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The Dawn of Freedom!

"MY INDIAN friends!" cried the Japanese army officer in his harsh guttural voice. "You are no more slaves. You are now independent and you must immediately start the Indian Independent League. Or else ..." And then a vicious grab at the hilt of the sword that dangled from his belt and a lot more of that fierce, ear-splitting rhetoric.

"Vare, vare, va . . ." roared on the speaker, as the lean impish, bespectacled young man, standing solemnly behind him, doled out in indifferent English, a translation of the momentous speech. "This is the time for the Indian people to spring up and fight for their independent. This is your golden opportunities. For we Japanese, with our mighty sword, are at your back ..."

All over Eastern Asia, from Shanghai down to Singapore and Batavia and from there up to Rangoon and Akyab, and everywhere in the island territories occupied by the Japanese forces, officers of the Japanese field intelligence addressed Indian gatherings and impressed upon them the urgent need to start what they called the "Indian Independent League." Meek crowds of Indians, coming out of their homes and hideouts after the restoration of peace in their districts, were naturally eager to know something of their future under Japanese auspices. Almost everyone attended these meetings, for word went around in advance that absentees would be classed as traitors to India and agents of the British enemy.

The technique was simple but effective. In Malaya, it was Pritam Singh and party who organized these mass meetings. Occasionally, they got one of the local Indian residents to address the rally. Then came resolutions thanking the Japanese forces, pledges of loyalty to the new regime, and expressions of the spontaneous desire of the people to organize the Indian Independent League. The entire procedure was carried out with seemingly widespread enthusiasm and unanimity of views. The result was nobody even ventured to suggest the modification of the name "Indian Independent League" to "Indian Independence League."

What happened in Burma on the trail of the Japanese advance was very much similar to the Malayan campaign. In Burma, however, the Japanese military operations took a longer period and many Indians managed to get out of the country. The initial phase of the organization of the Indian Independence League in Burma was, therefore, largely in the hands of the Japanese intelligence service, who devoted their spare time to this special assignment. The same plan of action was carried out in the other Japanese-occupied territories.

In Thailand, where the Japanese scored a lightning victory, however, the situation was slightly different. With Pritam Singh and his men away on the battlefronts, a rival organization which called itself the Indian National Council was set up in Bangkok immediately after the outbreak of the war.

Head of the Indian National Council in Thailand was one Swami Satyananda Puri, who had come to Bangkok sometime in 1930. The Swamiji was supposed to represent the Greater India Society of Calcutta and his mission was to study Thai language and culture. This he did with remarkable proficiency and published a number of books in the Thai language, including translations of Mahatma Gandhi's works. With the help of some Thai enthusiasts, he organized a Thai-Bharat Cultural Lodge in Bangkok. Very little was known about Satyananda Puri's political background, though it was rumored that he was known in India by a different name.

Satyananda Puri's Indian National Council enjoyed Japanese support and was promptly recognized by the Thai authorities as the official organization in charge of Indian residents and Indian interests in the country. The Swamiji, therefore, claimed that he had stepped in just where Sir Josiah Crosby (British Minister to Thailand) had left off. The Lodge functioned as a sort of unofficial wartime Indian Embassy in Thailand, though only for a few months.

The key figure in this unique movement that caught up so fast in Thailand and Malaya was Major Fujiwara, one of Ozeki's colleagues from the 8th Section, 2nd Bureau, of the Imperial General Staff. Tall and handsome, and with extremely refined manners, Fujiwara was liked by Indian army officers and educated civilians. He looked so different from the type of Japanese officers they saw at the head of the advancing forces. Fujiwara's assignment was to create disaffection and revolt among the British Indian army and to secure the support of Indian civilians in the occupied territories. He had laid his plans months before the war broke out.

Malaya proved a happy hunting ground for the Fujiwara clan. The Indian Army in Malaya was not all that the British politicians and military leaders expected it to be. Senior officers of the Indian Army, steeped in loyalty to Britain, were reliable enough. But there were large numbers of young officers who refused to allow the British Government to do the thinking for them. The rank and file of the Indian Army had numerous grievances against the British and they had serious doubts whether it was worth their while to fight and die for British imperialism. The result was that the British Indian Army in Malaya and elsewhere in Southeast Asia was susceptible to external propaganda. And the Japanese slogans were suitably sugar-coated.

