When Manipur pitched in to protect India’s territorial sovereignty

Lt Gen Baljit Singh (Retd)

Military Commentator

THIS is a broad-brushed retrospective of the Indian Army, which — having earned name and fame fighting under the British flag in Europe, Africa, Mesopotamia and Persia — took up arms for the first time in defence of its own homeland under the most disadvantaged circumstances.

Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, the then Commander-in-Chief, India, said on record, “Britain could not have come through both wars (WWI & WWII) if they hadn’t had the Indian Army.” And who could have known this better than Auchinleck? As a 20-year-old commissioned officer attached with 62nd Punjabis, he led his company in defence of the far-flung Gyantse outpost (midway on the pony track of Nathu La-Lhasa) and later fought with commendable distinction along with 1.5 million Indian soldiers in World War I. Two decades hence, he led in part 3.35 million Indian soldiers, termed ‘the largest volunteer Army in the world’, through World War II and till August 1947.

Despite the gargantuan numbers of the Indian Army, when unanticipated winds of war engulfed the Indian homeland in December 1941, no more than one puny Infantry Brigade of Black Cats (17 Infantry Division), numbering about 3,000 combatants, was in the kitty for dispatch in the first rush to Rangoon with the intent to fight and defeat the highly motivated Japanese soldiers, emboldened by victory after victory over every foe thus far.

The Black Cats under Maj Gen John Smyth (a recipient of the Victoria Cross and the Military Cross) were reinforced in situ by three brigades from assorted Burmese paramilitary entities, but this proved too little and too late. It is to Smyth’s credit that they did not yield to the Japanese onslaught for nearly one month but ultimately, they simply “had to retreat a thousand miles... the longest fighting withdrawal in the history of the British army... but they had not been disgraced. They had put up a great fight... As they came into Imphal…they still carried their weapons… Lt Gen William Slim was proud of them… he was determined that one day they would go back.”

“But meanwhile in the centre/Great deeds of arms were wrought”, as Macaulay had famously said in another context. The Japanese surprise attack on the US military facility at Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, had inflicted a crippling blow to the allies’ overall war plans, but, in turn, the year-long swift retaliation mounted by the US armed forces was to provide a 14-month hiatus to India for knitting together the formidable 14th Army under Lt Gen Slim.

On January 19, 1944, the Japanese Imperial Headquarters in Tokyo approved General Mutaguchi’s plan for Operation ‘U-Go’, also known as ‘Road to Delhi’. Gen Mutaguchi, a diehard adherent of Bushido (Japanese code of military honour), promptly issued a stirring order to his 15th Army: “The Army has now reached the stage of invincibility and the day when the rising sun shall proclaim our victory in India is not far off... Aided by the Gods and inspired by the Emperor and the will to win... Officers and men must fight to death for their country.” Concomitantly, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was vested with the command of the Indian National Army (INA), an adjunct of ‘U-Go’ with the Tricolour as its flag, its salutation ‘Jai Hind’ and its slogan ‘Chalo Dilli’.

In the interregnum prior to the ‘U-Go’ launch, the 14th Army Headquarters had gathered a sizeable outfit, comprising local Nagas, Kerens, Kukis, Meiteis, Mizos and Lushais, tasked with infiltrating between Manipur and Chindwin rivers in the East and across the Irrawaddy river in the North-East for timely acquisition of movements and related operational buildup of the Japanese 15th Army.

Finally, the stage was set for Lt Gen Slim to lure Gen Mutaguchi on to the Imphal plains and fight a decisive battle to destroy the 15th Army as a prelude to the eviction of the Japanese from Burma. In the event, the ‘U-Go’ and ‘Chalo Dilli’ hordes were destroyed close to the last man, having trodden barely the first 10 km of the intended 2,428-km journey from Imphal to Delhi. The INA division had failed in its primary task of inciting desertions and revolt in the 14th Army.

Of the 85,000 combatants fielded by Gen Mutaguchi in this opening phase, the Japanese suffered 54,879 casualties (killed or wounded); another 4,000 were killed at Kohima, compared to 14th Army’s 12,500 dead or missing. And in this macabre slaughter in a circumference of 10 km around Imphal, the soil of Manipur was drenched in blood and the war-ravaged countryside cloaked in cinder, ash and charred debris, like Nagasaki was after the atomic bombing.

The scale of the ravages of war brings to mind these lines by PB Shelley:

Oh, cease! must hate and death return?

Cease! must men kill and die?

Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn of bitter prophecy.

The world is weary of the past,

Oh, might it die or rest at last!

The British monarch elevated Lt Gen Slim to Field Marshal and also bestowed the knighthood on him, besides honouring the three Corps Commanders with the KBE (Knight Commander of the most excellent order of the British Empire). The then Viceroy of India, Field Marshal Sir Archibald Wavell, performed the knighthood ceremony near Imphal, witnessed by a motley crowd of Kukis and Meiteis, the raging war notwithstanding. And in the cruellest paradox of life, the two wartime foes would shortly emerge as the best of friends after the armistice.

Lt Gen Slim-led 14th Indian Army had handed to the Japanese their worst defeat of World War II over the Imphal plains and, in the process, preserved India’s territorial sovereignty. But much more significantly, the Indian Army emerged as the first and true inheritor of the salutation ‘Jai Hind’ along with Manipur, which is in the throes of a violent conflict today.

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