the Japanese made no attempt in their dealings with the overseas Chinese now entrapped in the occupied territories to distinguish between those who had actively campaigned against them and those who had remained apolitical.86

Retaliatory measures against the Chinese were planned well before the Japanese forces took Singapore. The most infamous of these were the organized massacres collectively known as the “Purge through Purification” (Kakyo Shukusei or Dai Kensho; in Chinese, Sook Ching).87 The death toll was estimated at between 50,000 and 100,000.88 Similar operations, often accompanied by the most heinous outrages and cruelties, were repeated against other Chinese communities elsewhere in Malaya.89

The series of retaliatory measures also included the imposition of a collective levy of fifty million yen upon the entire Chinese community of Malaya and Singapore. This was viewed as a form of communal punishment on the Nanyang Chinese for their support of those taking up arms against Imperial Japan, and according to the Gunseibu provided the Chinese with opportunity to “atone” for their past mistakes.90

The policy of violent discrimination, savage reprisals and the displacement of the traditional Chinese leadership, based on age and wealth, especially the obliteration of the local Kuomintang (KMT), greatly increased Chinese support for the MCP, which was viewed as the only organization capable of offering armed resistance to the Japanese.91 In response to Japanese repression, young Chinese leftists infiltrated the jungle to establish the Malayan Peoples’ Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA).92 The so-called “hill people” rapidly gained the allegiance of the thousands of Chinese squatters who had been forced by the impact of Japanese economic mismanagement to migrate towards the jungle fringes and Malay Reservation areas to grow food necessary for their survival.93 Throughout the war, the Chinese developed immense respect for the ideological and organizational skills of the MCP, and for the courage their cadres displayed in the face of overwhelming adversity.94 The MPAJA created networks among the squatter population; networks which generated a continuous flow of food and intelligence.95 The bonds forged during these years between the MCP and the Chinese squatters were to survive well beyond the war.96

Despite early betrayals which resulted in the elimination of much of its top leadership,97 after 1943 the MPAJA consistently had a fighting force of between 4,000 and 5,000 men and women.98 On 26 December 1943, at

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Blantan, the British Force 136, representing South East Asian Command (SEAC), signed an alliance with the MPAJA pledging mutual cooperation in the liberation of Malaya.99

In general, the Japanese were more accommodating towards the Malays. While prior to the war, the Japanese had issued leaflets assuring the Malays of Japanese friendship, and that their intentions were to expel the Europeans and to “kill off the Chinese who have taken the wealth of your country”,100 the Japanese generally regarded the Malays as lazy and timorous.101 Because of their perception of Malay economic and cultural backwardness, the Japanese never intended to grant independence to the Malays. This decision was reiterated as late as June 1945.102

The Japanese played upon Malay fears of Chinese domination by highlighting the dangers of the Chinese guerrilla movement. They also took steps to involve Malays in the administration of occupied Malaya, thus clearly distinguishing between Malays and non-Malays. Malays were given preference in appointment to the Civil Service and were recruited into the military police (Kempeitai), auxiliary troops (heiho), peace preservation corps (jikeiden), volunteer army (giyugan), and the Japanese Special Branch (toko).103

However, Japanese attempts to create mass collaborative movements among Malays met with failure. Initially the administration fostered the Marxist influenced Kesatuan Melayu Muda (KMM, or League of Malay Youth), which had been formed by a group of Malay intellectuals in 1937. Its leader, Ibrahim Yaacob, had run an underground intelligence network on behalf of the Japanese.104 In December 1941 the leaders of the KMM were arrested by the British but were subsequently released by the Japanese.105 However, the KMM also largely distrusted the Japanese, and the organization was banned in June 1942 after military intelligence uncovered secret contacts between the KMM and MCP.106 Japanese attempts to cultivate the Islamic hierarchy met some successes with the convening of conferences in 1943 and 1944 in which the Japanese leadership convinced the Malay elite that they (the Japanese) were the protectors of Islam and that the war against the European colonial powers was a form of jihad.107 While the Japanese leadership won early plaudits from pan-Malay nationalists by the temporary linking of Peninsula Malaya, Singapore and Sumatra into a single political unit, emphasizing the historic, anthropological and linguistic ties between the two entities, and (for Sumatrans), the freedom from Javanese control,108 any goodwill won by this measure was lost by

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the cession of the four northern states to Thailand in August 1943, and by repeated acts of senseless brutality.109

The generally favourable treatment shown towards Malays did not exclude their recruitment to Japanese forced labour schemes, both within the Peninsula and on the Burma Railway project. Usually those who were coerced into participating in these schemes were selected by village heads acting under Japanese compulsion and were subject to the callous, arbitrary and savage discipline which marked all Japanese conscripted labour projects.110

During the later years of the occupation, anti-Japanese groups were formed in several states. In Perak resistance fighters were known as Askar Melayu Setia (Loyal Malay Soldier), while in Pahang, Malay resisters were grouped in Wataniah (For the Homeland).111 One of the most prominent Wataniah recruits was a member of the royal house of Pahang, and future Prime Minister, Tun Abdul Razak.112 As the fortunes of war turned against the Japanese, these groups received the unofficial support of the royal courts.113 Malays also joined the MCP-sponsored MPAJA and the British run Force 136, though Malay enlistment in the latter was generally drawn from students studying abroad.114

Japanese racial policies created a widening gulf between communities now increasingly identified as “Chinese” and “Malay”. Pro-Malay measures implemented under Japanese administration created resentment among the Chinese.115 In turn the Japanese played upon Malay fears of Chinese domination by highlighting the putative dangers of the Chinese guerrilla movement. The MPAJA seemed to underscore Japanese propaganda by conducting indiscriminate reprisals against local informers and collaborators. Since most of the alleged fifth columnists appeared to be Malay, MPAJA retaliation assumed the outward appearance of interethnic score settling.116 Japanese enlistment of Malays in local military and police forces set the scene for repeated racial clashes, and for inter-racial conflict and distrust which was to last well beyond the Japanese occupation.117

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE INDIAN INDEPENDENCE LEAGUE AND THE INDIAN NATIONAL ARMY

The rapid collapse of British and Commonwealth forces left the Japanese in control of 65,000 British Indian Army (BIA) prisoners of war (POWs), as well as over 700,000 Indians domiciled in Malaya.118 Approximately

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1,000 BIA officers were captured during the Malayan campaign, of whom approximately 25 per cent were Indian.119

The Japanese had long been aware of the instrumental potential of both Indian nationalism and the BIA to further their war aims. Prior to the invasion the Japanese had set up an intelligence unit to investigate ways of fomenting anti-British sentiment within the BIA and among Indian émigré communities in Southeast Asia. As the confrontation between Japan and the Anglo-US-Dutch coalition intensified, Thailand became the main stage of conflict, and a battleground of diplomatic, intelligence, and espionage operations between the rival powers.120

Japanese intelligence was aware of the existence of a shadowy organization known as the Indian Independence League (IIL), a secret society of revolutionary Sikhs working for the liberation of India with branches in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo, San Francisco and Berlin.121 The Japanese moved quickly to establish links with the IIL. In Thailand, Major Fujiwara, assigned to lead the Malayan Kikan (agency), conferred with Pritam Singh, head of a group of disaffected Sikhs.122 Negotiating as an emissary of the Japanese government, Fujiwara agreed that as the Japanese Army progressed through Malaya, the IIL would be authorized to absorb all Indians who wished to engage in the fight against the British. The IIL would also be charged with the task of organizing a volunteer army which would consist of officers recruited from the BIA as well as the Indian population resident in Malaya and Singapore.123 As a first step, the Japanese would establish an intelligence operation (or Kosuku) in Southern Thailand and Malaya.124 The IIL would be used as a vehicle for the dissemination of nationalist propaganda to be aimed at both the BIA soldiery and the general Indian population.125

Fujiwara also assured the ILL that in conducting military operations the Japanese Army would strive to consider the Indian nationalist cause. The military would be instructed to promote the welfare of Indians and not to treat Indian soldiers and civilians as nationals of an enemy country.126 Troops would be ordered not to confiscate the property of Indian nationals and not to molest Indian women. In general these instructions were followed by the advancing Japanese Army.127 The first Malayan headquarters of the IIL were established at Kota Bharu, capital of the northern state of Kelantan, shortly after the successful Japanese landings of 8 December 1941.128

The Indian National Army (INA) was established during the Japanese campaign. One of the earliest recruits was Captain Mohan Singh, aged

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thirty-three, second in command of the 15th Brigade 1/14th Punjabis, which had been captured by Japanese forces after the fall of Jitra.129 Mohan Singh had already decided that he could no longer support the British, having been enraged by the actions of Lord Linlithgow, the Viceroy of India, who, without consultation with the Indian government, had plunged India into World War II.130 On 20 December 1941, in Alor Setar, Pritam Singh and Mohan Singh were taken by Fujiwara to meet Lt. General Yamashita, who confirmed the Japanese military’s full support for the Indian independence movement.131 Subsequent discussions concluded on 31 December 1941 in Taiping, Perak, with in-principle agreement to the formation of an INA with Mohan Singh as provisional commander.132 The INA was to be accorded the status of an allied army.133

Recruitment to the INA from among the membership of the BIA was stimulated by a sequence of developments which loosened and then overrode the obligatory ties which had mutually bound Indian troops and the British officer cadre. Indian soldiers stationed in Singapore and Malaya had been subject to a series of unsettling experiences before the trauma of the British surrender. Many Indian officers posted to Malaya after 1939 were appalled at the harsh conditions endured by Indian labourers and at their lesser rates of pay relative to Chinese workers.134 As noted in the previous chapter, Indian troops had been used to quell the disturbances attending the Klang strikes, during which they had been called upon to fire on their own countrymen. Moreover, Indian troops and the officer cadre had been repeatedly insulted and discriminated against in the months leading up to the campaign by the unyielding racial hierarchy of British colonial society. In May 1941, the 4/19th Hyderabad Regiment rebelled when an Indian officer was sent home, reputedly for a liaison with a white woman.135 Indian soldiers were dismayed by racial incidents which occurred throughout the campaign, in particular the evacuation of the European community of Penang in mid-December 1941 and the abandonment of the Asian population. The British behaviour could be interpreted as discrimination, betrayal, or even cowardice.136 To many Indians it was a clear demonstration that the British intended to look after their own at all costs; if necessary at the expense of their Asian allies.137

The morale of Indian troops in Malaya was gravely affected by the rapid collapse of the British and Allied forces and the dramatic surrender of the supposedly unconquerable fortress of Singapore.138 Many within the Indian officer cadre were less than impressed with the conduct of

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the campaign against the Japanese. A.C. Chatterji, Senior Medical Officer within the BIA in Malaya, believed that the campaign amounted to little more than “a case of continuous running away of the British troops, and the Japanese running hard to overtake them. Australian and Indians fought in a far better manner than the British troops”.139 Chatterji’s sentiments were shared by a sizeable percentage of BIA officers.140

