Although many in India, scholars besides, know about Netaji Subhash

Chandra Bose, we shall include a couple of paragraphs below to put the

matter in the context of international geopolitics. As we had seen in the
section on World War II, the case for dropping two bombs on Japan was
not an impeccable one, and many reasons are likely to be hidden from the
public eye. Could the equations of the Anglo-british involving a possible
defeat in the Indian theater by a Bose-Japan combine have been a part of
the decision process? We shall deliberately refrain from going into a
detailed documentation of this, for we should leave this as an exercise for
the reader.
Bose, was able to flee house arrest in Calcutta, and go to Germany. Studying the German
viewpoint of the international politics gave him an understanding that Gandhi and Nehru
may not have had. In a very daring trip, he would go further on to Japan, spend a few years
there, and have an audience with the Premier. He would subsequently land in Burma and
take control of the Burmese Indian National Army. Upon learning that Bose had come to
Burma and was raising an army, the Indian soldiers of the British army switched sides in
favor of their countryman. Bose was thus able to raise an army about 40,000 strong,
equipped with arms from Japan. In addition, the Emperor of Japan committed about
100,000 Japanese troops and some air squadrons for his assistance. With this formidable
combine, he stood a good chance of marching on to Delhi. The 100,000 Japanese troops
would eventually back down, but Bose resolved to continue the fight.
He occupied the Andaman and Nicobar islands, Nagaland, Mizoram, Assam and was about to
enter the Bengal. From the vantage of the Andaman and Nicobar islands, the Indian National
Army had effectively tied up Mountbatten in Ceylon, and he was unable to move. Bose had a
brilliant strategy. A main force was to march on to Delhi. This would however be aided by
three other forces, each of which would have first performed the task of destroying the
British hold over three major ports Calcutta, Vishakapatnam and Chennai as well as the
Dutch control of ports at Machilipatnam and Yanam.
The unit landing in Calcutta would join the units from Nagaland and Assam towards Delhi,
while the units from Vishakapatnam and Chennai would march towards Bombay. The
conquest of these five cities, to be completed in two weeks, would have effectively
ended British rule in India, cutting it off from the sea. But Bose would follow the same moral
principle that Napoleon had: Never my sword against my own people. Around the end of
July 1945 he dropped leaflets over the cities of Madras, Vishakapatnam and Calcutta,
requesting citizens to leave so that the INA could bomb these coastal towns prior to landing.
He set a two week deadline, after which he would start the attack.

But at this critical juncture, the Nehru-Gandhi combine would intervene under pressure from
Mountbatten holed up in Ceylon (it is no coincidence that Mountbatten was supreme
commander of the Allied Fleet in the Pacific).
They would use all available communication channels to convince the citizens of
Vishakapatnam, Chennai, and Calcutta and Machilipatanam to disobey Bose and not leave
the cities, thus thwarting Boses plan. Of course the Gandhi name was put to good use in
this blackmail. Gandhi would later regret his decision when the partition plan was pushed
down his throat. To be fair to Gandhi, it is not likely that he was, in any sense of the term,
acting as an agent of the British. He may have genuinely thought that the Indian people
were not prepared to fight a full fledged war with the mighty and ruthless British, of whom
he had a good taste during his stay in South Africa. We shall leave it to others to figure out
the details involved.
At any rate, Subhash planned to strike against the British and it is very likely that they would
have been unable to face an attack by the INA. On 6 August 1945, before the deadline set
by Bose was to expire, Hiroshima would be bombed, and then on 9 August, the second bomb
would be dropped on Nagasaki. The authors believe the following subsequent set of events:
After the Japanese surrender, Subhash evacuated the Andaman on 15 August 1945, in a
plane with Japanese markings. This plane was shot down by American gunners over Manila,
en-route to Tokyo. Three POWs were taken in this crash. In accord with the Geneva
convention, they stated their rank, name and age. The American captors did not realize who
their prisoners were. So they telegraphed the information to the British, who responded
Discard the Baggage. The Americans GIs refused to obey this instruction. The British
advised them to hand over the three prisoners to Stalins red army.

