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’.

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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

The Flight of the Hog Wild

A recent enquiry to the National Library of Scotland about the Indian Medical Service led me into a fascinating World War II journey which began with an American B-29 bomber.
On August 29th 1945 the Hog Wild was on a POW supply mission when it was shot down by Soviet fighters. Its 13-man crew was interned in Konan POW camp (now Hungnam, North Korea) for sixteen days while Soviet and American commanders negotiated for their release.
The camp already held 354 Allied POWs (mostly British) who were captured during the fall of Singapore in 1942. One of the prisoners was Canadian Major Harry V. Morris (pictured below), who had served in the Indian Medical Service.

Born and educated in Newfoundland, Morris graduated with a medical degree (with surgery specialty). He spent several months studying at London's Royal Military College before arriving in India in early 1939. He was stationed at the Indian General Hospital, Lahore and then moved to No. 12 Indian General Hospital in Malaya.

It is thought that he was captured by the Japanese in February 1941, held first in the notorious Changi Prison in Singapore and then in a North-East Korean POW camp. His wife and two children escaped Singapore. Major Morris was transferred to Konan, imprisoned by the Japanese for a further two years; he was one of five Allied officers at the camp. The men laboured long hours under extremely hazardous and strenuous conditions at a nearby carbide factory (pictured below), although the Japanese wouldn't permit an officer from doing any work of the sort. The crew of the Hog Wild were released in mid-September 1945; Major Morris and his fellow POWs were finally freed and repatriated a week later. The aircraft crew talked to the American Press, revealing the people, places and events surrounding the downing of the B-29.

You can read much more about the Hog Wild in a forthcoming book and the book's comprehensive website.

Thanks to Bill Streifer (New York) and Heather Home (Queen's University Archives) for the information. The photo of Major Morris was supplied by John Mill, son of Lieut. Ronald Mill, the sole Australian officer at the camp. Photo of the Hog Wild taken from The Flight of the Hog Wild website.

For King and Country? South Asian Soldiers Fighting for Britain in Two World Wars

A curator’s talk by Dr Florian Stadtler of the Open University

Surrey History Centre, Woking

Saturday 14 May 2011, 2.00pm – 3.30pm

This talk explores the role of South Asian soldiers in both world wars as part of the world's largest volunteer armies ever raised. It highlights their contributions as soldiers, journalists and commentators to the cataclysmic ‘national’ and global events of the First and Second World War and how this shaped their perception of Britain. The talk will also raise interesting questions how the crucial role of these soldiers is only gradually being brought to wider public attention and how slowly the historical lens is being refocused to include these stories in national commemorations of the wars.

Tickets are FREE but booking is essential. Please contact Surrey History Centre,
130 Goldsworth Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 6ND
01483-518737
shs@surreycc.gov.uk www.surreycc.gov.uk/surreyhistorycentre

Image: ‘Highlanders and Dogras in a trench with dugouts’ [Fauquissart, France]. Girdwood, H.D. Record of the Indian Army in Europe during the First World War. BL: Photo24/(294)

Liberté : a talk on Noor Inayat Khan GC (1914-1944)

Thursday 11th November 2010, 6:30 pm, Winstanley Lecture Theatre, Trinity College, Cambridge.

Liberté ; a talk on Noor Inayat Khan GC (1914-1944) by Shrabani Basu, author of Spy Princess: the life of Noor Inayat Khan.

Noor was an SOE agent in the Second World War. She was the first woman radio operator to be infiltrated into occupied France and helped the Resistance. She was betrayed, captured and executed in Dachau Concentration camp. Britain posthumously awarded her the George Cross.

Shrabani Basu published her biography of Noor Inayat Khan in 2006 and has since been campaigning for a personal memorial for Noor. Following an Early Day Motion in Parliament signed by 34 M.P.s and a signature campaign backed by Shami Chakrabarti and Gurinder Chadha, she got the go-ahead last month to install a bust of Noor Inayat Khan in Gordon Square, near the house where she lived. The permission was granted by the University of London, which owns Gordon Square. It will be the first memorial to an Asian woman in Britain.