Japanese and INA Propaganda in India: Anti-British Pamphlets and Leaflets of World War II

Our latest blog post is contributed by the British Library’s Chevening Fellow, Partha Bhaumik

An intriguing story of strategy and counter-strategy, innovation and counter-innovation…

During the Second World War, the British and Japanese governments fought a fierce propaganda war in South Asia to influence mass opinion in their favour. They exploited all available media -- wireless, film, print, and live-performances -- to propagate and publicise their own cause. The aim was to discredit the opponent, and to project their own side as the true friend of South Asian people.

Japanese propaganda in Burma and India found a convenient impetus when the Indian National Army (INA) or Azad Hind Fauj was formed in 1942. Made up of Indian prisoners-of-war and led by Indian nationalists like Subhash Chandra Bose, INA allied with Japan and joined the war to free India from colonial rule. Japanese propaganda started to highlight the Indian National Army and its popular leader Bose, probably on the common maxim that any propaganda becomes more effective when it comes from one’s own people. Japan harped on the idea of kinship to incite South Asian people against the British and Americans. The religious ties between Japan and India through Buddhism, for instance, became a way to convince the Indians of Japanese friendship. A British intelligence report, dated 24-31 December 1942, discussed how religion became ‘an adjunct to propaganda’, and the speech of an Indian speaker on Bangkok focussed on the theme ‘Siam, Japan and India have the same religion’.

IOR/M/3/858

Anti-British pamphlets and leaflets were often dropped from aeroplanes, and they were circulated secretly by the nationalists. To help circulation, propaganda materials were of short dimensions allowing them to be hidden conveniently. J. A. Biggs Davison, Assistant Magistrate and Collector at Chittagong, collected a small 14-page pamphlet measuring 10.5 X 8mm, featuring simple illustrations and a caption for each in Hindi and Urdu (written in Roman script).

1. What is Britain? Isn’t it a land of good and respectable people?
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2. Britain is eating India

3. Britain is wearing clothes taken from India

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14. Japan has made Asia a land of happiness, much against the wishes of Britain and America

15. Afterwards, Subhash Chandra Bose has come to Rangoon, and made Indian National Army for free India.

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Some posters were colourful; many of them featured John Bull, the national personification of Britain. 

      

Entire Asia is moving towards victory. Come, let us break our shackles, and fight for freedom.
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The following note was scribbled on the back of the above poster: ‘Japanese propaganda leaflet to the Indians found at Telenipa (near Bhadreswar Ghat Section) after air raid 34^th. [sic] 25^th. December 1942. Probably distributed by the Indian Nationalists.’

The Japanese army also distributed leaflets to assure Indian people that their air raids were aimed against the British and not against them. They declared no-bombing for 26 January, the day commemorated as ‘Independence Day’ by the Indian National Congress.

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The victory at Singapore was variously publicised, and a number of leaflets issued in the name of the Indian Independence League showed photographs of the British surrender. A few were addressed to the Indian soldiers in the British army, urging them not to take up arms against their own brothers.

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‘Compatriots in India! Very soon, the British and the Americans will be forced out of India; and the Government of Azad Hind will be established on Indian soil.’ Leaflet signed by Subhas Chandra Bose.
         
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This propaganda aimed to rally every Indian to the war cause and to create mass support for the Indian National Army. Despite the fact that the Japanese and INA lost the war, their propaganda left an impression among the common people. The nationwide outrage against the trials of captured INA soldiers (Red Fort Trials), who were then perceived as true patriots, can be cited as a case in point.

Parthasarathi Bhaumik

Assistant Professor, Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University

British Library- Chevening Fellow

Mountain surveys and exploring

In November 2017 The Royal Commonwealth Society posted in a blog a stunning picture of The snow range from Simla (RCMS 20/2/18) taken by Sir Frederick Tymms (1889-1987), link to post

Striking panoramas are found in :

Tours in Sikhim and the Darjeeling district / by Percy Brown ; revised and edited with additions by Joan Townend ; with frontispiece, contours and map.  Calcutta : W. Newman & Co., 1944. (Archive GB 61) given by Brigadier F.R.L. Goadby.

Archive GB 61 p 73

Archive GB 61 p 88

Archive GB 61  p 131

This book is held in the Archive collection of the Cambridge Centre of South Asian Studies which also has donations including logistics surveys and histories of mountaineering and the developments of climbing techniques.

One of the earliest mountaineering books held is: Notes of wanderings in the Himmala : containing descriptions of some of the grandest scenery of the snowy range, among others of Nainee Tal / by Pilgrim [T.J. Saunders], Agra, 1844. (Archive (235.24):910)  a scanned copy of which is also available from the Hathi Trust.

One of J.H. Hutton's donations : Notes on walking around Shillong, by W.A. Allsup, 1934, (Archive Hut 4) was republished and launched at the Shillong Club in 2017. The Shillong Times in an article dated 23rd July 2017 notes :

Allsup’s book represented the first effort to mark out a series of walks around Shillong and to recommend these walks to residents and visitors.
Horse riding was then the main conveyance for work or pleasure and these tracks, no doubt, provided convenient paths for walkers. While it is not known as to how successful Allsup’s efforts to promote walking were, the well-worn horse trails were often the starting points of his hiking trips.

The Ian M. Stephens collection has an early survey : Routes in the Western Himālaya, Kashmīr, &c. v. 1, Pūnch, Kashmīr & Ladākh / by Kenneth Mason. 2nd ed. Calcutta : Govt. of India Press, 1929. (Archive IS 86) which details all the major western trans-Himalayan routes, in Kashmir, Punch and Ladakh, detailing distances, Dak Bungalows and Rest Houses, bridges, and where to obtain fodder.

From the same collection at Archive IS 231 is a history of early exploration : When men and mountains meet : the explorers of the Western Himalayas 1820-75 by John Keay. London : John Murray, 1977,  Road to Rakaposhi by George Band. London : Hodder and Stoughton, 1955, (Archive IS 152)  which was dedicated to the Cambridge University Mountaineering Club and a report from some members of that Club : Cambridge Hindu-Kush Expedition 1966 (Archive IS 406).

The collection also includes publications by Eric Shipton who in 1957 was awarded the CBE for contribution to the conquest of Everest. (Archive IS 102) That untravelled world : an autobiography. London : Hodder, 1969. (Archive IS 55) Annapurna, conquest of the first 8000-metre peak (26,493 feet), by Maurice Herzog; translated from the French by Nea Morin, and Janet Adam Smith; with an introduction by Eric Shipton. London : Jonathan Cape, 1952 and (Archive IS 97) Mountains of Tartary : photographs by the author. London : Hodder, 1951. An article by Jonathan Westaway (2014) That undisclosed world: Eric Shipton's Mountains of Tartary (1950), Studies in Travel Writing, 18:4, 357-373, "recounts Eric Shipton's mountaineering and travels in Xinjiang during  his  two  postings  as  British  Consul-General  in  Kashgar  in  the  1940s." but goes on to argue that Shipton would have been prevented by his role as a British diplomat in China from publishing anything that revealed details of his role in Great Game politics or the full extent to which he was an agent of the state involved in diplomacy, intelligence gathering and imperial surveillance.