The Indian National Army - motives, problems and significance

Abstract

One of the most significant events in I.N.A. history and, indeed, an unprecendented event in the history of the Indian army was the massive transfer of loyalty in which forty thousand out of fifty- five thousand Indian men and officers who surrendered to the Japanese on the fall of Singapore repudiated their allegience to the British Crown. A proposal to raise an army from them for achieving "complete independence of India" was favoured in principle in the conferences of the representatives of the Indian communities and Indian P.O.W.s held at Singapore, Tokyo and Bangkok in the first half of 1942. The Japanese agreed to arm immediately only sixteen thousand soldiers which became the nucleus of the Indian National Army (I.N.A.)