The trial of the three INA officers will be of historical importance. . . . It touches the sentiments of the whole nation.
Jawaharlal Nehru, November 1945Footnote 1The hypnotism of the Indian National Army has cast a spell on us. Netaji's name is one to conjure with. His patriotism is second to none. . . . He aimed high but failed.
Mohandas Gandhi, February 1946Footnote 2Introduction
In September 1945 the All-India Congress Committee (AICC) announced with unsurprising bravado that the Indian National Congress and, indeed, all of India, was concerned that the ‘large numbers of officers and men and women’ of the Indian National Army (INA) were ‘in various Indian and foreign prisons awaiting trial’. At that time, the AICC ruled that it would be a ‘tragedy’ if these members of the INA ‘were punished for the offence of having laboured, however mistakenly, for the freedom of India’.Footnote 3 With this resolution, the leaders of the Indian National Congress appropriated the INA and its immediate legacy, contrary to two decades of non-violent struggle and regardless of the Congress leadership's well-publicized and irreconcilable ideological feud with the INA's Netaji, Subhas Chandra Bose.Footnote 4
The Congress's acceptance of the INA legacy during the chaotic denouement of the Raj is analysed below. Why did the Congress Working Committee (CWC)Footnote 5 with its doctrine of non-violent resistance and, particularly, Jawaharlal Nehru,Footnote 6 support the INA, a militant organization using violent and foreign-assisted methods aimed at overthrowing the Raj? Although the Congress high command assimilated the INA legacy, the principles guiding the operation of the INA and Bose's Provisional Government of Free IndiaFootnote 7 were rejected or ignored by Congress elites in the months leading up to liberation.Footnote 8 Why was it necessary for the Congress to act in this manner, abandoning its principles for a short span, only to resurrect them after the conviction of the officers in the Red Fort trialsFootnote 9 and in the replacement of British imperialism with Congress raj? This last issue is particularly relevant as the INA men were all but abandoned by the independent Indian government and were banned from the Indian Army.Footnote 10
This paper considers the extent to which Bose and the INA contributed to India's liberation from British imperialism. It is hypothesized that Congress leaders defended INA prisoners-of-war to further the Congress's post-war political aims and that there were two immediate priorities behind the sudden inclusion of the INA as one of the Congress's strategic interests: the Congress's control of the Indian army; and the more tangible generation of unprecedented popular electoral support by appropriating an all-India issue with incontrovertible sentimental appeal. This apparent acceptance of violent nationalism was designed to galvanize public opinion at the moment when the Indian electorate was preparing to go to the polls for the crucial post-war elections to provincial and central legislatures. Given the trends of the tripartite negotiations between the Congress, the Muslim League and the British, these elections would directly form the basis for a constituent assembly that would be charged with framing a constitution for an independent India. To further the vision of the Congress elite for a centralized, secular state, it was imperative for the Congress to dominate the constituent assembly. Consequently, the Congress's electoral success was crucial for the survival of a unified India.
Existing historical works covering the events of the inter-war and immediate post-war period have tended to focus on differing elements of the nationalist movement. While some have concentrated on the leadership's idealistic nationalist aims in the Congress's incremental, constitutional acquisition of power, others have maintained that Congress leaders were beholden to their personal quests for power and individual enhancement. The reality most likely resides at some median. Those who examine the constitutional gains of the Congress look for specific moments when Indian independence, although not officially proclaimed, was irrevocable and they typically point to British offers of constitutional advances as the benchmarks of this process.Footnote 11 Similarly, scholars of the British Empire have tended to place much emphasis on gradual, governmental participation. Constitutional reforms and the Congress's participation in a so-called national government were little more than moderate outcomes based on the extreme demands of Indian nationalists. Independence required the election of a Labour government in Britain, and a determined move by Attlee's cabinet to push Indians towards self-government and high-level negotiations. This immediate post-war urge to depart India was qualified and, ultimately, designed not to interfere with political developments in the sub-continent.Footnote 12 Some historical interpretations label the Congress leadership as obsequious to the interests of the Indian bourgeoisie while maintaining that the real overthrow of the Raj lay in the power and potential of labour and peasant unrest. Somewhat similarly, the Subaltern School emphasizes that it was not the Congress leaders who guided national liberation, but rather the politically insignificant multitudes that made up the movement who were the relevant force behind the push towards independence. Whilst these historians provide invaluable details about previously unstudied elements of Indian nationalism, they largely lack the telescopic perspective to incorporate their works into a more inclusive, India-wide movement.
Biographers of the most significant Congress figures during the twilight of the British Empire in India namely, Gandhi, Bose, Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel,Footnote 13 are often sympathetic to their charges. Hagiographies are especially the case with Bose, whose legendary status has inflated his life histories. To a lesser degree, comparable trends can be observed in the personal histories of the other major leaders who were in the forefront of their country's liberation from British rule. In a similar vein, narrative works depicting the INA immediately after the war portray a romanticized liberation army that helped free India from its bondage. While later studies of the INA take a more distanced approach, they too tend towards embroidered portrayals, particularly when connecting the INA with the Congress and the nationalist movement. The best of these histories attribute the importance of the INA to its erosion of the loyalty of British Indian Army troops to their foreign commanders, as does the Bose biographer, Leonard Gordon.Footnote 14 However, this appears to be only a partial solution to the broader significance of the INA to the independence movement. One scholar tentatively touches upon the Congress's appropriation of the INA cause and the politicization of the British Indian Army. He then emphasizes the issue of loyalty within the British Indian Army.Footnote 15 Other historians link the INA to the February 1946 Bombay Naval Mutiny.Footnote 16 Such conclusions are described as the Congress's right-wing leaders exerting their control over the more radical impulses of national liberation.Footnote 17 Moreover, this interpretation of events artificially links the rioting in Calcutta with the mutiny in Bombay; separated by India's general elections, these two public outbursts illustrate the tensions and passions generated in particular by the campaigns of the Congress and the Muslim League and the vitriol comprising most public pronouncements.Footnote 18 Emphasis by historians on the INA's effects on the army's loyalty compartmentalizes the Congress's zealous support for the misguided patriots of the INA. The ultimate impact of the INA on the nationalist movement lay beyond its inspiration for violent outbreaks in Calcutta and Bombay that were condemned by Congress leaders.
Sumit Sarkar emphasizes the psychological effects of the INA, essentially highlighting the ‘impact on the patriotic imagination of an actual army fighting, however ineffectively, for the country's liberation’.Footnote 19 He claims that Britain's ‘decisive shift’ with regard to Indian independence ‘came about under mass pressure’ emerging from the Red Fort Trial.Footnote 20 Despite this, Sarkar identifies the ‘greatest threat of all’ to have been the Naval Mutiny and links this episode to the INA trials, the ‘national political slogans’ emphasizing the release of INA men and the ‘post-war popular upsurge in India’. He points out that the naval ratings had become inspired by the INA image of extreme non-cooperation and that the leaders of the mutiny employed the INA greeting of ‘Jai Hind!’ in their messages to the mutineers.Footnote 21 Sadly, Sarkar does not incorporate the popular upsurge in support of the INA into the crucial winter 1945–1946 election campaign.
