Subhas Chandra Bose Came to the Naga Hills in 1944: A Rejoinder to K Puro

It has been sometime now that you, K. Puro continued Subhas Chandra Bose episode denying his presence in the Naga Hills even after many publication indicating a clear historical facts on Bose presence in the Naga Hills during the Battle of Kohima. Now this has made many to question the intention of your episode referring to few books written by the colonial rulers like Arthur Swinson’s (who was a staff captain of the British 5th brigade during the WWII) and wrote a book, “Kohima” focusing on the experience of the British 2nd infantry Division, which you extensively referred to. Also the then DC Pawsey, and as per the many available sources through books and Internet one thing is very clear that he was mostly occupied with rehabilitation post war and never had the time to go through different places even in close proximity let alone Phek district! The point is, if this is what you want to present as your historical facts and evidence (a bias approach) plainly taken from a one sided story from a handpick two three books, would it even be considered a research work in its truest sense?

You see, our society has come of age and is able to judge what was fed to us then by the colonial masters from what was deliberately hidden from our knowledge. Yesterday, it was about Netaji’s sudden disappearance, and today, a controversy has been generated to completely erase the great leader’s footprint from the Naga Hills. Why was/is there so much effort to hide every bit of vital information about Netaji and his movements during the WWII? Every person with a little knowledge of Indian History knows that Bose was an anti-imperialist and therefore, by default, he became an enemy of the British rule in India. His presence in India in 1944 was likely to create serious political consequences for the British raj. The Indian National Congress leaders who saw the British as the lesser evil vis-à-vis the Japanese, also saw Bose as a threat to their policies and ideology. Hence, Netaji phobia continued to be felt even during post India’s independence era. Even today, many of the scholars and historians find it difficult to avoid the pit-fall of subjectivity while attempting to work on Netaji and the Indian National Army. The reason is, we are still over dependent on the records left behind by our past masters. This is often proven to be true when written records of the white-collared officials and oral accounts of the lesser known players come into conflict. In most of the cases, official records of the past are still considered supreme and final when it comes to interpretation of historical events. However, it can never happen that every official record is complete or right in itself because the recorders themselves were/are being fed by human reporters, in most cases, by the ones in the pay roles of the recorders.

The absence of satisfactory colonial records on Netaji’s direct role in the India campaign of 1944 should not be targeted as an Achilles heel to deface him further from history. After all, history is often pieced together by various means using even undocumented facts or accounts of eyewitnesses. What more proof does one need to get convinced on Netaji’s entry into the frontier villages of the Naga Hills when eyewitnesses and participants who had either served him or had met him in person, have already given their side of the story very clearly? Of course, it is not a compulsion for everyone to believe on what one says, but the fact is, oral history is the foundation of many histories. Therefore, just because the opponents of Subhas Bose had, knowingly or unknowingly, failed to record his activities in northeast India during the WWII does not mean that he was not here. We all know that there existed crucial reasons why the activities of Bose and the INA was kept as a top secret during the war, especially by the British officials and the 14th Army. By the way, have we already accepted the British military history as the final history of the WWII in the region? Can’t we create a little space for the views of the living witnesses? There should not be anything wrong in the construction of a piece of history long forgotten or avoided in the past due to political and other reasons. Precisely, here we are talking about the forgotten history of Netaji’s brief association with some of the native Nagas in 1944.

We come across a startling fact in the work of Major General Shahnawaz Khan who had mentioned that on arrival in India, they found out that the people inside the country knew very little about the real worth and activities of the INA. The reason was, they found the propaganda of the British to be too powerful (Shanawaz Khan, p.243). It is alleged that even news about the entry of the INA into northeast India have been suppressed to sideline the importance of the political aspect of the Japanese and the INA campaign of India. In this regard, Professor Bhattachajee observed that there was a possibility of a deliberate attempt on the part of the British press and publicity to bewilder the people of India into believing that the battle of Imphal-Kohima was a Japanese invasion. The British propaganda was reinforced by the efforts of a section of the national leaders (World War II & India: A Fifty Years Perspective, presidential address, Gorakhpur University, 1990, p.13).

