242 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
dom struggle if they would voluntarily pledge their loyalty to Mother
India and join the Indian National Army (INA). Fujiwara’s speech was
received with great enthusiasm. As he fin ished, the Indian soldiers gave
him a standing ovation and “thousands of caps were tossed into the
air.” Fujiwara reckoned that he had swayed an overwhelming majority
of the fifty thousand soldiers who heard him speak.^7 British intelligence
sources gave slightly lower estimates. The British believed that forty
thousand of the forty- five thousand Indian troops who surrendered in
Singapore volunteered to join the INA. Only five thousand of them,
mostly of fi cers, remained in the nonvolunteer category.^8
After this early success among POWs in Singapore, the Indian in de-
pen dence movement in Southeast Asia suf fered a series of setbacks. On
March 19, some of the top leaders of the Indian Inde pen dence League,
including Giani Pritam Singh and Swami Satyananda Puri of Bangkok,
were killed in an air crash on their way to a conference in Tokyo. At
around the same time, Colonel Hideo Iwakuro replaced Fujiwara as the
chief liaison of fi cer with the Indians. Contrary to Fujiwara’s advice
that Japan needed a diplomatic mission to handle relations with the
Indians, the Iwakuro Kikan operated more like an espionage agency
dedicated to short- term military objectives.^9 The arrogance and high-
handedness of middle- ranking Japanese of fi cers irked the Indian
military and civilian leadership. The rift was papered over in June 1942,
at the time of the Indian Inde pen dence League’s Bangkok conference,
under the chairmanship of Rashbehari Bose, a veteran Indian revolu-
tionary. In 1912, Rashbehari (no relation to Subhas) had hurled a
bomb at Charles Hardinge, the British viceroy, as he ceremonially en-
tered Delhi, the new British cap ital, riding on an elephant. The assassi-
nation attempt was unsuccessful, but a symbolic point had been made.
Since 1915, Rashbehari had lived as a po lit i cal refugee in Japan.^10 De-
spite his efforts to keep Indo- Japanese relations on an even keel, the
lack of trust between the two sides became palpable during the latter
half of 1942. Finally, in December, an impatient and exasperated Mo-
han Singh issued an order to disband the Indian National Army. The
Japanese promptly took him into detention. Rashbehari Bose tried to
salvage the situation over the next few weeks, and prevented the com-
plete dissolution of the INA. Assurances given by him and the Japanese