Indian National Army

Subhas Chandra Bose was the ideal person to lead a rebel army into India came from the very beginning of F Kikan's work with captured Indian soldiers. Mohan Singh himself, soon after his first meeting with Fujiwara, had suggested that Bose was the right leader of a nationalist Indian army.[43] A number of the officers and troops – including some who now returned to prisoner-of-war camps and some who had not volunteered in the first place – made it known that they would be willing to join the INA only if it was led by Subhas Bose.[44] Bose was a nationalist. He had joined the Gandhian movement after resigning from a prestigious post in the Indian Civil Service in 1922, quickly rising in the Congress and being incarcerated repeatedly by the Raj.[45] By late 1920s he and Nehru were considered the future leaders of the Congress.[46] In the late 1920s, he was amongst the first Congress leaders to call for complete independence from Britain (Purna Swaraj), rather than the previous Congress objective of India becoming a British dominion.[46] In Bengal, he was repeatedly accused by Raj officials of working with the revolutionary movement. Under his leadership, the Congress youth group in Bengal was organised into a quasi-military organisation called the Bengal Volunteers.[47] Bose deplored Gandhi's pacifism; Gandhi disagreed with Bose's confrontations with the Raj.[46] The Congress's working committee, including Nehru, was predominantly loyal to Gandhi.[46] While openly disagreeing with Gandhi, Bose won the presidency of Indian National Congress twice in the 1930s. His second victory came despite opposition from Gandhi. He defeated Gandhi's favoured candidate, Bhogaraju Pattabhi Sitaramayya, in the popular vote, but the entire working committee resigned and refused to work with Bose.[48] Bose resigned from the Congress presidency and founded his own faction within the Congress, the All India Forward Bloc.[49]

Bose meeting with Adolf Hitler in East Prussia, May 1942

At the start of World War II, Bose was placed under house arrest by the Raj.[50] He escaped in disguise and made his way through Afghanistan and Central -Asia. He came first to the Soviet Union and then to Germany, reaching Berlin on 2 April 1941.[19][48] There he -sought to raise an army of Indian soldiers from prisoners of war captured by Germany,[51] forming the Free India Legion and the Azad Hind Radio.[52] The Japanese ambassador, Oshima Hiroshi, kept Tokyo informed of these developments.[53] From the very start of the war, the Japanese intelligence services noted from speaking to captured Indian soldiers that Bose was held in extremely high regard as a nationalist and was considered by Indian soldiers to be the right person to be leading a rebel army.[43]

In a series of meetings between the INA leaders and the Japanese in 1943, it was decided to cede the leadership of the IIL and the INA to Bose. In January 1943, the Japanese invited Bose to lead the Indian nationalist movement in East Asia.[54] He accepted and left Germany on 8 February. After a three-month journey by submarine and a short stop in Singapore, he reached Tokyo on 11 May 1943. In Tokyo, he met Hideki Tojo, the Japanese prime minister, and the Japanese High Command. He then arrived in Singapore in July 1943, where he made a number of radio broadcasts to Indians in Southeast Asia exhorting them to join in the fight for India's independence.[55]

On 4 July 1943 two days after reaching Singapore, Bose assumed the leadership of the IIL and the Indian National Army in a ceremony at Cathay Building. Bose's influence was notable. His appeal re-invigorated the INA, which had previously consisted mainly of prisoners of war: it also attracted Indian expatriates in South Asia. He famously proclaimed that Give me blood! I will give you freedom

"Local civilians joined the INA, doubling its strength. They included barristers, traders and plantation workers, as well as Khudabadi Sindhi Swarankars who were working as shop keepers; many had no military experience."[56][57] Carl Vadivella Belle estimates under Bose's dynamic appeal, membership of the IIL peaked at 350,000, while almost 100,000 local Indians in South-east Asia volunteered to join the INA, with the army ultimately reaching a force of 50,000.[56] Hugh Toye— a British Intelligence officer and author of a 1959 history of the army called The Springing Tiger— and American historian Peter Fay (author of a 1993 history called The Forgotten Army) have reached similar estimates of troop strength. The first INA is considered to have comprised about 40,000 troops, of whom about 4,000 withdrew when it was disbanded in December 1942. The Second INA started with 12,000 troops.[58] Further recruitment of former Indian Army personnel added about 8,000–10,000. About 18,000 Indian civilians also enlisted during this time. Belle estimates almost 20,000 were local Malayan Indians, while another 20,000 were ex-British-Indian Army members who volunteered for the INA.[56]

