252 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
in three divisions. During their first conversation, Field Marshal Count
Hisaichi Terauchi, the commander of Japanese forces in Southeast Asia,
had told Bose that he wanted the INA’s role to be limited to field pro-
pa ganda units. Bose would have none of that, and insisted that the INA
would spearhead the offensive into India. “Any liberation of India se-
cured through Japanese sac ri fices,” he told Terauchi, “is worse than
slavery.”^33 The field marshal agreed to the deployment of one INA regi-
ment—the equivalent of a British brigade—as a test of their ef fi ciency
and morale, before he would send the rest of the INA into action.
The first division of the INA, some ten thousand soldiers, was put
under the command of Mohammad Zaman Kiani. It was divided into
three regiments, or brigades, which Bose named after Gandhi, Nehru,
and Azad in a deliberate effort to make common cause with the strug-
gle at home. In response to Terauchi’s challenge, the INA selected the
best soldiers from the three regiments and formed the No. 1 Guerrilla
Regiment, intended as the first to be sent into action. This regiment
went into training in the northern Malayan town of Taiping in Septem-
ber 1943, under the command of Shah Nawaz Khan, and was sent to
Burma on November 20. The soldiers themselves called it the Subhas
Brigade. According to Shah Nawaz, Netaji did not approve of this; he
“repeatedly issued instructions that no one should call it ‘Subhas Bri-
gade,’ but the soldiers found it hard to obey the order.”^34
As supreme commander of the INA, Netaji built a close personal
rapport with his of fi cers’ corps. They had easy access to his home and
often joined him for badminton matches in the evenings. He made
unannounced visits to the barracks of the ordinary soldiers and fre-
quently shared meals with them. Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, and Christian
soldiers dined together—a striking departure from the British custom
of having separate mess halls. A warm camaraderie developed among
soldiers drawn from the different religious communities and linguistic
groups. He urged Hindus to be generous toward the religious minori-
ties. He taught soldiers from martial backgrounds to be welcoming to-
ward civilians who flocked to recruitment centers and joined the liber-
ation army. He sent forty- five handpicked young men for training in
Tokyo’s elite Military Academy; he also selected thirty- five for the army
and ten for a future air force. His success in raising funds enabled him