Roads to Delhi 245when he evoked the vision of holding their victory parade at Delhi’s
Red Fort. He asked his followers to join the movement after careful
consideration, for ahead lay a grim fight requiring great suf fering and
sac ri fice. He announced his intention of setting up a Provisional Gov-
ernment of Free India “to lead the Indian Revolution to a successful
conclusion.” “When the revolution succeeds and Anglo- American im-
perialism is expelled from India,” he told the delegates, “the task of the
provisional government will be over. It will then make room for a per-
manent government to be set up inside India, in accordance with the
will of the Indian people.”^17
The following day, July 5, at 10:30 in the morning, Bose appeared in
military uniform to address India’s army of liberation. Some twelve
thousand soldiers had gathered on the expanse of green in front of
Singapore’s municipal building. He insisted that this army had been
formed and would go into battle entirely under Indian leadership. He
gave this Azad Hind Fauj (“Free India Army”) their battle cry: “Chalo
Delhi!” (“Onward to Delhi!”). “For an enslaved people,” he said with
emotion, “there can be no greater pride, no higher honor, than to be
the first soldier in the army of liberation.” He promised his troops that
he would be with them “in darkness and in sunshine, in sorrow and in
joy, in suf fering and in victory.” The soldiers responded with shouts of
“Long live revolution!” and cries of victory to Mahatma Gandhi and
Subhas Chandra Bose. “For the present,” their leader warned them, “I
can offer you nothing except hunger, thirst, privation, forced marches
and death. But if you follow me in life and in death—as I am con fi dent
you will—I shall lead you to victory and freedom.”^18 The next day the
INA held another parade, at which Tojo, who was in Singapore for
other reasons, took the salute.
In the months that followed, Bose electrified massive audiences of
soldiers and civilians with his speeches in Hindustani, and elicited an
overwhelmingly positive response to his call for men and matériel for
the final struggle against the British raj. Since the majority of Indian
immigrants in Southeast Asia were from southern India, his speeches
were instantly translated into Tamil. “Indians outside India,” he told a
crowd of more than sixty thousand civilians in Singapore on July 9,
1943, “particularly Indians in East Asia, are going to or ga nize a fight ing