A Colony Set Free by a War – India and the Second World War
Students clean a statue of India's freedom
fighter and chief of Indian National Army,
Subhas Chandra Bose. In the years leading up
to World War Two, Bose, popularly known as
"Netaji" or leader, pushed for freedom from
British rule
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Doctor of History, Professor of the Oriental Studies Department of the MGIMO University
The attitude of India and its population to the Second World War is substantially different to that which exists in Europe. There were no military battles on the Indian territory, the country’s existence was not put in doubt, but the war itself led to the proclamation of India’s independence. It is the last aspect which attracts the Indian public most. In this respect there is especial interest in the actions of the Indian National Army, which fought on Japan’s side.
The attitude of India and its population to the Second World War is substantially different to that which exists in Europe. There were no military battles on the Indian territory, the country’s existence was not put in doubt, but the war itself led to the proclamation of India’s independence.
It is the last aspect which attracts the Indian public most. In this respect there is especial interest in the actions of the Indian National Army, which fought on Japan’s side.
In September 1939 India was declared a belligerent state by Great Britain. The British Indian Army underwent a major expansion and fought in South Asia and on other fronts. The threat of a Japanese invasion of India led to military units from the USA, South Africa and China also being brought in. The country’s national liberation movement was split: some of the leaders switched their allegiance to Germany and Japan, assuming that the Axis states would be able to help liberate India from British colonial rule. The Indian National Army, which had been organised in Burma and was led by Subhas Chandra Bose, took part in military actions on Japan’s side.
Subhas Chandra Bose (1897–1945) was twice mayor of Calcutta, leader of the left wing of the Indian National Congress and a youth idol. His driving idea was Indian independence, and so in 1938 he made contact with the German council in Calcutta, seeing Germany as a possible ally against Great Britain. After the British colonial authorities brought India into the Second World War (without consulting the Indians), Bose came out openly against this. At the very beginning of September 1939 he stated at a meeting of the Working Committee of the Indian National Congress that no “Indians, Indian funds or resources should take part in an imperialist war” [1]. On 27 January 1941 Bose escaped from house arrest and made his way to the Soviet Union via Afghanistan. After a meeting in Moscow with Count Friedrich-Werner von der Schulenburg, Germany’s ambassador to the USSR, he departed immediately for Berlin. According to archive information he had no meetings in Moscow with the Soviet political leaders [2].
After arriving in Germany Bose put forward his Plan for Cooperation between the Axis Powers and India, which proposed overthrowing Britain’s colonial rule. It should be noted that the Indian politician took a very negative view of Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union. He stated bluntly that it was a gigantic mistake, and the Indian public would now see Germany as an aggressor [3]. At the beginning of 1943 Bose moved to Japan, where he was received as an “Indian samurai” [4] and was made leader of the Indian National Army, which Japan had started to form at the beginning of 1942 from Indian prisoners of war and ethnic Indians living in South-East Asia. By this time, however, Japan had lost the strategic initiative and was focusing its attention on other areas, and the only military attack on British India from the Burmese territory in the spring of 1944 ended in a heavy defeat.
There are reports that the netaji (leader), as a national hero was always known in Bengal, believed that the USSR would inevitably clash with Britain in the future and was preparing to come out on Moscow’s side. As early as November 1944 Bose got in contact with the Soviet embassy in Japan. There is information that Major-General Saburo Isoda, head of the Japanese office for liaison with the Indian National Army (Hikari Kikan), agreed that Bose should move to Moscow via Manchuria [5]. It is very likely that Bose was flying, with the consent of the Japanese command, to surrender to Soviet forces, when he was involved in an air crash in Taiwan and died on 18 August 1945 from burns (which remains a matter of doubt in India). After he was cremated his ashes were taken to Tokyo and buried at the Renkoji temple [6]. Today some sociological surveys put Bose in second place in the ranking of Indian politicians after Mahatma Gandhi.
The feats of Soviet citizens during the Second World War are well known in India, and Soviet literature and films about the war period have achieved very wide distribution in the country. The Indian public has always had a very high opinion of what the USSR and the Soviet people did during the war. All this was of rather abstract interest for them, however, because it had not really touched India directly. The Soviet military feats have also gradually faded into the past too: each new generation knows less and less about them. So, 9 May 2015 will not be a significant date in India.
1. The Hindu (Delhi). 04.09.1939.
2. Yurlov, F.N. and Yurlova, E.S., History of India: the twentieth century, Institute of Oriental Studies, Moscow, 2010, p 221.
3. Yurlov, F.N. and Yurlova, E.S., op. cit., pp 249-250.
4. Hayes R., Subhas Chandra Bose in Nazi Germany: Politics, Intelligence and Propaganda 1941-1943, Oxford University Press, 2011.
5. Purcell, H., “Subhas Chandra Bose: The Afterlife of India’s Fascist Leader”, History Today (London). Vol. 60, Issue 11 (November), 2010.
6. The Japanese tend his grave extremely carefully to this day.
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