In the light of the above, a few evidences about the entry and activities of Netaji and his INA in northeast India have been listed below:
1. Right in the beginning, in early March 1944, groups of officers and men of the Special Service Group (Bahadur Group) and men of the Azad Hind Dal went up to the Kohima sector, being attached to the crack Japanese Manchurian Division (Major General A.C. Chatterji, India’s Struggle for Freedom, Chatterjee & Co., Ltd., Calcutta, 1947, p.180).

Writing of his memoir on 3rd April 1944, Lieut. M.G. Mulkar wrote, “We were passing through Naga Hills. Here and there we found a peculiar type of cultivation, i.e., terrace cultivation on the sides of hills. Naga village is on the top of a hill.” He further wrote on 7th April, “Kohima town was besieged by us. The fighting is severe and on it

2. Depends our future success (Lieut. M.G. Mulkar, INA Soldier’s Dairy, pp.128-132). Khumbo Angami, recollecting the event at Kohima said that he encountered several Indians in military dress who were officers of INA where they showed the people the Indian national flag and some badges (Fergal keane, Road of Bones, 2010, p.237).

3. Initially, fighting on Imphal- Kohima sector was mainly done by the Japanese with the INA playing the auxiliary role. But when the Japanese were pressed hard, they asked for the services of the Subhas Brigade (N.G Jog, In Freedom Quest, New Delhi, 1969,p.253). Apparently, this could be the reason why no specific mention of INA independently attacking a sector in Kohima was not highlighted in many accounts. The INA’s own strategy was to avoid set-piece battles for which it lacked arms and armament as well as man-power. The general operation plan envisaged the INA units pushing to Kohima and Imphal with Japanese forces and as the latter fell, the INA was to cross the Brahmaputra and enter Bengal. At Phek, a villager said, “Indian officers led the Japanese into our village and when they spoke to our elders, they did not sound threatening” (Robert Laymen, End of Empire, 2014, p.79). Sipohu Venuh of the same village said, “I saw men of Black race (INA) who came with the Japanese (Laymen, p.112).

4. The British christened the INA as Jiff (Japanese Inspired Fifth Columnists or Japanese Indian fighting force) as a measure of psychological warfare to defang the nationalist image of Bose Army (Fergal keane, Road of Bones, 2010 p.87). This is because the Japanese troops were frequently accompanied by the detachment of INA who prowled and howled using loudhailer in English and Urdu to seduce the Indians in British Army to forego their allegiance (Lucas Phillips, Springboard to Victory, 1966, p.41). By the end of May when regular INA troops arrived at Kohima, the military position of the Japanese forces in this area had changed for the worse (Esther Kathar, Naga Response to INA movement, 1991, p.47). INA men at Kohima held their post most gallantly though and beat back attack after attack (Majumdar, op.cit., p.598).

5. Before withdrawal, the commander of the INA Brigade was occupying approximately 200 sq. Miles of Indian Territory that was administered by the Azad Hind Dal. The commander was reluctant to withdraw from those liberated area and in a conference of the local Naga chiefs, he explain the whole situation (Majumdar, ibid., p.601), wherein the Nagas implored them not to go back (Shah Nawaz Khan, p.155). But the Japanese troops withdrew to Tamu and the INA much against its will, had to withdraw to the same place. The INA suffered the same fate as the Japanese at Kohima and there were heavy casualties on the retreat where troops complained bitterly of being used as porters by the Japanese (keane, op.cit., p.230).

6. According to John W. Gerber, The Nation, April 22, 1944, Bose had proclaimed in November 1943 that he would march into Bengal and Assam. On April 17, Times magazine noted the danger that Bose posed to the Allied cause. Bose himself reported at this time that things were going “very well at the frontier” and that the spirit was high, as he described a few lines to Brahmachari Kailasam of the Ramakrishna Mission in Singapore on April 16, 1944, “before crossing the frontier.” (Sugata Bose, His Majesty’s Opponent, Penguin Books, India, 2011, pp.274-275).