This handover was done somewhere in the Sakhalin/Okhostk/Kuriles. Netaji would languish
in the concentration camps of Siberia till his recent death. The Japanese who were reeling
under the atomic attacks had no choice but to toe the version of the ADAE, that Subhash
Chandra Bose had died and that they had buried him in Rongji temple, near Tokyo. (Japan
was also forced to toe the US version over the Korean Airline disappearance, and the air
battle over Sakhalin between US and USSR, both in 1984).
The impact Bose and the INA had on the events in British India has since been downplayed
by all the power groups that have controlled India, and not much is taught in modern history

about the role played by this very great man. Clement Attlee, is on record at least once
having said that the primary reason that forced the British to leave was the damage done by
Bose.
In this same record, he mentions Gandhis influence on this decision as having been
minimal. Again, although much of the critical information surrounding Bose and the INA are
not easily available, it is at least possible to draw conclusions on the principle: if the British
propaganda said something about him in a context, negate it to arrive at a reasonable view
of the truth (analogous to British war-time propaganda that had told us that the Japanese
were barbarians etc, to prevent Indians from siding with the Japanese.)
In this context, we mention that after the defeat of the Bose-Japanese combine at Imphal
(due to a combination of circumstances, including the monsoon), the British propaganda in
India had ascribed this to a mis-calculation on the part of Bose. Bose, they told us, had
incorrectly assumed that if his army were to enter India, the people of India would rise to
support him. Negating this position, we conclude the British fear: if the armies of Bose had
been able to even enter mainland India, the attacks on the British positions would have been
led by not an army of 40,000 INA soldiers, but by millions and millions of Indians who would
have joined them. This would have resulted in an ignominious defeat and loss of face for the
British.

Had Subhash been able to complete execution of his plan, the division and bifurcation of
India would perhaps not have taken place. Indias western border would have been located
at Iran, the Northern border at Kazakhstan, the North Eastern border well inside modern day
China, the Eastern border with Malaysia, and in the south Ceylon would have been part of
India as well. India would have not been pushed into declaring itself as a secular republic,
whatever that might mean. Instead, it would have been a constitutional republic on the lines
of France.
In place of the current division and secession oriented Indian constitution would have been a
unification-oriented constitution drafted by Subhash Chandra Bose himself. India would have
become a superpower, rather than a junior partner for the ADAE. India would have been
closer to continental Europe than to Britain or English-speaking America. Japan would
anyway have been devastated at the close of the war. But the situation after 1952 would

have been different. With the Indian resource base, India and Japan would have been
economic partners and would have risen to economic giants. At an international level,
Britain would have been rendered virtually powerless with the loss of India (see the
statements by Colonel Greene in the chapter on the Russian Revolution).

It is now in the public domain in the Indian media that the communist government of West
Bengal, has classified several hundreds of documents in this regard. It is also in the public
domain that the central government of India has refused to put for public scrutiny several
documents in its possession in this same regard. The nefarious Netaji papers continue to
do their rounds in the upper echelons of our government.
Does not our reader at least now see the height of irony when none other than the
communists of India asked Lakshmi Sehgal (an officer in the army of Netaji Subhash Chandra
Bose) to stand for presidency? To what extent have we been fooled?
by GPSSI(Geo-Political Strategic & Security Studies Institute) and portraitofindia.com
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN AUGUST 1947

Why did Mountbatten suddenly declare that the Partition of India would take place with
inexplicable haste on August 15, 1947, almost a year ahead of schedule?

Colonel Anil Athale (retd) explains the likely reasons for the British decision to hastily grant
India independence.

Over 65 years ago, one of the enduring human tragedies occurred when the Indian
subcontinent was divided on religious lines. Nearly one-and-half million innocent people lost
their lives during Partition. Even till today, one fifth of humanity, living in South Asia,
continues to pay the price of that division.