Ayesha Jalal magnificently illuminates the problems confronted by Mohammed Ali Jinnah and the Muslim League high command; particularly meaningful are her descriptions of provincial manoeuvrings immediately after the war and the foibles of the League at both the all-India and provincial levels. Congress elites perceived the League as the greatest threat to what Jalal calls the ‘Congress's commitment to an unitary centre'.Footnote 22 Moreover, the League intended to challenge Congress domination by campaigning on a platform that incorporated separatism and the battle-cry of Pakistan and a ‘vague Islamic millennialism’.Footnote 23 As the results of the 1945–1946 elections demonstrated,Footnote 24 Pakistan became ‘an attractive slogan’ which aroused the passions of India's Muslim electorate.Footnote 25 Consequently, the Congress was obliged to counter such emotive messages by generating its own patriotic empathies.
In contradistinction to extant histories of the twilight of the Raj, this paper argues that the contributions of Bose and the INA to the Indian independence movement reside in the Congress's appropriation of the INA's post-war legacy, contrary to two decades of non-violent resistance. Leonard Gordon described this significance when he observed that Gandhi and Nehru ‘brought’ the INA and Bose ‘back into the mainstream of Indian nationalism’ and were ‘able to yoke the powerful emotions of support for the INA to the Congress bullock cart’.Footnote 26 Similarly, Mihir Bose relates that in the circumstances of post-war India, ‘the Congress soon realized the potential of the fervour’ in support of the INA and suggests that, by supporting the cause of the INA, the Congress sought to gain political capital against the Muslim League.Footnote 27 On the eve of the 1945–1946 general elections, Nehru emphasized that the INA men had become ‘the symbols of India fighting for her freedom’ and ‘evoked an astonishing enthusiasm’.Footnote 28
Yet the Congress's support of the INA was excessively qualified. Patel observed that the Congress's recognition of the ‘sacrifice and bravery’ of the INA did not equate with the Congress's acceptance of ‘the stand that their leader took’. In fact, the Congress ‘never accepted that position’ and there was ‘no reason to do so in the future’. Instead, Patel argued that ‘for the time being’ the Congress should ‘be a little more tolerant for their mistaken belief’ that their actions were justified.Footnote 29 The question then becomes: why did the CWC abandon decades of established nationalist strategy to support the INA? Even after the Red Fort Trial was over, Nehru maintained that it was ‘dangerous’ to look to foreign nations for aid to gain India's freedom and that it was ‘futile’ to expect other nations to assist Indian nationalism out of ‘altruistic motives’.Footnote 30 So why, then, did Nehru support a cause contrary to his personal beliefs?
Seeking to address these ambiguities, this paper will examine the INA and British portrayals of this liberation army, the Indian government's rationale for INA trials, and the general proceedings of the first Red Fort Trial.Footnote 31 The INA and the Red Fort Trial themselves symbolized elements of the nationalist struggle. Chalo Delhi, ‘On to Delhi’ was one of the INA's slogans, a goal that was ironically fulfilled in the first Red Fort Trial by the court-martial of three high-ranking INA officers (Shah Nawaz Khan, Prem K. Sahgal and G.S. Dhillon).Footnote 32 The INA was supposed to have marched to Delhi, thereby liberating India. Instead its surviving leadership arrived at their hallowed destination as British prisoners. The trial took on an all-India versus Britain atmosphere with its secular composition of defendants—a Hindu, a Muslim and a Sikh—reemphasizing the rumoured non-communal attitude of the INA. Furthermore, the trial was held in the Red Fort, the seat of the former Mughal emperors, which elicited romantic ruminations of a pre-Raj period in Indian history. The defence attorneys, including members of the Working Committee and other prominent Indian lawyers, used historical precedents based on international recognition of rebellions and independence movements to legitimize the INA, which indirectly authenticated the Congress leadership's on-going struggle against the Raj.
The discussion of the INA and the Red Fort Trial is followed by a consideration of the Congress's long-standing push for national control of the Indian army and denotes continuities to the Congress's wartime and post-war policies. In the INA, Congress elites were presented with a politicized, wholly Indianised fighting force. The INA conveniently became the manifestation of a so-called national army. This force did not take its marching orders from the Indian Government and had, after all, attempted to liberate India in 1944. Furthermore, by backing the INA's resistance to the Raj, nationalist messages began to penetrate the previously compartmentalized armed forces. Consequently, as so many historians have observed, Congress support for the INA helped erode the loyalty of the British Indian Army—maintaining the army's loyalty was, of course, one of the primary concerns of British and Indian government officials.
The passions aroused by the romanticism of the INA proved an opportune electioneering weapon for Congress leaders in a desperate struggle to counter the emotional responses to the Muslim League's campaign message. The League's demand for Pakistan and its cries of ‘Islam in danger’ elicited an emotional outpouring of support among Muslim constituencies fearing that a Congress-dominated Centre meant a Hindu raj.Footnote 33 It is no surprise, then, that Congress leaders portrayed the INA as a solution to the communal problem—no religious differences were supposed to have existed in Bose's army. The popular outpouring of support for the INA was an equally sentimental reaction that, if carefully manipulated by Congress elites, might prove to be the secular, national counterweight to the League's separatism. Consequently, as the Congress prepared for the general elections scheduled for the winter of 1945–1946, Congress elites praised the steadfast patriotism of the INA. Unsurprisingly, as the election results became known in early 1946, Congress leaders’ support for the INA became less strident.
The Congress sought to absorb the INA and so merged it with the upheavals of the Quit India movement along with the electioneering message that the Congress and the INA were equally patriotic. Although the INA tried to liberate India, the Congress had not remained idle, and the Quit India movement was its attempt to secure India's freedom. Congress leaders depicted both Quit India and the INA as patriotic struggles for Indian liberation—both being explicitly hostile to British imperialism. This depiction enabled the Congress to threaten open rebellion if the British did not make a significant constitutional move towards giving India its independence. Consequently, Jawaharlal Nehru and other Congress elites mingled their support for the INA with public statements that warned of dire consequences if the British continued to ignore the Congress's demands. In this manner, Congress elites threatened the British with radicalized resistance and used the twin patriotic messages of the INA and the so-called ‘Struggle of 1942’, Congress leaders’ description of the Quit India movement, to generate the popular support needed for mass civil disobedience.
Gandhi, NehruFootnote 34 and PatelFootnote 35 were the leading actors in this drama. Subsequently, their published private papers and speeches reveal their individual perspectives. British post-war attitudes are secured from published documents. Other scholarly works have been utilized to provide general details. This paper's examination of the events of this period will help explain the Congress's apparent post-war opportunism, and will better situate the INA among the contributors to Indian independence.