Subhas Bose with Mohandas Gandhi at a Congress meeting, c 1930

The exact organisation of the INA and its precise troop strength is not known, since its records were destroyed by the withdrawing Azad Hind Government before Rangoon was recaptured by Commonwealth forces in 1945.[59] The order of battle described by Fay (constructed from discussions with INA-veterans), nonetheless, is similar to that described of the first INA by Toye in The Springing Tiger. The 1st Division, under M.Z. Kiani, drew many ex-Indian army prisoners of war who had joined Mohan Singh's first INA. It also drew prisoners of war who had not joined in 1942. It consisted of the 2nd Guerrilla Regiment (the Gandhi Brigade) consisting of two battalions under Col. Inayat Kiani; the 3rd Guerrilla Regiment (the Azad Brigade) with three battalions under Col. Gulzara Singh; and the 4th Guerrilla Regiment (or Nehru Brigade) commanded by the end of the war by Lt. Col Gurubaksh Singh Dhillon.[60] The 1st Guerrilla Regiment – the Subhas Brigade – under Col. Shah Nawaz Khan was an independent unit, consisting of three infantry battalions. A special operations group was also to be set up called the Bahadur group (Valiant), to operate behind enemy lines.[61]

A training school for INA officers, led by Habib ur Rahman, and the Azad School for the civilian volunteers were set up to provide training to the recruits. A youth wing of the INA, composed of 45 young Indians personally chosen by Bose and known as the Tokyo Boys, was also sent to Japan's Imperial Military Academy, where its members trained as fighter pilots. A separate all-female unit was also created under Lakshmi Sahgal. This unit was intended to have combat-commitments.[62] Named Jhansi ki Rani ("Jhansi Queens") Regiment (after the legendary rebel Queen Lakshmibai of the 1857 rebellion), it drew female civilian volunteers from Malaya and Burma. The 1st Division was lightly armed. Each battalion was composed of five companies of infantry. The individual companies were armed with six antitank rifles, six Bren guns and six Vickers machine guns. Some NCOs carried hand grenades, while senior officers of the Bahadur groups attached to each unit issued hand grenades (of captured British stock) to men going forward on duty.[63]

The 2nd Division was organised under Colonel Abdul Aziz Tajik[64] It was formed largely after the Imphal offensive had started and drew large remnants of what remained of the Hindustan Field Force of the First INA. The 2nd Division consisted of the 1st Infantry Regiment, which later merged with the 5th Guerrilla Regiment to form the INA's 2nd Infantry Regiment under Col Prem Sahgal. The 1st Infantry Regiment drew many civilian volunteers from Burma and Malaya and was equipped with the largest share of the heavy armament that the INA possessed.[65] An additional 3rd Division of the INA was composed chiefly of local volunteers in Malaya and Singapore. This unit disbanded before Japan surrendered. A motor transport division was also created, but it was severely limited by lack of resources. In 1945, at the end of the INA, it consisted of about 40,000 soldiers.[66] Unlike Mohan Singh, whose assumption of the rank of general had generated opposition, Bose refused to take a rank.[67] Both the soldiers of the INA and civilians addressed Bose as Netaji ("Dear leader"), a term first used in Berlin by members of the Free India Legion.[68] In October 1943, Bose proclaimed the formation of the Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind, or the Provisional Government of Free India (also known as Azad Hind or Free India). The INA was declared to be the army of Azad Hind.[69]

Radio transmitting set seized from INA agents in Calcutta, 1944. Four agents had been landed by submarine on the Indian coast, tasked with setting up a wireless post.

