Azad Hind Fauj

The Indian National Army (INA; ''Azad Hind Fauj'' ; 'Free Indian Army') was a collaborationist armed force formed by Indian collaborators and Imperial Japan on 1 September 1942 in Southeast Asia during World War II. Its aim was to secure Indian independence from British rule. It fought alongside Japanese soldiers in the latter's campaign in the Southeast Asian theatre of WWII. The army was first formed in 1942 under Rash Behari Bose by Indian PoWs of the British Indian Army captured by Japan in the Malayan campaign and at Singapore. This first INA, which had been handed over to Rash Behari Bose, collapsed and was disbanded in December that year after differences between the INA leadership and the Japanese military over its role in Japan's war in Asia. Rash Behari Bose handed over INA to Subhas Chandra Bose. It was revived under the leadership of Subhas Chandra Bose after his arrival in Southeast Asia in 1943. The army was declared to be the army of Bose's ''Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind'' (the Provisional Government of Free India). Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose named the brigades/regiments of INA after Gandhi, Nehru, Maulana Azad, and himself. There was also an all-women regiment named after Rani of Jhanshi, Lakshmibai. Under Bose's leadership, the INA drew ex-prisoners and thousands of civilian volunteers from the Indian expatriate population in Malaya (present-day Malaysia) and Burma. This second INA fought under the Imperial Japanese Army against the British and Commonwealth forces in the campaigns in Burma: at Imphal and Kohima, and later against the Allied retaking of Burma.

After the INA's initial formation in 1942, there was concern in the British Indian Army that further Indian troops would defect. This led to a reporting ban and a propaganda campaign called "Jiffs" to preserve the loyalty of the Sepoy. Historians like Peter W. Fay who have written about the army, however, consider the INA not to have had significant influence on the war. The end of the war saw many of the troops repatriated to India where some faced trials for treason. These trials became a galvanising point in the Indian Independence movement. The Bombay mutiny in the Royal Indian Navy and other mutinies in 1946 are thought to have been caused by the nationalist feelings that were caused by the INA trials. Historians like Sumit Sarkar, Peter Cohen, Fay and others suggest that these events played a crucial role in hastening the end of British rule. A number of people associated with the INA during the war later went on to hold important roles in public life in India as well as in other countries in Southeast Asia, most notably Lakshmi Sehgal in India, and John Thivy and Janaki Athinahappan in Malaya.

It was associated with Imperial Japan and the other Axis powers, and accusations were levelled against INA troops of being involved and complicit in Japanese war crimes. The INA's members were viewed as Axis collaborators and traitors by British soldiers and Indian PoWs who did not join the army, but after the war they were seen as patriots by many Indians. Although they were widely commemorated by the Indian National Congress in the immediate aftermath of Indian independence, members of the INA were denied freedom fighter status by the Government of India, unlike those in the Gandhian movement. Nevertheless, the army remains a popular and passionate topic in Indian culture and politics.

First INA

Before the start of World War II, Japan and South-East Asia were major refuges for exiled Indian nationalists. Meanwhile, Japan had sent intelligence missions, notably under Maj. Iwaichi Fujiwara, into South Asia to gather support from the Malayan sultans, overseas Chinese, the Burmese resistance and the Indian independence movement. The Minami Kikan successfully recruited Burmese nationalists, while the F Kikan was successful in establishing contacts with Indian nationalists in exile in Thailand and Malaya. Fujiwara, later self-described as "Lawrence of the Indian National Army" (after Lawrence of Arabia) is said to have been a man committed to the values which his office was supposed to convey to the expatriate nationalist leaders, and found acceptance among them. His initial contact was with Giani Pritam Singh and the Thai-Bharat Cultural Lodge.
At the outbreak of World War II in South-East Asia, 70,000 Indian troops (mostly Sikhs) were stationed in Malaya. In Japan's spectacular Malayan Campaign many Indian prisoners-of-war were captured, including nearly 45,000 after the fall of Singapore alone. The conditions of service within the British-Indian Army and the social conditions in Malaya had led to dissension among these troops. From these prisoners, the First Indian National Army was formed under Mohan Singh. Singh was an officer in the British-Indian Army who was captured early in the Malayan campaign. His nationalist sympathies found an ally in Fujiwara and he received considerable Japanese aid and support. Ethnic Indians in Southeast Asia also supported the cause of Indian independence and had formed local leagues in Malaya before the war. These came together with encouragement from Japan after the occupation, forming the Indian Independence League (IIL).