The trend of the war also contributed to the success of the Japanese propaganda. The British were unable to put up a stand anywhere down the Peninsula. It was one long series of tactical retreats and strategic withdrawals. For men who did not have their heart in the fight, the chance of surrendering to an adversary who promised them good treatment, was more attractive than the task of running back several hundred miles or fighting a hazardous rear-guard action. Nevertheless, only about three thousand officers and men of the British Indian Army actually went over to the Japanese side in all that mad rush for life from Jitra to Singapore.

The Indian army in Malaya did not play the role of the super-nationalist warriors. The officers and men were far too smart to be taken in by Japanese propaganda. They acted in the same way as any other band of reasonable men under similar circumstances would have done. They were victims of a military debacle which they knew they were powerless to avert.

Strange were the experiences of Indians in Malaya and elsewhere in Southeast Asia as the Japanese forces fought their way into the former citadels of British power, to haul down the Union Jack and hoist the Hinomaru. Britons, Australians, and Dutchmen were marched off to prison camps, as they were enemy subjects. Hundreds of Chinese disappeared overnight because they believed that Chiang Kai-shek was waging a righteous war against Japanese militarism. But almost every Indian emerged unscathed from that crisis, regardless of his political views, associations, and activities before the flare-up.

At least for some months Indians received what might be called the most-favored-nation treatment in war-torn Southeast Asia. "Indo-ka?" grinned the Japanese soldier to any Indian he met on the street. It was a great favor to be grinned at by the conquering hero and the Indian naturally grinned back at the friendly soldier. Then followed a verbal effusion in Japanese from the soldier, inquiring after the health of Mahatma Gandhi and the progress of India's struggle for national freedom. The Indian, of course, understood nothing except the reference to Ganchi and that naturally made him grin wider still. The Japanese soldier, impressed by his success in winning friends and influencing people, usually concluded the procedure with a laborious attempt to say that Indians and Japanese were friends—"Indo-Nippon tomadachi-ne," pointing to the Indian to signify Indo, to himself touching his nose with the first finger of the right hand to indicate Nippon, and a hearty hugging of the poor fellow to illustrate the meaning of tomadachi (friend).

This code of behavior in fraternizing with Indians was strictly in accordance with the orders issued by the highest command of the Japanese Army. Its observance, however, was often cramped by the exultation of the Japanese soldiers over their military triumph.

Fujiwara's first "bag" in the Malayan military pageant was a young Indian officer named Captain Mohan Singh who joined the Japanese with a small unit of Indian troops somewhere in the vicinity of Jitra near the Thai-Malayan frontier. There were several versions of Mohan Singh's alliance with the Japanese. One report claimed that Fujiwara had established contact with him weeks before the war broke out. Another story was that Fujiwara concluded a deal with Mohan Singh after taking him to the field headquarters as a war prisoner. Mohan Singh's own story was that he never intended to fight for the British and was glad to go over to the Japanese side at the first opportunity that presented itself.

Small of stature for the traditional Sikh warrior, Mohan Singh was a man of sharp features, with a pair of magnetic eyes which blazed with fanatic enthusiasm. He was one of the brightest among the young Indian officers from the Military Academy at Dehra Dun and a favorite among his senior officers. He was well under thirty when he created history in the role of the first Indian officer of the British Army to join hands with Japan and launched out on a career which, he probably hoped, would eventually install him as military dictator of India.

Certain features of the war in Malaya, as well as other military events in Southeast Asia, reacted most favorably for Japan's political campaign. In a few brief months after December, 1941, the Japanese were able to claim that they had exploded the myth of Anglo-American power. They had also dissipated the fear of the white man's superiority in the minds of fellow-Asians under colonial domination. Japan's initial triumph was so sweeping, so remarkable, that it left the world gasping. The performance of the British forces in Malaya and Burma, and that of the Dutch in the East Indies, was so poor and in such striking contrast with the promise they had held out, that a good many people lost all confidence in their former rulers.

Indians, in general, shared this disgust and disappointment. Apart from the feeling that Britain had left them in the lurch, Indians in Southeast Asia were also influenced by the anti-British tension in the home country and the natural dislike of a subject nation for its overlords. There was something fascinating in the thought that, after all, it was a merciful providence that taught Britain a lesson for its reluctance to give a fair deal to India and other subject nations.

Well over 90 per cent of the two million Indians in East Asia found themselves stranded in the various Japanese-occupied territories. About 800,000 Indians got stuck in Malaya, most of them deprived of their jobs and all cut off from their families. In Burma, where the military operations lasted until April, the British Government was able to arrange the evacuation of many people, particularly officials and their families. Thousands tried to get across to India by the land route but a large proportion of them perished on the way. Still, there were nearly one million Indians left behind in Japanese-occupied Burma. From other territories in East Asia, very few Indians were able to get back home after the outbreak of the war.