The plans chosen by Bose and Masakazu Kawabe, chief of the Burma area army, envisaged the INA being assigned an independent sector in the U-Go offensive. No INA units were to operate at less than battalion strength.[77] For operational purposes, the Subhas Brigade was placed under the command of the Japanese General Headquarters in Burma. Advance parties of the Bahadur Group also went forward with advanced Japanese units.[78] As the offensive opened, the INA's 1st Division, consisting of four guerrilla regiments, was divided between U Go and the diversionary Ha-Go offensive in Arakan.[77][79] One battalion reached as far as Mowdok in Chittagong after breaking through the British West African Division.[80][81] A Bahadur Group unit, led by Col. Shaukat Malik, took the border enclave of Moirang in early April.[82] The main body of the 1st Division was however committed to the U-Go, directed towards Manipur. Led by Shah Nawaz Khan, it successfully protected the Japanese flanks against Chin and Kashin guerrillas as Renya Mutaguchi's three divisions crossed the Chindwin river and the Naga Hills, and participated in the main offensive through Tamu in the direction of Imphal and Kohima.[11][83] The 2nd Division, under M.Z. Kiani, was placed to the right flank of the 33rd Division attacking Kohima. However, by the time Khan's forces left Tamu, the offensive had been held, and Khan's troops were redirected to Kohima. After reaching Ukhrul, near Kohima, they found Japanese forces had begun their withdrawal from the area. The INA's forces suffered the same fate as Mutaguchi's army when the siege of Imphal was broken. With little or nothing in the way of supplies, and with additional difficulties caused by the monsoon, Allied air dominance, and Burmese irregular forces, the 1st and 2nd divisions began withdrawing alongside the 15th Army and Burma Area Army. During the withdrawal through Manipur, a weakened Gandhi regiment held its position against the advancing Maratha Light Infantry on the Burma–India road while the general withdrawal was prepared.[84][85] The 2nd and 3rd INA regiments protected the flanks of the Yamamoto force successfully at the most critical time during this withdrawal,[86] but wounded and diseased men succumbed to starvation along the route. Commonwealth troops following the Japanese forces found INA dead along with Japanese troops who had died of starvation.[87] The INA lost a substantial number of men and amount of materiel in this retreat. A number of units were disbanded or used to feed into new divisions.[88]

As the Allied Burma campaign began the following year, the INA remained committed to the defence of Burma and was a part of the Japanese defensive deployments. The Second Division was tasked with the defence of Irrawaddy and the adjoining areas around Nangyu, and offered opposition to Messervy's 7th Indian Division when it attempted to cross the river at Pagan and Nyangyu during Irrawaddy operations.[12][89] Later, during the Battles of Meiktila and Mandalay, the forces under Prem Sahgal were tasked with defending the area around Mount Popa from the British 17th Division, which would have exposed the flank of Heitarō Kimura's forces attempting to retake Meiktila and Nyangyu. The division was obliterated, at times fighting tanks with hand grenades and bottles of petrol.[90][91] Many INA soldiers realised that they were in a hopeless position. Many surrendered to pursuing Commonwealth forces. Isolated, losing men to exhaustion and to desertion, low on ammunition and food, and pursued by Commonwealth forces, the surviving units of the second division began an attempt to withdraw towards Rangoon. They broke through encircling Commonwealth lines a number of times before finally surrendering at various places in early April 1945.[89][92] As the Japanese situation became precarious, the Azad Hind government withdrew from Rangoon to Singapore, along with the remnants of the 1st Division and the Rani of Jhansi Regiment. Nearly 6,000 troops of the surviving units of the INA remained in Rangoon under A. D. Loganathan. They surrendered as Rangoon fell and helped keep order until the Allied forces entered the city.[93]

As the Japanese withdrawal from Burma progressed, other remnants of the INA began a long march overland and on foot towards Bangkok. In what has been called an "epic retreat to safety",[94] Bose walked with his troops, refusing to leave them despite Japanese soldiers finding him transport.[95] The withdrawing forces regularly suffered casualties from Allied planes strafing them and in clashes with Aung San's Burmese resistance, as well as from Chinese guerrillas who harassed the Japanese troops.[95] Bose returned to Singapore in August to what remained of the INA and Azad Hind. He wished to stay with his government in Singapore to surrender to the British, reasoning that a trial in India and possible execution would ignite the country, serving the independence movement. He was convinced not to do so by the Azad Hind cabinet.[96] At the time of Japan's surrender in September 1945, Bose left for Dalian near the Soviet border in Japanese-occupied China to attempt to contact the advancing Soviet troops, and was reported to have died in an air crash near Taiwan.[97][98] The remaining INA troops surrendered under the command of M.Z. Kiani to British-Indian forces at Singapore.[99]

Troops of the Indian National Army who surrendered at Mount Popa. Circa April 1945.

