6. The Crisis of the First INA

Abstract

BANGKOK CONFERENCE On 15 June 1942 over a hundred delegates of the Indian Independence League all over Asia assembled in Bangkok, as had been agreed at the Sanno Conference in Tokyo. Representatives of the two million Indians in East Asia came from Malaya, Burma, Thailand, Java, Sumatra, Borneo, the Philippines, Japan, Manchukuo, Nanking, Shanghai, Canton and Hong Kong. For nine days they discussed plans for organizing the independence movement on an Asia-wide scale and for co-operating with the Japanese. Thai Premier Marshal Phibun Songgram opened the conference with a welcome in which he referred to the close cultural ties which bound India and Thailand. He paid his respects especially to Swami Satyananda Puri, who had worked in Bangkok for closer cultural and spiritual relations between the two nations. Rash Behari Bose from Tokyo was elected presiding chairman by the delegates. Despite the feelings of antipathy and mutual suspicion between Indians in Southeast Asia and those in Tokyo that had come to light during the Sanno Conference, Bose had after all instigated the Tokyo meeting. Mohan Singh, who proposed Bose's name as chairman, felt Bose would be most influential with the Japanese. Mohan Singh's judgement was shared by most Indian delegates. No other candidate for president of the League was proposed, since there was unanimous recognition of Bose's long record as a revolutionary and his working relationship with many Japanese leaders. Furthermore, he seemed lacking in personal ambition. From this point on, however, it seemed to some Bangkok Indians that the meeting was in the hands of a small group including Mohan Singh and N. Raghavan but headed by Bose. As one Bangkok businessman put it, “There were two groups, one pro-Japanese and the other not. We didn't participate, as we knew everything was being done as they wanted; we only attended.” Bose in his presidential address portrayed Japan as liberator of all Asia from Western imperialism: We have been working in Japan for decades so that we can see Japan in a position to stand by the oppressed Asiatics and to liberate Asia.