Indians abroad enjoyed a higher standard of living than in the home country but the stigma of being a subject race followed them everywhere. Indians went abroad mainly as laborers and traders. In neither category, were they treated on a par with other nationalities in any country and, in most places, they faced distinct disabilities. This was particularly the case with educated and professional men. Nevertheless, dire necessity and grim perseverance helped these overseas Indians to combat all sorts of restrictions, fight all sorts of competitions, and to endure all sorts of hardships and privations in an effort to establish themselves in the lands to which they had migrated.

Thus, in many parts of Southeast Asia, particularly Malaya, Burma, and other British colonies, Indian pioneers had done well as laborers and traders. They were later joined by men of other categories—scores of lawyers and doctors, thousands of clerks, technicians, and skilled workers.

Politically, however, Indians were a non-entity in Southeast Asia. In the British colonies and protectorates, they had just the same status as in India under British rule, occasionally with minor variations of an unfavorable nature. In the non-British territories, Indians were merely British subjects. As people who went abroad, essentially to earn a living, Indians in East Asia were not highly active, politically. They followed, with keen interest, the political developments in India but the peculiar circumstances in which they were thrown, and the toils of livelihood and business, did not enable them to live a full life, politically, as in the home country. Among the larger Indian communities, resident in Malaya and Burma, the most vital aspect of Indian "political activity" was the struggle for minor concessions such as higher wages for labor and some sort of representation in public organizations and government services. Nevertheless, political awakening was considerable among Indians in Burma, Malaya, and Thailand, as a result of visits by Jawaharlal Nehru and other Indian nationalist leaders.

This political consciousness among Indians in Southeast Asia, influenced largely by the Indian National Congress and its leaders, precluded any sympathy for Japan, Germany, and other militarist powers. Recognized leaders of the Indian community in Malaya were slow to identify themselves with the Japanese-sponsored Indian Independence movement. They were still undecided when the British commander-in-chief finally signed the unconditional surrender of Singapore and Japan's Prime Minister, General Hideki Tojo, followed up that fateful event with his first message to India and Indians. Tojo said: "It is a golden opportunity for India to rid herself of the ruthless despotism of the British and participate in the construction of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere."

That was on February 16, 1942. In March, when the late Sir Stafford Cripps was in India as an emissary of Prime Minister Winston Churchill to attempt a settlement of the Indian political deadlock, Tojo declared: "If the leaders of India, misled by British cajolery, betray the long-cherished aspirations of the Indian people, I believe there will be no chance for saving India forever ..."

A month later, in April, following the fall of Rangoon and the Japanese occupation of the Andaman and Nicobar islands in the Bay of Bengal, Tojo virtually threatened India with the possibility of a Japanese invasion. He said : "British influence in India is now about to be exterminated. It is farthest from the thought of Japan to consider the Indian people as enemies but Japan deeply sympathizes with them, as they are likely to suffer the ravages of war. If India should remain under the military control of Britain, it would, I am afraid, be unavoidable that, in the course of our subjugation of the British forces there, India will suffer great calamities. . . ."

Tojo's thunder set the world thinking. His warning that India will suffer "great calamities" resounded in the ears of every Indian in Southeast Asia. That set many people to think of the so-called Indian Independent Movement with more than passing interest. And preparations were already in full swing for the first conference of Indian leaders in East Asia to reorganize and consolidate the movement on a popular basis.

It was springtime in Japan. The Land of the Rising Sun basked in the finest spate of sunshine since the Sun Goddess descended on the islands. Tokyo, the great metropolis of Japan's vast empire in the making, was bright and gay as the Mikado's armed forces piled up brilliant victories in the Pacific and Southeast Asia. But all this gaiety somehow eluded the Sanno Hotel, in Akasaka, where the Indian Independence Conference was held.

A military plane, carrying some Japanese officers and four Indian delegates, had crashed somewhere on the shores of Japan on the last lap of the flight from Singapore to Tokyo. There were no survivors. The Indian obituary list comprised Giani Pritam Singh, who had been active on the battlefronts in Malaya; Swami Satyananda Puri of the Indian National Council in Thailand; Captain Akram Khan, formerly of the British Army, who had joined the Japanese in the beginning of the Malayan campaign; and Mr. K. A. Neelakanta Iyer, of Kuala Lumpur, well-known for his services to the Indian community as Honorary Secretary of the Central Indian Association of Malaya. The first function of the Tokyo conference, therefore, was to pay homage to "the brave souls of the patriots who died in the service of their Motherland."