But perhaps the most stunning act of treachery, at least as far as the BIA officer cadre was concerned, was the cavalier manner in which they were treated after the British surrender. Firstly, the British officers were separated, apparently without protest, from the Indian officers and troops that they had commanded.141 All BIA troops were then ordered to gather in Farrer Park in Singapore on 17 February 1942. The assembled troops were addressed by Lt-Colonel Hunt of the Malayan Command who told his stunned audience that “From today we are all prisoners of war. I now, on behalf of the British Government, hand you over to the Japanese Government, whose orders you will obey as you have been doing ours.” For many soldiers this was “the symbolic act by which the bond binding Percival’s Indians to the King-Emperor’s service was ended.”142 For the BIA officers gathered at Farrer Park, Hunt’s words signified nothing less than “the deliberate, formal, one might say almost ceremonial abdication of responsibility towards Indian troops”, a calculated renunciation of the traditional allegiances which had bound British and Indians together as a “matter of honour”.143 This perceived betrayal was later seen as a pivotal factor in persuading many Indian officers that their future belonged with the INA.144

Following Hunt’s address, the nominal rolls were handed to Major Fujiwara. He assured his audience that “Japan is fighting for the liberation of Asiatic nations which have been so long trodden under the cruel heel of British imperialism. Japan is the liberator and friend of the Asiatics.”145 Fujiwara then outlined the Japanese position with regard to India and the future of captured BIA personnel. Britain had been defeated in Malaya. Japan wanted an independent India. To this end, Japan was cooperating in the establishment of an Indian army which would be deployed towards achieving this objective.146 Having completed this address, Fujiwara now declared, “On behalf of the Japanese Government, I now hand you over to the General Commanding Officer, Mohan Singh, who shall have the power of life and death over you.”147 The speakers had thus consecutively delivered control of the troops, one to another, “not as one speaker making

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way for another, but as one command surrendering men to another command”.148 Mohan Singh now announced the formation of an Indian National Army, and invited those present to join.149 To many officers this held little appeal. Most were not attracted by the prospect of fighting their fellow countrymen, while others were astonished that the Japanese had entrusted the command of the INA to Mohan Singh, whom they regarded as a “very average officer”.150

Several additional factors worked to overcome the reservations felt by large numbers of Indian officers towards joining a Japanese-sponsored INA. The first was the need to consider the long-term welfare of the BIA personnel who were now prisoners of war, in particular to ensure that incarcerated soldiers were not deployed as a source of forced labour. This line of thinking suggested that a properly officered INA might create structures which could, where necessary, resist the Japanese, and thus guarantee the safety of the rank and file. The officer cadre were also anxious to take every action possible to ensure the welfare of the Indian émigré populations now dependent upon Japanese goodwill. They were aware of the appalling crimes the Japanese were committing against the Chinese population. To date the Japanese had shown comparative restraint in their treatment of Indian civilians. But would this restraint evaporate if Indian POWs as a body refused to join the INA? This consideration became more urgent with the Japanese occupation of Burma. Here the position was complicated by the existence of a vigorous nationalist movement which was stridently and potentially violently anti-Indian.151 Many BIA officers believed that the INA could act as de facto guardians of the Indian civilian population resident within the conquered territories.152 The most senior BIA Indian officer, Lt-Colonel Naranjan Singh Gill, “reluctantly” agreed to join with Fujiwara and Mohan Singh and to solicit recruitment among captured personnel.153

The conduct of the Burma campaign appeared to further expose the weakness of the British Empire, as well as revealing once again the racial hierarchy and moral hollowness which lay at the very heart of British colonial rule. As in Malaya, the Japanese Imperial Army had defeated the British with contemptuous ease. The British had simply withdrawn in the face of the Japanese onslaught and retreated into India. Following the initial Japanese air strikes in Burma in December 1941, there was a mass departure of the Indian, Anglo-Indian and Anglo-Burmese populations and, by autumn 1942, approximately 600,000 people had fled to India.154 The British had long sought to keep Burma at arm’s length from India and

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had thus consistently refused to construct any overland links between the two countries.155 This meant that all organized departures had to be by sea. In an attempt to slow the flight of labour, the colonial regime had issued regulations forbidding Indians to travel as deck passengers on ships sailing to Indian ports. As the average labourer could not afford the expense of a cabin, this measure effectively prevented most Indians from evacuating to India by sea and thus compelled thousands to risk the hazardous land crossing.156 Withdrawing Indians were harassed by the Burmese police, and as many as 80,000 people perished of disease, exhaustion or malnutrition.157 As with the evacuation of Penang, there was a sense of British perfidy and betrayal, and of the flagrant dereliction of responsibility, on purely racial grounds, to those most in need of protection.158

Moreover, the Burma campaign highlighted the geopolitical implications of the Japanese victories in Southeast Asia. The Japanese now stood on the very borders of India. With British defences apparently weak and in disarray, and its forces seemingly incapable of serious resistance, the prospect of a Japanese advance in India now looked very real indeed.159 The total collapse of the British eastern Empire reverberated among the civilian population of India. The ineffectual British response to the Japanese advances seemed to underscore Japanese claims that the Asian future would be entirely determined by Asians themselves, free of outside interference.160

But the crucial and deciding point for many captured Indian troops was the Quit India campaign, launched by the All-Indian Congress Committee on 8 August 1942 following the failure of the Cripps’ mission to India.161 The background to this campaign was as follows. On 3 September 1939, Lord Linlithgow, Viceroy of India, advised on the radio that he had issued an Indian declaration of war on Germany. This declaration had been issued without any pretence of consultation with Indian political opinion.162 Linlithgow’s high handedness outraged Congress, which issued a demand for total and immediate independence, a claim which drew no response from Linlithgow. A month later the Viceroy made the Indian leadership a vague offer of dominion status to be negotiated sometime after the war. In response the Congress ministers resigned en masse on 10 November.163 Within a month of the fall of Singapore, Churchill sent senior Labour MP Sir Stafford Cripps to India with an offer of dominion status for India when the war was concluded. However, this settlement would be dependent upon the main Indian parties offering total support to the Allied war effort. Moreover, the offer would include major concessions

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to India’s princely states, and electoral representation heavily weighted by considerations of caste and religion.164 Congress rejected the Cripps’ proposal, and Gandhi’s subsequent advocacy of massive civil disobedience quickly gained widespread support.165

The Quit India campaign aimed to make India ungovernable and was accompanied by an escalating tide of unrest and violence, riots, arson, and acts of sabotage. The British authorities reacted with widespread arrests (including the entire Congress leadership and thousands of local activists) and with armed repression, including police shootings, mass whippings, the burning of villages and the periodic torture of dissenters.166 More than 30,000 Congressmen and other political activists were detained.167 Within Malaya, the Congress campaign, the large-scale disorders and the British countermeasures were all the subjects of skilful Japanese, INA and IIL propaganda.168 For many Indian soldiers this was a crucial turning point. The INA had stipulated that it would not intervene in India until prevailed upon to do so by Congress and the Indian people. The Quit India uprising seemed as clear a request as was likely to be offered.169

In 1943 the Bengal famine became a further rallying point for INA activists. The disaster had its origins in a massive cyclone of October 1942 which was followed by three tsunamis. The poor rice harvest of 1942–43 produced panic buying in the open market leading to spiralling prices of all food grains. At the same time Britain shipped both grain and railway stock out of India, not only reducing food supplies but also weakening the internal distributional network.170 The problem was aggravated by Japan’s capture of Burma, thus cutting off its usual source of imported rice.171 The British response was one of irresolution, indeed seeming indifference to the plight of those affected by food shortages.172 Between one and two million people died, either of hunger or of the cholera epidemic which followed the famine.173

The Indian Independence League

In the months following the fall of Singapore, the IIL appeared to have achieved major success in capturing the public support of the Indian communities of Malaya and Singapore. There was an immediate and genuine response to the IIL among the Indian population of Malaya. Former members of the CIAM were the first to join the IIL and were prominent among the league’s Malayan Executive. They also provided

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the league with high-level organizational skills, political experience, and intellectual leadership.174 In March 1942, at a conference held in Tokyo, Indian delegates from China and Japan installed Rash Behari Bose, a veteran revolutionary of the Indian independence struggle, and a favourite of the Japanese, as President of a newly formed IIL of East Asia.175 A conference held in Bangkok in June 1942 brought together representatives of Indian communities from all countries under Japanese control, and formally established the IIL as the overarching vehicle for attaining Indian independence with the INA as its military wing.176 The IIL quickly established a network of state branches, which arranged a series of public meetings. By August 1942 the membership of the IIL stood at over 200,000.177

However, the early triumphs masked growing tensions within and between the IIL and INA. Many of these could be traced to the leadership of Rash Behari Bose. Bose, a one-time Bengali terrorist, had not lived in India since he fled the country following a failed assassination attempt against Lord Hardinge in 1912.178 Bose had subsequently made his way to Tokyo via Shanghai. Since that date he had remained in Japan, taken a Japanese wife, and fathered a son who was now serving in the Japanese Army. His long residence in Japan and his isolation from mainstream developments in Indian political life were to prove handicaps in his dealings with Indian nationalists. Moreover, he was unable to speak in the name of Congress to which the majority of Indians in Southeast Asia looked for leadership.179 Many who joined the IIL and INA believed that Bose was directing the movement in accordance with an agenda wholly dictated by the Japanese Army. This conviction, which had earlier surfaced at the IIL conference in Tokyo in March 1942, took firm root among the majority of the Malayan IIL executive, as well as within the INA leadership.180

The political impasse was not aided by the Japanese who had neither clearly defined their war aims with regard to India nor discussed the relationship between an independent India and a post-war Southeast Asia. While India had only remotely entered Japanese calculations for the overall design of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, the fact remained that Japan was at war with the colonial power occupying India. Japan was thus required to develop a policy upon India which would further its own strategic interests and continue to strike blows at the British. While the Japanese were not especially concerned with the aspirations of the IIL/INA (and indeed the Japanese military had little respect for the INA which

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they considered untrustworthy, secretly pro-British, inexperienced and unreliable), they believed that managed correctly, these were organizations which could be sponsored to the mutual advantage of both Japan and the émigré Indian nationalists.181

Moreover, conditions in the subcontinent suggested that the INA/IIL could well prove useful allies. Wartime developments in India, including the civil disobedience campaign, agitation and widespread and continuing unrest, appeared to point to a country in hopeless turmoil, and perhaps on the verge of revolution.182 The mere existence of the IIL/INA might well contribute to the general confusion, thus further stretching limited British resources. The IIL could be used to ferment anti-British sentiment, possibly within India, but most certainly within Southeast Asia. As a military organization, the INA’s very presence would exert psychological if not actual pressure on the eastern borders of the Raj.183 Finally, the INA would prove a constructive vehicle for Japanese propaganda, which would portray an anti-colonial and sympathetic Japan actively cooperating with Indian nationalists to rid Asia of its European oppressors.184

At the same time, the IIL was attempting to clarify the terms of its political and military relationship with the Japanese. At the June 1942 conference, the league executive, the ruling Council of Action, made it clear that further collaboration was dependent upon the Japanese committing themselves “clearly and unequivocally” to the cause of independence.185 This would entail Japanese respect for Indian sovereignty and territorial integrity, and recognition of the IIL as the Indian government in exile. In addition the Council of Action demanded the release of all Indian POWs and the elevation of the INA to the status of an allied army. Moreover, the Japanese should extend loans to the INA and should clearly recognize that the army’s sole function was to fight for the liberation of India. The Bangkok resolutions were passed on to Tokyo by Colonel Iwakuro Hideo, Fujiwara’s successor as Kikan OIC (and an officer who had little sympathy for the cause of Indian independence), but he did not press the Japanese government for a response. Nor was one ever received.186

