EPFO EO/AO 2023 General Ability Test · Question 63 of 120

Correct — A, (a) Singapore. The Azad Hind Fauj was raised in Singapore in 1942, and the reason is simply where the men were. At the outbreak of the war in South-East Asia some 70,000 Indian troops were stationed in Malaya. The Japanese Malayan campaign took very large numbers of them prisoner — nearly 45,000 after the fall of Singapore alone — and it was from these prisoners of war that the first Indian National Army was formed under Mohan Singh, an officer of the British Indian Army captured early in the campaign. Japanese military intelligence had been preparing the ground: Major Iwaichi Fujiwara's F Kikan had been sent into South and South-East Asia to make contact with the Indian independence movement in exile in Thailand and Malaya, and it was Fujiwara who became Mohan Singh's ally and channel to Japanese aid. Ethnic Indians already settled in Malaya and Singapore had formed local leagues before the war; after the occupation these came together as the Indian Independence League, whose overall leadership rested with Rash Behari Bose, and the INA was made subordinate to the League. That first army did not last. Disagreement with the Japanese over the INA's autonomy led its leadership and that of the League to resign, and Mohan Singh dissolved the unit in December 1942 and ordered his men back to the prisoner-of-war camps. The army was rebuilt in the same city. Subhas Chandra Bose left Germany on 8 February 1943, travelled by submarine, reached Tokyo on 11 May 1943, and arrived in Singapore in July; on 4 July 1943, two days after reaching it, he assumed the leadership of the Indian Independence League and of the Second INA at a ceremony at the Cathay Building in Singapore. Under him local civilians joined in such numbers that the army's strength doubled, and it was at Singapore that he proclaimed the Provisional Government of Azad Hind later that year. Both the founding and the refounding therefore belong to Singapore, which is why the answer holds whichever of the two the examiner has in mind.

• (b)Tokyo — Tokyo is where the politics was settled, not where the army was raised. Rash Behari Bose, who led the Indian Independence League to which the INA was subordinate, had lived in self-exile in Japan since the First World War. Subhas Bose himself reached Tokyo on 11 May 1943 and met the Japanese prime minister Hideki Tojo and the High Command there before going south. Every decision about Japanese support for the INA passed through Tokyo — and not one INA battalion was ever formed in it. The distinction the question is testing is between a movement's diplomatic capital and its recruiting ground.
• (c)Berlin — Berlin is Bose's earlier and quite separate European venture. Escaping house arrest in India, he travelled through Afghanistan and Central Asia to the Soviet Union and reached Berlin on 2 April 1941, where he sought to raise an army from Indian prisoners of war captured by Germany. What came of it was the Free India Legion and Azad Hind Radio — a much smaller force, on the wrong continent, two years before the INA's revival. Candidates pick this option because they remember Bose in Germany; the Azad Hind Fauj is the South-East Asian army, not the German one.
• (d)Rangoon — Rangoon is where the INA fought from, not where it was formed. The Japanese and INA forces launched their invasion of India from Rangoon in 1944, the campaign that was halted by losses at the Battle of Imphal in Manipur and became a long and exhausting withdrawal down the Malay Peninsula, ending in surrender to Allied forces in August 1945. Rangoon is therefore the INA's forward base in the last phase of its existence — roughly two years after the events the stem asks about.

The Indian National Army was a Japanese-allied force constituted in South-East Asia during the Second World War, made up mostly of British Indian Army prisoners of war taken by Japan and, later, of Indian civilians settled in the region — around 18,000 of whom enlisted. It came in two incarnations. The first, formed in 1942 under Mohan Singh with Fujiwara's backing, was dissolved by Mohan Singh himself in December 1942 in a quarrel over whether the INA would be a Japanese instrument or an Indian army; between December 1942 and February 1943 Rash Behari Bose held it together, and on 15 February 1943 it was put under the command of Lt. Col. M.Z. Kiani. The second was Subhas Chandra Bose's, from July 1943. Bose's appeal — 'Jai Hind', and the promise of blood for freedom — doubled the force with civilian volunteers and made it notably diverse by region, religion and gender. Militarily the INA achieved little; politically it was decisive, because the Raj's decision to try 300 of its officers for treason at the Red Fort produced a public reaction that forced the government to back down and became a rallying point for the independence movement.

This is a place-name question, and EPFO asks a lot of them in its history block because they are unambiguous to key and hard to guess: each of the four options is a real place in the INA's story, so a candidate who knows only that 'Bose and the INA and Japan go together' can be pulled to any of them. The habit rewarded is fixing every organisation to the city where it was actually constituted and keeping that separate from the cities where it was funded, commanded or fought.

• The Indian National Army — Azad Hind Fauj — was formed in Singapore in 1942 from Indian prisoners of war taken in the Japanese Malayan campaign, under Mohan Singh, with Japanese support through Major Iwaichi Fujiwara's F Kikan.
• Nearly 45,000 Indian prisoners of war were taken after the fall of Singapore alone, out of some 70,000 Indian troops stationed in Malaya at the outbreak of war in South-East Asia.
• The Indian Independence League, led by Rash Behari Bose, was the political body to which the INA was made subordinate.
• Mohan Singh dissolved the first INA in December 1942 after disagreement with the Japanese; on 15 February 1943 the army was placed under Lt. Col. M.Z. Kiani.
• Subhas Chandra Bose left Germany on 8 February 1943, reached Tokyo on 11 May 1943 and Singapore in July 1943, taking over the League and the Second INA at the Cathay Building on 4 July 1943.
• Bose had reached Berlin on 2 April 1941 and there raised the Free India Legion and ran Azad Hind Radio — a separate and earlier force.
• The INA and Japanese forces invaded India from Rangoon in 1944; the advance was halted at Imphal, and the remaining INA surrendered in August 1945.
• Around 300 INA officers were charged with treason in the INA trials, which the government abandoned in the face of Congress-led opposition.

• Placing the INA in Berlin because Bose was there first. Berlin gave the Free India Legion; Singapore gave the Azad Hind Fauj.
• Treating Tokyo as the INA's home because Japan armed it. Rash Behari Bose lived in Tokyo and Subhas Bose met Tojo there, but the army was raised where the prisoners were.
• Confusing the two INAs. Mohan Singh's of 1942 was dissolved in December 1942; Bose's dates from 4 July 1943, and both were Singapore events.
• Reading Rangoon as the point of origin because the 1944 invasion of India started there.

EO/AO history items about the national movement tend to ask for a place, a founder or a year, and to build the option list out of four true associations of which only one answers the question actually asked. Prepare each organisation with a one-line record — where founded, by whom, in what year, and what it did next — and this whole class of question becomes mechanical.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Free India Legion, raised from Indian prisoners of war held by Germany, was associated with which one of the following cities ?

  • (a)Rome
  • (b)Vienna
  • (c)Berlin
  • (d)Tokyo

  Answer(c) Berlin

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Who among the following commanded the first Indian National Army formed in 1942 ?

  • (a)Rash Behari Bose
  • (b)Mohan Singh
  • (c)Shah Nawaz Khan
  • (d)M.Z. Kiani

  Answer(b) Mohan Singh