Even before the end of the war in South Asia, the INA prisoners who were falling into Allied hands were being evaluated by forwarding intelligence units for potential trials.[100] Almost fifteen hundred had been captured in the battles of Imphal and Kohima and the subsequent withdrawal,[101] while larger numbers surrendered or were captured during the 14th Army's Burma Campaign. A total of 16,000 of the INA's 43,000 recruits were captured, of whom around 11,000 were interrogated by the Combined Services Directorate of Investigation Corps (CSDIC).[102] The number of prisoners necessitated this selective policy which anticipated trials of those with the strongest commitment to Bose's ideologies. Those with lesser commitment or other extenuating circumstances would be dealt with more leniently, with the punishment proportional to their commitment or war crimes.[103] For this purpose, the field intelligence units designated the captured troops as Blacks with the strongest commitment to Azad Hind; Greys with varying commitment but also with enticing circumstances that led them to join the INA; and Whites, those who were pressured into joining the INA under the circumstances but with no commitment to Azad Hind, INA, or Bose.[104]

By July 1945, a large number had been shipped back to India. At the time of the fall of Japan, the remaining captured troops were transported to India via Rangoon. Large numbers of local Malay and Burmese volunteers, including the recruits to the Rani of Jhansi regiment, returned to civilian life and were not identified.[103] Those repatriated passed through transit camps in Chittagong and Calcutta to be held at detention camps all over India including Jhingergacha and Nilganj near Calcutta, Kirkee outside Pune, Attock, Multan and at Bahadurgarh near Delhi. Bahadurgarh also held prisoners of the Free India Legion.[100] By November, around 12,000 INA prisoners were held in these camps; they were released according to the "colours".[100] By December, around 600 Whites were released per week. The process to select those to face trial started.[100]

The British-Indian Army intended to implement appropriate internal disciplinary action against its soldiers who had joined the INA, whilst putting to trial a selected group in order to preserve discipline in the Indian Army and to award punishment for criminal acts where these had occurred.[105] As news of the army spread within India, it began to draw widespread sympathy support and admiration from Indians. Newspaper reports around November 1945 reported executions of INA troops,[106] which worsened the already volatile situation. Increasingly violent confrontations broke out between the police and protesters at the mass rallies being held all over India, culminating in public riotings in support of the INA men.[107][108][109] This public outcry defied traditional communal barriers of the subcontinent, representing a departure from the divisions between Hindus and Muslims seen elsewhere in the independence movement and campaign for Pakistan.[110]

Between November 1945 and May 1946, approximately ten courts-martial were held in public at the Red Fort in Delhi. Claude Auchinleck, the Commander-in-Chief of the British-Indian army, hoped that by holding public trials in the Red Fort, public opinion would turn against the INA if the media reported stories of torture and collaborationism, helping him settle a political as well as military question.[111] Those to stand trials were accused variously of murder, torture and "waging war against the King-Emperor". However, the first and most celebrated joint courts-martial – those of Prem Sahgal, Gurubaksh Singh Dhillon and Shah Nawaz Khan – were not the story of torture and murder Auchinleck had hoped to tell the Indian press and people. The accusations against them included the alleged murder of their comrades-in-arms in the INA whilst in Burma. Peter Fay highlights in his book The Forgotten Army that the murders alleged were, in fact, courts-martial of captured deserters the defendants had presided over. If it was accepted that the three were part of a genuine combatant army (as the legal defence team later argued), they had followed due process of written INA law and of the normal process of conduct of war in execution of the sentences.[112] Indians rapidly came to view the soldiers who enlisted as patriots and not enemy-collaborators. Philip Mason, then-Secretary of the War Department, later wrote that "in a matter of weeks ... in a wave of nationalist emotion, the INA were acclaimed heroes who fought for the freedom of India."[113] The three accused were from the three major religions of India: Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism. Indians felt the INA represented a true, secular, national army when judged against the British-Indian Army, where caste and religious differences were preserved amongst ranks.[110][114] The opening of the first trial saw violence and a series of riots in a scale later described as "sensational".[115] The Indian National Congress and the Muslim League both made the release of the INA prisoners an important political issue during the campaign for independence in 1945–1946.[116] Lahore in Diwali 1946 remained dark as the traditional earthen lamps lit on Diwali were not lit by families in support of prisoners.[117] In addition to civilian campaigns of non-cooperation and non-violent protest, protest spread to include mutinies within the British-Indian Army and sympathy within the British-Indian forces. Support for the INA crossed communal barriers to the extent that it was the last major campaign in which the Congress and the Muslim League aligned together; the Congress tricolour and the green flag of the League were flown together at protests.[118]

