How Indian troops processed WW-II

The Second World War, though not an Indian war and not fought on Indian soil, was nonetheless a transformative moment in 20th century India. It reshaped not just the economy and polity, but the psychic universe of millions of Indians. It stamped its mark on their emotional lives, creating fear, uncertainty, anxieties, loss and longing. Diya Gupta’s book is quite unusual in that it is not so much about the war per se, as about how people experienced it and the whole range of emotions it evoked in them.

The theme of emotions is rather new in history writing. Emotions are increasingly being seen as exogenous rather than endogenous. They do not always spring from the depths of human heart but rather a whole range of external factors. On this understanding, emotions need to be seen as social rather than psychic. They are produced by history and they also shape history. The book provides an account of an entire gamut of emotions generated by the war.

This is an ambitious book as it tries to retrieve the world of emotions of those Indians who fought in WW-II and all those who came under its spell. The world of soldiers has been constructed with the help of a large number of letters written or dictated by these soldiers in different languages — Hindustani, Punjabi, Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam and Tamil, among others. These letters were then translated into English for the purposes of surveillance and censorship.

The letters, a few thousand in numbers, written by and to the soldiers, give us clues to the emotional universe of the soldiers. Some regretted joining the war. For some, it was an exercise in glory and heroism. Some missed home, others found the experience liberating. Some soldiers discovered a new meaning of home. Home for them was no longer a fixed and finite space, but a metaphorical zone which they could carry with them wherever they went. The unusual experience of the war created the most unusual range of emotional experiences for the soldiers.

Aper from letters, there were photographs, memoirs, poetry and autobiographical accounts of how people related to the experience of the war. All modern wars are deeply implicated in the project of nationalism. They are often produced by nationalism and they in turn engender nationalist feeling. But India’s experience with WW-II was quite atypical. It was not a straight war between India and its adversary. It was a complex war in which most Indians looked upon both the British and the Japanese as adversaries. They detested the British rule, but were equally apprehensive of the Japanese invasion.

It was a war inflicted upon India and was not likely to evoke feelings of Indian nationalism. The spectacle of a large number of Indians — around 25 lakh — enlisting for the war is no indicator of any great enthusiasm for it. They joined the war as it provided avenues for jobs and upward mobility.

However, the principle of nationalism worked in quite another way. When many Indian soldiers were caught by the Japanese and made prisoners of war, they were given an opportunity of fighting against the British; they jumped at it and joined the Indian National Army (INA) under the leadership of Subhas Chandra Bose. The experience of joining the war from both the possible sides has been narrated by Abid Hasan Safrani, Bose’s companion in the INA, in his book ‘The Men from Imphal’.

The story of Bengal famine, told in chapter two of Gupta’s book, is an integral part of peoples’ experience of the war. Close to three million people died of hunger and disease. It was not a famine caused by crop failure, but by diversion of food supplies for the war. The ships that would have supplied rice were all deployed for the war. Deeply disturbed by the plight of fellow Indians, Bose, leading the INA in Rangoon, offered to ship 1 lakh tonnes of rice to Bengal. The offer was turned down by the British government.

The book provides an account of the war that is not likely to be found in official records, archives and documents. This is an inside story of the war retrieved from personal memoirs, letters, poetry and novels. The principal argument in the book is that the subjective dimensions of the war are as significant as the actual events. The mega narratives of the political, strategic and diplomatic dimensions of the war need to be enriched by accounts of the social, cultural, emotional and the everyday. This task has been performed most admirably by Diya Gupta’s book.

— The reviewer is a visiting faculty at BML Munjal University