Although there were a number of prominent local Indians working in the IIL, the overall leadership came to rest with Rash Behari Bose, an Indian revolutionary who had lived in self-exile in Japan since World War I. The League and INA leadership decided that the INA was to be subordinate to the IIL. A working council – composed of prominent members of the League and the INA leaders – was to decide on decisions to send the INA to war. The Indian leaders feared that they would appear to be Japanese puppets, so a decision was taken that the INA would go to battle only when the Indian National Congress called it to do so. Assurances of non-interference— later termed the Bidadary resolutions— were demanded of Japan; these would have amounted to a treaty with an independent government. In this time, F. Kikan had been replaced by the Iwakuro Kikan (or I Kikan) headed by Hideo Iwakuro. Iwakuro's working relationship with the league was more tenuous. Japan did not immediately agree to the demands arising from the Bidadary resolutions. Differences also existed between Rash Behari and the League, not least because Rash Behari had lived in Japan for the considerable time and had a Japanese wife and a son in the Imperial Japanese Army. On the other hand, Mohan Singh expected military strategy and decisions to be autonomous decisions for the INA, independent of the league.

In November and December 1942, concern about Japan's intentions towards the INA led to disagreement between the INA and the League on the one hand and the Japanese on the other. The INA leadership resigned along with that of the League (except Rash Behari). The unit was dissolved by Mohan Singh in December 1942, and he ordered the troops of the INA to return to PoW camps. Mohan Singh was expected to be shot.

Between December 1942 and February 1943, Rash Behari struggled to hold the INA together. On 15 February 1943, the army itself was put under the command of Lt. Col. M.Z. Kiani. A policy forming body was formed with Lt. Col J.R. Bhonsle (Director of the Military Bureau) in charge and clearly placed under the authority of the IIL. Under Bhonsle served Lt. Col. Shah Nawaz Khan as Chief of General Staff, Major P.K. Sahgal as Military Secretary, Major Habib ur Rahman as commandant of the Officers' Training School and Lt. Col. A.C. Chatterji (later Major A.D. Jahangir) as head of enlightenment and culture.

Second INA

Subhas Chandra Bose

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. 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. 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. By late 1920s he and Nehru were considered the future leaders of the Congress. 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. 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. Bose deplored Gandhi's pacifism; Gandhi disagreed with Bose's confrontations with the Raj. The Congress's working committee, including Nehru, was predominantly loyal to Gandhi. 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. Bose resigned from the Congress presidency and founded his own faction, the All India Forward Bloc.

At the start of World War II, Bose was placed under house arrest by the Raj. 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. There he -sought to raise an army of Indian soldiers from prisoners of war captured by Germany, forming the Free India Legion and the ''Azad Hind'' Radio. The Japanese ambassador, Oshima Hiroshi, kept Tokyo informed of these developments. 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.

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. 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.

Revival

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." 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. 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. 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.

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. 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. 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.

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. 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.

The 2nd Division was organised under Colonel Abdul Aziz Tajik 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. 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.
Unlike Mohan Singh, whose assumption of the rank of general had generated opposition, Bose refused to take a rank. 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. 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''.

