06-12-2006, 03:28 AM
thanks very much. Pictures and other stuff will follow.
for now, let me post from a wiki site - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arzi_Hukumate_Azad_Hind
Provisional Government of Free India
Hukumat-e-Azad Hind (Urdu: Ø¹Ø§Ø±Ø¶Û ØÚ©Ù٠تâ٠آزاد Ú¾Ùد, the Provisional Government of Free India), was a puppet state established by Indian nationalists-in-exile in areas of British India and Southeast Asian British colonial territory occupied by Imperial Japan during the Second World War. It was founded and led by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose on October 21, 1943 in Singapore with the fiscal and political assistance of the Axis Powers, namely Japan. While it possessed all the nominal requisites of a legitimate government, it lacked both universal political recognition and large and definite areas of sovereign territory until the government assumed control of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands from Japan in 1943. It had the backing of the "Azad Hind Fauj", known in English as the Indian National Army (INA), who were in collaboration with, and were resourcefully dependent on, the Imperial Japanese Army. The government of Azad Hind had its own currency, court and civil code, but in practical application the government served largely as a front for a Japanese anti-Western, anti-imperialist ideological initiative against the British in India.
It survived in a limited legal form until the collapse of the Japanese Empire in 1945. The existence of Azad Hind was essentially coterminous with the existence of the Indian National Army. While the government itself continued until the civil administration of the Andaman Islands was returned to the jurisdiction of the British towards the end of the war, the limited power of Azad Hind was effectively ended with the surrender of the last major contingent of INA troops in Rangoon and the death of Subhas Chandra Bose in a plane crash in 1945.
The direct origins of Azad Hind can be linked to two conferences of Indian expatriates from across Southeast Asia, the first of which was held in Tokyo in March of 1942. At this conference, convened by Rash Behari Bose, an Indian expatriate living in Japan, the Indian Independence League was established as the first move towards an independent Indian state politically aligned with the Empire of Japan. Rash also moved to create a sort of liberation army that would assist in driving the British from India - this force would later become the Indian National Army. The second conference, held later that year in Bangkok, invited Subhas Chandra Bose to participate in the leadership of the League. Bose was living in Germany at the time and made the trip to Japan via submarine.
Rash, who was already aging by the time the League was founded, struggled to keep the League organized and failed to secure resources for the establishment of the Indian National Army. He was replaced as president of the Indian Independence League by Subhas Chandra Bose; there is some controversy as to whether he stepped down of his own volition or by pressure from the Japanese who needed a more energetic and focused presence leading the Indian nationalists.
Bose arrived in Tokyo on June 13, 1943, and declared his intent to make an assault against the eastern provinces of India in an attempt to oust the British from control of the subcontinent. Bose arrived in Singapore on July 2nd, and in October of 1943 formally announced the establishment of the Provisional Government of Free India. In defining the tasks of this new political establishment, Subhas declared: âIt will be the task of the Provisional Government to launch and conduct the struggle that will bring about the expulsion of the British and their allies from the soil of India.â [1] Bose, taking formal command of the demoralized and undermanned Indian National Army from Rash Bose, turned it into a professional army with the help of the Japanese. He recruited Indian civilians living in Japanese-occupied territories of South-east Asia, and incorporated vast numbers of Indian POWs from British forces in Singapore, Malaya and Hong Kong to man the brigades of the INA.
Government Administration and the War
Main articles: Indian National Army, India during World War II, Invasion and Occupation of the Andaman Islands during World War II
The same night that Bose declared the existence of Azad Hind, the government took action to declare war against the United States and Britain. The government consisted of a Cabinet ministry acting as an advisory board to Subhas Bose, who was given the title "Netaji" (translating roughly to "leader") and was no doubt the dominant figure in the Provisional Government. He exercised virtual authoritarian control over the government and the army. With regards to the government's first issuances of war declarations, the "Cabinet had not been unanimous about the inclusion of the U.S.A. Bose had shown impatience and displeasure - there was never any question then or later of his absolute authority: the Cabinet had no responsibility and could only tender advice..." [2]
At the end of October of 1943, Bose flew to Tokyo to participate in the Greater East Asia Conference as an observer to Japan's Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere; it could not function as a delegate because India had technically fallen outside the jurisdiction of Japan's definition of "Greater East Asia", but Bose gave speeches in opposition to Western colonialism and imperialism at the conference. By the end of the conference, Azad Hind had been given a limited form of governmental jurisdiction over the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which had been captured by the Imperial Japanese Navy early on in the war.
