Caught in the crossfire

It has been voted Britain’s greatest battle by the National Army Museum in London. The Japanese call it their worst defeat ever. The land on which this landmark battle was fought, from March to June 1944, however, does not talk much about it. Who is the winner and who the loser from the Indian perspective is still something that the country has trouble reckoning with.

On the one side were soldiers drawn from fierce martial communities like the Garhwalis, Gurkhas, Marathas, Jats and Rajputs and the Assam Rifles, fighting under the British flag. It was the Indian Army. On the other were soldiers drawn from the same pool, but had joined Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army (INA) after the British surrender in Singapore. They were fighting with the aggressors, the Japanese, in the hope of liberating India from British rule.

World War II was raging. In the eastern part of India, the British dominated the skies. In the spring of 1944, Japan’s Lieutenant General Renya Mutaguchi felt that controlling this part would curtail British influence. Japan was already in charge in Burma. Mutaguchi prepared for an offensive that he hoped would be over in three weeks.

The defenders were not prepared enough. Despite having received some intelligence, Kohima was weakly defended. The powers assumed the thick jungles around would be impenetrable to the Japanese. They were caught by surprise when soldier upon soldier emerged from the jungles. The tennis court in front of the deputy commissioner’s bungalow became the unofficial boundary; on the slopes above it were the Japanese, in huge numbers. On the other side were around 1,500 soldiers. Despite the disadvantage of height and numbers, these men held on, braving bullets raining daily, till reinforcements came. The Japanese advance stopped at the tennis court. Earl Louis Mountbatten would refer to the Battle of the Tennis Court as the Indian Thermopylae.

On the other front, the Japanese had reached Imphal, situated in a valley en route to Burma. An ideal place from where to begin the struggle for control of Asia. Except that Imphal refused to give in. The Japanese had made some costly mistakes. They had not made supply plans for a siege that was to last four months. Mutaguchi’s plan to employ the once successful Japanese strategy of herding livestock along with the military, as their larders on hooves, did not work. The cattle died or escaped. It is said the Japanese, who had hoped on local support, did not get much of that either, despite fronting the INA. Stories of their brutality, with fellow Asians in territories they had grabbed in the eastern theatre, had reached these hill villages. Starvation began setting in as the rains approached.

Meanwhile, the defenders put up a stiff resistance. The battles fought in these hills have been recorded for the savagery of the fight. In many places it came down to lethal hand-to-hand combat.

The invaders made another miscalculation; they thought the terrain would not support heavy artillery, and did not bring any anti-tank guns. So, when the tanks rolled up the hills, they had little defence. The Kohima siege ended with the arrival of tanks, and the British then pushed it to their advantage, advancing ahead till they were able to retake Burma. The use of air power by the British decimated any last shred of hope the Japanese could have held onto.

The British and American cargo planes brought in supplies and medicine, and evacuated the injured. Japan had no such help. Many of those who did not die of bullets, perished of starvation and diseases like malaria. The casualties on the Japanese side were over 50,000, of which more than 13,000 fatal. On the British side, the casualties stood at over 17,000. That, too, was quite high.

The Indian Army won, and the Indian National Army lost. Whose victory was it, finally? The INA trials held later found the soldiers guilty of waging war against the king emperor. The trials drummed up nationalist fervour further. Both the Congress and the Muslim League supported the soldiers. This was the last time the two agreed on any subject. The trials led to unrest in the ranks, triggering off a mutiny in the Royal Indian Navy. It did hasten the march towards independence.

But, what if Japan had succeeded in its intent? How would the history of India have changed? “It would certainly have brought WWII deep into Indian territory,” says military historian and retired Squadron Leader Rana T.S. Chhina. “How many more battles would have had to be fought, and which of them could have changed the course of history, one cannot say. But, yes, if the INA had won, India would not have been partitioned later. Bose’s vision was very clear on this.” Then again, one wonders whether the Japanese would have lived up to the assurance of delivering the nation to the INA. Its track record had not been very convincing.