Can Imperial Japan be forgiven for what it did to Indian soldiers it was supposed to protect as PoWs?
Agonising hell. These are the only two words that can describe the horror inflicted on Indian soldiers, leading to thousands of painful deaths, during World War II by the Japanese army when it was supposed to be an ally of Subhas Chandra Bose.
At a time when India has shied away from global celebrations marking the victory over fascism in WWII, a thoroughly researched new book rips open the ugly realities surrounding the Indian soldiers who refused to join the Indian National Army led by Bose.
Japanese cruelty and high-handedness over captive populations, civilians and soldiers included, during the war are largely known.
What Singapore-based Gautam Hazarika has done (The Forgotten Indian Prisoners of WWII, Penguin) is to expose what the Japanese specifically did to Indian prisoners of war (POWs) shipped off to the numerous islands dotting the Pacific in ships packed like sardines.
The Indian PoWs were made to slave away for as long as 18 hours a day, forced into back-breaking manual work, denied adequate food besides medicines if they fell sick, and flogged, beaten and at times executed at the slightest sign of defiance or supposed misconduct.
After just 30 months in captivity, as many as 2,800 of the 3,000 Indian POWs in New Guinea were dead by the time the war ended.
While some escaped, the number found on the island and liberated was only 11 -- yes, just 11 -- thoroughly emaciated men.
Similarly, an unbelievable 50 per cent of the 11,000 in New Britain island perished.
In all, over 17,000 Indian PoWs were sent to the Southwest Pacific Area (SWP) islands, of whom only 7,000 survived.
Mind you, these were not victims of action in war, barring the few who fell to American air bombing during the last stages of the conflict but died a slow and excruciating death due to Japanese brutalities.
If they had been treated as PoWs, such an extraordinary abuse would not have taken place.
When an American submarine sank a Japanese freighter, the BuyoMaru, on January 26, 1943, it was carrying more than 500 Indian PoWs.
The Japanese made no efforts to rescue the Indians, either then or later when rescue ships arrived.
Some Indian PoWs were so furious that they, while drowning, dragged down some of the Japanese. This led to more ill-treatment of the exhausted and terrified Indian survivors.
As punishment, Sepoy Abdullah Khan was beaten to death.
Shortages of water for the Indian PoWs led to an outbreak of dysentery in New Guinea, killing soldiers every day. The dead were simply lowered into the sea.
Incessant rains in the island triggered malaria.
Once the Japanese began to retreat as the Americans began to conquer the islands one by one, the already precarious food and medicinal situation deteriorated further.
The situation became so bad that the once proud soldiers ate grass and chewed leaves from the dense vegetation to fill their stomachs.
As food shortages hit the Japanese too, they simply resorted to cannibalism. Two Indian soldiers, Sepoys Sohanlal and Hansraj of the Dogra Regiment, were taken away and never seen again. Other PoWs were convinced the Japanese ate them.
Captain Nirpal Chand, also of the Dogra Regiment, was beheaded because he opposed Japanese high-handedness.
In 1944, Japanese troops opened machine gun fire and massacred 275 Indian PoWs after suspecting them of trying to contact an American warship.
Some Indian soldiers, desperate to beat the hunger, died after eating poisonous fruits by mistake.
There were occasions when the Indians retaliated; Havildar Rattan Singh of the Dogra Regiment beheaded two Japanese soldiers in September 1944 to prevent them from reporting their escape.
Hazarika, a former banker who now researches WWII in the context of Southeast Asia, dwells at length into the formation of the INA, detailing some events which have mostly remained buried due to Subhas Bose's overwhelming personality.
It was Captain Mohan Singh of the Punjab Regiment who founded what can be called the 'first INA' in Singapore in February 1942 after the British surrender to the Japanese.
While Mohan Singh was certainly charismatic, he had also a streak of punishing fellow Indians who did not fall in line vis-à-vis quitting the (British) Indian Army.
But as he realised over the months that the Japanese would not treat the INA with respect and parity, he broke with them, leading to his arrest.
Mohan Singh's arrest led to thousands of Indian soldiers, mainly Sikhs, ditching the INA.
This is when the Japanese inducted Rash Behari Bose, who lived in Tokyo and was married to a Japanese, to revive the INA.
Subhas Bose then arrived from Germany, took over the INA and gave it a new life.
Bose's leadership galvanised the INA but thousands of Indian soldiers who had surrendered to the Japanese still refused to join it.
This is the core group which suffered the most at the hands of the Japanese.
The war also did not go the INA way as it was poorly equipped and armed by the Japanese, who only wanted to use it as a propaganda tool.
And when the Japanese began to retreat from Burma, it effectively destroyed the INA's morale.
Hundreds defected and surrendered to the British Indian Army, of which they had been a part, while others suffered immensely while retreating through inhospitable jungles.
In 1944 and 1945, when the Indian PoWs were dying of starvation, Bose told the Japanese to bring them back to Singapore to join the INA.
But the Japanese refused, and Bose, says Hazarika, 'left it at that'.
India-Japan relations may be rosy today but Japan's brutalities on Indian PoWs should not be brushed under.
That the Japanese behaved similarly with others too -- Chinese and Koreans, who suffered most brutally, as well as Malay and Indian civilians besides ordinary Japanese themselves -- can be no excuse not to demand an apology from Japan which, unlike Germany, has refused to apologise for war-time atrocities.
Imagine, if the Pakistani or Chinese militaries had done even a fraction of what the Japanese did to Indian soldiers, Indians would have gone to town screaming injustice.
Can Imperial Japan be forgiven for what it did to Indian soldiers it was supposed to protect as PoWs?
Photographs curated by Manisha Kotian/Rediff
Feature Presentation: Ashish Narsale/Rediff
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