Throughout the later months of 1942, the strains between the IIL and INA, and both organizations and the Japanese, deepened and intensified. The military leadership increasingly viewed Rash Behari Bose as a Japanese puppet.187 The Malayan leadership also distrusted the depth of the Japanese commitment to the IIL/INA, and to the cause of Indian independence.188 Within both the IIL and the INA, there were severe doubts about the

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military capabilities of Mohan Singh,189 and there had been considerable disquiet when Fujiwara had promoted him to the rank of general.190

Several incidents, clumsily handled by the Japanese, sharpened IIL– Japanese antagonism. The deterioration in relations became acute when the Japanese moved the first batch of INA troops to Burma without any preliminary consultation with the IIL.191 In November, the Council of Action, deeply concerned, presented a memorandum to Iwakuro, “whose softness of tone did not conceal the fact that a real crisis was at hand”.192

The Japanese response to this growing discontent was peremptory, ill-considered and maladroit. On 8 December 1942, Colonel N.S. Gill of the INA was arrested as a “spy”. In reaction, every member of the Council of Action with the exception of Bose himself submitted his resignation.193 On 29 December, Bose dismissed Mohan Singh as commander of the INA.194 The Japanese subsequently arrested a number of recalcitrant officers, including Mohan Singh.195 Thousands of volunteers reverted to their previous status as prisoners of war.196

Despite this grave setback, the loss of so many high-profile leaders and so many military personnel, the IIL and INA slowly recovered. Rash Behari Bose circulated the camps, appealing and persuading, and gradually won back a large measure of support. However, there was an obvious need to find a fresh and dynamic leader, rather than an ageing, terminally ill ex- terrorist who had lost touch with the realities of metropolitan politics.197 This leadership was to be found in the person of Subhas Chandra Bose, a seasoned campaigner of the Indian nationalist movement.

SUBHAS CHANDRA BOSE

Subhas Chandra Bose had a long and active background in the politics of revolutionary independence. Outside India he was outranked only by Gandhi and Nehru as an Indian nationalist politician of note.198 Born in 1897 into a well-to-do and high-caste Indian family,199 Bose was educated in Calcutta and Cambridge200 and prepared for a career in the Indian Civil Service.201 However, the 1919 massacre at Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar, shocked and outraged Bose, and he subsequently dedicated himself to the cause of Indian independence.202 Bose advanced rapidly through Congress ranks, in 1938 defeating Pattabhi Sitaramayya for the Congress presidency. However, in 1939 his re-election was opposed by Gandhi and others, and he resigned as president in May 1940.203 Bose subsequently formed the

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Forward Bloc within Congress. Following the outbreak of war, the Forward Bloc strenuously opposed cooperation with the British.204

Detained by the British authorities after leading a demonstration in Calcutta on 2 July 1940, Bose was transferred to house arrest following a hunger strike.205 He organized a carefully planned escape and, assuming a false identity as “Muhammad Ziauddin”, a Pathan travelling inspector of the Emperor of India Life Insurance Company, made his way to Peshawar. He crossed into Afghanistan on 22 January 1941 and arrived in Kabul on 27 January.206 There the Italian diplomat Pietro Quaroni issued Bose with a passport under the name of Signor Orlando Mazzotta and arranged for him to travel to Berlin via Moscow.207 While in Moscow he made a series of unsuccessful attempts to meet the Soviet leadership. Bose departed from Moscow by rail on 31 March 1941, arriving in Berlin on 2 April.208

Bose believed that the swift defeat of the Allied forces in France foreshadowed a peace conference at which Germany would dictate the outcomes.209 He met most of the Nazi leadership which provided him with a generous allowance and encouraged him to open a Free India Centre. In addition he was furnished with facilities to broadcast to India. More importantly, he was allowed access to Indian troops captured in North Africa. By April 1941 some 15,000 Indian men and officers had been taken prisoner by the Axis forces. Preliminary briefings suggested that many were seriously disillusioned with their British officers.210 Bose persuaded a number of them to join a Free India Legion to be used as a spearhead for the liberation of India.211 Added inducements to enlist included promises of special treatment, including food, money and access to women.212 The legion reached its maximum strength of 2,593 in early 1943.213

Despite these early successes, Bose quickly became convinced that the main hope for Indian independence lay in active cooperation with the Japanese government.214 On 29 May 1942, Bose met Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler; a meeting that proved a major disappointment.215 Bose wanted the Axis powers to commit to the independence of India. Hitler was not interested in this proposal, nor would he agree to remove any disparaging references to Indians in his book Mein Kampf.216 However, he did agree to assist Bose’s travel to Japan by submarine. Bose duly left Kiel on 8 February 1943 under the assumed name “Matsuda”. He was transferred to a Japanese submarine off the east coast of Madagascar on 28 April, which transported him to Sabang in Sumatra. He finally reached Tokyo on 16 May 1943.217

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Following his arrival in Japan, Bose met Prime Minister Tojo Hideki upon whom he made a deep impression. On 16 June 1943, Tojo took Bose to the House of Representatives (The Diet) in Tokyo, and in his presence declared Japan’s eagerness to support the cause of Indian independence. This declaration had two major outcomes. Firstly, it replaced the ambivalence which had characterized Japanese policy towards India with a clear statement of intent. Secondly, the Japanese imprimatur gave Bose, and under his direction, the IIL and INA, a firm measure of autonomy.218 Bose could thus proceed to Singapore, not only confident of Japanese cooperation and support, but, what was of equal importance, with the relative freedom to reorganize the IIL and INA according to his own precepts.

On 27 June 1943, Bose left Tokyo, arriving in Singapore on 2 July. Thousands of people turned out to greet him. On 4 July the General Assembly of the IIL confirmed Bose’s appointment as President of the league, thus succeeding the ailing Rash Behari Bose.219 At this meeting, Bose read a message from Tojo which stated, inter alia:

I trust the Indians, with firm faith in the victory of Japan, Germany and Italy, will fight for justice and righteousness shoulder to shoulder with us. I firmly believe that this is the only way the Indians can hasten the glorious day of their freedom and I sincerely wish them every success in their brave fight.220

In the period between his resignation as Congress President and his arrival in Singapore, Bose had rejected much of the Congress platform, especially the Gandhian philosophy of ahimsa (non-violence).221 He was a militant activist, tending to authoritarianism, who believed that India required forceful, even dictatorial, leadership.222 At the same time, he had strong spiritual leanings and was deeply influenced by the teachings of Swami Vivekananda.223 Bose was an uncompromising advocate of total and immediate independence. He rejected dominion status within the British Empire, because he believed it would perpetuate British capitalist interests in India. He dreamed of an India freed of the hierarchies imposed by wealth, class, and caste, a nation where women had equal status with men, and where there would be no distinction between Hindu and Muslim at election time.224

Bose had long subordinated his earlier distaste at the excesses of Axis fascism, in particular the barbarism of Japanese imperialism in China, to

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the long-term goal of Indian freedom.225 Indeed, he considered that the Axis successes heralded a new direction in world affairs and that the dynamic fascist dictatorships were destined to sweep away the decadent and directionless democracies. During his time in Berlin, the followers of Bose had bestowed the title “Netaji”(leader) upon him, which some observers mistakenly interprested as evidence of his fascist leanings.226 Bose believed that both political and military tides were now running with the Japanese and that as a consequence the time was ripe to secure Indian independence by force of arms. Bose was convinced that a combined Japanese and INA invasion of India would lead to insurrection and rebellion throughout India, which would destroy the foundations of British rule.227

Bose made an immediate impact upon the Indian population of Southeast Asia and breathed new life into the IIL. Apart from the fact that he was a veteran revolutionary whose credentials were widely recognized,228 Bose was an outstanding and a charismatic speaker whose speeches and rallies drew enormous crowds, often including Chinese and Malays as well as Indians.229 Indeed, so completely did Bose dominate the ILL that he became the subject of an intense personality cult. His birthday became a special celebration, and a Netaji Week, which included rallies, processions, and prayers for Bose’s health in Hindu temples, mosques and churches, was held from 4 to 10 July 1944. In a re-enactment of a Mughal ceremony, Bose was weighed in gold, the contribution of Indian merchants. This was donated to the IIL after weighing.230

Upon assuming the IIL leadership, Bose foreshadowed the total mobilization of Indian manpower and resources. On 5 July 1943, he announced the reform of the INA which was now to be officially renamed Azad Hind Fauj (Free Indian Army).231 Bose aimed to expand the INA from its enlistment of 13,000 to a targeted strength of 50,000 and ultimately to 3 million soldiers.232 The revived INA involved local Indians resident in Southeast Asia in a way the earlier INA had not. Bose especially appealed to working class Tamils of Malaya to work for the cause of Indian liberation. In a gesture designed to placate Indian Muslims, Bose replaced the wheel of the Indian National Congress with the symbol of a springing tiger, thus evoking memories of Tipu Sultan, the eighteenth century Muslim ruler of Mysore who had resisted British domination of South India. Bose also stated that Ceylon was a “pendant in the Indian chain” and established a Ceylonese Unit within the INA.233

Bose also completely reorganized the governance of the IIL and appointed a supporting administrative apparatus of thirteen departments.234

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He founded a national bank and issued currency, adopted the tricolour as the national flag, decreed that Hindustani was to be the national language, and proclaimed Subh Sukh Chain Ki Varsha Barshe as the national anthem. Jai Hind (“Victory to India”) was made a common greeting, while Chalo Delhi (“On to Delhi”), the rallying cry of the Great Rebellion of 1857, became the war cry.235 On 21 October 1943, Bose proclaimed the formation of the Provisional Government of Free India (FIPG). This was recognized by the Japanese on 23 October.236 By 19 November 1943, seven other countries — Germany, Italy, the Japanese regime in China, Manchukuo, Burma, Thailand and Croatia — had extended recognition, while Eamon de Valera, President of Eire, had sent a congratulatory message.237 Shortly afterwards, Tojo notionally transferred the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to FIPG control which allowed Bose to symbolically raise the Indian flag at Port Blair, on “free” Indian soil.238

Bose revolutionized women’s participation in the independence struggle, at least within the Malayan context. While women had long been prominent in Indian nationalist politics, and indeed Nehru had successfully pressed for the abolition of social, economic and political discrimination against women,239 this was not the case among Indians in Malaya. On 9 July 1943, Bose appealed for women volunteers, citing the example of the Rani of Jhansi, a heroine of the Great Rebellion of 1857 who had campaigned actively against the British. On 12 July, a special women’s day, forty recruits presented themselves for service.240 The Rani of Jhansi Regiment was headed by Dr Laksmi Swaminathan, a recent immigrant from India who had set up a medical clinic in Singapore, and who was now accorded the rank of captain and entered Bose’s Cabinet as Secretary of the Women’s Department.241 The first central camp for the regiment (popularly known as the Ranees) was opened on 22 October 1943, the anniversary of the Rani’s birthday.242 The first contingent of female soldiers left for Burma in late 1943 where they were trained in jungle warfare and nursing.243

