EPFO APFC 2023 General Studies · Question 66 of 120

Correct — B, (b) Burma Front. The Ministry of Culture's Dictionary of Martyrs of India's Freedom Struggle, which is the standard reference for men and women of this kind who left no other published record, carries Agadhu Samantra of Koraput in Orissa. It records that he served in the British-Indian Army as a Lance-Naik in the Supply Corps, left that service to join the Indian National Army in 1942, was placed as a Naik in the First Bahadur Group and was deputed on the Burma front to fight the Allied forces, where he was wounded and died in hospital in 1944 shortly after being admitted. The Burma front is also where the answer makes military sense. The Indian National Army was raised and based in South-East Asia, its headquarters moved to Rangoon early in 1944, and Burma was both its rear area and the springboard for the one offensive it fought, the advance with the Japanese towards Imphal and Kohima in 1944. The Bahadur Group is the detail that fixes it further: formed originally as the Special Services Group, it was the army's commando arm, trained for frontline military intelligence and for sabotage and subversion behind enemy lines, and such units operated where the fighting line actually ran, which in 1942 to 1944 meant Burma. The date in the stem is worth noticing too. Joining in 1942 places this man in the first Indian National Army, formed after the fall of Singapore under Mohan Singh with the support of Rash Behari Bose's Indian Independence League, more than a year before Subhas Chandra Bose reached South-East Asia and took command of the revived force.

• (a)Andaman-Nicobar — The Andaman and Nicobar Islands have a real and famous connection with the Azad Hind movement, which is exactly why the option is dangerous. The Japanese formally handed the islands to the Provisional Government of Free India at the end of December 1943, Subhas Chandra Bose went to Port Blair and hoisted the tricolour there, and the islands were renamed Shaheed and Swaraj, giving Azad Hind the first territory it could call its own. But that was a transfer of nominal authority over an occupied island group, not a battle front. No ground campaign against the Allies was fought there by Indian National Army formations, and a commando group trained for operations behind enemy lines had nothing to do in a rear area held by the Japanese navy. Distinguish the movement's symbolic possessions from its fighting fronts; the islands belong to the first category and Burma to the second.
• (c)Arunachal Pradesh — This option fails twice over. Militarily, the Indian National Army's advance with the Japanese in 1944 was directed at Imphal and Kohima, through Manipur and the Naga Hills, and never ran through the country that is now Arunachal Pradesh; the frontier tracts of the far north-east saw no Indian National Army operations. It also fails as a name, because Arunachal Pradesh did not exist under that name during the war. The area was administered as frontier tract territory and later as the North East Frontier Agency, and it took the name Arunachal Pradesh only when it became a Union Territory in 1972, attaining statehood in 1987. An option that uses a modern administrative name for a wartime deployment is worth a second look on that ground alone, since it is a common way of building a plausible but impossible answer.
• (d)Assam — Assam was the objective of the 1944 campaign rather than a front the Indian National Army held, and that distinction is what the option trades on. The call of Chalo Delhi meant breaking through the hills into the plains of Assam and Bengal, and the fighting that would have opened the way was at Imphal in Manipur and at Kohima in the Naga Hills, which at that time were administered as part of Assam province. The offensive was stopped there in the summer of 1944 and the force was pushed back into Burma, so no unit was deputed to a front inside Assam in any operational sense. The single Indian National Army moment on that soil that candidates remember is the hoisting of the flag at Moirang in Manipur in April 1944. The stem asks where the man was deputed, and Indian National Army formations were deputed to Burma.

The Indian National Army was raised twice. The first was formed in 1942 in South-East Asia after the surrender of Singapore, when tens of thousands of Indian prisoners of war passed into Japanese hands; Mohan Singh organised them with the encouragement of Rash Behari Bose and the Indian Independence League, and the force was dissolved at the end of that year over disagreements with the Japanese about its status and command. The second and more famous phase began when Subhas Chandra Bose arrived in South-East Asia in the middle of 1943, took over the leadership, proclaimed the Provisional Government of Free India at Singapore in October 1943, and rebuilt the army with civilian recruits from the Indian communities of Malaya and Burma alongside the prisoners of war. It included the Rani of Jhansi Regiment, a women's combat unit led by Lakshmi Swaminathan, and specialised formations such as the Bahadur Group, first raised as the Special Services Group for intelligence, sabotage and operations behind Allied lines. The army's headquarters moved to Rangoon in early 1944, and its one offensive, alongside the Japanese Fifteenth Army, reached Imphal and Kohima before collapsing in the monsoon. Its political effect came after the surrender, when the trials of Prem Kumar Sahgal, Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon and Shah Nawaz Khan at the Red Fort in 1945 produced a wave of public sympathy that reached into the Indian armed forces themselves.