The INA and the Red Fort Trial
Comprising British Indian Army prisoners-of-war, the first INAFootnote 36 was created by the Japanese after their capture of Singapore in February 1942. Efforts were made by the INA leaders to eliminate factors such as caste and creed that could lead to disunity in the army. At the same time, the Indian Independence League (IIL), the political organization of expatriate Indians in Thailand, acquired broad-based support for the expatriate nationalist movement among émigré Indians. The primary objectives of the IIL were to protect Indian communities from the depredations of war and to help Indian prisoners-of-war.Footnote 37 It quickly became evident to IIL members that bold leadership was necessary if the INA was to be successful in its mission to liberate India. Consequently, the IIL repeatedly requested Japanese assistance in bringing Subhas Chandra Bose from Germany to East Asia and appealed to the Japanese government to ‘use its good offices to obtain the necessary permission and conveniences’ from the German government to enable Bose to reach Southeast Asia.Footnote 38
Bose's arrival in Southeast Asia, in June 1943, galvanized the INA and expatriate Indians throughout the region. Bose immediately proceeded to reorganize the INA to prepare it to launch an attack against the British in India. On 21 October that same year, he proclaimed the Provisional Government of Free India that was recognized by Japan two days later.Footnote 39 Bose mobilized the financial and manpower resources of the Indian expatriate communities in Southeast Asia and vowed that the INA, as an ‘Army of Liberation’, would free India.Footnote 40
Bose gave the INA its slogan, Chalo Dilli, which meant that the army's mission, the march into Delhi, ‘would not be complete until the tricolour flag flew over the Vice-regal Palace and they stood at the gates of the Red Fort’.Footnote 41Chalo Dilli began in early 1944 with the Indian National Army's participation in the Imphal campaign, a Japanese operation in north-eastern India. This invasion of India failed. British forces inexorably forced the Japanese Army and the INA out of India and through Burma. Bose attempted to escape to the Soviet Union in an overloaded Japanese bomber prior to the final collapse of Japanese forces in Southeast Asia, but the plane crashed and Bose was killed on 19 August, 1945. Viceroy Wavell found this news to be ‘a great relief’ because addressing Bose's actions ‘would have presented a most difficult problem’ for the Indian Government.Footnote 42
The Raj's concern with Bose's wartime activities was reflected in his radio broadcasts being cast by government-backed media in a negative light, portraying him variously as a ‘Fascist stooge’, as a ‘henchman of the Axis powers’ and as a ‘quisling’ who had ‘forsaken his country’.Footnote 43 Wartime statements included the accusation that Bose had abandoned his nationalism, joined the Japanese and planned to replace British with Japanese imperialism.Footnote 44 Propaganda against the INA was so complete during the war that Indians knew practically nothing about this force; few in India heard Bose, or comprehended his efforts in Southeast Asia, due to the effective government-sponsored blackout of his transmissions. Even after the war, the Indian Government continued to believe that Bose was a Japanese puppet and that the purpose of the 1944 Imphal campaign was ‘to exercise political influence over India’ and to install Bose as ‘the head of a puppet government in conquered Indian territory’.Footnote 45
The potential impact of the INA was reflected in the treatment of INA prisoners by British officials. INA members were placed into one of three classifications: whites—those who claimed they had been brow-beaten into joining the army; greys—those who joined of their own volition, but did not seem to retain any ardent nationalism; and blacks—the true believers in the INA's cause and in an independent India.Footnote 46 The British were determined to make an example of the INA men because of the ‘obvious threat to the reliability’ of the British Indian Army, but realized very early on that strict punishment of INA men would be ‘wounding to the majority of Indian opinion’.Footnote 47
British authorities desired to ‘steer a middle course’ by making examples of the INA's leaders and were determined to proceed cautiously because nationalist leaders, Gandhi and Nehru ‘in particular’, had taken a ‘keen interest in this matter’ of the INA.Footnote 48 Despite his public support for the INA, Nehru remained unbending in his opinion on one issue—that the path taken by Bose was wrong.Footnote 49 Gandhi also remained opposed to Bose's methods, but was willing to accept that he was mistaken in his evaluation of Bose's dedication to Indian nationalism and unity.Footnote 50
The Indian Government decided to make an example of three prominent officers in the INA, who would be charged with both treason and committing some act of brutality against their fellow Indian soldiers. The Raj anticipated that a court-martial of INA leaders would satisfy disciplinary concerns within the British Indian Army and would prove to Indians that the INA was truly a Japanese puppet and not the liberation army portrayed by Congress leaders. Furthermore, the Red Fort Trial was intended to set a precedent that would not need to be reiterated in subsequent trials. As early as 30 November, 1945Footnote 51 the Indian Government decided that ‘no future trials will take place except where there are allegations of gross brutality against the accused’. In this way, the Viceroy hoped to give a ‘fair trial’ to the three accused officers while concurrently showing that the Indian Government had ‘not entirely forgotten’ Indian prisoners of war ‘who were loyal to their allegiance’ and who ‘refused to join the enemy’.Footnote 52
The government announced that a Muslim, Shah Nawaz Khan, a Hindu, Prem K. Sahgal, and a Sikh, G. S. Dhillon, would be tried by court-martialFootnote 53 for the crime of ‘waging war against His Majesty the King Emperor of India’. Additionally, Dhillon was charged with ‘the offence of committing murder’ and the others with abetment of murder.Footnote 54 The CWC appointed an INA Defence Committee comprising leaders from a cross-section of nationalist opinion, and charged it with taking ‘all necessary steps for the defence of the officers and men and women of the INA’.Footnote 55 The prosecution intended to prove that, by waging war against the king, the three men violated Section 41 of the India Army Act which provided that members of the British Indian Army who committed ‘any civil offence shall be deemed guilty of an offence against military law’.Footnote 56 By violating the Act, the men could be tried by court-martial, with the offence in question being treason. The prosecution went to great lengths to demonstrate that, throughout the war, the trio of officers had voluntarily committed acts of treason through their participation in the INA and as members of Bose's Provisional Government.
The First Red Fort Trial opened on November 22, 1945. Using the prosecution witnesses, as well as several of their own, the Defence Committee, led by Bhulabhai J. Desai—one of the twelve CWC members who had resigned after Bose's 1939 re-electionFootnote 57— countered government charges with the argument that the INA and the Provisional Government were legitimate military and government entities. These organizations had been legally recognized by foreign powers and therefore were acting under the auspices of an internationally recognized government. Statements from the accused reinforced this perspective.Footnote 58 Admitting that these men had waged war against the king and had violated the Indian Penal Code,Footnote 59 the Defence Committee maintained that these regulations no longer applied to the accused as they were operating under a legally recognized government. The prosecution's argument, Desai claimed, held that a ‘subject race will remain in perpetuity a subject race’ and could ‘never make a legitimate war’ aimed at attaining its own liberation.Footnote 60 Desai drew on precedents in international law, noting that ‘it is permissible for those who are subject to a foreign authority to organize themselves’. Desai argued that Bose had done exactly this and, being the military arm of a legally recognized government-in-exile, the INA and its members were immune from prosecution ‘for all acts done in due prosecution of war on a civilized basis’.Footnote 61 The defence also cited a precedent in the British government's recognition of the belligerent status of the Southern States during the American Civil War, noting that such belligerent status made the members of an organized rebellion immune from prosecution.Footnote 62 Desai pointed out to the court-martial that during the last war, émigré governments had been recognized by the British, even though their countries had been entirely overrun by the Germans and the seats of these governments were in London. Desai demonstrated that each of these governments-in-exile, without possessing ‘an inch of territory which they could call their own’, maintained legitimate armies who had been granted the rights of belligerents by all the warring powers.Footnote 63
The trial ended on 3 January, 1946. Despite the efforts of the defence committee, the three accused officers were convicted of waging war against His Majesty's Government. While Sahgal and Dhillon were acquitted of the additional charges against them, Shah Nawaz Khan was found guilty of abetment of murder.Footnote 64 For being guilty of waging war, the court-martial had the option of sentencing the men to transportation for life or execution, which, according to British Indian Army military code, were the only two allowable forms of punishment for waging war against His Majesty's Government.Footnote 65 The three men were sentenced to transportation for life, discharged from the army and forfeited their arrears of pay and allowances.Footnote 66 The Commander-in-Chief of the British Indian Army, Sir Claude Auchinleck, reduced the sentence of transportation and, due to ‘prevailing circumstances’ also remitted the sentence against Shah Nawaz Khan for abetment of murder.Footnote 67 The three men were set free to great rejoicing throughout India.
