There is a great deal of debate today on whether women should be inducted into the Armed Forces in combat role. Netaji Bose had brought women into his INA decades ago, write SWAGATA SINHA ROY AND DK BUDAKOTI
Today, India has women officers in its Armed Forces, including as pilots. However, there are no women soldiers in other ranks. Women officers had to fight a bureaucratic and legal battle to get permanent commission in the Armed Forces. To imagine that Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose had, in 1943, the vision of a Women’s Regiment when he commanded the Indian National Army (INA), is amazing. The INA’s woman’s wing was named after the great Rani of Jhansi. The Government of India can now propose to have the world’s first All-Women’s Regiment — The Rani Jhansi Regiment — and thereby keep the spirit of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose alive.
Subhas Chandra Bose’s arrival in Singapore on June 23, 1943, to take over the leadership of India Independence league and the Indian National Army on July 5, 1943, galvanised the entire movement of the Indian people in Southeast Asia against the British rule, fuelling new enthusiasm amongst the Indian Prisoners Of War (PoWs) who joined the INA and marched against the British in the Burma frontier war. A large number of the Indian diaspora in Malaysia was also motivated to join the INA after listening to the speeches of Netaji. In these mass rallies, Netaji Bose also gave a call to women volunteers to join the all-women regiment for the liberation of India from foreign rule.
The Rani Jhansi Regiment, the brainchild of Bose of having women warriors against the Raj, made many people sceptical. But Netaji Bose had faith in Indian women and their capability to rise to the occasion even at the battle-front. He evoked the heroic action of the Rani of Jhasi against the Raj in India’s first battle of Independence in 1858, and thus named it Rani Jhansi Regiment. What a coincidence that the Rani of Jhansi was laxmi Bai and the commander of the Rani Jhansi Regiment was also led by Captain lakshmi.
Many women were enthused to join the Rani Jhasi Regiment commanded by Captain lakshmi Swaminathan. In many cases, Captain lakshmi had to interact with the families of volunteers so that they could get the family approval to join the women’s regiment. Such was the case with many teenage girls who volunteered to join the Rani Jhansi Regiment of the INA. Most of the women in the Rani Jhansi Regiment were barely literate and Indian Tamil women employed in the rubber estates in then Malaya.
On October 21, 1943, the Provisional Government of Azad Hind was declared and on October 22, the Rani Jhansi Regiment’s training started. They had a gruelling three-month Army training and had to show their mettle to earn their INA badge. For Netaji Bose, they were not there for symbolic reasons but were to be physically and mentally fit to face adverse conditions at the battle-front. Netaji had said, “It is not important how many guns you can carry or how many cartridges you can fire. It is the spiritual force which will be generated by your heroic example that is important.”
In one of the many mass rallies in Malaysia, including the one in Ipoh town, besides the two sisters — Rasammah and the elder Ponnammah — many other teenagers got all set to join the regiment. Rasammah was only 16, when she volunteered to join the Rani Jhansi Regiment in 1943. On the question of her motivation to join the INA regiment, in her biography, Footprints On the Sands of Time: Rasammah Bhupalan: A life of Purpose, by Aruna Gopinath, she mentions that “my father had a copy of the banned book, Jallianwala Bagh:The Amritsar Massacre, which years later in 1942, I had read the details of the horrible, inhuman massacre. I was then only 15 plus, this account greatly influenced me”.
We had the privilege of meeting the 90-year old Rasammah Bhuplan in Kuala lumpur, Malaysia. Rasammah was born on May 1, 1927, the youngest in a family of six children — four girls and two boys. Post-INA, she was in the teaching profession and very active in teachers’ union and also heading the union at the national level, participating in various international forums. She has also been recognised and rewarded at national and international levels.
She recollects her interaction with Netaji Bose with reverence and remembers him as saying, “live for others if you want to live”. That is what she did all her life.