Aditi Bhaduri/Kolkata

On Wednesday, we celebrated the birthday of a unique Indian - Subhas Chandra Bose, or simply Netaji as he is known to millions of Indians. Netaji is not just a legendary figure of the Indian Freedom Movement, he is a phenomenon. His legacy lives in the hearts of Indians across the length and breadth of the country even though he did not live to see an independent India. Neither he nor the Indian National Army - an institution he founded - has been the subject of any major academic research.

The INA's trials - an event so consequential for India's freedom struggle - have become a footnote in India's history books and given short shrift, notes renowned journalist and author Ashis Ray. That is why he delved deep into the history of the trials and came out with the compelling book THE TRIAL THAT SHOOK BRITAIN. HOW A COURT MARTIAL HASTENED ACCEPTANCE OF INDIAN INDEPENDENCE.

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Why this book now?

Well, first of all, I started life as a broadcaster in this city (Kolkata) in April 1971, on All India Radio on Yuva Vani. Exactly 50 years later in 2021, I joined Oxford as an academic visiting. Rick Traina, an American historian who specializes in European history, was at that time the Rector of Exeter College. He had read one of my earlier books where I had made a passing reference to say how the trials had hastened Indian independence. He asked me to expand on this because this is new. One thing led to another and I ended up with a professor of Indian history at Oxford,  Faisal Devji who proposed my name. And I was elected as an academic visitor. I was actually, a little tired of journalism. I felt that I needed to do something else. And so this is what I did. I spent a year at Oxford basically to explore not only whether the trials had hastened acceptance of Indian independence, but also to broaden my exploration into a fundamental question, which was how the Indian Freedom Movement revived after the Second World War.

And it was the INA trial that rejuvenated the Indian Freedom Movement after the Second World War?

For six years, the movement was dormant, from 1939 to 1945. In 1939, Congress resigned from all eight of the 11 governments that they were running at that time as a protest against Britain for dragging India into the Second World War. And so they vacated the political arena. Then, briefly, I mean, in 1942, Gandhiji called the Quit India movement, but unfortunately, it was crushed. The British got very angry with the Congress for having carried out this Quit India movement, they banned the party. So Congress was banned for the rest of the the Second World War.

So the fundamental question that I needed to address before I even came to the trial was how the movement revived. So the answer is this: From the middle of August 1945 onwards, the leaders of the Congress, one by one, were released from prison. But when they came out, they did not know what to do for about a month. And then they had the first ICC session after the Second World War in Bombay where the leaders expressed both anguish and anger about the impending trial of our soldiers. Everyone was on the same page. And they realized that this is an issue that they could latch on to to revive the movement.

In September 1945, preparations were going on for the trial. Then as October comes about, rallies are held all over India for elections for the provincial and the Central Assembly. And Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru went from rally to rally, more than any other Congress leader, to canvass for the Congress and talk about the INA, its great valour, and the great injustice that was being done to it by putting the men on trial. This caught the imagination of the public. Meanwhile, of course, the British went ahead with their preparations, not realizing that a certain amount of anger was being built up, which is reflected in the internal Intelligence Bureau reports.   

On the 5th of November 1945, the trial begins and this became a sort of showpiece trial because first of all, three officers were being jointly tried. Secondly, this being the very first trial, you know, it caught peoples' imagination. Last but not least, because one was a Muslim, the second was a Hindu, and the third was a Sikh. It united the country. So the buildup had already taken place because in rally after rally Nehru had gone around whipping up fervor. This is also reflected in notes sent by the British Viceroy in India Lord Wavelle to London where he's very critical of Nehru.

News clipping about INA Trials in Red Fort

So on the fifth of November, the trial begins and you have a situation where immediately, almost the feedback to the authorities is that this is not going very well. And so the second element was now added as ammunition for the Indian struggle. First of all, Nehru had gone to the masses already and now you had Bhulabhai Desai, holding center-stage as the lawyer defending the three in Delhi. And as I said, his performance caught peoples' imagination. So the combination of Nehru and Desai created this atmosphere of great hostility towards the British.

And what about the Indian armed forces?

This hostility was not restricted to the public. It entered the domain of the armed forces and it was critical. The British Viceroy Lord Wavelle and Commander-in-Chief of the British Indian Army Claude Auchinleck had expressed only a few days prior to the beginning of the trial was completely overturned in a matter of weeks because they got the feedback that the army itself wanted leniency. That was an understatement, but their loyalty was in question because people were wondering, whether the trials were right. After all, these were very accomplished officers of the British Indian Army who had defected. They were all commissioned officers - Shahnawaz Khan, Prem Sahgal,and Gurbaksh Dhillon, who had switched allegiance to the INA.  

And this [the trials] gradually, I think, created a nationalism in the armed forces versus the British rule, which did not exist before.  So this did affect the armed forces across the board, although there wasn't an actual mutiny in the army. But from Auchinleck written assessments, it would have happened had he not been lenient and not commuted the verdict.