National control of the army
Congress support for the INA demonstrated a consistency to nationalist policy, specifically national control of India's defence forces. Responding to the heightened tensions in Europe through the summer of 1939, the Congress announced its determination ‘to oppose all attempts to impose a war on India’. The CWC warned that the Congress would ‘prevent the exploitation of Indian resources for imperialist ends’. Also at that time, the CWC began formulating possible policies for India's defence.Footnote 68 On 3 September, 1939 Viceroy Linlithgow announced that India had joined the Allies in their war against Nazi Germany. Despite the Congress's warnings, Linlithgow simply assumed that India would loyally contribute to the war effort ‘on the side of human freedom as against the rule of force’.Footnote 69
In the first week of July 1940, the Working Committee merged the issue of national defence with a demand for the establishment of a truly national government. The Congress executive maintained that until the reigns of governance were transferred to the representatives of Indian political opinion, ‘all efforts at organizing the material and moral resources of the country for Defence cannot in any way be voluntary’ and therefore would remain incomplete. Congress leaders argued that their control of defence forces would enable the Congress ‘to throw its full weight in the efforts for the effective organization of the Defence of the country’.Footnote 70 After August 1940, there was a slight alteration in the attitude of Congress to anti-imperialism in its shift towards a more active and potentially violent strategy for removing the British. In wartime speeches and resolutions, the new fighting mentality of the Congress was clearly detectable.Footnote 71 The Congress began to use more resolute and confrontational language condemning India's involuntary involvement in the war, and argued for the formation of a national government that could guide India's war effort on behalf of the Allied powers, ultimately demanding immediate and unconditional independence for India.Footnote 72
Despite the hostility of Congress towards Britain's war effort, when presented with an opportunity to negotiate with the Indian Government in March 1942, the CWC sent its representatives to New Delhi to consult with Sir Stafford Cripps about the possibilities of a constitutional advance. As Cripps departed for India, he was instructed to determine whether the British Government's proposals were met ‘with that generous measure of acceptance’ which was ‘vital’ to present or future constitutional adjustments in the sub-continent.Footnote 73 During these discussions, the Congress's attitude quickly became transparent—its negotiators ‘at once fixed upon the question of Defence’, emphasizing that Indians should ‘acquire control of the defence of their country’.Footnote 74 Meeting with Cripps on 28 March, 1942, Abul Kalam Azad pressed a spectrum of Indian involvement in defence, ranging from the feasibility of full Indian oversight to separate Indian control of the Indian Army. Cripps dismantled these arguments.Footnote 75 Over the course of the following two weeks, Cripps observed that Congress leaders continued to press for national control of the army or, at the very least, Indian control of civilian defence responsibilities.Footnote 76 Commenting on the break-down of the talks with Cripps, in May 1942 the AICC ruled that it remained ‘impossible for the Congress to consider any schemes or proposals which retain, even in a partial measure, British control and authority in India’. The AICC also took this opportunity to repudiate Subhas Chandra Bose's activities abroad, noting that independence could not be achieved ‘through interference or invasion by any foreign nation’.Footnote 77
Up to the very end of the conferences with Cripps, Congress leaders clung to the hope that Britain would turn over control of defence and the army to the Congress. Azad wrote that the Congress remained interested in the ‘full popular control of defence’, a function that was ‘essential’ if the Congress was to even consider forming what it called a national government.Footnote 78 He also argued that any truly Indian government as envisaged by Congress leaders would ‘function in a very limited field’ without retaining control of defence because one of the ‘chief functions of a National Government must necessarily be to organize defence’.Footnote 79 The Working Committee's rejection of Cripps’ proposals emphasized that preventing Indians from controlling their own country's defence reduced the ‘responsibility’ of defence ‘to a farce and a nullity’. The Congress's support for Britain's war effort required Indians’ ‘realization’ that they were ‘free and are in charge of maintaining and defending their freedom’.Footnote 80 At one point in April 1942, Linlithgow observed that the Congress's push for a so-called national government implied that, after the war, the Congress would have ‘political control’ of the army.Footnote 81 This priority was resurrected by Gandhi in August 1944 and again by Congress leaders after the war.Footnote 82
Congress leaders were clearly frustrated with the failure of the Cripps Mission. One prominent Congressman observed that ‘all stand disillusioned’ with the British and there was ‘an intensified feeling of depression and distrust’. He also claimed that Indians believed that ‘Britain will cling to power to the last moment and will not concede anything substantial to India’.Footnote 83 Additionally, a faction within the Working Committee's was shaken by the implication that the Cripps Mission might have created a national government dedicated to advancing the Allied war cause. The threatened resignations of four CWC members exemplified this divisiveness.Footnote 84 By July 1942 the frustration with the failed talks had crystallized into the premise that ‘British rule in India must end immediately’ because the conversations with Cripps ‘showed in the clearest possible manner’ that ‘the British hold on India was in no way to be relaxed’.Footnote 85 The next phase of the nationalist movement was the Quit India campaign and the outbreak of unrestrained resistance that was abetted by the Indian government's carefully-prepared beheading of the Congress movement.
With their release from prison, Congress leaders revisited the long-standing notion that independence meant, in part, national control of the army and defence.Footnote 86 One of the first moves taken by the CWC was to issue instructions to Congressmen that emphasized giving ‘an Indian character to the Indian Army’. This meant breaking down the otherwise watertight compartment in which the British Indian Army had been contained, permitting the politicization of the armed forces.Footnote 87 Then, in the INA Congress elites were presented with a fully Indianised army that had been under Indian control. This force was a national counterweight to the apolitical British Indian Army.