Bose’s dynamic leadership spurred a continuous flow of recruits to both the INA and the IIL. There was mass recruiting among working-class Indians both within the urban and the estate workforces. By July 1944, over fifty per cent of the Indian population belonged to the IIL.244 IIL membership peaked at 350,000, and over 100,000 local Indians volunteered to join the INA. This reached a total strength of 50,000, of whom approximately 20,000 were ex-BIA soldiers, and at least 20,000 were recruited from among Indians resident in Malaya.245

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However, INA ranks included a number of reluctant enlistees. While many ex-BIA soldiers had willingly thrown their lot in with the INA, others had done so under threat of forced labour elsewhere in Japanese- occupied Asia.246 Similarly, many estate workers joined the INA solely to avoid conscription to forced labour camps, while others saw military service as a means of obtaining work and food. INA membership provided a temporary escape from continual semi-starvation on the estates and furnished a barrier against the tyranny of Japanese rule.247

Similarly, the rapid increase in the IIL membership disguised the fact that many who joined did so out of fear or perceived compulsion. Others hoped to use their association with the IIL for personal advantage.248 The backbone of the IIL was made up of those who were generally enthusiastic about the league’s aims and objectives — political intellectuals who had previously been associated with the CIAM, and who now provided overall leadership, and the estate workers and labourers who comprised the rank and file.249 Extreme pressure was exerted both by the IIL leadership and more openly by the Japanese administration upon those who hesitated to declare their support for Bose and the independence movement. Bose made it clear that it was the “duty” of every adult male to enrol in the local branch of the IIL.250 The Japanese were far blunter — those who remained outside the league would be regarded as enemies.251 Furthermore, the Japanese military advised that it would not tolerate adherence to or perpetuation of sub-ethnic divisions (such as Ceylonese, Malayalees, and Muslims) among the Malayan Indian population.252 The combined IIL/Japanese coercion induced large numbers of the Indian middle classes, often members of the Indian minority ethnic groups, into joining the movement. When Indian Muslims, who at first held aloof from the IIL/INA were informed that internal travel was dependent upon special passes issued by IIL officers, they had little choice but to become members.253

As head of the provisional government, Bose decided that the considerable funds needed for the civilian administration and for the equipment required by the army would be procured through taxation of the Indian population. On 25 October 1943, Bose foreshadowed that the provisional government would levy a tax of ten per cent of all assets on all members of the Indian community. All Indians were required to provide details of their personal assets to specially constituted Boards of Management. Those who tried to evade the tax regime were liable to arrest by the Kempeitai and could be subject to severe torture. However,

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the monies raised were insufficient to cover INA/IIL expenditure, and Bose appealed for financial sacrifices from the community. While voluntary donations were often generous, Bose never hesitated to persuade, cajole and even threaten Indians for a greater flow of capital for the cause. Much of this fund raising was undertaken at public meetings, where Bose’s oratory would often rouse the crowd to fever pitch.254 By the end of 1943, the IIL was raising a total of almost two million dollars each month from its Malayan network of approximately seventy branches.255

Imphal and Beyond

However, despite Bose’s success in reorganizing the IIL and INA, the league’s effectiveness continued to be hampered by chronic doubts about the genuineness and extent of Japanese support for the league as an agent for attaining Indian independence, and by continuous distrust of the actions and goodwill of the Japanese authorities.256 From June 1944 to August 1945, these forebodings were augmented by growing Indian disillusionment within the IIL itself, and to a lesser extent with the leadership of Subhas Chandra Bose.257 Much of this resulted from the failure of the Imphal campaign, and the growing realization that the Allies were by no means a spent force.

The Japanese planned a major offensive in eastern India for March to April 1944. The intention was to knock British India out of the Pacific War. They were encouraged by Bose who informed them that once their troops reached the Bengal plains, the entire country would rise in revolt.258 However, influential elements within the Japanese military opposed the campaign. They argued that the operation would be hazardous, and even a successful invasion would prove problematic.259

In November 1943 the main body of the INA had left for Rangoon preparatory to the planned India campaign. Bose had followed, moving his headquarters to Rangoon on 4 January 1944.260 A total of 40,000 INA men were deployed alongside the Japanese Army for the offensive. But when the INA reached the front line, they were assigned a series of subordinate and even menial non-combatant tasks which ranged from basic maintenance and repair work down to conveying rations for Japanese troops. Moreover, they had been informed that BIA troops would desert in large numbers when they encountered a genuinely independent Indian Army.261 The predicted defections did not materialize. Instead, the INA had to contend

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with a BIA resolute in its opposition. Some INA soldiers, unnerved and demoralized by the unexpected hostility, surrendered to the BIA.262 The Imphal campaign left 65,000 Japanese and 2,000 INA soldiers dead, and paved the way for the Allied advance into Burma.263

The failure of the Imphal campaign was a shattering blow to both INA and IIL morale. Bose had placed great store upon the outcome of the campaign, believing that success would provoke revolution in India.264 Indians throughout Malaya had been advised to prepare for a “momentous event”, and plans were devised for elaborate celebrations to mark the fall of Imphal.265 News eventually leaked out through returning Indian soldiers that the Imphal campaign had been a comprehensive defeat.266 They revealed that the INA had been denied any major combat role, had been poorly supplied, and in the opening stages of the campaign had been wasted on security duties or labour battalions.267 Casualty rates, not least from disease and desertion, had been enormous.268 News of the Imphal catastrophe spread rapidly throughout the Indian community in Malaya, resulting in a rash of desertions and general loss of morale within the INA and IIL.269 The Allied bombing of Penang, Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore was a further tangible demonstration that military ascendency had passed to Britain and the Allies,270 and undermined Bose’s repeated insistence that the war would be won by the Axis powers.271

After Imphal, relations between the Japanese and INA began to deteriorate.272 Morale declined even further when Bose placed the 3rd Division of the INA — consisting entirely of recruits from Malaya — under the control of the Japanese, to be used in defence of Malaya in the event of a British invasion. The INA had been created and staffed by Indians with the express intention of fighting, under Indian direction, for the liberation of India. Thus, Bose’s action, which anticipated that the Army would join battle in defence of Japanese rule, represented a fundamental breach of the underlying assumptions and the specific nature of the agreement which had governed the formation of the INA. This move created profound disenchantment and led to a further flood of desertions.273

Political developments within India gravely weakened the appeal of the IIL and threatened to undermine its very raison d’être. The Quit India campaign had, according to Congressional sources, been a disappointing failure.274 The new Viceroy, Wavell, made conciliatory gestures towards the Indian leadership, and in May 1944, he ordered Gandhi’s release from prison.275 On 14 June 1945, Wavell announced the convening of a conference

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to consider the formation of a new Viceroy’s Executive Council which would move India closer to full self-government.276 The foreshadowing of self-government destroyed the moral and political premises upon which the IIL/INA had been structured, and led many Indians to question their continuing involvement in an organization which appeared to have been superseded.277 For if the British were prepared to negotiate independence, and those negotiations involved Nehru and Gandhi, the giants of Congress, what point was there to the INA?278 To the horror of his publicity officer, Bose attacked the “compromise mongers” within India,279 and threatened to prosecute for high treason those who temporized with the British.280 The vehemence of his denunciations appeared to put him on a collision course with Congress, and thus lessened his standing among many Malayan Indians.281

Towards the end of 1944 and throughout 1945, there was growing uneasiness within the ranks of the IIL/INA. The gathering realization that Japan had lost the war served to reinforce habitual Indian suspicion of Japanese attitudes, motives, and actions.282 Indeed, some locally raised units and estate workers cooperated with and provided intelligence to MPAJA guerrillas, though Bose took steps to counter such activities.283 Moreover, many Indians were weary of Bose’s ever-expanding tax regime, and his unremitting calls for voluntary contributions.284 While, during an earlier phase of the war, these demands had been met on the understanding that they constituted the sacrifices that were necessary to fund the independence struggle, this was manifestly no longer the case. Now the taxes were experienced as a crushing imposition upon an already impoverished Indian community, largely reduced to grinding privation and a grim daily battle for survival.285 Lowered morale within the IIL was reflected in the monthly recruitment figures, down from 10,000 throughout the month of April 1944, to 500 in November, and in plummeting returns from taxation which had dipped to $600,000 by November. Desertions from the INA multiplied in the face of the relentless British advance.286

Although Bose’s position appeared to be increasingly untenable, he refused to countenance defeat. As late as November 1944, Bose was insisting that the war would be won by Germany and Japan.287 As the British neared Rangoon, the Japanese prevailed upon Bose to leave the city. He was reluctant to depart. For him the city had a highly symbolic significance both as a staging post for the march on Delhi and as the site of the internment of the last Mughal Emperor.288 He left with the retreating

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INA on 24 April 1945, leading the Rani of Jhansi Regiment. After his car was strafed, and despite suffering severe pain, he led the Ranees on foot on what might be considered an epic retreat to safety in Thailand.289 His mission complete, Bose travelled on to Singapore by air.290

In August 1945, learning of the imminent surrender of the Japanese, Bose called for a meeting of his Cabinet to discuss the implications for the INA. There was unanimous agreement that the INA would surrender where it stood and that its records and documents would be destroyed. Bose himself was prepared to stay and surrender with his men. But his Cabinet and advisors believed that he should continue his struggle elsewhere.291 On 15 August 1945, when the Japanese announced their surrender to the Allies, Bose indicated that Indian nationalists would continue to wage their armed resistance to the British.292

Bose was severely injured in a plane crash in Taipei, Formosa, on 18 August 1945, and died the same day in a Japanese military hospital.293 He was en route to Darien and Manchuria,294 purportedly to negotiate with USSR officials about the possibility of continuing the independence struggle from that country.295 His death, although reported, was widely disbelieved, and he became the object of a continuing cult.296

After news of Bose’s death reached Malaya, the INA command ordered that all records be destroyed for fear of reprisals by returning British troops.297 In the weeks of anarchy which followed the Japanese surrender, and prior to the arrival of Allied troops, locally enlisted INA members quietly dispersed.298

Even before his death, Bose had achieved the stature of a national hero. His death traumatized many Indian civilians in Malaya and Singapore who viewed him as a martyr to the cause of Indian independence.299 News of Bose’s death had an immediate impact in India. Both Gandhi and Nehru, as well as other Congress leaders (so recently attacked as “Gandhi flunkeys” by Bose in his Singapore broadcasts) paid tribute to Bose and his achievements.300

WARTIME CONDITIONS WITHIN MALAYA: THE INDIAN EXPERIENCE

To date, we have concentrated upon the growth of Indian nationalism in response to the collapse of British colonial power and the appeal of Indian independence. But there was another and much darker side to the Japanese occupation; namely the plight and indeed the survival of

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the average Indian civilian in the face of the intransigent harshness of an incompetent and uncaring Japanese regime.