Operations

On 23 October 1943, ''Azad Hind'' declared war against Britain and the United States. Its first formal commitment came with the opening of the Japanese offensive towards Manipur, code-named '' U-Go''. In the initial plans for invasion of India, Field Marshall Terauschi had been reluctant to confer any responsibilities to the INA beyond espionage and propaganda. Bose rejected this as the role of Fifth-columnists, and insisted that INA should contribute substantially in troops to form a distinct identity of an Indian-liberation army. He secured from Japanese army Chief of Staff, General Sugiyama, the agreement that INA would rank as an allied army in the offensive. The advanced headquarters of ''Azad Hind'' was moved to Rangoon in anticipation of success. The INA's own strategy was to avoid set-piece battles, for which it lacked armament as well as manpower. Initially it sought to obtain arms and increase its ranks by inducing British-Indian soldiers to defect. The latter were expected to defect in large numbers. Col Prem Sahgal, once military secretary to Subhas Bose and later tried in the first Red Fort trials, explained the INA strategy to Peter Fay – although the war itself hung in balance and nobody was sure if the Japanese would win, initiating a popular revolution with grass-roots support within India would ensure that even if Japan ultimately lost the war, Britain would not be in a position to re-assert its colonial authority. It was planned that, once Japanese forces had broken through British defences at Imphal, the INA would cross the hills of North-East India into the Gangetic plain, where it would work as a guerrilla army. This army was expected to live off the land, with captured British supplies, support, and personnel from the local population.

1944

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. 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. 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. One battalion reached as far as Mowdok in Chittagong after breaking through the British West African Division. A Bahadur Group unit, led by Col. Shaukat Malik, took the border enclave of Moirang in early April. 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. 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. The 2nd and 3rd INA regiments protected the flanks of the Yamamoto force successfully at the most critical time during this withdrawal, 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. 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.

1945

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. 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. 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. 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.

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", Bose walked with his troops, refusing to leave them despite Japanese soldiers finding him transport. 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. 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. 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. The remaining INA troops surrendered under the command of M.Z. Kiani to British-Indian forces at Singapore.

End of the INA

Repatriation to India

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. Almost fifteen hundred had been captured in the battles of Imphal and Kohima and the subsequent withdrawal, 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). 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. 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.

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. 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. By November, around 12,000 INA prisoners were held in these camps; they were released according to the "colours". By December, around 600 ''Whites'' were released per week. The process to select those to face trial started.

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. 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, 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. 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.

Red Fort trials

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. 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. 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." 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. The opening of the first trial saw violence and a series of riots in a scale later described as "sensational". 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. Lahore in Diwali 1946 remained dark as the traditional earthen lamps lit on Diwali were not lit by families in support of prisoners. 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.

The Congress quickly came forward to defend soldiers of the INA who were to be court-martialled. 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. 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." 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''. 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. 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. 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.

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. 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.

Post 1947

Within India, the INA continues to be an emotive and celebrated subject of discussion. It continued to have a stronghold over the public psyche and the sentiments of the armed forces until as late as 1947. It has been suggested that Shah Nawaz Khan was tasked with organising INA troops to train Congress volunteers at Jawaharlal Nehru's request in late 1946 and early 1947. After 1947, several members of the INA who were closely associated with Subhas Bose and with the INA trials were prominent in public life. A number of them held important positions in independent India, serving as ambassadors immediately after independence: Abid Hasan in Egypt and Denmark, A. C. N. Nambiar in the Federal Republic of Germany, Mehboob Hasan in Canada, Cyril John Stracey in the Netherlands, and N. Raghavan in Switzerland. Mohan Singh was elected to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian Parliament. He worked for the recognition of the members of Indian National Army as "freedom fighters" in the cause of the nation's independence in and out of Parliament. Shah Nawaz Khan served as Minister of State for Rail in the first Indian cabinet. Lakshmi Sahgal, Minister for Women's Affairs in the ''Azad Hind'' government, was a well known and widely respected public figure in India. In 1971, she joined the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and was later elected the leader of the All India Democratic Women's Association. Joyce Lebra, an American historian, wrote that the rejuvenation of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, then a fledgling Tamil political party in southern India, would not have been possible without participation of INA members.

Some accounts suggest that the INA veterans were involved in training civilian resistance forces against the Nizam's Razakars prior to the execution of Operation Polo and annexation of Hyderabad.
There are also suggestions that some INA veterans led Pakistani irregulars during the First Kashmir war. Mohammed Zaman Kiani served as Pakistan's political agent to Gilgit in the late 1950s. Of the very few ex-INA members who joined the Indian Armed Forces after 1947 R. S. Benegal, a member of the Tokyo Boys, joined the Indian Air Force in 1952 and later rose to be an air commodore. Benegal saw action in both 1965 and Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, earning a Maha Vir Chakra, India's second-highest award for valour.

