The book is a fine compendium of dates, data and details. One also realises the change as Subhas Bose emerged on stage
Cover page of The Forgotten Indian Prisoners of World War II
If rated just by the depth of research and assimilation of information, Gautam Hazarikas The Forgotten Indian Prisoners of World War II will surely feature near the top of any list of non-fiction Indian books. A historical narrative is difficult to create, and the author has done this with aplomb.
The general picture of the Indian Independence League (IIL) and the resultant Indian National Army (INA), as held by post-Independence Indians, has been a romantic one, laced with patriotic songs and generative rhetoric. This book deconstructs the lacy, frilly narratives and tells detailed stories of incidents that, as the author describes, spelt surrender, loyalty, betrayal and hell, complete with spies, double and triple-cross operatives, hope, desperation and massacres.
Captain Mohan Singh helped coalesce and then led the first INA at the boots level. He negotiated with the Japanese and Major Fujiwara, he lured Indian Army soldiers to defect from British order (the Indian Army), if not with love, then with brute force and beatings in concentration camps. This would probably be a revelation to all followers of INA history. Here was a soldier, trying his best to create an army from prisoners of war and defectors, telling them that the Japanese would help where the British did not; telling them that Japanese were the friends and the British werent.
That seemed to have presented two problems. The first was that after a couple of centuries of British rule, it was almost natural for Indians to have sworn loyalty to them, however wild that may seem today. And the second was that the new INA entrants had to swear loyalty to Singh and not to the idea of a free India: it was an image dilemma.
When Singh realised that he was getting nowhere, and that Rashbehari Bose, who had conceptualised the IIL and the idea of INA, wasnt on his page, he ordered the dissolution of the INA.
The author has, perhaps, been somewhat less than charitable to Rashbehari Bose. True that the takeover of the INA by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose swept the hundreds of thousands of Indians living abroad with a blast of imagination so strong that women came forward with even their mangalsutras to try and fund part of Netajis Azad Hind Fauj and his Provisional Government of Free India (PGFI). But credit remains due to Rashbehari Bose for conceiving the idea of an armed struggle from beyond the borders of a nation in chains. If there is at all a large chapter dealing with the INA and a government in exile, then the first word of that was written by the likes of Rashbehari Bose.
Politics can make even the unreal look possible. The INA was poorly armed, with the Japanese agreeing to part with rusty rifles and some armament which was too few for the growing ranks. However, as the author shows, the morale of the people in the files grew beyond armaments. Leadership is a complex task involving the building of an image far larger than life, and of propagating sharp rays of hope in the dark. Whatever the Azad Hind Fauj achieved in its advances and in its cohesion was the result of the immense trust that the people, many civilians, placed in the larger-than-life aura of Netaji.
The book is a fine compendium of dates, data and details. One also realises the change as Subhas Bose emerged on stage. The fine print was about the souls laid down, of their untold stories. They remained casualties, not of a war, but of an idea, the soul of which could not gain a body. Then there were those who returned as well as those gone missing without a trace.
The book sees the author resurrect these heroes. For that, one salutes him.
The Forgotten Indian Prisoners of World War II
By Gautam Hazarika
Penguin Random House India
p. 360; Rs 799
( Source : Asian Age )
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