Roads to Delhi 247ammunition for their training. The head of the Indian Inde pen dence
League’s branch in Singapore, Attavar Yellappa, overcame the Japanese
ob jec tions and found barracks and equipment for the young Ranis.
The first guard- of- honor to their leader was given by sari- clad women
bearing weapons of war, but they were soon in military uniform and
underwent rigorous military training in their camp. A few came from
educated, privileged backgrounds, while the majority were simple
rubber- plantation workers in Malaya.^23
Recruitment into the women’s regiment was facilitated to a large
extent by Netaji’s charisma. Janaki Thevar has described how, as a teen-
ager, she went on her bicycle to hear Bose speak at a rally in Kuala
Lumpur. At the end of the meeting, she saw people rushing forward to
offer Netaji money, jewelry, and anything else they possessed. Janaki
took off her earrings and gold chain and put them in Netaji’s hands.
Her parents learned of what she had done from a photograph on the
front page of the local newspaper the next day. When Lakshmi Swami-
nathan came recruiting for the women’s regiment, Janaki persuaded
her father to let her join. In January 1944, after training for six months,
she went with the regiment to Burma. Decades later, women of the
Rani of Jhansi Regiment—many of whom went on to have distin-
guished careers—remembered the fatherlike fig ure of Bose with devo-
tion and regarded the years 1943–1945 as the finest period in their
lives.^24
From July to September 1943, Bose undertook a whirlwind tour of
various Southeast Asian countries, galvanizing support for his cause
among Indian expatriates. He quickly grasped that Malaya, Thailand,
and Burma would be the most im por tant countries from his point of
view. He had already visited Saigon, in South Vietnam, en route from
Tokyo to Singapore, but the Indian community there was small. Malaya
had nearly a million Indians—some wealthy financiers and bankers, as
well as a much larger number of poor migrant laborers. The latter, in
particular, had their first taste of human dignity and a feeling of equal
citizenship by joining the Azad Hind movement. Thailand, with its
nominally neutral but effectively pro- Japanese government headed by
Phibul Songkhram, supplied the crucial connection between Malaya
and Burma. It, too, had an Indian immigrant community, which num-