Road to Delhi. M. Sivaram
to discuss certain important matters connected with organizing Indians in East Asia in the light of Japan's war policy.
Rash Behari was a self-exiled Indian, resident in Tokyo. During the early years of the 20th Century, he was a terror to the British authorities in India. He was an active member of the Lahore, Delhi, and Benares conspiracies for the overthrow of British rule and had the distinction of having thrown a crude bomb at Lord Hardinge, then Viceroy of India. He played hide-and-seek with the British police and secret service for a long time before he managed to escape from India. Rash Behari sought refuge in Japan and nobody was able to claim the reward of Rs. 5,000 that was offered for his head by the British Government of India.
During World War I, the Japanese Government treated Rash Behari Bose in an entirely different manner, because Japan at that time was Britain's ally. The British authorities persuaded the Japanese Government to issue an order of extradition against him but Rash Behari secured the protection of the Black Dragon Society of Japan and its leader, the late Mitsuru Toyama, who arranged to send him "underground" at the residence of one of his followers. Later, Rash Behari became a Japanese subject, married the daughter of the man who gave him asylum and settled down in Tokyo, partly attending to a business he started in partnership with his father-in-law, but devoting a great deal of his time to what little anti-British and Indian nationalist activity he could organize and get away with in Japan between the two world wars.
During World War I, Japan was not actively interested in India and the Indian problem, but the Rash Behari episode was not left unnoticed by the men who had envisaged Japan's expansion to the Asian mainland and the South Seas. Thus, while the Tokyo Foreign Office kept up the pretense of the Anglo-Japanese alliance, the 8th Section, 2nd Bureau of the Imperial General Staff, and its innumerable subsidiaries secretly interested themselves in all sorts of people who might some day be of help in the fulfillment of Japan's expansionist program.
There was in Tokyo, at that time, another Indian revolutionary who had played a daring role during World War I. This man, Raja Mahendra Pratap, sought Germany's help to fight the British forces in India and even established an exile National Government of India in Kabul, with the support of Afghanistan's King Amanullah. After Germany's defeat and the overthrow of the Amanullah regime, Raja Mahendra Pratap became an Afghan subject and wandered over half the world to find that no country, except Japan, would give him asylum. In Tokyo, this princely patriot from India found Japanese admirers who helped him carry on with his lecture tours and financed his unique publication—a monthly sheet which advocated the formation of a World State, with India (not Japan) as its center. Probably because of this fancy for India, Raja Mahendra Pratap did not meet the specifications of the 8th Section, 2nd Bureau.
Thirty years in Japan had made Rash Behari Bose a thorough-going Japanese. He spoke Japanese with an ease and dignity that amazed most Japanese and was also able to read and write the language well. Besides, he had dabbled a lot in Japan's turbulent politics of those days and was acquainted with the subtle mysteries of the Japanese political movements. The hot blood of the Indian revolutionary still coursed in his veins and, though political necessity forced him to assume Japanese citizenship, he remained in Indian at heart. He liked Japan and things Japanese and, in spite of his political realism, he believed that it was possible to strike a reconciliation between Japan's military projects and India's political salvation.
The conference between Rash Behari Bose and Major Ozeki was brief and formal. Ozeki outlined the significance of the Greater East Asia War, pointing out that Japan was not treating Indians as enemy subjects. Indians in East Asia, he said, should organize themselves, contributing their share to the victory of Japan and carrying on any activity they cared to launch in the interests of India's independence.
Major Ozeki's proposition was full of possibilities and Rash Behari's old revolutionary spirit grasped them instantly. In Japan's declaration of war on Britain, he saw India's opportunity to get foreign help to drive out the British. The way the war seemed to be progressing, in favor of Japan, was particularly encouraging. When the Japanese completed the conquest of Burma, they would be knocking at the eastern frontiers of India and military necessity might compel them to march into India. After all those long years, it seemed that the dream of Rash Behari's life was about to be fulfilled.
Against these bright prospects, however, Rash Behari did not quite like the casual manner in which the Japanese authorities were tackling so vast and vital a project as the independence of India. He knew the 8th Section, 2nd Bureau of the Imperial General Staff and the nature and scope of its activities and he thought that the problem of Indian independence should have been taken up at a different level. Other doubts also crossed his mind as he bowed out of the Kudan Hills offices.
Rash Behari was asked to organize the large Indian population in East Asia, with whom he did not have any contact whatever for years. He was, however, well aware of the general attitude of India and Indians towards Japan's political ideals. He knew he would need a great deal of effort and energy to bring them around to Japan's point of view. Besides, there was the much more vital problem of the reaction inside India to any movement launched by Indians in East Asia under Japan's auspices. And Rash Behari Bose was one of those modest men who did not aspire to enforce his political doctrines on India's millions, even with Japan's war machine to support him.
Nevertheless, Rash Behari accepted the assignment. He was an optimist by nature and, in any case, he could not turn down the Imperial General Staff's proposition. He knew the meaning of "Boryaku"—though he never liked it.
3
The Dawn of Freedom!
"MY INDIAN friends!" cried the Japanese army officer in his harsh guttural voice. "You are no more slaves. You are now independent and you must immediately start the Indian Independent League. Or else ..." And then a vicious grab at the hilt of the sword that dangled from his belt and a lot more of that fierce, ear-splitting rhetoric.
"Vare, vare, va . . ." roared on the speaker, as the lean impish, bespectacled young man, standing solemnly behind him, doled out in indifferent English, a translation of the momentous speech. "This is the time for the Indian people to spring up and fight for their independent. This is your golden opportunities. For we Japanese, with our mighty sword, are at your back ..."
All over Eastern Asia, from Shanghai down to Singapore and Batavia and from there up to Rangoon and Akyab, and everywhere in the island territories occupied by the Japanese forces, officers of the Japanese field intelligence addressed Indian gatherings and impressed upon them the urgent need to start what they called the "Indian Independent League." Meek crowds of Indians, coming out of their homes and hideouts after the restoration of peace in their districts, were naturally eager to know something of their future under Japanese auspices. Almost everyone attended these meetings, for word went around in advance that absentees would be classed as traitors to India and agents of the British enemy.
The technique was simple but effective. In Malaya, it was Pritam Singh and party who organized these mass meetings. Occasionally, they got one of the local Indian residents to address the rally. Then came resolutions thanking the Japanese forces, pledges of loyalty to the new regime, and expressions of the spontaneous desire of the people to organize the Indian Independent League. The entire procedure was carried out with seemingly widespread enthusiasm and unanimity of views. The result was nobody even ventured to suggest the modification of the name "Indian Independent League" to "Indian Independence League."
What happened in Burma on the trail of the Japanese advance was very much similar to the Malayan campaign. In Burma, however, the Japanese military operations took a longer period and many Indians managed to get out of the country. The initial phase of the organization of the Indian Independence League in Burma was, therefore, largely in the hands of the Japanese intelligence service, who devoted their spare time to this special assignment. The same plan of action was carried out in the other Japanese-occupied territories.
In Thailand, where the Japanese scored a lightning victory, however, the situation was slightly different. With Pritam Singh and his men away on the battlefronts, a rival organization which called itself the Indian National Council was set up in Bangkok immediately after the outbreak of the war.
Head of the Indian