ON APRIL 28, 1943 two sailors from the German submarine U-180 swam in rough seas off the coast of Zululand to a nearby Japanese submarine I-29, to prepare for the transfer of a mysterious and important Indian freedom fighter, Netaji (revered leader) Subhash Chandra Bose, the greatest son of India.
Bose was a fierce nationalist. He was elected chairman of the Indian National Congress in 1938 and 1939. He demanded the British leave India within six months or face an armed revolt. Bose resented Mahatma Gandhi’s ineffective philosophy of passive resistance and Gandhi had Bose expelled from the party.
Bose, a bitter rival of Nehru, then formed the All-India Forward Bloc Party in 1939. Bose was not a democrat. He propagated an Indian political system based on fascism like that of Adolf Hitler and Mussolini, where the party would rule the masses in an autocratic manner under a charismatic leader like Bose himself.
British intelligence feared Bose more than Gandhi and Nehru. They wanted him killed for co-operating with the Germans and the Japanese to overthrow British rule in India during World War II.
Bose was jailed 11 times by the British, placed under house arrest in Calcutta and in January, 1941 he escaped in disguise to Afghanistan and then to Moscow. He then travelled to Berlin where he submitted a memorandum to the Germans outlining his plans for co-operation between the Axis powers and India.
Hitler had a meeting with Bose on May 29, 1941. But he declined to formally recognise Bose’s government-in-exile. However, the Germans agreed to finance his operations and Bose was given a generous salary of £3200 a year, a villa and a car, plus premises for a Free India Centre. In November 1941, Bose started to broadcast radio propaganda to stir revolt in India.
The German military commander Erwin Rommel had captured thousands of Indian soldiers fighting for the British army in North Africa and Bose got permission to enlist Indian prisoners-of-war inside Germany to form a volunteer military unit, the Free India Legion, or Azad Hind Fauj, under Bose’s personal leadership as Netaji.
Despite Bose having no military experience, his objective was to raise a rebellion among the 2.8 million Indian troops fighting for the British and to invade India. His volunteers were trained and equipped by the German army and they had to swear allegiance to Hitler:
“I swear by God this holy oath that I will obey the leader of the German race and state, Adolf Hitler, as the commander of the German armed forces in the fight for India, whose leader is Subhash Chandra Bose.”
The standard of the legion, known as Azad Hind Fauj, was a tricolour in green, white and saffron of the Indian National Congress, superimposed with a figure of a leaping tiger. The legion members enjoyed the same facilities and amenities as the German soldiers with regard to pay, clothing, food, etc.
Bose applied brilliant propaganda techniques to motivate the Azad Hind Fauj. The form of salute was, “Jai Hind” or “Victory to India”; their slogan was “Dilli Chalo” or “On to India” and their patriotic song, Jana Cana Mona, would later become India’s national anthem.
The Azad Hind Fauj had 3500 trainee soldiers by the end of 1942. But they never fought for Bose. When Hitler’s soldiers retreated from Russia in 1942, it became clear to Bose that Hitler could not provide military assistance to him to invade India. The Japanese embassy in Berlin then offered Bose ample military assistance to liberate India.
As it was impossible for Bose to fly from Germany to Japan at this stage of the war, Hitler offered that a German submarine would transport Bose, not as a civilian, but as “Commander-in-chief of the Indian Liberation Army”, to a secret rendezvous with a Japanese submarine south of Madagascar.
Without informing his troops, Bose slipped away on February 8, 1943. The Azad Hind Fauj were now leaderless and demoralised. After dissent and a mutiny, the German high command dispatched the volunteers under the Waffen SS, first to Holland and then to south-west France, to fortify the coast against an Allied landing.
After D-Day, the Free India Legion was in chaotic retreat through France. All the Indians were eventually repatriated from Italy, France and Germany.
The first attempt by Bose to utilise an Indian volunteer army to liberate India was a failure.
Dark secret
Bose had a dark secret: When he first visited Austria in 1934 for medical treatment, Bose employed Emilie Schenkl as his secretary to type the manuscript of his book, The Indian Struggle 1920-1942. They became lovers and he married her according to Muslim rites in 1937 to avoid Nazi conjugal law.
For political reasons, Bose refused to acknowledge that he was married to a white foreigner. He often lied by claiming that he was a bachelor with no children. However, his baby daughter, Anita, (later Prof Anita Bose-Pfaff), was born four weeks before Bose left Germany for good. He never saw his wife and child again.
