His Majesty\'s Opponent. Subhas Chandra Bose and India\'s Struggle Against Empire

292 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT

Adventure into the Unknown

On the eve of his departure from Burma, Netaji addressed his soldiers:

I have only one word of command to give you, and that is that if you

have to go down temporarily, then go down fight ing with the national

tri- color held aloft; go down as heroes; go down upholding the highest

code of honor and discipline. The future generations of Indians, who

will be born not as slaves but as free men because of your colossal sac-

ri fice, will bless your names and proudly proclaim to the world that

you, their forebears, fought and suf fered reverses in the battles in Ma-

nipur, Assam, and Burma, but through temporary failure you paved the

way to ultimate success and glory.^121

The battle for Burma had been lost, but the war in Southeast Asia, es-
pecially Malaya, was far from over. Bose sent some of the best troops
of the Subhas Brigade back to Moulmein, en route to Thailand and
Malaya. He left another 5,000 soldiers in Rangoon under the command
of A. D. Loganathan, who was instructed to negotiate surrender as
prisoners- of- war once the British arrived. N. G. Swami, Bose’s intelli-
gence chief, put into operation his stay- behind schemes to keep the
underground revolutionary movement going, before leaving Rangoon
with his leader. Loganathan, with the able assistance of R. M. Arshad
and Mehboob Ahmed, kept perfect order in the city of Rangoon before
handing over authority to the 26th British Indian division on May 4,

1945.^122
On April 23, Bose told the Japanese that he refused to leave Rangoon
unless transport was provided for about a hundred women of the Rani
of Jhansi Regiment who had to be returned safely to Malaya. The
women who had been recruited in Burma he had already sent to their
homes, after fond farewells. On the night of April 24 he set off from
Rangoon with these women in a ramshackle convoy of trucks. His
ministers S. A. Ayer and A. C. Chatterji, his top military commanders
M. Z. Kiani and J. K. Bhonsle, his intelligence chief N. G. Swami, the
head of the Hikari Kikan Lieutenant General Isoda Saburo, and the
ambassador Teruo Hachiya went with him. Bose had promoted M. Z.