8
Roads to Delhi
There, there in the distance—beyond that river, beyond those jun-
gles, beyond those hills lies the promised land—the soil from
which we sprang—the land to which we shall now return.
—subhas chandra bose, Order of the Day, March 1944Around midday on July 2, 1943, Subhas Chandra Bose, accompanied
by Abid Hasan, landed in Singapore in a twin- engine Japanese aircraft.
He was greeted with a Hindustani song composed by Mumtaz Hussain:
“Subhas- ji, Subhas- ji, woh jaan- e- Hind aagaye, woh naaz jispe Hind
ko, woh shan- e- Hind aagaye.” Set to music by Ram Singh Thakur (the
melody was a European marching tune), the song joyfully welcomed
the beloved leader who was the pride of India. “Asia ke Aftab”—“the
light of Asia”—had now arrived in Asia, the song proclaimed. As early
as December 1941, General Fujiwara Iwaichi had noted in Thailand
and Malaya that “all the Indians” he encountered “had a great admira-
tion for Bose, amounting almost to a religious devotion.”^1 A conference
of Indian expatriate pa tri ots in Bangkok on June 15, 1942, had issued
him an invitation to lead them in Southeast Asia. At the time, he had
been able only to send them a message underscoring the need to “link
up Indian nationalists all over the world.”^2 A year later he was at last
among them, providing that link in person.
During the long delay—from June 1942 to July 1943—in the imple-
mentation of Bose’s travel plans, the relative fortunes of the warring
powers had changed. The Soviet Union had decisively turned the tables