Once under the jurisdiction of Azad Hind, the islands formed the government's first claims to territory. The islands themselves were renamed "Shaheed" and "Swaraj", meaning "martyr" and "self-rule" respectively. Bose placed the islands under the governorship of one Lieutenant-Colonel Loganathan, and had limited involvement with the official governorship of the territory, instead involving himself largely with the leadership of the INA and assisting in Japan's plans for the invasion of India. In theory the government itself had the power to levy taxes on the local populace, and tomake and enforce laws: in practice they were enforced by the police force under Japanese control. Indians were willing to pay these taxes at first, but became less inclined to do so towards the end of the war when the Provisional Government enacted legislation for higher war-time taxes to fund the INA. During his interrogation after the war Loganathan admitted that he had only had full control over the islands' vestigial education department, as the Japanese had retained full control over the police force, and in protest he had refused to accept responsibility for any other areas of Government. He was powerless to prevent the Homfreyganj massacre of the 30th January 1944, where forty-four Indian civilians were shot by the Japanese on suspicion of spying. Many of them were members of the Indian Independence League, whose leader in Port Blair, Dr. Diwan Singh, had already been tortured to death in the Cellular Jail after doing his best to protect the islanders from Japanese atrocities during the first two years of the occupation. [1]
Azad Hind's military forces in the form of the INA saw some successes against the British, and moved with the Japanese army to lay siege to the town of Imphal in eastern India. Plans to march towards Delhi, gaining support and fresh recruits along the way, stalled both with the onset of monsoon season and the failure to capture Imphal. British bombing seriously reduced morale, and the Japanese along with the INA forces began their withdrawal from India.
In addition to these setbacks, the INA was faced with a formidable challenge when the troops were left to defend Rangoon without the assistance of the Japanese in the winter of 1944-1945. Loganathan was relocated from the Andaman Islands to act as field commander. With the I.N.A. garrison about 6,000 strong, he manned the Burmese capital in the absence of any other police force or troops during the period between the departure of the Japanese and the arrival of the British. Due to his experience administering the limited sovereign territory of Azad Hind with the Japanese troops, he was successful in maintaining law and order to the extent that there was not a single case of dacoity or of loot during the period from April 24th to May 4th, 1945.
The Defeat of the INA and the Collapse of the Provisional Government
Left to defend Rangoon from the British advance without support from the Japanese, the INA was soundly defeated. Bose had fled Burma and returned to Singapore before the fall of Rangoon; the government Azad Hind had established on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands collapsed when the island garrisons of Japanese and Indian troops were defeated by British troops and the islands themselves retaken. Bose himself was killed in a plane crash departing from Taiwan attempting to escape to Russia. The Provisional Government of Free India ceased to exist with the deaths of the Axis, the INA, and Netaji Bose in 1945.
The troops who manned the brigades of the Indian National Army were taken as prisoners of war by the British. A number of these prisoners were brought to India and tried by British courts for treason, including a number of high ranking officers such as Colonel Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon. The defense of these individuals from prosecution by the British became a central point of contention between the British Raj and the Indian Independence Movement in the post-war years.
Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, while an ally of Japan throughout the war, has become a controversial figure for his stances against racism and imperialism which would run in opposition against what was generally recognized as Japanese imperialism in Asia during World War II. Bose himself opposed all manner of such colonial practices, but saw Britain as hypocritical in "fighting a war for democracy" but refusing to extend the same respect for democracy and equal rights to their colonial subjects in India. As such, he is sometimes cited by revisionist Japanese historians as proof of the legitimacy of Japanese assertions that their brand of imperialism was in the best interests of Asian nations oppressed by Western colonialists. Criticism of Bose remains, with some accusing him of fascism, citing his strict control over the Provisional Government as evidence of this; some accused him of wanting to establish a totalitarian state in India with the blessings of the Axis powers. It is inaccurate to term Bose solely as a fascist, but it is true that Bose openly admired fascism in the Axis countries and used it as a way to organize the Provisional Government; he believed that parliamentary democracy was unsuitable for India, and that a centrally organized, self-sufficient, semi-socialist India under the firm control of a single party was the best course for Indian government. Some of his ideas would help shape Indian governmental policy in the aftermath of the country's independence from Britain.