7. On May 22, 1944, Berlin Radio had announced about an interview a war correspondent had with Mr. Bose at the Indo-Burma Front (Place not mentioned). On June 21, 1944, Berlin Radio announced: “ S.C. Bose, President of the Provisional Government of India, is at present in India with his army… (Place not mentioned).” (Arun, Testament of Subhas Bose, Raj Kamal Publications, Delhi, 1946, p.159).

8. By mid-May (1944), the Subhas Brigade had hoisted the Indian flag on the Mountain tops around Kohima. The Nagas, the major tribal community around Kohima, Shah Nawaz reported, were helpful to the INA troops (Sugata Bose, His Majesty’s Opponent, Penguin Books, India, 2011, p.276, also refer: History of the Freedom Movement in India by R.C. Majumdar, Vol.3, Firma KLM Private Ltd., Calcutta, 1996, p.598).

9. It has been stated on Netaji Week, July 4, 1944, that Subhas Babu arrived from the front on the 2nd (July). He was supposed to have toured the “whole front for the last two months and had personally inspired the soldiers of the Fauj.” (An extract from the Diary of a Rebel Daughter, quoted in Shanawaz Khan’s, p.132) N.B: Subhas Bose addressed the function.

10. On August 5, 1944, Tokyo Radio had announced that Netaji Bose addressed a Press Conference held at the Indian National Army Headquarters in India (Place not mentioned). Besides other things, Bose is said to have stated: “We have successfully crossed the border of our Motherland, and we have routed the enemy on several fronts in India.” (Arun, p.161)

11. It is also equally important to mention here that few eyewitnesses who had seen Netaji in the year of the war are still alive to clear any doubts regarding the current unexpected development on this subject matter.

It is not a purpose here to describe the battle of Kohima. But an undeniable fact is, when the news of the advancing Japanese and the INA reached the British soldiers in their outposts in the Naga villages, they packed up and left. Almost all the villages on the eastern frontier, some in the confine of Kohima, remained undefended throughout the war. It was under such situation that the villagers from several villages came into close association with the Japanese and the INA. The village of Ruzazho was one of them, which got the privilege to receive Subhas Chandra Bose and the INA, including a sizable number of Japanese soldiers from the 31st Division. Even though Netaji did not fly into our region on flying machine, the private plane gifted to him by Japan must have been used by him elsewhere to carry out his work. The INA depended on the Japanese Army supplies and transport systems during the war. Above all, Bose couldn’t be loitering around in Burma all throughout the war because his destiny was India and his mission was for the liberation of his Mother country from foreign rule.

It is also pertinent to mention that vast treasure of Japanese memoirs remains locked out of view of international scholars because they have not been translated into English and at the same times reluctance of Japanese themselves to recount the event until recently where they seems to be opening up. For this reason, most sources of information fed to us has been Anglo-American bearing mostly one side story written by victors in their own light. In the midst of whom the battle took place, places are awash with stories which still lies embedded in the local narrative forming and important piece of oral history. Hence to conclude the victors history as THE history would be like claiming a rupee coin has only a number printed on it and refusing to admit that there is also another side with a lions head or some an Indian map! However as you keep on with your so called history arrogantly demanding us for proof! The Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Memorial Development Society Nagaland is giving you a short glimpse again to enlighten you that Netaji and INA did come to Naga Hills in 1944. After all, History cannot be treated as political Science or some mere politics, which you seem to be good at being a political science graduate.

Or if you are still not yet convinced and still think that this is no history, we would like to know what to you is Historical fact? Historical proof? Distorting history? Or with what kind of scientific research methodology and levels of objectivity you applied to arrived to your conclusion of Bose and INA’s absence in the Naga Hills in 1944? As you would accuse others of not using those in their research work!

Dupoyi Nyekha
General Secretary
NSCB Memorial Development
Society Nagaland