The Indian Government inexplicably did little to counter the Congress initiative; it simply observed Congress activities, criticized the Indian press for its biased coverage of the INA and the First Red Fort Trial, and lamented the fact that the government had done too little early enough to forestall Congress propaganda.Footnote 88 By November 1945 Wavell privately admitted that ‘propaganda and publicity over the I.N.A. was fatally slow and ineffective’.Footnote 89 Of course, the government was suspicious of the Congress's sudden defence of the INA cause, with Viceroy Wavell observing that Congress leaders intended to ‘suborn the Indian Army if they could’ and that Congressmen also expected that ‘their threats will impair the loyalty and efficiency of the Police’.Footnote 90 Initially, the Indian Government planned to take a hard line against convicted blacks but soon changed their perspective in response to the public opinion generated by the Congress campaign. In November 1945, with the First Red Fort Trial barely underway, British authorities decided that after the first INA trial, defendants in future trials would not be charged with treason and would only be punished for individual acts of ‘brutality’.Footnote 91
Government officials assumed that they would be able to prove their point regarding the INA's treachery and maintain discipline among the armed forces by convicting the INA officers. Just after the trial began, Auchinleck wrote to Viceroy Wavell that, in future trials, the ‘general principle’ to be followed by courts-martial would be that death sentences would be ‘commuted’ in cases where the accused acted under the impression that he was ‘carrying out his duty’. In the case of the first trial, Auchinleck quickly decided to ‘reduce the sentence’ because the accused did what they ‘conceived mistakenly to be their duty’, and added that future trials would still be held to ‘vindicate the legal principle’ of waging war against the Crown.Footnote 92 Although loyal Indian soldiers were initially hostile to the INA, by the end of November, British authorities in India were noting that opinion in the British Indian Army was ‘favouring leniency’.Footnote 93 Forced by public pressure and concerned about discipline within the army, the Indian government implemented a halfway measure, partially satisfactory to both British and Indian opinion.
Leading Congressmen also supported the INA to exert influence on the previously apolitical British Indian Army. Highlighting Britain's concern with this endeavour, in June 1945 Wavell noted that ‘the one thing which was disastrous for any Government was if the Army became political’.Footnote 94 The Indian Government had noted a connection between the Congress's interest in the INA and a ‘general interest in the armed forces’ and the Viceroy observed that ‘one of the main desires’ of the Congress was the conversion of the Indian Army into ‘a truly national organization to which the public, and presumably the political leaders, could have free access’.Footnote 95 One governor opined that the Red Fort Trial afforded the Congress ‘the chance to win the support of the Indian Army’.Footnote 96 However, Congress interest in the army stemmed more for its inclusion as part of a mass movement than from an effort to subvert the loyalty of Indian troops. That the loyalty of the Indian soldier to the British Raj was not largely affected is demonstrated by British Indian Army operations conducted against the 1946 Bombay mutineers.Footnote 97 Moreover, support for the romanticized liberation army was timely, considering the extent of demobilization and the subsequent discontentedness of ex-soldiers.Footnote 98
Nevertheless, the Congress initiative still affected the British Indian Army. Narendra Dev remarked that a ‘spirit of freedom has penetrated the Indian Army’. Moreover, the ‘old barriers between the Indian Army and the civil population have broken down’. Consequently, the army was ‘slowly shedding its mercenary character’ and Indian soldiers were now aware that their duties were to ‘defend the country from foreign aggression’ and to ‘liberate it from the foreign yoke’. Significantly, Dev observed that the Indian Army ‘looks to the Congress for guidance and leadership’, and development that commented favourably on the sudden ‘political maturity’ of soldiers.Footnote 99
Nehru noted that the Congress had ‘taken an eager interest’ in the Indian Army and ‘frequently demanded Indianisation’ of its officer corps.Footnote 100 Regarding ‘Indianisation’, Patel stated that a fully national army already existed in the form of the INA.Footnote 101 On 2 December, 1945 Nehru observed that the trial had brought the ‘army closer to the people’.Footnote 102 Building upon this newly-discovered politicisation of the army, Nehru, in a late December speech, noted that, prior to the First Red Fort Trial, the Indian people and the ‘Government army’ were kept in ‘watertight compartments’ between which there was no interaction; the trial ‘brought the two closer’.Footnote 103 Nehru also emphasized the importance of aligning the army with national opinion, stating that the failure of the Quit India movement to overthrow the British Raj demonstrated that a mass movement such as that of 1942 was ‘bound to be defeated’ unless it had ‘the help of an army’.Footnote 104
Throughout the trial, Congress leaders were cautious in dealing with the British Indian Army, as noted in a British intelligence report which stated that Congress speeches ‘give the impression that careful thought has been given to wording’ and that they ‘have avoided publicizing’ future plans for INA members.Footnote 105 On 9 January, 1946, Nehru stated that the Congress proposed to ‘absorb’ the INA men ‘in every possible way in the national activities which need not be political activities’. Nehru suggested that the INA men would be useful in industrial or village work, in participating in the formation of industrial cooperatives and in ‘direct public works’. He added that the Congress did not desire to make politicians out of the INA men.Footnote 106 When Nehru listed possible employment for former INA men, the position of soldier was pointedly avoided. In its nascent politicization of the army, Congress leaders made sure not to alienate Indian soldiers by accepting too eagerly the INA as a national army.
The INA as an Electoral Issue and an Extension of the ‘Struggle of 1942’
To counter what they perceived as the Raj's fixed determination to remain in India, Congress elites searched for a means of mobilizing public sentiment against the British. The Indian National Army provided Congress with the perfect instrument for coordinating massive, India-wide, anti-British agitation. With the Indian government's announcement to hold the First Red Fort Trial, the INA had ‘literally burst upon the country’ which had become ‘aflame with an enthusiastic fervour’.Footnote 107 Almost overnight Indians had accepted the INA as a liberation army that had fought against the British for India's independence. Nehru noted that the INA had ‘captured the Indian heart’.Footnote 108
Writing from prison in August 1944, Jayaprakash Narayan commented on the Congress and its contact with India's masses. He observed that ‘the Congress has no programme of work which puts it in daily and constant touch with the people’. Narayan also remarked that ‘the Congress in peacetime’ devoted ‘the greater part’ of its ‘time and energy to elections’.Footnote 109 The post-war Congress was no different.
Leading Congressmen initially reacted to intense public interest in the INA with conditional acceptance. In a press interview on 8 August, 1945, Nehru proclaimed his concern for the INA men, but he was still of the opinion that ‘the leaders and others of this army had been misguided’ and were unaware of the consequences of their ‘unfortunate association’ with the Japanese.Footnote 110 Nehru stated at the end of August that Bose was ‘foolish’ to have sought the assistance of the Japanese and Germans, but that there was never any doubt about Bose's ‘passion for freedom’.Footnote 111 Patel soon added his voice to the nationwide call for release of the INA men, appealing to the Indian government for ‘clemency’.Footnote 112 Congress leaders concluded that they could benefit from supporting the INA. Nehru wrote that because the war had ended, ‘we must speak out on this subject’ of the INA and predicted that ‘the reaction in India will be far-reaching’.Footnote 113 Wavell suspected that ‘Nehru's plan is to make use’ of the INA.Footnote 114
As the war wound down, the British began to consider moves towards Indian independence. In August 1944, Wavell began pushing for a solution to the political situation in India and at the Governors’ conference he proposed that some step should be taken before the end of the war.Footnote 115 Wavell's proposals amounted to the creation of ‘a provisional political Government, of the type suggested in the Cripps declaration, within the present constitution, coupled with an earnest but not necessarily simultaneous attempt to devise means to reach a constitutional settlement’.Footnote 116
The solution was that the Congress and the Muslim League would be brought into the Viceroy's Executive Council and that Indians would form a constituent assembly to draft a constitution for a free India. The talks between Bhulabhai Desai and Liaquat Ali Khan had produced a formula based on a Congress-League parity that appealed to Wavell.Footnote 117 Armed with this apparent ‘moderate advance’,Footnote 118 Wavell visited London in March 1945 attempting to ‘advocate’ for some ‘move about India’.Footnote 119 Wavell returned to India in June with instructions to invite representative Indians to join his Executive Council.