The fact that Azad Hind was aligned politically with Japan may have little to do with explicit agreement and support for Japanese policy in Asia, and more with what Bose saw as a pragmatic approach to Indian independence. Disillusioned with Gandhi's philosophies of non-violence, Bose was clearly of the camp that supported exploiting British weakness to gain Indian independence. Throughout the existence of Azad Hind, Bose sought to distance himself from Japanese collaboration and become more self-sufficient, but found this difficult since the existence of Azad Hind as a governmental entity had only come about with the support of the Japanese, and on whom the government and army of Azad Hind were entirely dependent. Bose, however, remains a hero in present-day India and is remembered as a man who fought fiercely for Indian independence. [3]
The INA had never been a highly effective combat force, and Japanese troops saw much of the combat in India against the British. With the fading of their plans for Indian conquest, the Japanese began to shift priority for resource allocation from South Asia to the Pacific, where they were fighting United States troops advancing from island to island against Japanese holdings there. When it had become clear that Bose's plans to advance to Delhi from the borders of Burma would never materialize due to the defeat of the INA at Imphal and the halt of Japanese armies by British aerial and later naval superiority in the region, Japanese support for Azad Hind declined.
Azad Hind was recognized as a legitimate and independent successor state to British rule in India by only a small number of countries, limited almost solely to Axis powers and their affiliate states. Azad Hind had diplomatic relations with nine countries: Nazi Germany, the Empire of Japan, Fascist Italy, the Independent State of Croatia, Wang Jingwei's Government in Nanjing, Thailand, Burma, Manchukuo and the Philippines. On the declaration of its formation in Singapore, President Eamon de Valera of the Irish Free State sent a note of congratulations to Bose. Vichy France, however, although being an Axis collaborator, never gave formal political recognition to Azad Hind.
for now, let me post from a wiki site - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arzi_Hukumate_Azad_Hind
Provisional Government of Free India
Hukumat-e-Azad Hind (Urdu: Ø¹Ø§Ø±Ø¶Û ØÚ©Ù٠تâ٠آزاد Ú¾Ùد, the Provisional Government of Free India), was a puppet state established by Indian nationalists-in-exile in areas of British India and Southeast Asian British colonial territory occupied by Imperial Japan during the Second World War. It was founded and led by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose on October 21, 1943 in Singapore with the fiscal and political assistance of the Axis Powers, namely Japan. While it possessed all the nominal requisites of a legitimate government, it lacked both universal political recognition and large and definite areas of sovereign territory until the government assumed control of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands from Japan in 1943. It had the backing of the "Azad Hind Fauj", known in English as the Indian National Army (INA), who were in collaboration with, and were resourcefully dependent on, the Imperial Japanese Army. The government of Azad Hind had its own currency, court and civil code, but in practical application the government served largely as a front for a Japanese anti-Western, anti-imperialist ideological initiative against the British in India.
It survived in a limited legal form until the collapse of the Japanese Empire in 1945. The existence of Azad Hind was essentially coterminous with the existence of the Indian National Army. While the government itself continued until the civil administration of the Andaman Islands was returned to the jurisdiction of the British towards the end of the war, the limited power of Azad Hind was effectively ended with the surrender of the last major contingent of INA troops in Rangoon and the death of Subhas Chandra Bose in a plane crash in 1945.
The direct origins of Azad Hind can be linked to two conferences of Indian expatriates from across Southeast Asia, the first of which was held in Tokyo in March of 1942. At this conference, convened by Rash Behari Bose, an Indian expatriate living in Japan, the Indian Independence League was established as the first move towards an independent Indian state politically aligned with the Empire of Japan. Rash also moved to create a sort of liberation army that would assist in driving the British from India - this force would later become the Indian National Army. The second conference, held later that year in Bangkok, invited Subhas Chandra Bose to participate in the leadership of the League. Bose was living in Germany at the time and made the trip to Japan via submarine.
