248 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
bered about sixty thousand, and had served as the base of the Indian
Inde pen dence League. Burma would be the springboard for the march
into India. Even after the net emigration of Indians from Burma dur-
ing the Depression de cade and the flight of perhaps four hundred
thousand refugees in advance of the Japanese invasion, a varied popu-
lation of some eight hundred thousand Indians—merchants, bankers,
laborers, and professionals—remained in Burma. Indo- Burmese rela-
tions required delicate handling, as the great peasant rebellion of 1930–
1932, led by Saya San, had been directed quite as much against Indian
moneylenders as against British colonial of fi cials.
Subhas Chandra Bose was invited to be an honored guest at the
Burmese in de pen dence celebrations on August 1, 1943. He arrived in
Burma on July 29. Over the next two days, he gave rousing speeches to
the Indian expatriates, who welcomed him enthusiastically. After liber-
ating Burma from its British rulers, Japan had agreed, despite some
dithering, to recognize an in de pen dent government of Burma led by
Ba Maw, with Aung San as his deputy and defense minister. Ba Maw
had led the legal defense of Saya San (who was executed by the British)
and served as premier between 1937 and 1939 under a new constitu-
tion, which had kept real power in the British governor’s hands. He was
leader of the Sinyetha, or Poor Men’s party, which enjoyed limited
popular support in Burma. Far more in flu en tial was the Thakins party,
of which Aung San was a prominent leader. The word thakin meant
“master,” and the Thakins addressed one another with that title as a
way of refusing to accept the authority of the British colonial masters.
In the late 1930s, the more radical among the Thakins formed the Free-
dom Bloc, which had a connection with Bose’s Forward Bloc. When
the Burmese leaders refused to collaborate with the British war effort,
they were cast into prison. Aung San escaped. After receiving mili-
tary training in Japan, he and his comrades—known as the “Thirty
Heroes”—returned to Burma with the Japanese invading force that
expelled the British.
Ba Maw had met Bose in Singapore on July 6 and was suitably im-
pressed. “Subhas Chandra Bose was a man you could not forget once
you knew him,” he wrote in his memoirs. “His greatness was mani-
fest.”^25 On August 1, Bose made a moving speech on the occasion of