In August 1945, the Governors’ conference concluded that elections to the central and provincial assemblies should be held ‘as soon as possible’.Footnote 120 Shortly after Wavell made his latest recommendations to London,Footnote 121 the British Cabinet announced that central and provincial elections would be held in the winter of 1945–1946. By the end of August, the British government decided that the foundations for constitutional advance would be the Cripps proposals.Footnote 122
Both Congress and League leaders clearly understood the importance of the pending elections. Ayesha Jalal describes the situation as one in which ‘if Muslims gave the League a mandate in the coming elections’, then the League could demand Pakistan without ‘any further investigation or plebiscite’. This ‘clear mandate’ would ‘give substance’ to the League's claims to represent Indian Muslims and electoral success would ‘allow Jinnah plausibly to stick to his line that he alone had the right to negotiate for India's Muslims’. Intending to secure this popular consent, the League's election campaign addressed the ‘unsubstantiated but plausible’ argument that ‘the League and Pakistan alone stood between Muslims and a black future’.Footnote 123
Given this overt and populist threat to India's geographic integrity, Congress leaders could not remain idle. Moreover, Congress leaders knew that the results of the general elections would be used to create a constituent assembly;Footnote 124 if Congress elites were to implement their vision of a secular independent state, they were obliged to successfully contest the elections, thereby controlling provincial governments and dominating the constituent assembly. Consequently, they needed to promote an equally emotional—yet secular—cause that would draw India's voters to the Congress. This cause was, of course, Subhas Chandra Bose's Indian National Army.
When they emerged from prison in the summer of 1945, Congress leaders realized that their only remaining political capital was the Quit India movement, which they quickly described as the ‘Struggle of 1942’.Footnote 125 Initial negotiations failed to achieve their objective of establishing an interim government that included the Congress and the Muslim League.Footnote 126 In response to this unsuccessful negotiated settlement, the Congress began to threaten the use of civil disobedience to secure India's independence. More specifically, Congress elites merged the Struggle of 1942 with the patriotic activities of Bose's INA. This was so effectively achieved that Wavell anticipated that ‘the Congress are counting on the I.N.A. as the spear-head of their revolt’ and suspected that Congress leaders would ‘suborn the Indian Army if they could’.Footnote 127
Congress policy at this crucial juncture amounted to what Abul Kalam Azad described as a ‘dual policy’ of perpetuating the ‘spirit of struggle’ while refraining from ‘any precipitate step’.Footnote 128 The Congress president remarked that he was convinced the Congress ‘should not start a new movement’ but should instead ‘participate in the General Elections’.Footnote 129 Accordingly, the AICC celebrated the Struggle of 1942 as a period of ‘wanton suppression by the British Government’ during which Indians suffered with ‘courage and endurance’ the ‘fierce and violent onslaught of the British power’. The Congress congratulated the nation's patriotic suffering during ‘three years of military, police and ordinance rule’. Dismissing the violence of Quit India, the AICC ruled that ‘the provocative action of the Government in effecting sudden and widespread arrests’ and its ‘brutal and ruthless suppression of peaceful demonstrations’ had ‘goaded’ Indians to ‘rise spontaneously to resist the armed might of an alien Imperialist power which was trying to crush the spirit of freedom and the passionate desire of the Indian people to gain independence’.Footnote 130 The wartime governance of India was described as ‘military rule’ that ‘sought to choke the voice and liberty of the people’.Footnote 131 Commenting on the Quit India Movement, Narendra Dev urged that the emotions aroused by this ‘August Revolution’ should be utilized to create a constituent assembly that represented the ‘wishes of the people’ and fulfilled the ‘unfettered freedom to shape our own destiny’.Footnote 132
The Congress then turned to inflaming the passions of the electorate. Its most recent patriotic legacy was the Quit India movement and the AICC quickly congratulated the nation for its ‘courage and endurance’ while resisting British imperialism. Concurrently, the Congress reiterated that the British must immediately leave India to facilitate the creation of a national government and a constituent assembly that were not influenced by foreign occupation of India.Footnote 133 The AICC also took the opportunity of this first post-war session to formulate its ‘guiding maxim’, namely, ‘negotiation and settlement when possible and non-cooperation and direct action when necessary’.Footnote 134
The timing of the Congress's support of the INA was crucial. At the same time the AICC was verbally abusing the Raj, it began to express its concern about the fate of the ‘officers, men and women of the Indian National Army’. Congress elites opined that these members of Bose's liberation army ‘should have been treated as combatants and prisoners of war and discharged after the conclusion of hostilities’. The AICC took this opportunity to declare that ‘it would be a tragedy, if these officers, men and women were punished for the offence of having laboured, however mistakenly, for the freedom of India’.Footnote 135 The Working Committee quickly authorized the formation of the INA defence committee.Footnote 136
Unsurprisingly, at the same session at which the AICC vowed to support the INA, Congress elites declared that the Indian government's announcement regarding general elections ‘has been made in a manner and in circumstances which arouse suspicion’. The Congress's primary objection was that elections to the Central Assembly would be conducted on ‘a franchise of less than one percent of the population’ and could ‘have no justification in the context of Indian freedom’. Accordingly, the Congress demanded that elections to the central legislature should be held on ‘a properly revised register, even though this might involve some little delay’.Footnote 137 This meant that the Congress attempted to buy time to facilitate the spread of its patriotic campaign message. Despite these complaints, the AICC resolved to contest the general elections and expressed its confidence that, ‘with the added strength and assurance that the past years have given’ the people, India would support Congress candidates.Footnote 138 Accordingly, the Working Committee was authorized to prepare an election manifesto that would guide Congress candidates during their upcoming election campaigns.Footnote 139 With the exception of its newfound patriotic messages, the Congress's electioneering platform replicated those employed during the successful campaigns of 1936–1937.Footnote 140
British impressions of post-war speeches and public statements by premier Congressmen, and particularly those made by Nehru and Patel, indicate Indian leaders taking an uncompromising, threatening and almost violent tone in their anti-British statements. According to Raj administrators, Congress leaders were making ‘a great play in support’ of the INA, portraying them as heroes and demanding their release.Footnote 141 Nehru warned the British that failure to release the INA men would be ‘likely to cause unrest in India’,Footnote 142 and that, if the INA men were ‘treated harshly’, there would be a ‘lasting effect on the minds of Indians’.Footnote 143 Nehru's tone became more menacing when he threatened that there would be ‘a great stir and a tremendous repercussion’ throughout India if the British continued to ignore public opinion.Footnote 144 His statements took on an even more ominous tone at that point, with a warning to the Indian government that, if the INA men ‘are treated as criminals’, then there would be a ‘wave of resentment’ that would ‘sweep the length and breadth of the country’.Footnote 145 Nehru announced that, should ‘anything’ happen to the INA men, the ‘whole country’ would be ‘affected’.Footnote 146 By November, Nehru was stating that the trial would be of ‘historical importance’ and that it touched the ‘sentiments of the whole nation’.Footnote 147 In Calcutta on 24 December, Nehru observed that the ‘whole country’ demanded the release of the INA men and that such ‘disregard of public opinion is not possible in any free land’.Footnote 148
Nehru's role in the INA agitation is clearly demonstrated by his claim that he was ‘the first person to raise this question’ of the INA and observed that, beginning with his support, public interest in the INA grew until it became ‘one of the major issues’ in India.Footnote 149 Writing as the trial was taking place, Nehru admitted that the INA and the First Red Fort Trial ‘were going to become a major issue’ particularly in light of the role that the Congress had played in fomenting trial-related agitation.Footnote 150 Patel's public statements and speeches followed a similar vein.Footnote 151 Patel also backed a press campaign designed to publicize the efforts of Congress to provide relief to the men and women of the INA.Footnote 152
Reflecting on the heightened tensions of the winter of 1945–1946, The Statesman opined that the demonstrations over the INA indicated that ‘political leaders have too little control over the passions they arouse’ among segments of the population only too willing to ignore all forms of authority.Footnote 153 In an interview with the Viceroy on 3 November, 1945, Nehru ‘practically admitted’ that he had been ‘preaching violence’ and that he did not see how violence was to be avoided if ‘legitimate aims could not be attained otherwise’. Wavell suspected that Nehru was well aware of the ‘trouble’ he was making, but that the Congressman ‘feels that he can rouse the country sufficiently to make it difficult for us to suppress it’. Moreover, support for the INA resulted in the ‘intimidation of officials and police’ which, in Wavell's estimation, would end in the Indian Government's reliance on ‘weaker and rather demoralized forces’ to check civil disobedience.Footnote 154 The Viceroy observed that Nehru's aims in ‘glorifying’ the INA were to ‘provoke or pave the way for mass disorder’.Footnote 155 A British intelligence report reviewing the pro-INA Congress campaign noted that public opinion was influenced by the ‘platform writings and speeches’ of nationalist politicians, and that the Congress view was supported ‘completely’ by the nationalist press. Congress leaders had inflamed public opinion and the British authorities were under the impression that they would continue to do so in an effort to ‘create a still greater country-wide demand’.Footnote 156 The Indian Government anticipated that the Congress would use the newfound public unity generated by the publicity given to the INA for anti-British agitations.
