The Subhas Brigade, or the 1st Guerrilla Regiment was a unit of the Indian National Army (INA). The unit was formed in 1943 and unofficially referred to as Subhas Brigade after the

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

independence Independence is a condition of a person, nation, country, or state in which residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory. The opposite of independence is the statu ...

leader

Subhas Chandra Bose Subhas Chandra Bose ( ; 23 January 1897 – 18 August 1945 * * * * * * * * *) was an Indian nationalist whose defiance of British authority in India made him a hero among Indians, but his wartime alliances with Nazi Germany and Imperia ...

, who at the time was also the supreme commander of the army. The unit was the first and major commitment of the second INA in the Imphal Offensive, and along with Azad, Gandhi and Nehru Brigade, the Army's contribution to the

Imperial Japanese Army The was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor o ...

's U-go offensive. The Brigade was divided into three

battalion A battalion is a military unit, typically consisting of 300 to 1,200 soldiers commanded by a lieutenant colonel, and subdivided into a number of companies (usually each commanded by a major or a captain). In some countries, battalions are ...

s under the command of

Shah Nawaz Khan Shah (; fa, شاه, , ) is a royal title that was historically used by the leading figures of Iranian monarchies.Yarshater, EhsaPersia or Iran, Persian or Farsi, ''Iranian Studies'', vol. XXII no. 1 (1989) It was also used by a variety of ...

. By the beginning of January 1944, it had reached

Rangoon Yangon ( my, ရန်ကုန်; ; ), formerly spelled as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar (also known as Burma). Yangon served as the capital of Myanmar until 2006, when the military government ...

Burma Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

, where two battalions remained to guard the border between Burma and

near Haka while the third advanced into India across the

Kaladan River The Kaladan River ( my, ကုလားတန်မြစ်, ; also Kysapnadi, Beino, Bawinu and Kolodyne) is a river in eastern Mizoram State of India, and in Chin State and Rakhine State of western Myanmar. The Kaladan River is called the Chh ...

. Elements of the Brigade subsequently took part in the Battles of Imphal and

Kohima Kohima (; Angami Naga: ''Kewhira'' ()), is the capital of the Northeastern Indian state of Nagaland. With a resident population of almost 100,000, it is the second largest city in the state. Originally known as ''Kewhira'', Kohima was founded ...

, where they were forced to withdraw alongside the Japanese forces they supported. These battles marked the turning point in the Burma Campaign. Bose himself did not wish to have the Brigade named for him,

R.C. Majumdar Ramesh Chandra Majumdar (known as R. C. Majumdar; 4 December 1888 – 11 February 1980) was a historian and professor of History of India, Indian history. Majumdar is a noted historian of modern India. He was a former Sheriff of Kolkata. Early ...

, ''History of the Freedom Movement in India'', 1988 (). but the name was kept.

Notes

Sources

* * Getz, Marshall J., ''Subhas Chandra Bose: A Biography'', 2002 (), quoted in
Stone & Stone review by Bill Stone
South-East Asian theatre of World War II Military units and formations of the Indian National Army {{India-mil-stub