Without diminishing the Congress’s contribution to the Indian independence movement, we must ask ourselves: Did the British leave just because we spun our own cloth, refused to pay tax on salt, and protested peacefullyIJ
It can only be poetic justice that an innocuous leak of an Intelligence Bureau document, of the snooping on Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s kin for 20 years after independence, has snowballed into a scandal of epic proportions, the contours of which, we are yet to understand. The leak has also resulted in the veil being ripped on the events leading to the independence. Conventional wisdom and constructed history will have us believe — and the Congress will not have us forget — that the Indian National Congress, led by Jawaharlal Nehru, in conjunction with Mahatma Gandhi’s strategy of Ahimsa and Satyagraha, non- violence and non-cooperation, was able to out-manoeuvre the British Raj and break its will to stay on and rule India. All of this, just within 18 months since the end of World War II from which, the British and their allies had emerged victorious and more powerful than ever.
While there is no reason to cast aspersions on the sacrifices of the many Congress leaders we venerate today, there is a need to ask ourselves: Did the British leave just because we spun our own cloth, refused to pay tax on salt and opposed their rule through peaceful non-cooperation methodsIJ Fortunately, our high school syllabus does devote a few short pages to the exploits of those who believed that the only way Britain would grant us independence was through the force of arms. For example, in 1916, the Ottoman Indian Volunteer Corps was raised with Turkish assistance and went on to fight the British in Afghanistan in the First World War.
After the commencement of World War II, the Centro Militare India was established with Italian help, and Bose’s Indian legion, established with German assistance in Europe and Asia, the Indian National Army or the Azad Hind Fauj established in Singapore with Japanese assistance. Though originally raised by Rash Behari Bose and Mohan Singh, the latter was galvanised into becoming a true Army when Netaji finally arrived in Singapore and appointed himself as the head of the Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind or the Provisional Government of Free India. The Indian National Army consisted of approximately 43,000 men and women volunteers and engaged the British in combat in Burma and India. It went on to raise the tri-colour at Moirang, in Manipur, and in the Andaman Islands after their liberation with Japanese help.
Having faced insurmountable odds and incurring extensive casualties, they were finally forced to surrender and after imprisonment and interrogation they returned home to their villages. Defeated, but not vanquished, they proclaimed their cause loudly till their shouts became a roar and people began to pay heed to what they said.
The Red Fort trials of Prem Kumar Sahgal, Shah Nawaz Khan and Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon, ironically instead of projecting British authority and resolve as they had envisaged, became not just a symbol of the freedom movement but also a catalyst for growing dissidence within the British Indian forces that had helped establish the British Empire and sustained it for over 200 years.
While most prominent historians would have us believe that the exploits of the Azad Hind Fauj was just a side show in our fight for independence with nothing really tangible to show, there were some who suggested that it was fear of insurrection within the British Indian Forces, such as, not just the Royal Indian Navy mutiny at Mumbai and lahore, which received much publicity, but also lesser mutinies and cases of individual and collective disobedience within the other services as well.
There is now ample documentation to show that this indeed was the case and the rising tide of disaffection and disloyalty within the services forced the British to hastily abandon “an Empire on which the Sun never set.” There are even minutes of British Cabinet meetings, now available to the public in the British library, that refer to the plans formulated to evacuate British citizens from selected cities with the assistance of the British Army and Royal Air Force in the event of the British Indian Army mutinying.
As the BJP-led NDA Government contemplates declassifying documents pertaining to Netaji, one would not be wrong in assuming that public opinion will probably force complete disclosure, regardless of consequences. Indeed, it will be silly of the Government to insist that relations with friendly foreign powers may be adversely impacted by their declassification more than 70 years after the events in question.
Whether these disclosures will lead to the mystery regarding Netaji's disappearance being solved is difficult to predict. However, one thing is certain: The unknown soldiers of this ‘Forgotten Army’, as Professor Peter Ward Fay has referred to them in his book of the same name, will finally come in from the cold and their noble endeavour and untold sacrifices will finally receive recognition that was their due.
(The writer, a military veteran, is a consultant with the Observer Research Foundation)