266 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
Bivabati, recognized Subhas’s handwriting. Sisir then put Rao in touch
with those members of the underground or ga ni za tion Bengal Volun-
teers who had managed to stay out of prison.^56
In January 1944, radio contact was successfully established between
partisans in Calcutta and Subhas Chandra Bose in Burma. One of the
earliest messages transmitted did not contain any valuable military in-
telligence. It conveyed the news of Prabhabati’s death. “You look tired,”
Debnath Das said to Netaji that evening. “No, I am not tired,” Bose re-
plied. “I heard today that I have lost my mother.”^57
Freedom’s BattleOn January 7, 1944, the advance headquarters of the Provisional Gov-
ernment were moved forward from Singapore to Rangoon. The first
guerrilla regiment known as the Subhas Brigade, of the INA’s first divi-
sion, had already arrived in Burma by November 1942. Tokyo approved
plans for the offensive into India in January and, at the beginning of
February, sent orders for the Imphal campaign to General Mutaguchi
Renea, the commander of Japanese forces in northern Burma. The
strategic aims of the Japanese and the Indians were quite different. Ja-
pan saw the invasion as a preemptive strike to forestall British attempts
to reconquer Burma. The INA, on the other hand, saw its role as that of
a catalyst for a civilian uprising against British rule. The capture of Im-
phal and Kohima would open the way for its advance into the rest of
Assam and Bengal, where a heroes’ welcome awaited them. All that was
required for “ultimate success,” Bose said on January 8, 1944, was that
“action within the country must synchronize with the action from
without.”^58
In addition to the three regular divisions of the INA, the intelligence
and field pro pa ganda units had been or ga nized since Bose’s arrival into
three groups: the Bahadur (“Courageous”) group would penetrate be-
hind enemy lines; the Intelligence group would subvert the loyalty of
British Indian troops on the battlefield; and the Reinforcement group
would be in charge of the po lit i cal education of Indian prisoners be-
fore they joined the INA. By December 1943, four units of two hun-
dred fifty men each had been attached for training to the Japanese divi-