Rash, who was already aging by the time the League was founded, struggled to keep the League organized and failed to secure resources for the establishment of the Indian National Army. He was replaced as president of the Indian Independence League by Subhas Chandra Bose; there is some controversy as to whether he stepped down of his own volition or by pressure from the Japanese who needed a more energetic and focused presence leading the Indian nationalists.
Bose arrived in Tokyo on June 13, 1943, and declared his intent to make an assault against the eastern provinces of India in an attempt to oust the British from control of the subcontinent. Bose arrived in Singapore on July 2nd, and in October of 1943 formally announced the establishment of the Provisional Government of Free India. In defining the tasks of this new political establishment, Subhas declared: âIt will be the task of the Provisional Government to launch and conduct the struggle that will bring about the expulsion of the British and their allies from the soil of India.â [1] Bose, taking formal command of the demoralized and undermanned Indian National Army from Rash Bose, turned it into a professional army with the help of the Japanese. He recruited Indian civilians living in Japanese-occupied territories of South-east Asia, and incorporated vast numbers of Indian POWs from British forces in Singapore, Malaya and Hong Kong to man the brigades of the INA.
Government Administration and the War
Main articles: Indian National Army, India during World War II, Invasion and Occupation of the Andaman Islands during World War II
The same night that Bose declared the existence of Azad Hind, the government took action to declare war against the United States and Britain. The government consisted of a Cabinet ministry acting as an advisory board to Subhas Bose, who was given the title "Netaji" (translating roughly to "leader") and was no doubt the dominant figure in the Provisional Government. He exercised virtual authoritarian control over the government and the army. With regards to the government's first issuances of war declarations, the "Cabinet had not been unanimous about the inclusion of the U.S.A. Bose had shown impatience and displeasure - there was never any question then or later of his absolute authority: the Cabinet had no responsibility and could only tender advice..." [2]
At the end of October of 1943, Bose flew to Tokyo to participate in the Greater East Asia Conference as an observer to Japan's Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere; it could not function as a delegate because India had technically fallen outside the jurisdiction of Japan's definition of "Greater East Asia", but Bose gave speeches in opposition to Western colonialism and imperialism at the conference. By the end of the conference, Azad Hind had been given a limited form of governmental jurisdiction over the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which had been captured by the Imperial Japanese Navy early on in the war.
Once under the jurisdiction of Azad Hind, the islands formed the government's first claims to territory. The islands themselves were renamed "Shaheed" and "Swaraj", meaning "martyr" and "self-rule" respectively. Bose placed the islands under the governorship of one Lieutenant-Colonel Loganathan, and had limited involvement with the official governorship of the territory, instead involving himself largely with the leadership of the INA and assisting in Japan's plans for the invasion of India. In theory the government itself had the power to levy taxes on the local populace, and tomake and enforce laws: in practice they were enforced by the police force under Japanese control. Indians were willing to pay these taxes at first, but became less inclined to do so towards the end of the war when the Provisional Government enacted legislation for higher war-time taxes to fund the INA. During his interrogation after the war Loganathan admitted that he had only had full control over the islands' vestigial education department, as the Japanese had retained full control over the police force, and in protest he had refused to accept responsibility for any other areas of Government. He was powerless to prevent the Homfreyganj massacre of the 30th January 1944, where forty-four Indian civilians were shot by the Japanese on suspicion of spying. Many of them were members of the Indian Independence League, whose leader in Port Blair, Dr. Diwan Singh, had already been tortured to death in the Cellular Jail after doing his best to protect the islanders from Japanese atrocities during the first two years of the occupation. [1]
Azad Hind's military forces in the form of the INA saw some successes against the British, and moved with the Japanese army to lay siege to the town of Imphal in eastern India. Plans to march towards Delhi, gaining support and fresh recruits along the way, stalled both with the onset of monsoon season and the failure to capture Imphal. British bombing seriously reduced morale, and the Japanese along with the INA forces began their withdrawal from India.