The immediate impact of the Japanese occupation upon the bulk of the Indian workforce was widespread economic dislocation and hardship. The community, especially the large working class, had been overwhelmingly dependent upon the paid employment provided within the economic framework generated by British colonialism. The network of waged labour collapsed under the inept Japanese administration and was not replaced with any alternative forms of regular or guaranteed income. Workers and their families were thus denied any obvious means of subsistence.301 On the plantations, rubber production was all but paralysed, and unemployment and underemployment were widespread. Most of the labour force was left destitute.302

The Japanese military assumed responsibility for the importation and distribution of food, but had neither the requisite experience nor the expertise to fulfil this role.303 By the end of 1942 grain prices in the Straits Settlements were on average twelve to fifteen times their 1940 level.304 An already chronic food shortage was exacerbated by the Japanese cession in October 1943 of the four northern rice-producing states — Kelantan, Terengganu, Kedah and Perlis — to Thailand.305 While later in the war the Japanese promoted a “grow more food” campaign, the entire period of occupation was marked by prolonged food shortages, the periodic and sustained unavailability of crucial medicines and medical supplies, and the breakdown of health and sanitation services.306

Most Indian labourers experienced an acute struggle for survival. Because they had little money, very basic items were placed beyond their reach.307 Workers were required to garden and scavenge to stay alive. Many Indian women sold their jewellery to purchase food. Nearly all workers grew crops such as tapioca (which for the duration of the war replaced rice as a food staple) to provide basic nourishment.308 Despite sustained efforts to ward off starvation, malnutrition-related deaths, which were especially prevalent among children, became a common experience on the estates.309 Towards the end of the war, the appalling hardships endured by the Indian labour force were aggravated by the systematic and punitive taxation regime introduced by the administration of Subhas Chandra Bose.310

The Japanese military administration imposed a regime of ruthless management and a relentless and brutal system of justice upon the workforce (e.g., the penalty of beheading was often exacted for thievery).311 Throughout the period of the Japanese occupation, the British estate and

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public utility managers were replaced by the second-tier Asian clerical staff, the kirani, most of whom, as we have seen, were either Malayalees or Ceylonese Tamils, and hence of different ethnic background to their overwhelmingly Tamil workforces.312 While the kirani were thus elevated to new levels of responsibility, they were now immediately answerable to the Japanese authorities who insisted upon total and unquestioning compliance with their demands. The kirani also bore the full harshness of Japanese rule; they were frequently humiliated, abused and physically assaulted for failure to meet Japanese expectations, often in the presence of their workers.313

One of the most serious abuses perpetrated by the Japanese against Indians as a community was the conscription or kidnapping of personnel to work upon Japanese forced-labour schemes.314 While there were a number of such projects within Malaya and other countries under Japanese control, the most notorious was the Burma Railway (the so-called Death Railway).

The construction of this railway, traversing 445 kilometres of mountainous jungle and malarial swamps, was ordered in 1942 by Imperial General Headquarters. By this stage of the war, the Japanese Southern Army was rapidly losing both air and naval supremacy. It was thus increasingly dependent on land transport within occupied Southeast Asia.315 The railway would shorten communication lines and allow the rapid transfer of personnel and supplies to support the Japanese Army in Burma.316 Although Japanese engineers estimated that under normal circumstances the project would take between five and six years, they were ordered to complete the railway within eighteen months.317 Work commenced in November 1942. A huge labour force, consisting of 250,000 personnel, mainly recruited from Malaya and Burma, together with 61,000 Allied POWs, was assembled to construct the line.318

Up to 120,000 Malayan Indian workers were coerced or persuaded to work on the Railway.319 While some were enticed by Japanese-placed advertisements which promised good wages and work conditions,320 and even the prospect of being sent to India,321 most were forcibly enlisted. Many of these were estate workers who were nominated for labour service by the kirani, often acting under Japanese pressure. However, after the war, there were allegations that some kirani were only too willing to connive with the Japanese to conscript supposed troublemakers or certain labourers they wanted off the estate.322 Other personnel were kidnapped and

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abducted by Japanese troops as they emerged from public places such as temples and mosques. This practice was ended at the insistence of Subhas Chandra Bose.323 Work on the railway was undertaken under primitive and unhygienic conditions, and the labourers were poorly fed and at all times subject to the savage discipline and repeated cruelties of the Japanese and Korean guards. Most workers died of poor nutrition, diseases and the effects of physical abuse.324 Responding to reports of mass deaths, Bose sent an IIL observer, Amar Singh, who duly reported on the abominable circumstances endured by Tamil labourers. Bose subsequently complained to the Japanese, who promised to improve conditions.325 However, the Japanese considered Tamils “highly expendable”,326 and less than 12,000 workers (40,000 according to Japanese estimates) managed to find their way back to Malaya upon completion of the railway. Those who survived were often severely traumatized and broken in health.327

The Japanese occupation proved devastating to the Malayan Indian community. Disease, more easily spread and contracted as a result of chronic malnutrition and the breakdown of sanitation and health services; starvation, especially of the very young, sick and other vulnerable members within the community; and Japanese labour schemes took a very heavy toll of Indian life. Throughout these years, the Indian population fell by over 100,000, or approximately fourteen per cent, from 700,000 in 1939 to 599,000 in 1947,328 and the Indian component of the overall Malayan population declined from fourteen per cent in 1940 to ten per cent in 1947.329

CONCLUSIONS

The INA/IIL movements profoundly affected the Indian population of Malaya. Under Bose’s leadership, Malayan and Singaporean Indians felt that they had been propelled from the periphery of metropolitan affairs to the very heart of Indian nationalist politics and could justifiably claim to have served in the front rank of those who had worked directly against the might of the British Empire for the liberation of the Motherland. Indian nationalist ideology had emphasized pan-Indian identification and the need for every Indian to contribute to the anti-colonial struggle regardless of his or her caste, ethnicity, language, or religious affiliation.330 The inclusive nationalist discourses which stated unequivocally that all Indians were descended from one of the world’s great and most enduring civilizations,

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one which had bequeathed incomparable gifts to humanity in terms of religion, philosophy, statecraft and artistic expression, was repeated in countless speeches, was absorbed by significant numbers of Indians, and affected all sectors within the community. The idea that the community had a role to play in the establishment of a free India had captured the imagination of Indians of all classes and backgrounds.331 The experiences during the war years were to engender a renewed and enduring interest among Malayan Indians in their cultural heritage and their links to the metropolitan civilization, which was to inform all aspects of Indian political and social life in the post-war era.332

The INA/IIL background had also impressed upon Malayan Indians the value of political organization and activism as a vehicle for mobilization of community resources and as an agent of change. Membership in the IIL and INA had promoted a sense of communal solidarity which united Indians under the aegis of an overarching organization.333 Meetings and training sessions conducted by the IIL and INA not only inculcated nationalist and anti-imperialist sentiments, but also exposed members to a wide range of political and social potentialities.334 Though the CIAM, albeit animated by a sense of Indian nationalism, had principally focused upon investigating the socio-economic problems of Malayan Indians, its post-war successor, the Malayan Indian Congress, was to adopt a broader political programme.335 In this respect, the Congress was the direct intellectual and ideological heir to the IIL, which had been “the catalyst that cemented Malayan Indians of different creeds, castes and languages”.336

A corollary of working-class experience of participation in the IIL and INA was the inexorable Tamilization of post-war Indian Malayan political organizations. Prior to the war, the principle political body, the CIAM, had consisted of a largely professional leadership, many of whom did not speak Tamil.337 However, the IIL had taken politics and political organizations into the plantations where kanganies and school teachers had assumed leadership roles.338 Those who trained in the INA were exposed to military discipline, which inculcated organizational skills and instilled a sense of self-worth.339 Given the fact that working-class Tamils comprised an overwhelming majority of Malaya’s Indian population,340 it was only a matter of time before this newly politicized group dominated the course of post-war Malayan Indian affairs.

The traditional apathy which had prevailed among many educated Indians in Malaya had also been irrevocably shattered by political

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developments throughout the period of Japanese occupation.341 Involvement in the IIL and INA not only stimulated a sense of obligation among educated Indians towards the remainder of the community, but also elevated many intellectuals, merchants and professionals into prominent leadership and organizational roles which were to equip them for similar duties within Indian and social bodies in post-war Malaya.342

The confidence garnered by Indians through IIL/INA negotiations with the Japanese, now extended to dealings with other political organizations in post-war Malaya.343 This new self-assurance was perhaps at its most obvious in the Indian relationship with the returning British. The contemptuous ease with which the Japanese had defeated the Allied forces throughout the opening phases of the Pacific War had destroyed forever the belief in British invincibility, and thus as a concomitant the inevitability of British rule in both India and Malaya. Among other things, the Tamils who had been recruited to the INA had shown that they could adjust to military life, and their performance as soldiers had discredited the previously accepted British nostrums as to which groups constituted martial and non-martial “races”.344 The experiences of the Japanese occupation had also exploded the model of paternalism propounded by British colonialism — that is, of dependence upon the British for welfare and succour. For several years the Indians had been forced to get by on their own resources, and had survived the ordeals of harsh repression and chronic shortages, albeit often under appalling circumstances. However, the culture of survival engendered throughout these years was also one of implied resistance. It was a culture in which constant deprivation and tyranny created a need for subterfuge, ingenuity and innovation.345 The Indian workforce thus no longer viewed the British managers as an indispensible component of the future. Labourers were no longer prepared to accord to British expectations of servility and quiescence. This new attitude surprised colonial officials, especially those who had held managerial positions prior to the war.346

This transformation in collective attitudes and outlook among Malayan Indians was observed by Nehru in March 1946. At a meeting in Ipoh, he commented upon “the tremendous change that he saw in the Indians since his last visit in 1937 in which he had referred to Malayan Indians as the ‘backwater’ of Indian nationalism”.347 This upsurge of collective awareness and pride which had invigorated the Indian community was to spill over into the turbulent years which followed the return of the British, and was to prove fundamental in reshaping Indian society.

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But the Japanese invasion did more than promote Indian nationalism and reshape Indian perceptions. The former commanding role of the British in Malaya had been recast. The humiliations of defeat had exposed the brittleness of colonial rule, and meant that the earlier mystique of British supremacy, the prestige and unquestioned authority they had hitherto enjoyed, had been forever destroyed.348 Moreover, the boundaries of ethnicity and ethnic relations had been comprehensively redrawn. The ethnic compartmentalization which had served the British so well, had, under the impetus of Japanese administration, precipitated into three main ethnic communities, animated by a fierce Sino-Malay rivalry.349 Communalism, structured on primary and exclusive concepts of racial identity, was to increasingly define the social and economic landscape of post-war Malaya.350 In writing of post-war Singapore, Asad-ul Iqbal Latif has made the profound but often overlooked point that the war created a sense of localized belonging, but this was a belonging which largely responded to the disparate pulls of diasporic nationalism — the KMT and MCP among the Chinese, the IIL among the Indians, and Indonesian Raya and KMM among the Malays.351 While Latif is writing of Singapore, this observation is equally applicable to Malaya. These disparate pulls, with all their potential for misunderstanding and conflict, were to manifest in various ways in the immediate period following the British return.

Notes 1. This chapter was enriched by the many interviews I conducted with IIL/INA

veterans. I am particularly indebted to the late Puan Sri Janaki Athi Nahappan, who as a young woman joined the Rani of Jhansi Regiment, and who was kind enough to share her recollections with me.

2. Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook, Japan at War: A New Oral History (New York: The New Press, 1992), p. 50; Peter Thompson, The Battle for Singapore: The True Story of the Greatest Catastrophe of World War II (London: Portrait, 2005), p. 51.

