In Netaji's Footsteps

Committee at Old Delhi's Dary-aganj, and actor Sunil Dutt. As the expedition members progressed from Singapore to Manipur to Delhi, on the way they overcame the recalcitrance of the Burmese government, miffed at the Indian government's decision to give the Nehru award to Aung San Suu Kyi in 1995.

The INA force was basically extracted out of the 90,000 Indo-British soldiers who surrendered to the Japanese on February 15,1942. The writer's account: "The POWs were placed in various camps spread over the island. On February 17, the Indian POWs were singled out, picked up from different locations and brought to the Old Race Course, now Farrer Park. At Farrer Park, Col. W.S. Hunt of Hodgon's Horse handed over the Indian POWs to the Japanese, who in turn handed them over to Capt. Mohan Singh." The anti-imperialist mood (read anti-British) roused the Indians no end and a new chapter and front had been opened in a land far away from India, but imbibed with traditions that could be considered Indian.

One of those assembled there included a 27-year-old, Capt. Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon, whose nostalgia can only be appreciated as he stood 50 years later on the same greens of the Farrer Park remembering his fallen comrades. Bakshi's account is filled with similar memories: the Indian High Commission in Malaysia fixing a meeting of surviving INA veterans where crippled old fight-ers sat together and cried; of Moulmein in Burma where Netaji once stayed on his way to Singapore and five decades later ethnic Indians defying martial law regulations gathered to welcome the expedition; visiting Bahadur Shah Zafar's grave in Burma and the excitement of Indian families in the remotest parts of Malaysia and Burma wherever news of the expedition reached.

There are tales of real heroics like the battle of Irrawady where Dhillon, then a 29-year-old officer commanding the INA's Fourth Guerrilla Regiment, with shoestring ammunitions held off Gen. William Slim and his well-equipped 30,000-strong unit from crossing the river in what the writer describes as "the longest held river crossing in any theatre of World War II". Or Mount Popa in Burma, site of the INA's last stand against the advancing British troops which was fought by Shah Nawaz, Sahgal and Dhi-llon and the heroism of Company Commander Gyan Singh Bisht and his unit. Also reproduced is Netaji's last order issued to the INA on August 14, 1945, four days before his plane crashed in Taipei. The order called upon the officers and men of the Azad Hind Fauj to "remain calm and unperturbed" and above all not to "allow yourself to be influ-enced in any way by wild bazaar rumours".

Bakshi is a resourceful writer of many facets, which makes access easier. For instance, when the expedition was asked to leave Burma without any further ado, Narasimha Rao ordered that an Indian Air Force IL-76 airlift them from Rangoon to Imphal. Similarly Jyoti Basu was at hand to receive the expedition when they reached Calcutta. Photographs by Kabir Khan, a producer of travel films, are impressive. Certainly a book to treasure.