Wavell found that Nehru, in particular, appeared ‘quite unable to restrain’ the vehemence of his public statements.Footnote 157 In his use of the INA, Nehru even considered using the newfound popularity of the Red Fort defendants as Congress candidates.Footnote 158 With Congressmen agitating for the release of the INA soldiers, Nehru observed that former INA men would ‘make a difference, perhaps a great difference’ in their support of the Congress and that the INA men would ‘look to Congress for leadership’.Footnote 159 At one point Gandhi publicly claimed that Bose's ‘last wishes’ were for the INA men to return to India, ‘retain their discipline and patriotism, but act non-violently and help the Congress’.Footnote 160 Apart from the implied threat of civil disobedience and revolution, former INA troops could be ‘of the greatest service in the heavy work of building up a new a free India’ and the AICC called for the unconditional release of INA soldiers detained in ‘various Indian and foreign prisons awaiting trial or other decision of the authorities’.Footnote 161
Nehru explicitly linked the INA and Indian patriotism to post-war political developments. Shortly after the war he observed that, although Bose and the INA were ‘misguided in many ways’, he was convinced ‘their dominating motive was love for India's freedom’.Footnote 162 By October 1945, Nehru announced that those who had ‘fought and suffered for the ideal of freedom’ were to be considered his ‘friends and comrades’. His unqualified defence for the INA was granted without regard to ‘mistakes’ that may have been ‘committed’.Footnote 163 Celebrating Netaji's birthday in Delhi, Nehru remarked that the Red Fort Trial was ‘the symbol of India's struggle for freedom’.Footnote 164
To restore the prestige and prominence of the Congress, members of the Working Committee were compelled to ‘appeal to all violent feeling’ in India. The Indian Government, by mishandling the Red Fort Trial, had provided the Congress leadership with a ‘non-communal cause’ which it could support to generate India-wide support for Congress.Footnote 165 Wavell opined that the elections were important to the Congress high command only because they provided the Congress with an ‘opportunity’ to ‘revive and re-organize the Party’.Footnote 166 Congress elites specifically used the trial as a ‘focal point of expressing nationalist opinion against the British’.Footnote 167 The Viceroy also observed that the Congress's public vilification of the Indian Government and calls to violence denoted an effort ‘to stir up racial hatred against the British’. Nevertheless, the Viceroy anticipated that the Congress would neither carry out its threat of violence nor submit an ultimatum ‘until after the elections’ and suspected that Congress leaders would ‘go as far as they feel they safely can without provoking a premature (from their point of view) conflict with Government’.Footnote 168
Congress leaders closely linked the elections with the increased anti-British sentiment of their electioneering messages. The Indian Government was convinced that Congress leaders supported the INA to generate support, thereby providing the basis for a mass movement that would force the British out of India. The governor of the North-West Frontier Province noted that ‘whatever the outcome’ of the Red Fort Trial, an ‘anti-British bias will persist in each man's mind’.Footnote 169 The Viceroy, too, observed that anti-British sentiment had been inflamed due to the ‘speeches of the political leaders’ in September and October 1945.Footnote 170 An intelligence report submitted by the Viceroy to London clearly demonstrated the violent, anti-British emotions of the Indian public.Footnote 171
The Congress's Appropriation of the INA Legacy
Congress leaders found it impossible not to attach themselves to the INA issue and took advantage of the situation created by the INA and the First Red Fort Trial. Azad observed that the Congress was obliged to defend the INA officers because ‘their imprisonment or death would be a serious national loss’. Moreover, the trials ‘excited great public enthusiasm’ which it was impossible for Congress elites to ignore.Footnote 172 Nehru wrote that it was ‘exceedingly difficult’ for the Congress to ignore public sentiment regarding the INA. Even without Congress mobilization of the public's attitude, the INA had endeared itself to popular opinion. Should the Congress fail to harness this sentiment, the result would be ‘public agitation’ and ‘some trouble’.Footnote 173 The Congress leadership was concerned lest the agitation they had launched become uncontrollable and unleash itself on the country without proper, Congress-led restraint. Congress elites sought to employ the opportunity afforded by public interest in the INA to mobilize mass support under their control. The Congress hierarchy was also anxious to control its Left Wing.Footnote 174 This faction had become involved in the INA agitations and tended toward the use of revolutionary methods for obtaining independence, contrary to the predominant, incremental and constitutional approaches favoured by the Congress high command.
Congress leaders saw in Netaji and the INA what has been described as ‘a formidable stick with which to beat the British’.Footnote 175 Wavell observed that the INA as a cause was ‘a weapon’ which the Congress ‘have not been slow to use, and very unscrupulously’.Footnote 176 The benefits accruing from the Congress's support were multitudinous. Defending the INA might subvert the loyalty of the army, police and services; it might harness the public's patriotic sentiment behind a possible mass civil disobedience campaign; and it might provide Congress elites with a patriotic counterweight to the separatist demands of the Muslim League.
