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 List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...

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 stat ...

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 Imperi ...

, 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 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (; ; 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948), popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi, was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist Quote: "... marks Gandhi as a hybrid cosmopolitan figure who transformed ... anti- ...

and

Nehru Brigade The Nehru Brigade or 4th Guerrilla Regiment was a unit of the Indian National Army The Indian National Army (INA; ''Azad Hind Fauj'' ; 'Free Indian Army') was a collaborationist armed force formed by Indian collaborators and Imperial Japa ...

, 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 Emper ...

'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 ...

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 C. Wells, Joh ...

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

near

Haka Haka (; plural ''haka'', in both Māori and English) are a variety of ceremonial performance art in Māori culture. It is often performed by a group, with vigorous movements and stamping of the feet with rhythmically shouted or chanted accompani ...

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 ...

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