But a mutiny did occur in the Navy and the Air Force. So it was only a matter of time before the Army also, which was their biggest and most uniform armed force, would have revolted. But the most serious was the mutiny in the Royal Indian Navy. But even in the Air Force, there were significant protests and there was anger, even after the three were let off. And all three were Punjabis, from which most renowned recruits to the armed forces came.  

So they went to Lahore, which was the capital of Punjab at the time, and they were given this huge reception. They were already national heroes. And so there's a report which I have used in my book sent by the Governor of Punjab to the Viceroy of India, saying that Indian Armed Forces personnel in uniform turned up for these receptions for the three of them. So they were doing it openly. So Auchinleck was correct in his assessment......... And so that's where they started to think in terms of clemency as early as November.

The INA trials began on the 5th of November and on the 16th of November, the first indication that is expressed at the highest level that something is wrong. Britons were objecting to this exercise, but they were overruled and the trial went ahead till it blew up on their faces. On the 31st of December, the seven judges pronounced judgment and they found the three guilty. And it was only either that they found them guilty enough to award the death penalty or the lesser of the two, which is life imprisonment. And so they went for life imprisonment.

Neither the public in India nor the public in Britain knew what was going on behind the scenes. But three days after the sentencing, Auchinleck overturns the judgment and they are set free immediately. But the fact is the process began as far back as November, in between discussions had already taken place between Wavell and Auchinleck.

And then, of course, as I said, the importance of Nehru is reinforced by the fact that Auchinleck invites Nandu to meet him on the 1st of December right in the middle of the trial. I think they confided in each other. Nehru had been saying in his public speeches, that this was not the right thing to do and there would be consequences, which they (Congress) could not control. A month later, when he meets Auchinleck, Nehru appears to have said the same thing. Nehru also says that the defense committee fund is getting enormous sums of money from Indian soldiers. The defence was publicly funded.

On the 3rd of January when the crucial announcement came, it made Indians happy. They were relieved that the three men had been let off.

Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and his INA

So along with the trials, the revocation of the sentence must also have been a catalyst to the revival of the Indian Freedom struggle as Indians must have seen it as a triumph of their will.

Yes, absolutely. The moment Nehru started campaigning nationwide from October, the movement started to be revived. ......By the time the trial started, the movement was in top gear. There is one statement by British Prime Minister Clement Attlee where he says that this is not 1920, 1930, or 1942. This is a very different situation and a very serious situation. And Britain was already economically weakened after the war.

So Britain was ready to grant dominion status by that stage. There is no doubt about that. But they kept on saying two things that were sticking as far as progress was concerned. One was conditional dominion status, which was a matter of negotiation.  The second was a very deliberate attempt to divide the country, which was that the British kept saying that we must work towards a constitution.

Now this is where the Congress and the Muslim League were on completely different pages. And the British knew this. From 1939 to 45 the Muslim League gained a lot of ground and emerged as a force to be reckoned with. So by saying that, constitutional matters needed to be resolved. The British were constantly bringing up issues knowing that the Indians would not agree to this, and they would continue to be in power. So, this trial came as a shock to them in a matter from the start of the trial to the 15th of March, when that famous statement by Prime Minister Attlee in the House of Commons.

I'm surprised that Indian historians have not highlighted that statement. It was a public statement in the House of Commons by Prime Minister Attlee saying that, if the Indians want independence, they have a right to have it. Now, that statement happens just 18 weeks from the start of the trial. At the start of the trial, the British position was still conditional dominion status, no more than that. But in 18 weeks it became independence, which is responding to the 1929 Congress resolution of Punya Swaraj. And so that was a triumph for the Indian people. Nehru said that it was the will of the Indian people versus the will of those who hold power in India. And it was the will of the Indian people that triumphed. So it was a turning point.

Tell us about the mutiny in the Air Force and the Navy.

What I do in my first chapter, I talk about the use of force by Indian nationalists before the INA, and from which Subhas Bose derived his ideas. I begin with the Mutiny of 1857 and three elements. The second is what was called the revolutionary movement, which was a lot in Bengal, but also in some other states. And the third I refer to is what was called the Gadar movement, which was staged from outside India. So from the three, he derived his inspiration and ideas. So that's the chapter one.

Now chapter two is about the Indian National Army, its campaign and the war, and so on. The third, which is the central chapter, is the trial. But then where I come to the other matters is Chapter four, which is in two parts, which I call Repercussions of the Indian National Army trials. There were many so I have divided it into two segments. One segment is the public protest.