German submarine U-180, under the command of Fregattenkapitä* Werner Mussenberg, left Kiel on February 8, 1943. The weather was atrocious with gale-force winds and a temperature of -10°C. It was a hazardous journey of thousands of kilometres crossing enemy territory guarded by enemy warships, bomber aircraft and mines. On the 15th day of their voyage they succeeded in sinking a British tanker, “Corbis”. Bose was gravely ill.
Japanese submarine I-29 was under Commander Juichi Isu, accompanied by captain Mesao Teraoka of the Imperial Royal Navy, as host to the very important Bose.
The transfer of Bose and his assistant, Dr Abid Hassan, was difficult. The Germans maintained strict radio silence and they struggled to detect the Japanese submarine in the turbulent waters off the coast of Zululand. Eventually, two German sailors swam to the Japanese submarine to discuss the difficult transfer of Bose and his assistant.
It was decided to place the two men into a sturdy Japanese rubber dingy, towed by rope behind the U-boat. Bose was terrified of all the sharks. It was a perilous undertaking and they were in the dingy for several hours before the Japanese sailors could haul the two on board on April 28, 1943. The Japanese crew welcomed them with enthusiasm.
The heroic transfer of Bose from one submarine to another submarine in mid-ocean is the stuff of romantic war legends. His undersea journey to Japan took 93 days.
Bose reached Singapore safely where he was welcomed by the Japanese army as the head of the revived Indian National Army or Azad Hind Fauj. The 40000 Indian volunteers from south-east India swore personal allegiance to Bose to liberate India from British rule with Japanese military assistance.
On July 5, 1943 Bose addressed a mass rally, saying: “I can offer you nothing except hunger, thirst, privation, forced marches and deaths. I shall lead you to victory and freedom.” Exactly a year later, his liberation force was massacred inside India.
Bose also formed the legendary female Rani of Jhansi Regiment of 1000 armed young women. He referred to the young women as his children. On October 21, 1943 Bose declared the “provisional government of Azad Hind” to eventually govern a liberated India under his leadership.
He declared himself head of state, prime minister, minister of war and foreign affairs and supreme commander. He printed postage stamps and coins featuring his own image and bank notes pictured Bose shaking hands with Hitler. He also boasted that, “no British bomb has been manufactured which would kill or maim Subhash Bose”.
Bose was a great choreographer and orator. He organised mass meetings, mass rallies and military parades. He wore an imposing military uniform, including forage cap, khaki tunic and jodpurs, plus shiny knee-length black boots.
He demanded the privileges of a head of state, complete with full ceremonial escort of Japanese Jeep equivalents with mounted machine guns, a fleet of cars and motorcycle outriders. He wanted to demonstrate to the world that he was a man of great importance.
Bose forced wealthy Indians to donate funds or risk confiscation of their property. On his birthday in Singapore in 1944, the wealthy responded by donating gold equivalent to Bose’s own weight.
Under Japanese leadership, the Indian national army freed the Andaman and Nicobar islands from the British and they marched and fought for 1000km through Burma and occupied the city of Imphal, inside the border of India.
At last the Azad Hind Fauj, his glorious freedom fighters, singing: “Quadam, Quadam Keep stepping forward, singing songs of happiness as you go” and waving the standard of the leaping tiger of India, had arrived on Indian soil.
Bose expected millions of Indians to join them to drive the British out of India. It never happened. The professional Indian soldiers fighting for the British massacred them. Some 20000 or 50% of the Indian volunteers perished befo re July 9, 1944.
The Japanese lost some 90000 men and withdrew - their hearts were not in the fight for Indian freedom.
Exactly one year after assuming command in Singapore, the grand military plans of Bose failed a second time. He was shattered.
The American bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki led to the unconditional surrender of Japan on August 15, 1945.
Bose then decided to fly to Manchuria to surrender to the Soviet Union. On August 18, 1945 his plane crashed near Taipei and he died in hospital from severe burn wounds at the age of 48.
After the war, the Indian legionnaires were sent back to India where they were all released after serving short jail sentences. And when the British put three senior officers of the Azad Hind Fauj on trial, there were mutinies in the navy, army and air force, plus mass protests in the streets.
It became clear to the British government that the British Indian army could no longer be trusted to defend more than 100 years of British rule in India, and the Indians were granted their independence on August 15,1947.