The Congress quickly came forward to defend soldiers of the INA who were to be court-martialled.[119] The INA Defence Committee was formed by the Indian Congress and included prominent Indian legal figures, among whom were Jawaharlal Nehru, Bhulabhai Desai, Kailashnath Katju and Asaf Ali.[118] The trials covered arguments based on military law, constitutional law, international law, and politics. Mithi Mukherjee call the trials a "key moment in the elaboration of an anticolonial critique of international law in India."[120] Much of the initial defence was based on the argument that they should be treated as prisoners of war as they were not paid mercenaries but bona fide soldiers of a legal government – Bose's Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind.[121] Nehru argued that "however misinformed or otherwise they had been in their notion of patriotic duty towards their country", they recognized the free Indian state as their sovereign and not the British sovereign.[122] Peter Fay points out that at least one INA prisoner – Burhan-ud-Din  a brother of the ruler of Chitral – may have deserved to be accused of torture, but his trial had been deferred on administrative grounds.[123] Those charged after the first celebrated courts-martial only faced trial for torture and murder or abetment of murder. Charges of treason were dropped for fear of inflaming public opinion.[124]

In spite of aggressive and widespread opposition to the continuation of the court-martial, it was completed. All three defendants were found guilty in many of the charges and sentenced to deportation for life. The sentence, however, was never carried out. Immense public pressure, demonstrations, and riots forced Claude Auchinleck to release all three defendants. Within three months, 11,000 soldiers of the INA were released after cashiering and forfeiture of pay and allowance.[115][125] On the recommendation of Lord Mountbatten and with the agreement of Jawaharlal Nehru, former soldiers of the INA were not allowed to join the new Indian Armed Forces as a condition for independence.[126]

Some mutinies in the Royal Indian Navy in 1946 are thought to have been caused by the nationalist feelings inspired by the opposition to INA trials.[127] Historians like Sumit Sarkar, Peter Cohen, Fay and others suggest that these events played a crucial role in hastening the end of British rule.[115][128]

The INA was known as the puppet army of the Japanese empire.[7][8] In early days, the officers in the INA distrusted the Japanese. Leaders of the first INA sought formal assurances from Japan before committing to war. When these did not arrive, Mohan Singh resigned after ordering his army to disband; he expected to be sentenced to death. After Bose established Azad Hind, he tried to establish his political independence from the regime that supported him. Indeed, he had led protests against the Japanese expansion into China, and supported Chiang Kai-shek during the 1930s. Azad Hind depended on Japan for arms and material but sought to be as financially independent as possible, levying taxes and raising donations from Indians in Southeast Asia".[150] On the Japanese side, members of the high command had been personally impressed by Bose and were willing to grant him some latitude; more importantly, the Japanese were interested in maintaining the support of a man who had been able to mobilise large numbers of Indian expatriates – including, most importantly, 40,000 of the 45,000 Indians captured by the Japanese at Singapore.[151] However, Faye notes that interactions between soldiers in the field was different. Attempts to use Shah Nawaz's troops in road building and as porters angered the troops, forcing Bose to intervene with Mutaguchi. After the withdrawal from Imphal, the relations between both junior non-commissioned officers and between senior officers had deteriorated. INA officers accused the Japanese Army high command of trying to deceive INA troops into fighting for Japan. Conversely, Japanese soldiers often expressed disdain for INA soldiers for having changed their oath of loyalty. This mutual dislike was especially strong after the withdrawal from Imphal began; Japanese soldiers, suspicious that INA defectors had been responsible for their defeat, addressed INA soldiers as "shameless one" instead of "comrade" as previously had been the case.[152] Azad Hind officials in Burma reported difficulties with the Japanese military administration in arranging supply for troops and transport for wounded men as the armies withdrew. Toye notes that local IIL members and Azad Hind Dal (local Azad Hind administrative teams) organised relief supplies from Indians in Burma at this time. As the situation in Burma became hopeless for the Japanese, Bose refused requests to use INA troops against Aung San's Burma National Army, which had turned against Japan and was now allied with Commonwealth forces.[153]

