Roads to Delhi 275at the front” and that spirits were high, as he scribbled a few lines to
Brahmachari Kailasam of the Ramakrishna Mission in Singapore on
April 16, 1944, “before crossing the frontier.” Once he did so, he was
not sure when he would be able to communicate with Kailasam again.
Besides the INA’s soldiers, personnel belonging to the Reconstruction
Department from Singapore and Rangoon had gone forward. “We shall
be meeting them in Free India,” Bose wrote optimistically.^73
Going against Bose’s preferred strategy, Mutaguchi chose to lay siege
to Imphal. He obstructed the Imphal- Kohima road, denying the Brit-
ish any chance of escape toward the railhead of Dimapur and the
route to Ledo. Mutaguchi had convinced himself that he had caught
large fish in his net. Bose decided to make a virtue out of necessity
and persuaded himself that a large number of British Indian troops
and war matériel captured in Imphal would strengthen his le ver age
with the Japanese. During the month of April, the Japanese forces and
the INA seemed within an ace of capturing both Kohima and Imphal.
The Japanese hoped the news of the fall of Imphal could be presented
as a gift to Emperor Hirohito, whose birthday fell on April 29. The
Bahadur group of the INA, commanded by Shaukat Ali Malik, had
fought extraordinarily well in the Bishenpur sector. Netaji had placed
his personal faith in this talented and dedicated of fi cer, who had on oc-
casion exhibited an excessive fondness for drink. Malik fulfilled the
con fi dence his leader had shown in him by hoisting the Indian tricolor
in Moirang, a few miles short of Imphal.^74
The Japanese had taken an enormous risk by deciding to travel light
with limited supplies across long distances, over dif fi cult and treacher-
ous terrain. A speedy victory was of the essence, if they and the INA
forces were not to be stranded on the wrong side of the hills and jun-
gles beyond which Bose could see the promised land. The Japanese
counted on capturing “Churchill rations” in Imphal and Kohima, as
the supply links connecting Rangoon and Mandalay with the front line
were tenuous. On the battlefields of Imphal and Kohima, some eighty-
four thousand Japanese troops of the 31st, 33rd, and 15th divisions and
twelve thousand INA troops (of whom four thousand were reinforce-
ments) faced one hundred fifty- five thousand British, British Indian,
British West African, and American troops. With all escape routes