The paper mixes questions on the great names of the national movement with questions on individual soldiers and local figures drawn from the Ministry of Culture's Dictionary of Martyrs, a multi-volume compilation of short biographies of people who died in the freedom struggle. Items of the second kind cannot be answered from a textbook narrative, and they are not meant to be. What they can be answered from is the internal evidence of the stem read against a general understanding of the movement in question. Here the stem supplies the organisation, the rank, the unit and the year, and the candidate has only to know where that organisation actually fought. This is the habit worth building for biographical questions about obscure figures: extract the institution from the stem, place the institution in space and time, and then test each option against that placement rather than against the person, whose life is unknowable to the candidate in the examination hall. Two of the wrong options here are eliminated by that method alone, one because the territory was a symbolic possession rather than a front, the other because its very name is later than the war. Note also that the stem prints the state's name as Orissa, which was its official form until it was renamed Odisha in 2011.

• The Ministry of Culture's Dictionary of Martyrs of India's Freedom Struggle records Agadhu Samantra of Koraput in Orissa as a Lance-Naik in the Supply Corps of the British-Indian Army who joined the Indian National Army in 1942, served as a Naik in the First Bahadur Group on the Burma front, and died of wounds in hospital in 1944.
• The Bahadur Group was raised as the Special Services Group and was the Indian National Army's commando arm, tasked with frontline military intelligence and with sabotage and subversion behind enemy lines.
• The first Indian National Army was organised in 1942 by Mohan Singh with Rash Behari Bose's Indian Independence League after the fall of Singapore, and was dissolved at the end of that year; Subhas Chandra Bose took over the revived force in 1943.
• The Provisional Government of Free India, Azad Hind, was proclaimed at Singapore in October 1943, and the Japanese transferred the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to it at the end of December 1943, when they were renamed Shaheed and Swaraj.
• The army's headquarters moved to Rangoon in early 1944, and its offensive with the Japanese reached Imphal in Manipur and Kohima in the Naga Hills before failing in the monsoon; the flag was hoisted at Moirang in Manipur in April 1944.
• The trials of Prem Kumar Sahgal, Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon and Shah Nawaz Khan at the Red Fort in 1945, with a defence team that included Bhulabhai Desai, Tej Bahadur Sapru, Asaf Ali and Jawaharlal Nehru, turned the army into a political force after its military defeat.

• Choosing the Andaman and Nicobar Islands because they were handed to Azad Hind and renamed Shaheed and Swaraj; that was a symbolic transfer of territory, not a theatre where Indian National Army units fought
• Choosing Assam because the campaign was aimed at it; the fighting was at Imphal and Kohima and the advance never reached the Assam plains, while formations were based and deputed in Burma
• Accepting a modern State name for a wartime posting; Arunachal Pradesh took that name only in 1972 and did not exist as such during the Second World War
• Assuming everyone who joined the Indian National Army served under Subhas Chandra Bose; a man who joined in 1942 entered the first force under Mohan Singh, before Bose reached South-East Asia in 1943
• Reading the Bahadur Group as an ordinary infantry formation; it was the commando and special services arm, which is why its men were deployed at the fighting front rather than in rear areas

Modern history in this paper alternates between the familiar landmarks of the national movement and short biographical items about individual soldiers, martyrs and regional figures, and the second kind is answered from institutional knowledge rather than from biography. The stem always carries the organisation the person belonged to — the Indian National Army, a revolutionary society, a peasant or tribal uprising — and the options then test whether the candidate can place that organisation on the map and in the calendar. Expect Indian National Army questions in particular to build option sets from four places that all have some association with Subhas Chandra Bose or with Azad Hind, so that recognition alone decides nothing, and to be settled instead by asking which of them was a fighting front, which a symbolic possession, and which merely a name from a later decade.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Provisional Government of Free India was proclaimed by Subhas Chandra Bose in October 1943 at which one of the following places?

  • (a)Tokyo
  • (b)Rangoon
  • (c)Singapore
  • (d)Port Blair

  Answer(c) Singapore — Bose proclaimed the Provisional Government of Free India, the Azad Hind government, at Singapore in October 1943, shortly after taking over the leadership of the Indian National Army. Rangoon became the headquarters of the army in early 1944 as the campaign towards Imphal began, and Port Blair is where the tricolour was hoisted at the end of December 1943 after the Japanese transferred the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to the new government.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Indian National Army hoisted its flag on Indian soil in April 1944 at which one of the following places?

  • (a)Moirang in Manipur
  • (b)Kohima in the Naga Hills
  • (c)Silchar in Assam
  • (d)Chittagong in Bengal

  Answer(a) Moirang in Manipur — the flag was raised there in April 1944 during the advance towards Imphal, and the site is now marked by an Indian National Army memorial. Kohima saw some of the hardest fighting of the campaign but was not where the flag was hoisted, and neither Silchar nor Chittagong was reached by the offensive, which was halted in the hills of Manipur and Nagaland and driven back into Burma.