member Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, who succeeded Amery in 1945, would call the British government’s handling of the Bengal food crisis ‘a dishonourable failure’.
Churchill and Lindemann had further and more notable reasons than Quit India to accuse the Indians of ingratitude, and so to be unimpressed by their cries for help. There was the issue of the extraordinary Indian Subhas Chandra Bose. Born in 1897, Bose was a charismatic Bengali of Hindu stock. He was one of the Indian elite who had passed examinations to qualify for entry into the Indian civil service. He had twice been elected president of Congress. Today he is considered a great Indian hero, celebrated as Kalki, the final manifestation or avatar of the god Vishnu, and of Shivaji. Calcutta’s airport and Bombay’s Bose Marine Drive have been named after him. Any follies of the man have been forgotten in modern India, and he is seen as a prophet of Indian independence.
In his lifetime he was given the honorific title of ‘Netaji’ by Indians, which means ‘great leader’. And such was his aura by the early 1940s that when the Japanese bombed Calcutta in December 1942, many enthusiastic Indians attributed it to Bose.
Bose attempted to collaborate with the Nazis, a fact thatwas appalling to the British and to a great number of Indians, but obviously did not outrage all Indian opinion. Bose had gone to Germany in 1941 and tried, without much success, to create a ‘free Indian government’ in Berlin and to raise an ‘Indian legion’ under the aegis of the Nazis. It was Bose’s hope that the Germans would get beyond the Volga and Stalingrad to reach Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and, through Afghanistan, would enter north-west India. There, it was assumed, the local population would join them in fighting the British. Bose’s fantastic expectations were not approved of by Gandhi, despite his earlier statements about the British and Americans leaving, nor by the other great Congress leader Jawaharlal Nehru. The leader of the Muslim League, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, thought that it was crazy to swap one imperial master for yet another and worse one.
By 1942, the Japanese were hammering on the door. After a private meeting with Hitler, Bose left the German port of Kiel for Japan by u-boat. In Napoleonic style, he left his 3500 Indian soldiers to the German army, in which they became the 950th Regiment. In July 1943, he travelled through Japanese-captured Asia to recruit an Indian National Army from prisoners of war.
Asia proved far richer pickings for Bose than Germany had been. Many Indian POWs, and some Indian nationals throughout the Japanese-conquered areas, were willing to join his army and fight with the Japanese in the invasion of Bengal and Assam from bases in Japanese-conquered Burma. Some of the POWs in Japanese prisons in Singapore were motivated by the general incompetence of the British leadership in the face of Japanese military competence throughout south-eastAsia. The Indian POWs of the Japanese in Burma, thousands having been caught on the wrong side of the Sittang River, did not have the fondest memories of the battles they had lost under British command. Of the British army’s Indian regiments who had been surrounded and captured by Japanese, 35,000 remained loyal, but more than a third of the Indian POWs from Burma agreed to go over to the Japanese under Bose’s command.
Under the Japanese, Bose was Indian head of state and prime minister and war minister of a government in exile, as well as supreme commander of the Indian National Army. Members of his army fought on with the Japanese until the end of the war, despite the Japanese tendency to use the Indians for coolie work. Bose had offered Burmese rice to victims of the famine in Bengal by way of a broadcast through German radio on 14 August 1943. In return, he required British acceptance of his Indian Independence League, and for Britons to give an undertaking that any food he sent
Churchill and Lindemann had further and more notable reasons than Quit India to accuse the Indians of ingratitude, and so to be unimpressed by their cries for help. There was the issue of the extraordinary Indian Subhas Chandra Bose. Born in 1897, Bose was a charismatic Bengali of Hindu stock. He was one of the Indian elite who had passed examinations to qualify for entry into the Indian civil service. He had twice been elected president of Congress. Today he is considered a great Indian hero, celebrated as Kalki, the final manifestation or avatar of the god Vishnu, and of Shivaji. Calcutta’s airport and Bombay’s Bose Marine Drive have been named after him. Any follies of the man have been forgotten in modern India, and he is seen as a prophet of Indian independence.
In his lifetime he was given the honorific title of ‘Netaji’ by Indians, which means ‘great leader’. And such was his aura by the early 1940s that when the Japanese bombed Calcutta in December 1942, many enthusiastic Indians attributed it to Bose.
Bose attempted to collaborate with the Nazis, a fact thatwas appalling to the British and to a great number of Indians, but obviously did not outrage all Indian opinion. Bose had gone to Germany in 1941 and tried, without much success, to create a ‘free Indian government’ in Berlin and to raise an ‘Indian legion’ under the aegis of the Nazis. It was Bose’s hope that the Germans would get beyond the Volga and Stalingrad to reach Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and, through Afghanistan, would enter north-west India. There, it was assumed, the local population would join them in fighting the British. Bose’s fantastic expectations were not approved of by Gandhi, despite his earlier statements about the British and Americans leaving, nor by the other great Congress leader Jawaharlal Nehru. The leader of the Muslim League, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, thought that it was crazy to swap one imperial master for yet another and worse one.
By 1942, the Japanese were hammering on the door. After a private meeting with Hitler, Bose left the German port of Kiel for Japan by u-boat. In Napoleonic style, he left his 3500 Indian soldiers to the German army, in which they became the 950th Regiment. In July 1943, he travelled through Japanese-captured Asia to recruit an Indian National Army from prisoners of war.
Asia proved far richer pickings for Bose than Germany had been. Many Indian POWs, and some Indian nationals throughout the Japanese-conquered areas, were willing to join his army and fight with the Japanese in the invasion of Bengal and Assam from bases in Japanese-conquered Burma. Some of the POWs in Japanese prisons in Singapore were motivated by the general incompetence of the British leadership in the face of Japanese military competence throughout south-eastAsia. The Indian POWs of the Japanese in Burma, thousands having been caught on the wrong side of the Sittang River, did not have the fondest memories of the battles they had lost under British command. Of the British army’s Indian regiments who had been surrounded and captured by Japanese, 35,000 remained loyal, but more than a third of the Indian POWs from Burma agreed to go over to the Japanese under Bose’s command.
Under the Japanese, Bose was Indian head of state and prime minister and war minister of a government in exile, as well as supreme commander of the Indian National Army. Members of his army fought on with the Japanese until the end of the war, despite the Japanese tendency to use the Indians for coolie work. Bose had offered Burmese rice to victims of the famine in Bengal by way of a broadcast through German radio on 14 August 1943. In return, he required British acceptance of his Indian Independence League, and for Britons to give an undertaking that any food he sent
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