282 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
the unity of India. We had our different private faiths and we had our
different languages, but in our purpose and in our po lit i cal belief we
were a well- knit, determined and indivisible whole.^89Their leader had not asked them to give up their distinct regional and
religious identities, but had rather inspired them to transcend these for
a larger cause. Even Bose’s enemies acknowledged that his presence
among his soldiers in September was welcomed, “for there was about
this dedicated man an awe and a passionate sincerity which could in-
spire devotion and love.” One of fi cer, who was imprisoned and inter-
rogated later, was asked what he had got in return for the suf fering
he had been through in Imphal. His answer was simple: “Netaji em-
braced me.”^90
A reconstruction of what ac tually transpired in Imphal and Kohima
is made especially dif fi cult by the contradictory accounts left by the
two sides. Some British military memoirs, of which there is a long
tradition, disparage the role of the INA and exaggerate the scale of de-
sertions once the prospects of capturing Imphal evaporated. The few
reports left by INA veterans recount heroic local actions against tre-
mendous odds. The internal intelligence estimates on the British side
in 1944 do not support the self- congratulatory substance and tone of
the later memoirs, often written by those who were nowhere on the
scene at that time.
A secret British intelligence survey, dated October 2, 1944, of the
six months from March to September is instructive. It reckons that by
March 1944 there were about twelve thousand INA troops in Burma, of
whom about four thousand were in the forward areas. Another seven
thousand were believed to be on the way from Malaya to Burma and
a third division was under training in Malaya. In Manipur the INA
suf fered heavy losses, and “this shock, coupled with disease and hard
living conditions, soon began to tell”: “Several gave themselves up, in-
cluding a few INA of fi cers of some importance, and still greater num-
bers were captured. Nevertheless, as in the case of Arakan, there was no
question of mass desertion: some 700 of the INA have come into our
hands since the end of February 1944, and the rest have retired with
the Japanese forces.” In September 1944, the numbers of INA troops in