Fujiwara, being a specialist in his chosen profession, managed to send out to Tokyo some of the leading figures among the Indian community in Malaya. Among them were Mr. N. Raghavan, a Penang lawyer, who was President of the Central Indian Association of Malaya; Mr. K. P. Kesava Menon, veteran Indian nationalist and advocate of the Supreme Court in Singapore; and Mr. S. C. Goho, another Singapore lawyer who was President of the Youth League, the Indian Passive Defense Corps and other organizations.

Representing the Indian Army in Malaya, in addition to Captain Mohan Singh, was Lt. Colonel N. S. Gill who had joined the movement after the surrender of Singapore. Gill was a staff officer attached to the British Northern Command in Malaya and had retreated all the way down the Peninsula. His sudden switch-over to the Japanese camp seemed strange. He belonged to the arch-pro-British family of Sir Sunder Singh Majeethia of the Punjab which had provided five ADC's (aides-de-camp) to five successive British Commanders-in-Chief in India.

There were a few others from Hongkong, Shanghai, and other places. Burma and the Philippines were unable to send delegates as the "pacification" campaign in those countries was not yet complete.

The central figure at the Tokyo conference was Rash Behari Bose but whatever was achieved by the conference was due to the tireless efforts of one Mr. A. M. Nair. Nair-san, as he was called by everyone, was one of the most remarkable characters associated with the movement. He was the man behind Rash Behari Bose—and the man whom the Kudan Hills men sought to use as their "front".

As a youth of 20, Nair-san had come to Japan from his home in Trivandrum, in South India, to study civil engineering and graduated from Kyoto University some years later. But, instead of returning home to his engineering pursuits, he took to Japanese politics and became acquainted with veterans of the Black Dragon Society and other elements that advocated drastic action by Japan to crush Anglo-American influence and power on the Chinese mainland and elsewhere in Asia. For a time, Nair-san went about in Japan as a Ronin—the peculiar species of Japanese politician who professed no worldly ambition, who always remained poor and yet capable of raising enormous funds, who never sought office and yet commanded tremendous influence in the country, whose claim was that they never hurt anybody, though they would readily stoop to murder and arson in implementing their political projects.

From the Ronin's role, Nair-san switched over to some sort of undefined "political work"—in China, Manchuria, Mongolia, and Tibet. A man of dynamic energy, he had all sorts of adventures in the course of his unique assignment and had played many parts, ranging from camel dealer to Living Buddha. Prince Teh of Mongolia owed his contact with the Japanese to Nair and it was through him that the Japanese established liaison with many Chinese politicians. Officially, he was designated "Liaison Officer" at the conference headquarters but the delegates found him to be something of a mystery man, with a great deal of unseen power and influence.

The Japanese proposition was that Indians in East Asia should be organized as members of the Indian Independence League, which would devise and direct activities calculated to promote the cause of India's freedom, in collaboration with the Japanese Government and armed forces. There was agreement, in principle, but the men from Malaya, all lawyers, seemed eager to maintain democratic forms and suggested that such a vital decision should be taken at a really representative gathering of Indians in the region and with some specific understanding of the Japanese plans. They also submitted that it was highly important to regulate their activities on the general lines of policy followed by the leaders of Indian nationalism at home. They stressed that whatever they did in Southeast Asia should not conflict with the larger struggle inside India and the general policy of the Congress Party.

The Japanese Army officers, who conferred with the Indian delegates, recognized the difficulties confronting the overseas Indians. Democratic procedure, they agreed, was ideal but it would only lead to a lot of profitless talk and was, in any case, rather impracticable in wartime. Finally, the conference adopted a resolution to organize the Indian Independence League, with a central secretariat and branches all over East Asia. Rash Behari Bose was elected Interim President of the League and a scheme for setting up the organization was drafted. At the insistence of the Malayan delegates, it was resolved that the scheme should be implemented only after it was ratified by a larger conference attended by Indian representatives from all the East Asia territories. And Bangkok was chosen as the venue of the next big conference.

The Indian delegates left Tokyo, just about the time Sir Stafford Cripps returned from India. The Cripps plan was rejected by the Indian National Congress and other political organizations in India. The Cripps Mission did not break the Indian political deadlock but its failure did look like a blessing in disguise. For who knew whether Japan, in its triumphant march, would not have decided to have a crack at the British in India? Who knew whether General Tojo would not have said the word "go" to implement his threat of "great calamities" for India?