In addition to these setbacks, the INA was faced with a formidable challenge when the troops were left to defend Rangoon without the assistance of the Japanese in the winter of 1944-1945. Loganathan was relocated from the Andaman Islands to act as field commander. With the I.N.A. garrison about 6,000 strong, he manned the Burmese capital in the absence of any other police force or troops during the period between the departure of the Japanese and the arrival of the British. Due to his experience administering the limited sovereign territory of Azad Hind with the Japanese troops, he was successful in maintaining law and order to the extent that there was not a single case of dacoity or of loot during the period from April 24th to May 4th, 1945.
The Defeat of the INA and the Collapse of the Provisional Government
Left to defend Rangoon from the British advance without support from the Japanese, the INA was soundly defeated. Bose had fled Burma and returned to Singapore before the fall of Rangoon; the government Azad Hind had established on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands collapsed when the island garrisons of Japanese and Indian troops were defeated by British troops and the islands themselves retaken. Bose himself was killed in a plane crash departing from Taiwan attempting to escape to Russia. The Provisional Government of Free India ceased to exist with the deaths of the Axis, the INA, and Netaji Bose in 1945.
The troops who manned the brigades of the Indian National Army were taken as prisoners of war by the British. A number of these prisoners were brought to India and tried by British courts for treason, including a number of high ranking officers such as Colonel Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon. The defense of these individuals from prosecution by the British became a central point of contention between the British Raj and the Indian Independence Movement in the post-war years.
Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, while an ally of Japan throughout the war, has become a controversial figure for his stances against racism and imperialism which would run in opposition against what was generally recognized as Japanese imperialism in Asia during World War II. Bose himself opposed all manner of such colonial practices, but saw Britain as hypocritical in "fighting a war for democracy" but refusing to extend the same respect for democracy and equal rights to their colonial subjects in India. As such, he is sometimes cited by revisionist Japanese historians as proof of the legitimacy of Japanese assertions that their brand of imperialism was in the best interests of Asian nations oppressed by Western colonialists. Criticism of Bose remains, with some accusing him of fascism, citing his strict control over the Provisional Government as evidence of this; some accused him of wanting to establish a totalitarian state in India with the blessings of the Axis powers. It is inaccurate to term Bose solely as a fascist, but it is true that Bose openly admired fascism in the Axis countries and used it as a way to organize the Provisional Government; he believed that parliamentary democracy was unsuitable for India, and that a centrally organized, self-sufficient, semi-socialist India under the firm control of a single party was the best course for Indian government. Some of his ideas would help shape Indian governmental policy in the aftermath of the country's independence from Britain.
The fact that Azad Hind was aligned politically with Japan may have little to do with explicit agreement and support for Japanese policy in Asia, and more with what Bose saw as a pragmatic approach to Indian independence. Disillusioned with Gandhi's philosophies of non-violence, Bose was clearly of the camp that supported exploiting British weakness to gain Indian independence. Throughout the existence of Azad Hind, Bose sought to distance himself from Japanese collaboration and become more self-sufficient, but found this difficult since the existence of Azad Hind as a governmental entity had only come about with the support of the Japanese, and on whom the government and army of Azad Hind were entirely dependent. Bose, however, remains a hero in present-day India and is remembered as a man who fought fiercely for Indian independence. [3]
The INA had never been a highly effective combat force, and Japanese troops saw much of the combat in India against the British. With the fading of their plans for Indian conquest, the Japanese began to shift priority for resource allocation from South Asia to the Pacific, where they were fighting United States troops advancing from island to island against Japanese holdings there. When it had become clear that Bose's plans to advance to Delhi from the borders of Burma would never materialize due to the defeat of the INA at Imphal and the halt of Japanese armies by British aerial and later naval superiority in the region, Japanese support for Azad Hind declined.
Azad Hind was recognized as a legitimate and independent successor state to British rule in India by only a small number of countries, limited almost solely to Axis powers and their affiliate states. Azad Hind had diplomatic relations with nine countries: Nazi Germany, the Empire of Japan, Fascist Italy, the Independent State of Croatia, Wang Jingwei's Government in Nanjing, Thailand, Burma, Manchukuo and the Philippines. On the declaration of its formation in Singapore, President Eamon de Valera of the Irish Free State sent a note of congratulations to Bose. Vichy France, however, although being an Axis collaborator, never gave formal political recognition to Azad Hind.