3. Willard H. Elsbree, Japan’s Role in Southeast Asia: Nationalist Movements 1940–1945 (Harvard University Press, 1953), p. 9; Thompson, The Battle for Singapore, p. 63.

4. Elsbree, Japan’s Role, p. 18; Louis Allen, Singapore, 1941–1942 (Singapore, MPH, 1977), p. 12.

5. Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper, Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia

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Japanese Invasion, Chandra Bose and Wartime Nationalism 211

(Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 129.

6. Elsbree, Japan’s Role, p. 18. 7. Martin Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century, Volume Two 1933–1953

(London: Harper-Collins, 1998), p. 408. 8. Allen, Singapore 1941–1942, pp. 116–20. 9. Noel Barber, A Sinister Twilight: The Fall of Singapore, 1942 (Boston: Houghton

Miflin, 1968), p. 8. 10. Virginia Thompson, Post-Mortem on Malaya (New York: Macmillan, 1943), pp.

245–47. 11. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, p. 106. 12. Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper, Forgotten Wars: The End of Britain’s Asian

Empire (London: Penguin Books, 2008), pp. 10–12. 13. Sir John Smyth, Percival and the Tragedy of Singapore (London: McDonald, 1971),

p. 47. 14. Barber, A Sinister Twilight, p. 8. 15. Peter Elphick, Singapore: The Pregnable Fortress (London: Coronet Books, 1995),

p. 37. 16. Thompson, The Battle for Singapore, pp. 27–29, 31–33. 17. Ibid., pp. 27–29. 18. Margaret Shennan, Out in the Midday Sun: The British in Malaya 1880–1960

(London: John Murray, 2009), p. 213. 19. Thompson, The Battle for Singapore, p. 16. 20. Kent Fedorowich, “The Evacuation of Civilians from Hong Kong and Malaya/

Singapore”, in A Great Betrayal? The Fall of Singapore Revisited, edited by Brian Farrell and Sandy Hunter (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2010), p. 109.

21. Shennan, Out in the Midday Sun, p. 229. 22. Thompson, The Battle for Singapore, p. 43. 23. John R. Ferris, “Student and Master: The United Kingdom, Japan, Airpower

and the Fall of Singapore”, in A Great Betrayal? The Fall of Singapore Revisited, edited by Brian Farrell and Sandy Hunter (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2010), p. 85.

24. Kate Caffrey, Out in the Midday Sun (London: Andre Deutsch, 1974), p. 52. 25. Thompson, The Battle for Singapore, p. 249. 26. Fedorowich, “The Evacuation of Civilians”, p. 108. 27. Caffrey, Out in the Midday Sun, p. 95. 28. Thompson, Post-Mortem on Malaya, p. 249. 29. Ibid., pp. 249–50. 30. E. Spencer Chapman, The Jungle is Neutral (London: Corgi Books, 1957),

p. 17.

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31. Caffrey, Out in the Midday Sun, p. 29; Phillipa Poole, Of Love and War: The Letters and Diaries of Captain Adrian Curlewis and His Family (Sydney: Landsdowne, 1982), p. 47.

32. Shennan, Out in the Midday Sun, p. 228. 33. Caffrey, Out in the Midday Sun, p. 142. 34. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, pp. 63–65. 35. Ibid., pp. 65–66; Allen, Singapore 1941–1942, p. 250. 36. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, p. 63; Russell Braddon, The Naked Island

(Hawthorn: Lloyd O’Neill, 1975), pp. 32–33. 37. Smyth, Percival and the Tragedy, p. 76. 38. Shennan, Out in the Midday Sun, p, 261. 39. Akashi Yoji, “General Yamashita Tomoyuki: Commander of the Twenty-Fifth

Army”, in A Great Betrayal? The Fall of Singapore Revisited, edited by Brian Farrell and Sandy Hunter (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2010), pp. 152–53.

40. Smyth, Percival and the Tragedy, p. 133; Malcolm H. Murfett, “An Enduring Theme: The Singapore Strategy”, in A Great Betrayal? The Fall of Singapore Revisited, edited by Brian Farrell and Sandy Hunter (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2010), p. 14.

41. Alan Warren, “The Indian Army and the Fall of Singapore Revisited”, in A Great Betrayal? The Fall of Singapore Revisited, edited by Brian Farrell and Sandy Hunter (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2010), p. 225.

42. Thompson, The Battle for Singapore, p. 140. 43. Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century, pp. 411–12. 44. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, p. 118. 45. Ibid. 46. Thompson, The Battle for Singapore, p. 182; Clifford Kinvig, “General Percival

and the Fall of Singapore”, in A Great Betrayal? The Fall of Singapore Revisited, edited by Brian Farrell and Sandy Hunter (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2010), p. 201.

47. Thompson, The Battle for Singapore, p. 208. 48. Ibid., p. 289. 49. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, p. 143. 50. Thompson, The Battle for Singapore, p. 289; Elphick, The Pregnable Fortress,

pp. 164, 529–30; Akashi, General Yamashita Tomoyuki, p. 158. 51. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, p. 146. 52. Lee Kuan Yew, The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (Singapore: Prentice

Hall, 1998), p. 52. 53. Khong Kim Hoong, Merdeka! British Rule and the Struggle for Independence in

Malaya 1945–1957 (Kuala Lumpur: Insan, 1984), p. 30. 54. William Shaw, Tun Razak: His Life and Times (Kuala Lumpur: Longman Malaysia,

1976), p. 41; Patricia Lim Pui Huen, “War and Ambivalence: Monuments and

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Japanese Invasion, Chandra Bose and Wartime Nationalism 213

Memorials in Johor”, in War and Memory in Malaysia and Singapore, edited by Patricia Lim Pui Huen and Diana Wong (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2000), p. 151.

55. Barber, A Sinister Twilight, p. 250. 56. Ibid., pp. 142–43, 238–39. 57. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, pp. 119–20. 58. Ibid., p. 120; Shaw, Tun Razak, p. 41. 59. Thompson, The Battle for Singapore, p. 72. 60. Caffrey, Out in the Midday Sun, p. 84; Shennan, Out in the Midday Sun,

pp. 236–37. 61. Lee Kuan Yew, The Singapore Story, p. 51. 62. Daud Latiff, “Japanese Invasion and Occupation”, in Malaya: The Making of a

Neo-Colony, edited by Mohamed Amin and Malcolm Caldwell (Nottingham: Spokesman, 1977), p. 87; Said Zahari, Dark Clouds at Dawn: A Political Memoir (Kuala Lumpur: Insan, 2001), p. 17; Rehman Rashid, A Malaysian Journey (Petaling Jaya: Rehman Rashid, 1993), p. 25.

63. Elphick, The Pregnable Fortress, p. 3. 64. Elsbree, Japan’s Role, pp. 162–63. 65. Ibid. 66. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, p. 46; Tominaga Shozo, “Qualifying as a

Leader”, in Japan at War: An Oral History, edited by Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook (New York: The New Press, 1992), pp. 41–42.

67. Sybil Kathigasu, No Dram of Mercy (London: Neville Spearman, 1954), p. 39. 68. Ibid; Agnes Khoo, Life as the River Flows: Women in the Malayan Anti-Colonial

Struggle (Petaling Jaya: Strategic Information Research Development, 2004), pp. 185, 229; Abu Talib Ahmad, The Malay Muslims, Islam and the Rising Sun (Kuala Lumpur: MBRAS, 2003), p. 39.

69. Akashi Yoji, “Colonel Watanabe Wataru: The Architect of the Military Administration, December 1941–March 1943”, in New Perspectives on the Japanese Occupation in Malaya and Singapore 1941–1945, edited by Akashi Yoji and Yoshimura Mako (Singapore: NUS Press, 2008), p. 35.

70. Yoshimura Mako, “Japan’s Economic Policy for Malaya/Singapore 1941–45”, in New Perspectives on the Japanese Occupation in Malaya and Singapore, edited by Akashi Yoji and Yoshimura Mako (Singapore: NUS Press, 2008), p. 118.

71. Kathigasu, No Dram of Mercy, pp. 44–45. 72. Akashi, “Colonel Watanabe”, pp. 51–53. 73. Cheah Boon Kheng, “Memory as History and Moral Judgement: Oral and

Written Accounts of the Japanese Occupation of Malaya”, in War and Memory in Malaysia and Singapore, edited by Patricia Lim Pui Huen and Diana Wong (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2000), p. 29.

74. Chin Kee Ong, Malaya Upside Down, 3rd ed. (Kuala Lumpur: Federal Publications, 1976), pp. 82–87.

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75. Yoshimura, “Japan’s Economic Policy”, pp. 116–18. 76. Ibid. 77. Akashi, “Colonel Watanabe”, p. 54. 78. Yoshimura, “Japan’s Economic Policy”, p. 118. 79. Akashi, “Colonel Watanabe”, pp. 54–55; Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Wars,

p. 11. 80. Chin, Malaya Upside Down, pp, 38–45; 192–95. 81. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Wars, p. 11. 82. Yoshimura, “Japan’s Economic Policy”, p. 125. 83. Cheah Boon Kheng, Red Star Over Malaya: Resistance and Social Conflict During

and After the Japanese Occupation of Malaya 1941–1946, 2nd ed. (Singapore, Singapore University Press, 1987), pp. 294–95.

84. Elsbree, Japan’s Role, pp. 162–63. 85. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Wars, p. 24. 86. Wang Gungwu, “Memories of War”, in War and Memory in Malaysia and

Singapore, edited by Patricia Lim Pui Huen and Diana Wong (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2000), pp. 16–17.

87. Hayashi Hirofumi, “Massacres of Chinese in Singapore and Its Coverage in Post-War Japan”, in New Perspectives on the Japanese Occupation in Malaya and Singapore 1941–1945, edited by Akashi Yoji and Yoshimura Mako (Singapore: NUS Press, 2008), pp. 235–36.

88. Lee, The Singapore Story, p. 58. 89. Chapman, The Jungle is Neutral, pp. 125, 282; Shan Ru-Long, The War in the

South: The Story of Negri Sembilan’s Guerillas (Bangkok: Mental Health Pubishing, 2003), p. 60; Lim, War and Ambivalence, pp. 144–45.

90. Akashi, “Colonel Watanabe”, p. 40. 91. Cheah, Red Star Over Malaya, p. 54. 92. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Wars, p. 30. 93. Cheah, “Memory as History”, pp. 28–29. 94. Khong, Merdeka!, p. 32. 95. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Wars, p. 31. 96. Cheah, Red Star Over Malaya, p. 55. 97. Shan, The War in the South, pp. 81–84; Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Wars,

p. 34. 98. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Wars, p. 32. 99. Chin Peng, My Side of History (Singapore: Media Masters, 2003), p. 26; Bayly

and Harper, Forgotten Wars, pp. 31–32. 100. Lawrence James, Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India (London: Little,

Brown, 1997), p. 547. 101. Akashi Yoji, “Introduction”, in New Perspectives on the Japanese Occupation in

Malaya and Singapore, 1941–1945, edited by Akashi Yoji and Yoshimura Mako (Singapore: NUS Press, 2008), p. 5.