The first interaction of the INA with the British-Indian forces was during the months during the First Arakan offensive, between December 1942 and March 1943. The morale of Sepoys during this time was low and knowledge about the INA was minimal. The INA's special services agents led a successful operation during this time in encouraging the Indian troops to defect to the INA. By the end of March 1945, however, the Sepoys in the British-Indian Army were reinvigorated and perceived the men of the INA to be savage turncoats and cowards. Senior British officers in the Indian Army considered them "rabble".[112] Historians Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper mention that sepoys in field units shot captured or wounded INA men, relieving their British officers of the complex task of formulating a formal plan for captured men.[154] After Singapore was retaken, Mountbatten ordered the INA's war memorial to its fallen soldiers to be blown up.[155]

As the story of the INA unfolded in post-war India, the view of Indian soldiers on the INA – and on their own position during the war – also changed.[156] The Raj observed with increasing disquiet and unease the spread of pro-INA sympathies within the troops of the British-Indian forces.[108] In February 1946, while the trials were still going on, a general strike by ratings of the Royal Indian Navy rapidly deteriorated into a mutiny incorporating ships and shore establishments of the RIN throughout India. The mutineers raised slogans invoking Subhas Bose and the INA, demanding an end to the trials. The mutiny received widespread public support.[157] In some places in the British-Indian Army, non-commissioned Officers started ignoring orders from British superiors. In Madras and Pune British garrisons faced revolts from within the ranks of the British-Indian Army. These were suppressed by force.[157][158] At the conclusion of the first trial, when the sentences of deportation were commuted, Fay records Claude Auchinleck as having sent a "personal and secret" letter to all senior British officers, explaining:[159]

... practically all are sure that any attempt to enforce the sentence would have led to chaos in the country at large, and probably to mutiny and dissension in the Army, culminating in its dissolution.

Sidney Bradshaw Fay concludes that the INA was not significant enough to beat the British-Indian Army by military strength. He also writes that the INA was aware of this and formulated its own strategy of avoiding set-piece battles, gathering local and popular support within India and instigating revolt within the British-Indian Army to overthrow the Raj.[14] Moreover, the Forward Bloc underground movement within India had been crushed well before the offensives opened in the Burma–Manipur theatre, depriving the army of any organised internal support.[128] However, despite its small numerical strength and lack of heavy weapons, its special services group played a significant part in halting the First Arakan Offensive while still under Mohan Singh's command.[160] The propaganda threat of the INA and lack of concrete intelligence on the unit early after the fall of Singapore made it a threat to Allied war plans in Southeast Asia, since it threatened to destroy the Sepoys' loyalty to a British-Indian Army that was demoralised from continuing defeats.[161] There were reports of INA operatives successfully infiltrating Commonwealth lines during the Offensive. This caused British intelligence to begin the "Jiffs" propaganda campaign and to create "Josh" groups to improve the morale and preserve the loyalty of the sepoys as consolidation began to prepare for the defence of Manipur.[162][163] These measures included imposing a complete news ban on Bose and the INA that was not lifted until four days after the fall of Rangoon two years later.[164][165]

