[9] A long and exhausting withdrawal, accompanied by a lack of supplies, malnutrition, and death, ensued,[10] some victorious soldiers in the Indian Army not taking INA battlefield surrender kindly.

[13] After Subhas Chandra Bose arrived in Southeast Asia from Nazi Germany in May 1943, he refounded the INA with significant recruitment from Indian civilian communities in Malaya and Singapore.

Meanwhile, Japan had sent intelligence missions, notably under Maj. Iwaichi Fujiwara, into South Asia to gather support from the Malayan sultans, overseas Chinese, the Burmese resistance and the Indian independence movement.

[32][58] There he sought to raise an army of Indian soldiers from prisoners of war captured by Germany,[61] forming the Free India Legion and the Azad Hind Radio.

"[66][67] Carl Vadivella Belle estimates under Bose's dynamic appeal, membership of the IIL peaked at 350,000, while almost 100,000 local Indians in South-east Asia volunteered to join the INA, with the army ultimately reaching a force of 50,000.

A youth wing of the INA, composed of 45 young Indians personally chosen by Bose and known as the Tokyo Boys, was also sent to Japan's Imperial Military Academy, where its members trained as fighter pilots.

It was planned that, once Japanese forces had broken through British defences at Imphal, the INA would cross the hills of North-East India into the Gangetic plain, where it would work as a guerrilla army.

[86] The plans chosen by Bose and Masakazu Kawabe, chief of the Burma area army, envisaged the INA being assigned an independent sector in the U-Go offensive.

Led by Shah Nawaz Khan, it successfully protected the Japanese flanks against Chin and Kashin guerrillas as Renya Mutaguchi's three divisions crossed the Chindwin river and the Naga Hills, and participated in the main offensive through Tamu in the direction of Imphal and Kohima.

Isolated, losing men to exhaustion and to desertion, low on ammunition and food, and pursued by Commonwealth forces, the surviving units of the second division began an attempt to withdraw towards Rangoon.

[107] The withdrawing forces regularly suffered casualties from Allied planes strafing them and in clashes with Aung San's Burmese resistance, as well as from Chinese guerrillas who harassed the Japanese troops.

Increasingly violent confrontations broke out between the police and protesters at the mass rallies being held all over India, culminating in public riotings in support of the INA men.

However, the first and most celebrated joint courts-martial – those of Prem Sahgal, Gurubaksh Singh Dhillon and Shah Nawaz Khan – were not the story of torture and murder Auchinleck had hoped to tell the Indian press and people.

Philip Mason, then-Secretary of the War Department, later wrote that "in a matter of weeks ... in a wave of nationalist emotion, the INA were acclaimed heroes who fought for the freedom of India.

"[132] Much of the initial defence was based on the argument that they should be treated as prisoners of war as they were not paid mercenaries but bona fide soldiers of a legal government – Bose's Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind.

[147] Joyce Lebra, an American historian, wrote that the rejuvenation of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, then a fledgling Tamil political party in southern India, would not have been possible without participation of INA members.

[148] Some accounts suggest that the INA veterans were involved in training civilian resistance forces against the Nizam's Razakars prior to the execution of Operation Polo and annexation of Hyderabad.

[160] Janaky Athi Nahappan, second-in-command of the Rani of Jhansi Regiment, was also a founding member of the MIC and later became a noted welfare activist and a distinguished senator in the Dewan Negara of the Malaysian Parliament.

Azad Hind depended on Japan for arms and material but sought to be as financially independent as possible, levying taxes and raising donations from Indians in Southeast Asia".

[166] Azad Hind officials in Burma reported difficulties with the Japanese military administration in arranging supply for troops and transport for wounded men as the armies withdrew.

[120] In February 1946, while the trials were still going on, a general strike by ratings of the Royal Indian Navy rapidly deteriorated into a mutiny incorporating ships and shore establishments of the RIN throughout India.

He also writes that the INA was aware of this and formulated its own strategy of avoiding set-piece battles, gathering local and popular support within India and instigating revolt within the British-Indian Army to overthrow the Raj.

[140] However, despite its small numerical strength and lack of heavy weapons, its special services group played a significant part in halting the First Arakan Offensive while still under Mohan Singh's command.

This caused British intelligence to begin the "Jiffs" propaganda campaign and to create "Josh" groups to improve the morale and preserve the loyalty of the sepoys as consolidation began to prepare for the defence of Manipur.

[191] Historians such as Sumit Sarkar, Sugata Bose, and Ayesha Jalal conclude that the INA trials and its after-effects brought a decisive shift in British policy towards independence Indian.

[202] Hugh Toye and Peter Fay point out that the First INA consisted of a mix of recruits joining for various reasons, such as nationalistic leanings, Mohan Singh's appeals, personal ambition or to protect men under their own command from harm.

[177][205] Carl Vadivella Belle suggested in 2014 that among the local Indians and ex-British-Indian Army volunteers in Malaya, there was a proportion who joined due to the threat of conscription as Japanese labour troops.

He concludes that the Jiffs campaign promoted the view that INA recruits were weak-willed and traitorous Axis collaborators, motivated by selfish interests of greed and personal gain.

[225] The Day of the Scorpion and The Towers of Silence, the second and third books in Paul Scott's Raj Quartet, mention Jiffs in the political and social context in which the term found use in the Eastern Army during the war.

Directed by Kabir Khan and produced by Akhil Bakshi, it followed what was called the Azad Hind Expedition between 1994 and 1995, retracing the route taken by the INA from Singapore to Imphal, before ending at Red Fort.