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Japanese Invasion, Chandra Bose and Wartime Nationalism 215

102. Ibid., p. 18. 103. Wan Hashim, Race Relations in Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur: Heinemann

Educational Books (Asia), 1983), p. 39. 104. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Wars, pp. 17–18. 105. Abu Talib, The Malay Muslims, p. 92. 106. Wan Hashim, Race Relations, p. 40; Abu Talib, The Malay Muslims, p. 98. 107. Abu Talib, The Malay Muslims, pp. 212–40. 108. Elsbree, Japan’s Role, pp. 112–13; Cheah Boon Kheng, “The ‘Blackout

Syndrome’ and the Ghosts of World War II; The War as a ‘Divisive Issue’ in Malaysia”, in Legacies of World War II in South and East Asia, edited by David Koh Wee Hock (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2007), p. 52.

109. Elsbree, Japan’s Role, p. 164. 110. Abu Talib, The Malay Muslims, pp. 212–40. 111. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Wars, p. 46. 112. Shaw, Tun Razak, p. 47. 113. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Wars, p. 46. 114. Abu Talib, The Malay Muslims, pp. 124–27. 115. Cheah, “Memory as History”, p. 28. 116. Cheah, Red Star over Malaya, p. 55. 117. Cheah, “The ‘Blackout’ Syndrome”, p. 51. 118. Allan, Singapore 1941–1942, p. 261. 119. Warren, The Indian Army, p. 234. 120. Fujiwara Iwaichi (trans. Akashi Yoji), F. Kikan: Japanese Army Intelligence

Operations and Southeast Asia during World War II (Hong Kong: Heinemann Asia, 1983), p. 21.

121. Ibid. 122. Allen, Singapore 1941–1942, p. 260. 123. Gerard R. Corr, The War of the Springing Tigers (London: Osprey, 1975),

p. 64. 124. Ibid., p. 54. 125. Fujiwara, F. Kikan, p. 40. 126. Corr, The War of the Springing Tigers, p. 64. 127. Chin, Malaya Upside Down, p. 122; Joginder Singh Jessy, “The Indian Army of

Independence”, (BA [Hons] Thesis, University of Singapore, 1957–58). 128. Joyce Lebra, Jungle Alliance: Japan and the Indian National Army (Singapore:

Asia Pacific Press, 1971), p. 14. 129. Corr, The War of the Springing Tigers, p. 73. 130. Sunanda K. Datta-Ray, “World War II Legacies for India”, in Legacies of World

War II in South and East Asia, edited by David Koh Wee Hock (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2007), p. 185.

131. Fujiwara, F. Kikan, p. 90.

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132. Ibid., pp. 105–6. 133. Corr, The War of the Springing Tigers, p. 93. 134. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, p. 43. 135. Ibid., p. 66. 136. A.C. Chatterjee, India’s Struggle for Freedom (Calcutta: Chuckervatty, Chatterjee,

1947), p. 4. 137. Corr, The War of the Springing Tigers, pp. 93–94. 138. Jessy, The Indian Army of Independence. 139. Chatterjee, India’s Struggle for Freedom, p. 5. 140. Maria Misra, Vishnu’s Crowded Temple: India since the Great Rebellion (London:

Allen Lane, 2007), pp. 228–29. 141. Peter Ward Fay, The Forgotten Army: India’s Armed Struggle for Independence,

1942–1945 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), p. 83. 142. Allen, Singapore 1941–1942, p. 260. 143. Fay, The Forgotten Army, p. 83. 144. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Wars, p. 89. 145. Louis Allen, Burma: The Longest War 1941–45 (London: Dent, 1984), p. 605. 146. Fay, The Forgotten Army, p. 83. 147. Allen, Singapore 1941–1942, p. 260. 148. Fay, The Forgotten Army, p. 83. 149. Ibid. 150. Allen, Singapore 1941–1942, p. 261. 151. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, pp. 90–93; Nalini Ranjan Chakravarti, The

Indian Minority in Burma: The Rise and Decline of an Indian Community (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 112.

152. These lines of thought are comprehensively summed up by Captain P.K. Saghal who stated: “After protracted negotiations the only solution we could think of was the formation of a strong and well-disciplined armed body which should fight for the liberation of India from the existing alien rule, [and which] should be able and ready to provide protection to their countrymen against any possible molestation by the Japanese and to resist any attempt by the latter to establish themselves as rulers of the country in place of the British.” (Warren, The Indian Army, p. 234).

153. Ibid. 154. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, p. 167. 155. Chakravarti, The Indian Minority in Burma, pp. 106–7. 156. Allen, Burma: The Longest War, p. 81. 157. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, p. 167; Allen, Burma: The Longest War,

p. 81. 158. Fay, The Forgotten Army, p. 96. 159. Ibid., pp. 98–100.

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Japanese Invasion, Chandra Bose and Wartime Nationalism 217

160. C.P. Ramachandra, “The Indian Independence Movement in Malaya 1942–45”, (M.A. Thesis, Universiti Malaya, 1970).

161. James, Raj, p. 564; Alex Von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire (London: Simon and Schuster, 2007), pp. 121–22.

162. Datta-Ray, “World War II Legacies”, p. 185. 163. Von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer, p. 109. 164. Ibid., p. 121. 165. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, p. 147. 166. James, Raj, pp. 565–66; Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, p. 248. 167. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, p. 277. 168. Elsbree, Japan’s Role, pp. 150–52. 169. Fay, The Forgotten Army, p. 134. 170. Von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer, p. 138. 171. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, p. 284. 172. Ibid., p. 286. 173. Von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer, p. 138; Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies,

p. 287. 174. Ramachandra, The Indian Independence Movement. 175. Lebra, Jungle Alliance, pp. 45-46; Usha Mahajani, The Role of Indian Minorities

in Burma and Malaya (Bombay: Vora, 1960), p. 146. 176. Lebra, Jungle Alliance, p. 77. 177. Ramachandra, The Indian Independence Movement. 178. James, Raj, p. 550. 179. Elsbree, Japan’s Role, p. 33. 180. Lebra, Jungle Alliance, pp. 45–46. 181. Jessy, The Indian Army of Independence. 182. Elsbree, Japan’s Role, p. 150. 183. Lebra, Jungle Alliance, pp. 60–67. 184. Elsbree, Japan’s Role, p. 150. 185. Fay, The Forgotten Army, p. 144. 186. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, p. 257. 187. Lebra, Jungle Alliance, p. 84. 188. Ramachandra, The Indian Independence Movement. 189. Lebra, Jungle Alliance, p. 84. 190. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, p. 256. 191. Fay, The Forgotten Army, pp. 148–49. 192. Ibid., p. 148. 193. Ibid., p. 149. 194. Lebra, Jungle Alliance, pp. 95–96. 195. Jessy, The Indian Army of Independence. 196. Fay, The Forgotten Army, pp. 150–51.

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218 Tragic Orphans: Indians in Malaysia

197. Ibid., p. 152. 198. Hugh Toye, The Springing Tiger: A Study of a Revolutionary (London: Cassell,

1959), p. 42. 199. Fay, The Forgotten Army, p. 133. 200. Ibid., pp. 154–55. 201. K.C. Yadav and Akiko Saki, Subhas Chandra Bose: The Last Days (Gurgaon:

Hope India, 2003), p. 14. 202. Netaji Subhas Bose — A Malaysian Perspective (Kuala Lumpur: Netaji Centre,

1992), p. 151. For a detailed study of the Jallianwala Bagh incident and its aftermath, see Nigel Collet’s The Butcher of Amritsar: General Reginald Dyer (London: Hambledon & London, 2005).

203. Toye, The Springing Tiger, pp. 52–53. 204. Yadav and Akiko, Subhas Chandra Bose, pp. 16–17. 205. Netaji Subhas Bose, p. 166. 206. Mihir Bose, Raj, Secrets, Revolution: A Life of Subhas Chandra Bose (London:

Grice Chapman, 2004), pp. 182–83; Sugata Bose, His Majesty’s Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle against Empire (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001), p. 188.

207. Yadav and Akiko, Subhas Chandra Bose, p. 23. 208. Bose, Raj, Secrets, Revolution, p. 188. 209. Yadav and Akiko, Subhas Chandra Bose, p. 23. 210. Subodh Markendeya, Subhas Chandra Bose: Netaji’s Passage to Immortality

(New Delhi: Arnold, 1990), p. 158. 211. Fay, The Forgotten Army, p. 199. 212. Bose, Raj, Secrets, Revolution, p. 211. 213. Markendeya, Netaji‘s Passage to Immortality, p. 173. 214. Toye, The Springing Tiger, p. 77. 215. Lebra, Jungle Alliance, p. 110. While Sugata Bose claims that the meeting

took place on 29 May at the Reich Chancellory, Mihir Bose has shown that it was held on 27 May at the Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s East Prussian redoubt (Bose, Raj, Secrets, Revolution, pp. 221–23; Bose, His Majesty’s Opponent, p. 219).

216. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, p. 278; Yadav and Akiko, Subhas Chandra Bose, p. 24.

217. Yadav and Akiko, Subhas Chandra Bose, pp. 25–26. 218. Fujiwara, F. Kikan, pp. 248–49. 219. Markendeya, Netaji’s Passage to Immortality, pp. 194–95. 220. Netaji Subhas Bose, p. 189. 221. Jessy, The Indian Army of Independence. 222. Toye, The Springing Tiger, p. 60. 223. During interviews, I was advised that whenever possible, Bose would visit the

prayer shrines in the homes of his confidants, where attired in the traditional

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Japanese Invasion, Chandra Bose and Wartime Nationalism 219

dress of the sannyasin he would spend hours in meditation. Bose also expressed a deep interest in the writings of Sri Aurobindo Ghose.

224. Toye, The Springing Tiger, p. 89; Fay, The Forgotten Army, pp. 234–36. In taking this approach, Bose was completely rejecting British proposals of an electoral system weighted by considerations of religion or caste.

225. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, p. 279; Markendeya, Netaji’s Passage to Immortality, p. 165.

226. Lebra, Jungle Alliance, p. 107; Bose, Raj, Secrets, Revolution, p. 209. Sugata Bose states that the term “was a very Indian form of expressing affection mingled with honour” (Bose, His Majesty’s Opponent, p. 209).

227. Allan, Burma: The Longest War, p. 169. 228. Fay, The Forgotten Army, p. 212. 229. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, p. 332. 230. Ramachandra, The Indian Independence Movement. 231. Jessy, The Indian Army of Independence. 232. Bose, Raj, Secrets, Revolution, p. 251. 233. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, pp. 324–26. 234. Jessy, The Indian Army of Independence; Netaji Subhas Bose, p. 193. 235. Yadav and Akiko, Subhas Chandra Bose, p. 32; Bayly and Harper, Forgotten

Armies, p. 32. 236. Lebra, Jungle Alliance, p. 129. 237. Bose, Raj, Secrets, Revolution, p. 253. 238. Lebra, Jungle Alliance, p. 133. 239. Von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer, p, 70. 240. Fay, The Forgotten Army, pp. 215–20. The Rani of Jhansi’s unique contribution

to resistance against the British during the Great Rebellion was the formation and training of a women’s corps who were to fight as regular soldiers alongside the men (Michael Edwardes, Red Year: The Indian Rebellion of 1857 (London: Cardinal, 1975), p. 119).