Let me read this out: '19th of November 1945. Sir Maurice Hallett, governor of the vast United Provinces neighboring Delhi, and linking northern India to the country's east, informed Wavelle, "There are reports that brigades may be started at Benaras and Allahabad, the latter to be trained by an ex-lieutenant of the INA Harish Chandra Verma. In Agra, Hindi and English handwritten leaflets are said to have been found in a hotel that if any INA soldier was killed, Britishers would be murdered. Some released INA prisoners in Jabalpur were entertained in Allahabad at Congress headquarters, which is practically Nehru's home. While there is also a report that the RIAF (Royal Indian Air Force) personnel in Allahabad, Bamrauley, and Kanpur subscribed to the INA defense,...". Which means they were sending money, which is what Nehru also confirmed. So that's one of those references to the Air Force.

KN Katju, Tej Bahadur Sapru and Jawahar Lal Nehru walking into Red Fort to defend the INA in late 1945.

My reference to the Naval Mutiny is more comprehensive. Because that was such a serious matter. It is an entire part of a chapter and very detailed. Here is something interesting, again in the middle of the trial. "Twenty-second of December, 1945. Generals Claude Auchinleck, Commander-in-Chief of all armed forces in India, appraised the Chiefs of Defense staff in London "There is no definite evidence at present to warrant differentiation between the Indian Army, RIN (Royal Indian Navy) and RIAF in respect of reliability, except that the two latter contain higher proportion of semi educated men who are always susceptible to political propaganda and have less solid tradition of service and obedience to authority behind them."

Now, this is very significant because what he was saying is that the Indian army was a more disciplined force and better-trained force and a much older force compared to the Navy and the Air Force. And so the interesting differentiation he makes is that the people who were coming into the Army had very little education, whereas the the people who were entering the Air Force and the Navy had a little more education and therefore they were susceptible to political propaganda and this was also said in the inquiry report on the naval mutiny. "And so on 18th February 1946, fulminated a revolt in the RIN inspired by Subhas  Bose's Indian National Army and in reaction to the trials of its men by British authorities."

So this is when the Naval Mutiny went on for several days. Now, that was possibly a final straw because it confirmed what was already being talked about, had been stressed by Auchinleck about dissension, mutiny in the Army, and even its dissolution. And this was confirmation, as it were, that it was about to happen. It had happened in the Navy now and this had been inspired by the INA trial. And so it was a matter of time. And that's why Attlee concluded that the loyalty of armed forces could no longer be taken for granted. And that is what exactly was the case.

Last but not least, he also talks about the ICS, the Indian Civil Service, which was the cream of the services, and what people called the iron spine. It says the Indians in the ICS Indians worked extremely loyally but it was idle to suppose that they weren't just as patriotic as everybody else and just as enthusiastic for Indian nationalism.

So you see the the British hold over India had broken down and it had broken down as a result of the INA trials. Of course, as we all know, Indian independence took place in terms of the actual transfer of power in August 1947. But this was the first indication that Britain had moved from their previous position of Dominion status to granting complete independence.  

In the course of your research, did you discover any hidden or unknown aspect of Netaji?

Well, I have used intelligence reports from archives. But then the INA movement itself is not the central theme of my book, although I have devoted one chapter to it, of course. And I have also concluded that it did not have a chance of success. That is my conclusion about the campaign. I say that it was flawed foresight, if not desperation, on the part of the Japanese to conceive a solution to their supply problem contingent on victory. This was tactically wrong. What the Japanese and the Indian National Army, had visualized is that the British would capitulate followed by the Japanese army and the INA capturing all their arms and food supplies. But that was a flawed foresight and did not happen.

So then I see, unluckily for Bose the opportunity of a military option arose at the wrong time. Japan's elite alliance came within striking distance of a breakthrough, but the winds of war had changed course. The Japanese were on the defensive by the end of 1943. They had opened up too many fronts - against the Americans in the Pacific, fighting in China, and now in Southeast Asia. So they were a bit stretched and they could not cope with this. The course of the Second World War had changed.  

And then, of course, I gave other reasons that those who were recruited locally and that was from the people of Indian origin in Singapore and Malaysia. It had been done hastily in a very short period. They were civilians and they couldn't possibly be trained to those standards. They were brave people and they fought, but they were not good enough to take on a fully trained British army. And the British having experienced defeat in the past at the hands of the Japanese, were now much better prepared. So they were ready for the Japanese invasion.

No matter how committed they were to the INA the Japanese could not keep up with the demand of the INA in terms of arms supplies, food supplies, and medical supplies. As a result, I think it was an inadequately prepared armed force that was deployed. So that's what I say about the INA.

I would, however, say that from the ashes of defeat, the INA rose like a phoenix at the Red Fort because of the trial. Coincidentally, the Red Fort was the INA's destination. And so in a way, they did triumph at the Red Fort, but in a different manner, obviously, in a manner unforeseen, and inadvertent.

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But that is where the INA certainly, from the ashes of defeat, turned it to victory at the Red Fort with the trial.  

Aditi Bhaduri is an independent journalist with expertise in Middle-East and Central Asian affairs