BPSC 71st CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 77 of 150

Correct — D, Subhash Chandra Bose. On 4 July 1943, two days after reaching Singapore, Bose took over the leadership of the Indian Independence League and of the revived Indian National Army at a ceremony in the Cathay Building. He had left Calcutta in disguise on the night of 16 January 1941, slipping his house internment at Elgin Road, and travelled through Afghanistan and the Soviet Union to reach Berlin on 2 April 1941, where he raised the Free India Legion from Indian prisoners of war taken in North Africa and set up Azad Hind Radio. He left Germany on 8 February 1943, crossed by submarine, reached Tokyo on 11 May 1943 and met the Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, and arrived in Singapore in July 1943. Unlike his predecessors he refused to take a military rank; his soldiers and the Indian civilians of South-East Asia called him Netaji. On 21 October 1943 he proclaimed at Singapore the Provisional Government of Free India — Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind — holding himself the offices of Head of State, Prime Minister, Minister of War and Minister of Foreign Affairs, and on 23 October 1943 that government declared war on Britain and the United States. The INA's regiments were named for the men Bose was fighting alongside and against in Indian politics: the Gandhi, Nehru, Azad and Subhas Brigades, plus the Rani of Jhansi Regiment, a women's combat unit. From the advanced headquarters at Rangoon the army moved north with the Japanese Operation U-Go towards Imphal and Kohima in 1944, and in April 1944 opened its first headquarters on Indian soil at Moirang in Manipur. 'Chalo Delhi' — 'Dilli Chalo', on to Delhi — was the call Bose gave those columns; the destination was the Red Fort, where, in a turn nobody planned, his officers were put on trial in 1945-46 instead. His other and more famous exhortation, 'Give me blood, and I shall give you freedom', is attached by different accounts to two different occasions — the Singapore ceremony of 4 July 1943 and a rally of Indians in Burma on 4 July 1944 — so treat the date as unsettled rather than memorising one of them. Bose died on 18 August 1945 of third-degree burns after his overloaded plane crashed in Japanese-held Taiwan.

• (a)Rash Behari Bose — The strongest distractor, because he is the man who handed the command over. A veteran of the 1912 Delhi conspiracy — the bomb thrown at Viceroy Lord Hardinge in Chandni Chowk on 23 December 1912 was part of a plot he headed — he had lived in self-exile in Japan since the First World War and led the Indian Independence League, the political body to which the first INA was made subordinate. In 1943 he and the Japanese agreed to cede the leadership of both the League and the army to Subhas Chandra Bose. He led the parent organisation, never the marching army, and the slogan is not his.
• (b)Mohan Singh — He really did command an Indian National Army — the first one. A captain of the British Indian Army captured in Malaya, he founded it in 1942 with Major Iwaichi Fujiwara of the Japanese F Kikan and took the rank of general. But his relations with the Japanese broke down over their intentions towards the force, and in December 1942 he dissolved the army himself and ordered his men back to the prisoner-of-war camps. That first INA was defunct months before any march on Delhi; the army that raised the cry was the one Bose revived in July 1943.
• (c)Shah Nawaz Khan — A senior INA commander, never its commander-in-chief. From February 1943 he served as Chief of General Staff under Lt Col J. R. Bhonsle's military bureau, and he later led the 1st Guerrilla Regiment, the Subhas Brigade. His fame is post-war: he was one of the three officers — with Prem Kumar Sahgal and Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon — in the first and most celebrated of the Red Fort courts-martial of 1945-46. He commanded a brigade inside Bose's army; he did not assume command of the army.

There were two Indian National Armies, and almost every trap on this topic lives in the gap between them. The FIRST INA was raised in 1942 out of the tens of thousands of Indian prisoners of war the Japanese took when Singapore fell, organised by Captain Mohan Singh with Major Iwaichi Fujiwara of the Japanese F Kikan intelligence mission. It was placed under the political authority of the Indian Independence League, whose overall leadership rested with Rash Behari Bose in Tokyo, and its Indian officers extracted assurances of Japanese non-interference precisely because they feared being used as a puppet force. When those assurances proved hollow, Mohan Singh dissolved the army in December 1942. The SECOND INA is the one history remembers. Subhas Chandra Bose took charge of it and of the League on 4 July 1943 at Singapore, and it changed character: civilians joined alongside the prisoners of war — traders, barristers, plantation workers from the Indian diaspora in Malaya and Burma — roughly doubling its strength to something in the range of 40,000 to 50,000, and it acquired a women's combat unit, the Rani of Jhansi Regiment. It fought as a declared allied army in the Japanese U-Go offensive of 1944 rather than as a fifth column, which Bose had refused. Militarily it failed at Imphal and Kohima; politically it detonated after the war, when the Red Fort trials turned three convicted officers into a national cause and shook British confidence in the loyalty of the Indian Army.

