Roads to Delhi 287(his daughter’s second birthday), “On the eve of my taking off from the
soil of Nippon, I want to send you my love and good wishes for the
success of your work. I have no son of my own—but you are to me
more than my son—because you have dedicated your life to the cause,
which is the one and only goal of my life—the freedom of Bharat Mata
[Mother India].”^103 He returned to Burma to carry on the fight via Tai-
pei, Saigon, and Singapore. Mighty storms over the South China Sea
delayed his flights. “Today a gentleman is going from here to Tokyo,” he
wrote to the cadets from Saigon on December 14, 1944. “I am taking
the opportunity of sending a bundle of papar for you. I could have sent
a few other things, but he could not carry any more weight.”^104 His let-
ters to M. Satiavati Thevar were also full of concern, and showed his
willingness to deal with the minutest details concerning the or ga ni za-
tion of the women’s regiment.^105
“It was the battling with no hope along the Irrawady, not the bat-
tling with high hope about the Manipur ba sin,” Peter Fay has plausibly
argued, “that jus ti fied the freedom army and gave it in the end such
moral le ver age.”^106 It was to fight this battle that Netaji returned to
Burma on January 10, 1945. On his way there, in early January, he was
fêted in Bangkok by the Thai government, which was still friendly to-
ward his movement.^107 Japan’s Ichigo offensive in China had gone well,
and perhaps the INA could defend Burma at the line of the Irrawady.
Indian morale in Rangoon continued to be high, despite the mili-
tary reverses of the previous year. On January 23, Bose turned forty-
eight and his followers celebrated. Much to his embarrassment, he was
weighed against gold in grand Mughal style, and more than twenty
million dollars was raised for the INA. Young men and women wrote
pledges in blood vowing to fight to the death against the enemy. Be-
hind the enthusiasm there was also some careful planning of intelli-
gence activities. Bose devised with Swami an elaborate plan to send
agents with wireless sets behind enemy lines. A special group was
trained to sabotage the American pipeline in north Burma. The Nehru
Brigade of the INA’s first division, which had been unscathed in Im-
phal, was to be joined by two regiments of the second division that had
arrived from Malaya. The responsibility for obstructing the advancing
British forces at the Irrawady River was given to Gurbaksh Singh