The Terrible Price of Freedom 213overshadowed by more momentous events in East Asia. Japan’s entry
into the Second World War on December 7, 1941, and the rapid ad-
vance of Japanese troops across Southeast Asia against the Western co-
lonial powers, opened up new strategic possibilities for Subhas Chan-
dra Bose. The fall of Singapore, on February 15, 1942, provided the
occasion for Bose to discard his identity as Orlando Mazzotta: he made
his first open broadcast to India on February 19, 1942. “The fall of Sin-
gapore,” he declared, “means the collapse of the British Empire, the end
of the iniquitous regime which it has symbolized and the dawn of a
new era in Indian his tory. Through India’s liberation will Asia and the
world move forward towards the larger goal of human emancipation.”
More than a year after his dramatic escape from India, his countrymen
heard his voice: “This is Subhas Chandra Bose speaking to you over the
Azad Hind [Free India] Radio.”^29The Voice of Free IndiaThe broadcasts on Azad Hind Radio usually began with stirring Eng-
lish lines—“To arms, to arms, / The Heavens ring, / With the clarion
call, / To Freedom’s fray”—and ended with “Our cause is just!”^30 When
Japanese forces took Rangoon from the British, Bose hailed the pros-
pect of Burmese freedom. He derided the pro pa ganda of the British
viceroy Archibald Wavell: that India was under threat of enemy at-
tack and that its frontiers, therefore, were at Suez and Hong Kong,
which had to be defended with Indian troops. India, Bose pointed out,
had “no imaginary Wavellian frontiers,” only “a national geographical
boundary determined by Providence and nature.” Having brought “In-
dia into the war” in September 1939, the British were now trying to
bring “the war into India.”^31
Mahatma Gandhi now shared this perspective on the war. Though
Bose had failed to persuade Gandhi to issue an ultimatum to the Brit-
ish in 1939, the British debacle at the hands of the Japanese in South-
east Asia emboldened the Mahatma to prepare for a final showdown
with the British raj. Gandhi believed that India could be spared the
devastation of war if the British left India. He was con fi dent of his abil-
ity to negotiate with the Japanese, who would have no reason to enter