The stem does two jobs at once — 'assumed the command' and 'gave the battle cry' — and the option list is built so that the first job alone will not settle it. Three of the four names really did hold command in or over an Indian National Army: Mohan Singh raised and led the first one, Shah Nawaz Khan was Chief of General Staff and then a brigade commander in the second, and Rash Behari Bose headed the League that the first army answered to. So a candidate who tests only 'was he an INA man?' is left with four plausible answers and a one-in-four guess. The discriminator is the word 'the' plus the slogan. 'Chalo Delhi' belongs to an army actually marching towards India, and only one Indian National Army ever did that — the one Bose revived from 4 July 1943, which moved from Rangoon into Manipur in 1944 and planted its first headquarters on Indian soil at Moirang. Mohan Singh's army had been dissolved by its own commander in December 1942 and never moved; Rash Behari Bose was in Tokyo and ceded the leadership rather than exercising it; Shah Nawaz Khan took orders. Bose is the one of the four most bound up with slogans, but he coined fewer of them than he is given credit for, and this is the card on which to be exact about it: 'Chalo Delhi' was the battle cry of the 1857 Meerut mutineers marching on Delhi, which he deliberately revived, and 'Jai Hind' is credited to Chempakaraman Pillai, adopted by Bose and Abid Hasan as the INA's salutation. 'Give me blood, and I shall give you freedom' is his own. When a stem pairs a command with a phrase, check who owns the phrase — including when the phrase belongs to the man the question is about.

• Bose escaped house internment at Elgin Road, Calcutta on the night of 16 January 1941, travelled through Afghanistan and the Soviet Union, and reached Berlin on 2 April 1941, where he raised the Free India Legion from Indian prisoners of war and started Azad Hind Radio.
• He left Germany on 8 February 1943, reached Tokyo on 11 May 1943 and met Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, and on 4 July 1943 assumed the leadership of the Indian Independence League and the Indian National Army at the Cathay Building, Singapore. He refused to take any military rank.
• The Provisional Government of Free India, Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind, was proclaimed at Singapore on 21 October 1943 with Bose as Head of State, Prime Minister, Minister of War and Minister of Foreign Affairs; it declared war on Britain and the United States on 23 October 1943.
• In April 1944 the INA opened its first headquarters on Indian soil at Moirang in Manipur during the Japanese Operation U-Go; the offensive broke on the Battles of Imphal and Kohima. From Rangoon radio on 6 July 1944 Bose addressed Gandhi as 'Father of the Nation' — the first recorded use of that title for him.
• The first INA was founded in 1942 by Captain Mohan Singh with Major Iwaichi Fujiwara and dissolved by Mohan Singh himself in December 1942; the INA's brigades under Bose were named Gandhi, Nehru, Azad and Subhas, with the Rani of Jhansi Regiment as its women's unit.
• About ten courts-martial were held in public at the Red Fort between November 1945 and May 1946. Prem Kumar Sahgal, Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon and Shah Nawaz Khan were tried first; the Congress raised an INA Defence Committee including Jawaharlal Nehru, Bhulabhai Desai, Kailashnath Katju and Asaf Ali, and public pressure forced Commander-in-Chief Claude Auchinleck to release all three.

• Answering 'Mohan Singh' because he founded the INA — he founded and then dissolved the FIRST INA in 1942; the question is about the army that marched, which is Bose's revived one
• Confusing 21 October 1943 (Provisional Government proclaimed) with 4 July 1943 (Bose assumes command of the INA) or 23 October 1943 (declaration of war)
• Assuming 'Give me blood, and I shall give you freedom' has one settled date — it is placed both at Singapore on 4 July 1943 and at a rally in Burma on 4 July 1944, so a date-based question on it is unsafe

BPSC asks it as a single-line attribution and then does something clever with the options — all four names are genuine INA or Indian Independence League figures, so recognition alone does not save you and only the slogan discriminates. UPSC almost never asks 'who led the INA' outright; it circles the topic instead. It asked in 2000 where the INA came into existence in 1943, in 2008 who raised the Free Indian Legion, in 2021 who Shah Nawaz Khan, Prem Kumar Sahgal and Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon were, and in 1998 it buried the INA trial inside a four-event chronology set — so the same knowledge is tested through place, organisation, personnel and sequence rather than through the famous name.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Provisional Government of Free India (Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind) was proclaimed by Subhas Chandra Bose in October 1943 at

  • (a)Tokyo
  • (b)Singapore
  • (c)Rangoon
  • (d)Moirang

  Answer(b) Singapore — proclaimed on 21 October 1943, with Bose as Head of State, Prime Minister, Minister of War and Minister of Foreign Affairs. Tokyo is where he met Tojo in May 1943, Rangoon became the advanced headquarters in 1944, and Moirang in Manipur is where the INA opened its first headquarters on Indian soil.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Consider the following statements about the first Indian National Army : 1. It was organised in 1942 by Captain Mohan Singh with the help of Major Iwaichi Fujiwara. 2. It was dissolved by Mohan Singh himself in December 1942. Which of the statements given above is/are correct ?

  • (a)1 only
  • (b)2 only
  • (c)Both 1 and 2
  • (d)Neither 1 nor 2

  Answer(c) Both 1 and 2 — Mohan Singh raised the first INA in 1942 with Fujiwara of the Japanese F Kikan, and dissolved it in December 1942 after the quarrel with the Japanese, ordering his men back to the prisoner-of-war camps. Bose revived the army in July 1943.