Road to Delhi. M. Sivaram
National Council in Thailand was one Swami Satyananda Puri, who had come to Bangkok sometime in 1930. The Swamiji was supposed to represent the Greater India Society of Calcutta and his mission was to study Thai language and culture. This he did with remarkable proficiency and published a number of books in the Thai language, including translations of Mahatma Gandhi's works. With the help of some Thai enthusiasts, he organized a Thai-Bharat Cultural Lodge in Bangkok. Very little was known about Satyananda Puri's political background, though it was rumored that he was known in India by a different name.
Satyananda Puri's Indian National Council enjoyed Japanese support and was promptly recognized by the Thai authorities as the official organization in charge of Indian residents and Indian interests in the country. The Swamiji, therefore, claimed that he had stepped in just where Sir Josiah Crosby (British Minister to Thailand) had left off. The Lodge functioned as a sort of unofficial wartime Indian Embassy in Thailand, though only for a few months.
The key figure in this unique movement that caught up so fast in Thailand and Malaya was Major Fujiwara, one of Ozeki's colleagues from the 8th Section, 2nd Bureau, of the Imperial General Staff. Tall and handsome, and with extremely refined manners, Fujiwara was liked by Indian army officers and educated civilians. He looked so different from the type of Japanese officers they saw at the head of the advancing forces. Fujiwara's assignment was to create disaffection and revolt among the British Indian army and to secure the support of Indian civilians in the occupied territories. He had laid his plans months before the war broke out.
Malaya proved a happy hunting ground for the Fujiwara clan. The Indian Army in Malaya was not all that the British politicians and military leaders expected it to be. Senior officers of the Indian Army, steeped in loyalty to Britain, were reliable enough. But there were large numbers of young officers who refused to allow the British Government to do the thinking for them. The rank and file of the Indian Army had numerous grievances against the British and they had serious doubts whether it was worth their while to fight and die for British imperialism. The result was that the British Indian Army in Malaya and elsewhere in Southeast Asia was susceptible to external propaganda. And the Japanese slogans were suitably sugar-coated.
The trend of the war also contributed to the success of the Japanese propaganda. The British were unable to put up a stand anywhere down the Peninsula. It was one long series of tactical retreats and strategic withdrawals. For men who did not have their heart in the fight, the chance of surrendering to an adversary who promised them good treatment, was more attractive than the task of running back several hundred miles or fighting a hazardous rear-guard action. Nevertheless, only about three thousand officers and men of the British Indian Army actually went over to the Japanese side in all that mad rush for life from Jitra to Singapore.
The Indian army in Malaya did not play the role of the super-nationalist warriors. The officers and men were far too smart to be taken in by Japanese propaganda. They acted in the same way as any other band of reasonable men under similar circumstances would have done. They were victims of a military debacle which they knew they were powerless to avert.
Strange were the experiences of Indians in Malaya and elsewhere in Southeast Asia as the Japanese forces fought their way into the former citadels of British power, to haul down the Union Jack and hoist the Hinomaru. Britons, Australians, and Dutchmen were marched off to prison camps, as they were enemy subjects. Hundreds of Chinese disappeared overnight because they believed that Chiang Kai-shek was waging a righteous war against Japanese militarism. But almost every Indian emerged unscathed from that crisis, regardless of his political views, associations, and activities before the flare-up.
At least for some months Indians received what might be called the most-favored-nation treatment in war-torn Southeast Asia. "Indo-ka?" grinned the Japanese soldier to any Indian he met on the street. It was a great favor to be grinned at by the conquering hero and the Indian naturally grinned back at the friendly soldier. Then followed a verbal effusion in Japanese from the soldier, inquiring after the health of Mahatma Gandhi and the progress of India's struggle for national freedom. The Indian, of course, understood nothing except the reference to Ganchi and that naturally made him grin wider still. The Japanese soldier, impressed by his success in winning friends and influencing people, usually concluded the procedure with a laborious attempt to say that Indians and Japanese were friends—"Indo-Nippon tomadachi-ne," pointing to the Indian to signify Indo, to himself touching his nose with the first finger of the right hand to indicate Nippon, and a hearty hugging of the poor fellow to illustrate the meaning of tomadachi (friend).
This code of behavior in fraternizing with Indians was strictly in accordance with the orders issued by the highest command of the Japanese Army. Its observance, however, was often cramped by the exultation of the Japanese soldiers over their military triumph.
Fujiwara's first "bag" in the Malayan military pageant was a young Indian officer named Captain Mohan Singh who joined the Japanese with a small unit of Indian troops somewhere in the vicinity of Jitra near the Thai-Malayan frontier. There were several versions of Mohan Singh's alliance with the Japanese. One report claimed that Fujiwara had established contact with him weeks before the war broke out. Another story was that Fujiwara concluded a deal with Mohan Singh after taking him to the field headquarters as a war prisoner. Mohan Singh's own story was that he never intended to fight for the British and was glad to go over to the Japanese side at the first opportunity that presented itself.
Small of stature for the traditional Sikh warrior, Mohan Singh was a man of sharp features, with a pair of magnetic eyes which blazed with fanatic enthusiasm. He was one of the brightest among the young Indian officers from the Military Academy at Dehra Dun and a favorite among his senior officers. He was well under thirty when he created history in the role of the first Indian officer of the British Army to join hands with Japan and launched out on a career which, he probably hoped, would eventually install him as military dictator of India.
Certain features of the war in Malaya, as well as other military events in Southeast Asia, reacted most favorably for Japan's political campaign. In a few brief months after December, 1941, the Japanese were able to claim that they had exploded the myth of Anglo-American power. They had also dissipated the fear of the white man's superiority in the minds of fellow-Asians under colonial domination. Japan's initial triumph was so sweeping, so remarkable, that it left the world gasping. The performance of the British forces in Malaya and Burma, and that of the Dutch in the East Indies, was so poor and in such striking contrast with the promise they had held out, that a good many people lost all confidence in their former rulers.
Indians, in general, shared this disgust and disappointment. Apart from the feeling that Britain had left them in the lurch, Indians in Southeast Asia were also influenced by the anti-British tension in the home country and the natural dislike of a subject nation for its overlords. There was something fascinating in the thought that, after all, it was a merciful providence that taught Britain a lesson for its reluctance to give a fair deal to India and other subject nations.
Well over 90 per cent of the two million Indians in East Asia found themselves stranded in the various Japanese-occupied territories. About 800,000 Indians got stuck in Malaya, most of them deprived of their jobs and all cut off from their families. In Burma, where the military operations lasted until April, the British Government was able to arrange the evacuation of many people, particularly officials and their families. Thousands tried to get across to India by the land route but a large proportion of them perished on the way. Still, there were nearly one million Indians left behind in Japanese-occupied Burma. From other territories in East Asia, very few Indians were able to get back home after the outbreak of the war.
Indians abroad enjoyed a higher standard of living than in the home country but the stigma of being a subject race followed them everywhere. Indians went abroad mainly as laborers and traders. In neither category, were they treated on a par with other nationalities in any country and, in most places, they faced distinct disabilities. This was particularly the case with educated and professional men. Nevertheless, dire necessity and grim perseverance helped these overseas Indians to combat all sorts of restrictions, fight all sorts of competitions, and to endure all sorts of hardships and privations in an effort to establish themselves in the lands to which they had migrated.
Thus, in many parts of Southeast Asia, particularly