During the Japanese U-Go offensive towards Manipur in 1944, the INA played a crucial (and successful) role in diversionary attacks in Arakan and in the Manipur Basin itself, where it fought alongside Mutaguchi's 15th Army.[166] INA forces protected the flanks of the assaulting Yamamoto force at a critical time as the latter attempted to take Imphal.[86][167] During the Commonwealth Burma Campaign, the INA troops fought in the battles of Irrawaddy and Meiktilla,[168] supporting the Japanese offensive and tying down Commonwealth troops.[169][170]

The first INA trial, which was held in public, became a rallying point for the independence movement from the autumn of 1945.[18][128][127] The release of INA prisoners and the suspension of the trials came to be the dominant political campaign, superseding the campaign for independence.[171] Christopher Bayly notes that the "INA was to become a much more powerful enemy of the British empire in defeat than it had been during its ill-fated triumphal march on Delhi."[154] The Viceroy's journal describes the autumn and winter of 1945–1946 as "The Edge of a Volcano".[128] The setting of the trial at Red Fort was taken by Indian public as a deliberate taunt by the British Raj over the vanquished INA, recalling the INA's battle cries of unfurling the Indian tricolour over the Red Fort.[112] Many compared the trials to that of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor tried in the same place after the failed 1857 uprising.[172] Support for the INA grew rapidly and their continued detention and news of impending trials was seen an affront to the movement for independence and to Indian identity itself.[173] It was further feared that the Congress would exploit the INA to gain mass support against the Raj and possibly start an armed struggle with weapons smuggled from Burma.[123][174] Nehru was suspected of using INA men to train Congress volunteers.[123] The political effects of the INA trials were enormous and were felt around India as late as 1948, much to the chagrin of the Congress government in independent India,[130][175] which feared that pro-INA sympathies could help alternative sources of power.[176]

Historians such as Sumit Sarkar, Sugata Bose, and Ayesha Jalal conclude that the INA trials and its after-effects brought a decisive shift in British policy towards independence Indian.[171][177] Particularly disturbing was the overt and public support for the INA by the soldiers of the Indian Army and the mutinies.[171][177] The Congress's rhetoric preceding the 1946 elections gave the Raj reasons to fear a revival of the Quit India Movement of 1942.[177] Gandhi noted:[171]

... the whole country has been roused ... even the regular forces have been stirred into a new political consciousness and have begun to think in terms of independence ...

After the war ended, the story of the INA and the Indian Legion was seen as so inflammatory that, fearing mass revolts and uprisings across its empire, the British Government forbade the BBC from broadcasting their story.[178] The use of Indian troops for the restoration of Dutch and French rule in Vietnam and Indonesia fed into the already growing resentment within the forces.[179] Indian troops sent to suppress Sukarno's agitations in Indonesia in 1946 rapidly identified with the nationalist sentiments in the previous Dutch colony.[180] The South East Asia Command reported growing sympathy for the INA and dislike of the Dutch.[181] There were similar pro-nationalist sentiments among Indian troops sent to Vietnam, Thailand and Burma. This led to the realisation by 1946 that the British-Indian Army, the bulwark of the policing force in the British colonies, could not be used as an instrument of British power.[182] INA-inspired strikes emerged throughout Britain's colonies in Southeast Asia. In January 1946, protests started at Royal Air Force bases in Karachi and spread rapidly to Singapore. This was followed by a full-scale mutiny by a British Army unit in Singapore. In British Malaya, men of the Parachute Regiment refused to obey orders from their officers.[183] Authors like Nilanjana Sengupta attribute these to a combination of dissatisfaction over pay and work conditions and conflicts of comradeship over the INA trials.[184] Former INA members in Malaya identified closely with the left-wing organisations in opposing British colonial authority. The majority of prominent left-wing union leaders in Malaya after the war were members of the INA. The activities of the trade unions in the newly established Tamil schools were particularly influential, leading to the establishment of an inspector system by the British to supervise the curriculum and teaching in these schools.[136] Joyce Lebra notes that the INA had a particularly strong unifying influence over ethnic Indians residing in Malaya. Lebra concludes that the experience of the INA was useful in challenging British authority in the post-war period in Malaya, and in improving the socio-economic conditions of the Indian community.[136]