241. Chatterjee, India’s Struggle for Freedom, p. 85. 242. Fay, The Forgotten Army, p. 221; Netaji Chandra Bose, p. 43. 243. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, pp. 326–27. 244. Rajeswary Amplavanar, The Indian Minority and Political Change in Malaya

1945–1957 (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 8. 245. Ramachandra, “The Indian Independence Movement”; Warren, The Indian Army,

p. 237. 246. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, pp. 324–26; Mahajani, The Role of Indian

Minorities, p. 148. 247. Ramachandra, “The Indian Independence Movement”. 248. Tan Sri S. Chelvasingam-MacIntyre, Through Memory Lane (Singapore: Education

Press, 1973), p. 120; Chin Kee Onn, Malaya Upside Down, p. 130. 249. Chelvasingam-MacIntyre, Through Memory Lane, p. 127.

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220 Tragic Orphans: Indians in Malaysia

250. Fay, The Forgotten Army, p. 214. 251. Chelvasingam-MacIntyre, Through Memory Lane, p. 284. 252. Ramachandra, “The Indian Independence Movement”. 253. P. Ramasamy, “Indian War Memory in Malaysia”, in War and Memory in

Malaysia and Singapore, edited by Patricia Lim Pui Huen and Diana Wong (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2000), p. 96. Several Indian Muslim scholars whom I interviewed disputed this account and pointed out that Indian Muslims in Malaysia had played pivotal roles in the leadership and organisation of both the IIL and the INA. A number of Indian Muslim women also joined the Rani of Jhansi Regiment. Scholars also highlighted the role played by Muslims in the British Indian Army mutiny in Singapore in February 1915. This incident unfolded as follows. Members of the Indian 5th Light Infantry, mainly consisting of Punjabi Muslims, were incensed that Britain was at war with Muslim Turkey. They had discussed their anti-British sentiments with one Kassim Mansoor, a Gujarati Muslim activist who owned a coffee shop near the Alexandria Barracks, and had also been subject to the propaganda of German Prisoners of War whom they were guarding. Members of the 5th Light had secretly joined the mainly Punjabi Ghadar movement which aimed at expelling the British from India. (This movement was also supported by members of the Sikh diaspora, and indeed in December 1914, one Jegat Singh of Singapore had been instrumental in persuading Sikh Malay Guards not to embark for active service in Europe.) The spark which appears to have ignited the revolt was the rumour that the Infantry was being sent, not to Hong Kong, but rather to fight in Turkey. Troops murdered their officers, set free German POWs, and in a series of random attacks killed forty-four Europeans. The mutiny was ultimately quelled by a British naval detachment which also exacted retribution on “all kinds of dark skinned but quite innocent people” (Shennan, Out in the Midday Sun, p. 96). Thirty-seven mutineers were subsequently executed, others were transported, and Kassim Mansoor was hung (see Asad-ul Iqbal Latif, “From Mandalas to Microchips: The Indian Imprint on the Construction of Singapore”, in Rising India and Indian Communities in East Asia, edited by K. Kesavapany, A. Mani, and P. Ramasamy (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2008), pp. 554–55; Shennan Out in the Midday Sun, pp. 88–99).

254. Fay, The Forgotten Army, pp. 214–15. Attendees interviewed by the author attested to the immense power of his oratory, and the mesmerism he seemed to exercise over his audiences.

255. Ibid., p. 215. 256. Ibid. 257. Michael R. Stenson, Class, Race and Colonialism in West Malaysia: The Indian

Case (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1980), p. 98.

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Japanese Invasion, Chandra Bose and Wartime Nationalism 221

258. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, pp. 370–71. 259. Hata Shoryu, “A War Correspondent”, in Japan at War: An Oral History, edited

by Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook (New York: The New Press, 1992), p. 210.

260. Jessy, The Indian Army of Independence. 261. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, pp. 373–74; Allen, Burma: The Longest War,

p. 169. 262. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, p. 248. 263. Ramachandra, “The Indian Independence Movement”. 264. Lebra, Jungle Alliance, pp. 175–76. 265. Chin, Malaya Upside Down, pp. 129–31. 266. Ibid., p. 133. 267. Corr, The War of the Springing Tigers, p. 163. 268. James, Raj, pp. 571–72. 269. Ramachandra, “The Indian Independence Movement”; Selvakumaran

Ramachandran, Indian Plantation Labour in Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur: S. Abdul Majeed, 1994), p. 235.

270. Chin, Malaya Upside Down, p. 133. 271. Lebra, Jungle Alliance, p. 197. 272. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, p. 401. 273. Ramachandra, “The Indian Independence Movement”; Fay, The Forgotten

Army, p. 379. 274. James, Raj, p. 571. 275. Fay, The Forgotten Army, p. 377. 276. Ibid., pp. 377–78. 277. Ramachandra, “The Indian Independence Movement”. 278. Ibid. 279. Fay, The Forgotten Army, p. 379. 280. Chin, Malaya Upside Down, p. 133. 281. Ramachandra, “The Indian Independence Movement”. 282. Chelvasingam-McIntyre, Through Memory Lane, p. 123. 283. Ravindra K. Jain, South Indians on the Plantation Frontier in Malaya (New Haven:

Yale University Press, 1970), p. 304; P. Ramasamy, Plantation Labour, Unions, Capital and the State in Peninsular Malaysia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 59.

284. Stenson, Class, Race and Colonialism, pp. 98–100. 285. Selvakumaran, Indian Plantation Labour, p. 236. 286. Bose, Raj, Secrets, Revolution, pp. 271–73. 287. Lebra, Jungle Alliance, p. 191. 288. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, pp. 435–36. 289. Allen, Burma: The Longest War, p. 485.

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222 Tragic Orphans: Indians in Malaysia

290. Yadav and Akiko, Subhas Chandra Bose, p. 41. 291. Netaji Subhas Bose, p. 213. 292. Toye, The Springing Tiger, pp. 163–65. 293. Yadav and Akiko, Subhas Chandra Bose, p. 43. 294. Netaji Subhas Bose, p. 214. 295. Toye, The Springing Tiger, p. 165. 296. Lebra, Jungle Alliance, pp. 197–98; James, Raj, p. 575. 297. Jessy, The Indian Army of Independence. 298. Netaji Subhas Bose, p. 216. 299. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Wars, pp. 22–23. 300. Fay, The Forgotten Army, pp. 433–34. 301. Ramasamy, Indian War Memory, p. 92. 302. Selvakumaran, Indian Plantation Labour, p. 236; Paul W. Wiebe and

S. Mariappen, Indian Malaysians: The View from the Plantation (Delhi: Manohar, 1978), p. 27.

303. Jain, South Indians on the Plantation Frontier, p. 299. 304. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, p. 328. 305. Ibid., p. 327. 306. Selvakumaran, Indian Plantation Labour, p. 233. 307. Ramasamy, Indian War Memory, p. 92. 308. Sinnappah Arasaratnam, Indians in Malaysia and Singapore (London: Oxford

University Press, 1970), pp. 102–3. 309. Jain, South Indians on the Plantation Frontier, p. 299; Selvakumaran, Indian

Plantation Labour, p. 236. 310. Selvakumaran, Indian Plantation Labour, p. 236. 311. Jain, South Indians on the Plantation Frontier, p. 298. 312. Ramasamy, “Indian War Memory”, pp. 96–97. 313. Ibid. 314. Selvakumaran, Indian Plantation Labour, p. 233. 315. Ota Koki, “Railway Operations In Japanese-Occupied Malaya”, in New

Perspectives on the Japanese Occupation in Malaya and Singapore 1941–1945, edited by Akashi Yoji and Yoshimura Mako (Singapore: NUS Press, 2008), p. 155.

316. Cook and Cook, Japan at War, p. 99. 317. Lord Russell, The Knights of Bushido: A Short History of Japanese War Crimes

(London: Corgi, 1967), p. 74. 318. Cook and Cook, Japan at War, p. 99. 319. The actual figures for Tamils and other Indians who worked on the railway

are the subject of some dispute, and at this distance are perhaps impossible to assess with any precise degree of accuracy. However, Mihir Bose indicates that Subhas Chandra Bose sent Brahmachariar Kailasan of the Singapore Ramakrishna Mission to report on the conditions under which Indians were

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Japanese Invasion, Chandra Bose and Wartime Nationalism 223

required to work on this project. Bose read his report in June 1945. Bose and N. Raghavan then discussed this report with the Japanese who admitted that 120,000 Tamils had been taken from Malaya, of whom one-third had survived. Raghavan estimated that 60,000 additional Indians had been recruited from Burma, of whom a mere 20,000 had returned (Bose, Raj, Secrets, Revolution, pp. 275–76).

320. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, p. 406. 321. Andrew C. Wilford, Cage of Freedom: Tamil Identity and the Ethnic Fetish in

Malaysia (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006), p. 23. 322. Charles Gamba, The Origins of Trade Unionism in Malaya: A Study in Colonial

Labour Unrest (Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, 1962), p. 253. 323. Ramachandra, “The Indian Independence Movement”. 324. Russell, The Knights of Bushido, pp. 80–84. 325. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, pp. 407–8. 326. Ibid., p. 406. 327. Selvakumaran, Indian Plantation Labour, p. 236. For Japanese figures, see

note 319. 328. Arasaratnam, Indians in Malaysia and Singapore, p. 31; Stenson, Class, Race and

Colonialism, p. 90. 329. Ramachandra, “The Indian Independence Movement”. 330. Arasaratnam, Indians in Malaysia and Singapore, p. 109. 331. Ramasamy, “Indian War Memory”, p. 98; Kernial Singh Sandhu, “The Coming

of Indians to Malaysia”, in Indian Communities in Southeast Asia, edited by Kernial Singh Sandhu and A. Mani (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1993), p. 183.

332. Ramachandra, “The Indian Independence Movement”. 333. Arasaratnam, Indians in Malaysia and Singapore, p. 109. 334. Ramasamy, Plantation Labour, p. 59. 335. Ramachandra, “The Indian Independence Movement”. 336. Netaji Subhas Bose, p. 231. 337. Ramachandra, “The Indian Independence Movement”. 338. Arasaratnam, Indians in Malaysia and Singapore, p. 109. 339. Ramasamy, “Indian War Memory”, p. 99. 340. Sinnappah Arasaratnam, “Malaysian Indians: The Formation of an Incipient

Society”, in Indian Communities in Southeast Asia, edited by Kernial Singh Sandhu and A. Mani (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1993), p. 193.

341. Sinnappah Arasaratnam, “Political Attitudes and Political Organization among Malayan Indians 1945–1955”, Jernal Sejarah 10 (1971/72): 1.

342. Ramasamy, “Indian War Memory”, p. 99. 343. Rajeswary, The Indian Minority, p. 48.

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344. Chatterjee, India’s Struggle for Freedom, p. 188. 345. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, p. 322. 346. Selvakumaran, Indian Plantation Labour, p. 239. 347. Jessy, The Indian Army of Independence. 348. Allen, Singapore, p. 187. 349. Mahajani, The Role of Indian Minorities, p. 163; Chin, Malaya Upside Down,

p. 187. 350. Arasaratnam, “Malaysian Indians: The Formation of an Indian Society”,

p. 210. 351. Asad-ul Iqbal Latif, “Singapore’s Missing War”, in Legacies of World War II in

Southeast Asia, edited by David Wee Hock (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2007), p. 95.

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