The acceptance of the Indian National Army's legacy ‘resulted in raising the strength of Congress’.Footnote 177 Congress leaders released from prison in the summer of 1945 were confronted by the enhanced position of those political groups who had not been similarly detained, particularly the Muslim League. With the September 1945 announcement that elections to the Central and Provincial Legislatures were to be held the following November and again in early 1946,Footnote 178 Congress leaders needed quickly to gain the support they had lost while detained by the British for the previous three years. From the Congress perspective, success in the elections was critical, as members of these legislatures would likely be nominated to the country's constitution-making body.Footnote 179 Azad had even ‘sent an indignant wire’ to Wavell complaining that the Indian Government had ordered elections without providing the Congress with ‘more time to organize’.Footnote 180 British opinion was that the trial had given the Congress an ‘excellent election cry’ in its support for the secular, nationalist INA.Footnote 181 The British also expected that the Congress-organized, pro-INA agitation would continue ‘throughout the election period’.Footnote 182 The Congress was particularly concerned with a strong showing in the Punjab and in Bengal due to the Muslim majorities in these provinces.Footnote 183 Election victories in these two provinces were essential for the Congress to counter the Muslim League's clamour for the partition of India after independence. The League's popularity had grown among Muslims throughout India during the war years due to its undefined promotion of Pakistan—the establishment of a homeland for Indian Muslims which was to be free from Hindu rule.Footnote 184 Moreover, the popular passions aroused by the INA were so intense that the Muslim League sought to obstruct the efforts of Congress by forming its own INA defence committee in the incessant cat-and-mouse manoeuvring between the League and the Congress.Footnote 185
Nevertheless, the cautious statements made by Congress elites betrayed a level of insincerity in their appropriation of the INA legacy. Even while defending the INA officers, Bhulabhai Desai stated that they were ‘fools’ for having sought Japanese assistance.Footnote 186 Although he was a member of the INA Defence Committee, Nehru only attended court twice during the proceedings and met just once with the three defendants.Footnote 187 Despite the abundance of speeches defining the INA as India's national army, no effort was made by the Congress hierarchy, the Interim Government or the independent Indian government to incorporate the rank and file INA men into the Indian Army. In fact, the INA ‘as a body’ was kept out of the independent Indian armed forces.Footnote 188 This occurred because, upon attaining independence, the British authorities were replaced by Indian administrators without replacing the existing British structure, and official concerns about the loyalty of soldiers (who had once rebelled) were transferred to the new Indian government. Congress leaders sought to avoid deterioration in the ‘discipline and obedience to authority’ that the INA men had previously demonstrated and therefore excluded them from the Indian armed forces.Footnote 189 Nehru initially was concerned with what would happen to the INA men as they were unemployed and ‘penniless’ and ‘funds normally due to them’ by the British military authorities were withheld due to their association with the INA.Footnote 190 Consequently, the INA Inquiry and Relief Committee was formed by the Congress to assist the INA rank and file in obtaining ‘productive work’.Footnote 191 Assistance was given for a short time, but ‘tens of thousands’ of INA men were eventually abandoned by the Indian government after independence.Footnote 192
Even as the Congress leadership appropriated the INA legacy, the guiding principles of the INA and the Provisional Free Government were not utilized. Bose overcame the religious differences of the men who comprised the INA and he emphasized a common, Indian ‘spirit of solidarity’ that excluded communal distinctions.Footnote 193 He dissipated communal divisions by underscoring the premise that all soldiers were ‘sons of the same motherland’ who had no ‘difference between them’ and by illustrating that India's communalism was ‘the creation of an alien power’.Footnote 194 In the light of later communal developments in India, his establishment of secular nationalism was no mean task. Nehru praised the model that the INA provided for ‘communal unity’Footnote 195 in India, as did Gandhi.Footnote 196 However, Congress elites were unequal to the task of implementing Bose's format for communal equality. The Muslim League's advocacy of a Muslim national identity and of Pakistan appealed to Muslims and could not completely be countered by the Congress.
Having harnessed the popular empathy for the INA, once Congress elites were ensconced in New Delhi they attempted to backtrack from their wholehearted support for the misguided patriots of Bose's liberation army. Patel observed that the outpouring of support for the INA was ‘natural but temporary’. Consequently, he suggested that the Congress should merely be ‘tolerant’ of current popular opinion.Footnote 197 By December 1946, Nehru privately noted that it was ‘exceedingly difficult’ for the Congress ‘to ignore a very widespread public sentiment’ that might result in ‘public agitation’. Nehru claimed that he was trying ‘to prevent any such agitation from developing’. Nehru, the head of the interim government, fretted about the effect that such ongoing agitation might have on the loyalty of the Indian Army, noting that ‘army discipline has to be maintained’.Footnote 198
Nevertheless, in the spring of 1946, Viceroys and governors believed that they were no longer able to rely on the unconditional support of their military. Without the unquestioning loyalty of Indians in the British Indian Army, the British could not reliably govern India. Soldiers had now become political creatures, malleable to the will of the Congress and were no longer trusted by the British who could, as the 1946 naval mutiny in Bombay demonstrated, neither enforce discipline nor maintain loyalty. Furthermore, support for the Congress was mobilized by leading Congressmen on a previously unequalled scale as INA men and former British Indian Army troops, backed by the Congress, brought the nationalist programme into their home villages throughout India. Demobilization facilitated the spread of the Congress's patriotic campaign message.
Also, for the first time in the history of British India, an anti-British politician had acquired control of a ‘substantial number of men in the Indian Army’.Footnote 199 Bose had converted Indian prisoners-of-war in Southeast Asia to the cause of Indian independence and had, by recruiting from the émigré Indian communities in the region who had originated from all parts of India, shattered British definitions of martial and non-martial Indian races. All troops were treated equally in the INA without regard to caste, creed, status or gender. Bose had fulfilled a crucial component of the Congress's long-standing definition of swaraj as national control of the functions of central governance, including the army and defence.Footnote 200 The Congress's appropriation of the INA legacy meant that Bose's army came to symbolize national control of a national army.
By aligning themselves with the INA, Congress leaders galvanized and harnessed an emotional public cause in support of the post-war Congress programme. In a speech on 24 December, 1945, Nehru noted that the trial had created a ‘mass upheaval’ and wherever he went ‘even in the remotest villages’ Indians were interested in the fate of the INA men. He remarked that the First Red Fort Trial had taken Indians ‘many steps forward on the path to freedom’ and further observed that throughout the history of British Raj, there had never been ‘such unified sentiments and feelings’ as those that were ‘manifested by divergent sections of the Indian population’.Footnote 201 The Congress, through its appropriation of the INA's patriotic legacy, had absorbed a significant all-India issue which provided the nationalist movement with unparalleled support. By helping to break down the official barriers separating the army from the populace, Congress elites injected nationalist impulses into the otherwise impervious domain of the official services. By linking itself with the threat of violence, the Congress compelled the British to hurriedly withdraw from India. The patriotic message enabled the Congress to easily dominate the general electorates even though it was demolished by the League in the competition to secure Muslim constituencies.Footnote 202 This meant that the patriotic election campaign was only partially successful—the League's emotional message proved too strong for the Congress to effectively counter. Nevertheless, the INA provided Congress leaders with a cause to generate a lasting, non-communal, all-India, mass mobilization, the direct outcome of which was a popular consensus in support of Indian independence.