Among other prominent members of the INA, Ram Singh Thakur, composer of a number of songs including the INA's regimental march Kadam Kadam Badaye Ja, has been credited by some for the modern tune of the Indian national anthem.

Gurubaksh Singh Dhillon and Lakshmi Sahgal were later awarded the Indian civilian honours of Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan respectively by the Indian Government in the 1990s. Lakshmi Sahgal was nominated for the Indian presidential election by communist parties in 2002. She was the sole opponent of A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, who emerged victorious. Subhas Bose himself was posthumously awarded Bharat Ratna in 1992, but this was later withdrawn over the controversy over the circumstances of his death.

Former INA recruits in diasporic Singapore, however, faced a different situation. In Singapore, Indians – particularly those who were associated with the INA – were treated with disdain as they were "stigmatized as fascists and Japanese collaborators". Some within this diaspora later emerged as notable political and social leaders. The consolidation of trade unions in the form of National Union of Plantation Workers was led by ex-INA leaders. In Malaya, notable members of the INA were involved in founding the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) in 1946; John Thivy was the founding president. Janaky Athi Nahappan, second-in-command of the Rani of Jhansi Regiment, was also a founding member of the MIC and later became a noted welfare activist and a distinguished senator in the Dewan Negara of the Malaysian Parliament. Rasammah Bhupalan, also of the Rani of Jhansi Regiment, later became a well-known welfare-activist and a widely respected champion for women's rights in Malaysia.

Relations

Japanese Army

The army's relationship with the Japanese was an uncomfortable one. 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". 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. 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. ''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.

British-Indian Army

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". 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. After Singapore was retaken, Mountbatten ordered the INA's war memorial to its fallen soldiers to be blown up.

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. The Raj observed with increasing disquiet and unease the spread of pro-INA sympathies within the troops of the British-Indian forces. 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. 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. 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:

Influence

World War II

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

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. INA forces protected the flanks of the assaulting Yamamoto force at a critical time as the latter attempted to take Imphal. During the Commonwealth Burma Campaign, the INA troops fought in the battles of Irrawaddy and Meiktilla, supporting the Japanese offensive and tying down Commonwealth troops.

Indian independence

The first INA trial, which was held in public, became a rallying point for the independence movement from the autumn of 1945. The release of INA prisoners and the suspension of the trials came to be the dominant political campaign, superseding the campaign for independence. 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." The Viceroy's journal describes the autumn and winter of 1945–1946 as "The Edge of a Volcano". 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. Many compared the trials to that of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor tried in the same place after the failed 1857 uprising. 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. 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. Nehru was suspected of using INA men to train Congress volunteers. 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, which feared that pro-INA sympathies could help alternative sources of power.

Historians like Sumit Sarkar, Sugata Bose, Ayesha Jalal conclude that the INA trials and its after-effects brought a decisive shift in British policy towards independence Indian . Particularly disturbing was the overt and public support for the INA by the soldiers of the Indian Army and the mutinies. The Congress's rhetoric preceding the 1946 elections gave the Raj reasons to fear a revival of the Quit India Movement of 1942. It was soon realised that the Indian Army could not be used to suppress such a movement as it had in 1942, principally because of nationalistic and political consciousness in the forces which was ascribed to the INA. Gandhi noted:

Facing problems in the British mainland and unable to muster enough forces of collaboration or coercion, the Cabinet mission of 1946 was sent to negotiate the transfer of power. Some historians cite Auchinleck's own assessment of the situation to suggest this shortened the Raj by at least fifteen to twenty years. Clement Attlee, the British prime minister, reflecting on the factors that guided the British decision to relinquish the Raj in India, is said to have cited the effects of the INA and Bose's activities on the British-Indian Army and the Bombay Mutiny as being the most important.

British colonies

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
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