No Indian or British historian has yet attempted to explain that event satisfactorily. The first
question is: Why did Lord Wavell, the Viceroy, on June 11, 1945, abruptly call off the Simla
talks when all the political parties favored the creation of a united India?
The second question arises from the British cabinets statement that the transfer of power to
Indians would take place by June 1948? (The British governments statement of June 3,
1947.) Lord Louis Mountbatten as viceroy had insisted on this cut-off date when he went to
confer with the cabinet in London in May 1946.

Why, then, on his return from London a fortnight later, did he then suddenly declare that the
Partition of India would take place with inexplicable haste on August 15, 1947, almost a year
ahead of schedule?

To understand the events of 1947 one has to go back to 1942, when on August 9, Mahatma
Gandhi gave the call for Quit India and do or die. This came at a particularly decisive
moment in World War II. The Germans were at Stalingrad and Japan ruled the Pacific.

The Americans were worried about the impact this would have on the war effort and
President Roosevelt dispatched a personal emissary Colonel Johnson to India and brought
immense pressure on the British to promise Independence to Indians in return for
cooperation by the Congress in the war efforts.

The Cripps mission was borne out of this compulsion. Gandhi rejected this by dubbing it as
post dated check issued on a falling bank. But Churchill was unmoved and believed that
Congress leaders were Men of straw and that with the help of Jinnah the British would
control the situation.

In the early hours of August 9, a massive British crackdown began. Congress leaders were
arrested and taken to various high security prisons. On hearing news of their arrest,
disturbances broke out in Bombay, Ahmadabad and Poona. But like all such movements, it
was difficult to sustain action in the absence of a trained leadership and a proper
organization.

The British were helped by the fact that Indian Anglicized community and Muslim
League(readers has to dig the facts that why and how Muslim league originated) elements
provided active help and information to the British police to round up the nationalists. There
was no second rung Congress leadership to fill the vacuum created by the arrest of leaders,
and no plans for an underground network.

On March 30, 1947, during the concluding session of a Muslim League working committee
meeting, Jinnah suddenly collapsed and was rushed to the Breach Candy hospital. Dr Patel,
his personal physician, declared that it was only the patients timely arrival that had saved
him.

By a unanimous decision the working committee decided to keep this occurrence secret.
Jinnah regained consciousness soon and refused the doctors orders to stay in the hospital.
Jinnahs stubbornness ultimately overrode medical advice and he was discharged the very
next day. It is most unlikely that the British did not come to know of this.

The British realised that without Jinnah, the creation of Pakistan was next to impossible. It
was the news of Jinnahs illness that prompted the advancement of British departure from
India, with tragic consequences. That is why Mountbatten suddenly declare that the Partition
of India would take place with inexplicable haste on August 15, 1947, almost a year ahead of
schedule
Understanding these factors behind the events of 1947 helps us see the extraordinary
influence the British have over American approach to the subcontinent. The British time and
again have shown their almost paternal love for Pakistan. This author has seen enough
evidence in even JFK era papers of the kind of dependence the US has on UK as far as the
subcontinent is concerned.

If seen objectively and not from the point of view of durbari historians, the record of the
past can teach us much about the present.

The date August 15 was also carefully chosen by the British. It was on this very day that
Japan surrendered in 1945. What better way to thwart any possible Indo-Japanese linkage in
future than to make India (and South Korea) celebrate while Japan remembers its
humiliation! Specially relevant in the days of 1947 when the stories of Japanese support to
Subhas Chandra Boses Indian National Army were a household word in India!

(Based on the research conducted by the author and the late Lieutenant General Eric Vas for
their book Unmaking of Pakistan: If Bose Had Lived?, published by Strategic Books as an ebook.)

That a matter of such importance should escape the questioning of the public mind is an
indicator of the confusion (or mental lethargy) we have been thrown into. The significance of
the events relating to Japan is often underestimated in conventional Indian thinking on
geopolitics. Learning about even the basic reactions of Japan to the geopolitical forces would
perhaps cause many of us Indians to hang our heads in utter shame.