Indians For Guns

Interesting site for psywar for India in WW II

Excerpt from German Leaflet - really interesting material wish knew Urdu to read the original pamphlets. Allies used Gandhi's words against Bose..

"A mouse is the leader of the Elephant

Once upon a time when an elephant was sleeping, a mouse came up to him and saw him sleeping so soundly that he tied the elephant with a chain. Even since the elephant has remained a slave of the mouse. One day a cat came by and wanted to eat the mouse. The mouse ran to the elephant and asked for help. He promised the elephant that if he helped the mouse would set him free. The innocent elephant helped the mouse against the cat and then asked him to release the chains. The mouse laughed at the elephant and replied, “You don’t deserve to be set free; you are not fit for it.” After a few days the same cat came again and attacked the mouse. The mouse once again went to the elephant for help. The elephant replied, “You are dishonest; a traitor and deceiver! I won’t help you. I’ll try to break my chains by myself. It is good for the cat to eat you.” And that is exactly what happened, the cat ate the mouse and the elephant applied a bit of strength to break his own chains and was free.

This is your state! A big country like India is a slave to a small country like Britain. The Indian soldiers should be fighting for their freedom which can only be achieved if England is destroyed. You are only fighting to remain enslaved."

http://www.psywarrior.com/AxisPropIndia.html

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Some of the posters related to psywar

wow!!!! very nice Grawal Sahib you take me back in the history, i love it.

Thank you very much for this all the info.Proud to be a India.

Baljit

Navi, it is a bit chilling to remember that people were fighting and dying, and that whatever side would do or say whatever it thought it had to do for survival. As I looked through the web page, I wondered why the Japanese did not refer to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

Thanks for this link -- the page is most interesting.

ngrewal wrote:

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The second leaflet in Urdu originated in India I guess. It shows Subhas Chandra Bose putting a rope around Mother India and handing it over to the Japanese army ... No wonder it does not show Bose in INA uniform...

Thank you for sharing these..

TC

Nice post.

There is retired teacher in my town who has some Japanese Rupee notes! Apparently they were circulated in the north east.

Sad part of the history, Freedom has price and people around the world paid hefty prices for that. EDIT: There is often a fine line between talking about history and talking about politics. Let's not ruin a very interesting historical topic by interjecting political preaching. IFG members are smart enough to derive their own conclusions from the lessons of history without lectures - moderator

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Edit: If I could understand what the hell you (Mr. Mod) trying to say - Haji

EDIT: you have some time to think about it - moderator

As a follow-up to my earlier post, I'd like to make the following comments:

One of the things I have always admired about Nehru was his adherence to a "non-aligned" movement. Here in the USA, most, including our political leadership, did not appreciate this idea, however for India, it was the right course, as I believe the present and future events will support. Essentially, India's relations with third-world countries, where essential resources for growing economies are located, will remember the Non-Aligned stance to India's benefit.

The human mind is a funny thing, in that it has a strong affinity for boiling issues down to a binary model: right or wrong, black or white, good or bad. Humans have to stop and think a bit when analyzing a situation where a number of choices, none of which are entirely good or entirely bad, must be assessed.

In studying Indian history, the issue of Subhas Chandra Bose not only illustrates this, but also calls to mind a similar, but earlier issue in history.

Part of this issue that is primary for me is the understanding that both Nehru and Bose had the same basic motivation: Being for India. How each thought it best to act on this motivation may be debated, but I think that it is this common motivation that makes their choices controversial.

Here in the West, the attitude usually encountered would be that Bose sided with the Japanese, and was therefore bad, and that Nehru sided with the Soviets, or at least, would not join the USA in opposing them, and was therefore bad. I find either basis insufficient for judging either man, because they were not trying to promote the USA's interests. They were trying to promote India's, and it is on that basis that I think they are correctly judged.

A similar issue arose during the First World War, which makes the choices of Nehru and Bose regarding the Japanese and the British even more interesting to me.

At the outbreak of WW1, Józef Piłsudski led a nationalistic freedom movement for a reconstituted Polish State. In this, he first fought on the side of the Central Powers against Tsarist Russia, because he identified the Muscovite State as being a free Poland's greatest enemy. This caused Piłsudski and his movement to lose support from Great Britain, chiefly Lloyd George and Lord Curzon, for which Piłsudski's movement and ultimately Poland paid a price.

But after the collapse of the Muscovite State, when Germany demanded that Piłsudski and his Revolutionary Army (for indeed, that's what it was) swear an oath of allegiance to Kaiser Bill and the 2nd Reich, Piłsudski refused and was jailed in the Magdeburg Fortress. When the 2nd Reich collapsed, the Germans set Piłsudski free, for they recognized that in the aftermath of the War, Germany would require the friendship of reconstituted Poland and sought to curry Piłsudski's favor.

For me, it is very easy to see Piłsudski's motivations here and understand that he was not caring about helping the Allied cause or that of the Central Powers, he was fighting for Poland.

That's exactly what I see in the choices made by both Nehru and Bose. The propaganda of the Japanese and the British (and later, of the USA) all attempt to motivate people to defend their positions (as opposed to India's), and the way that this propaganda does this is not only interesting, it is instructive.

Very interesting observations Timmy.

Part of the reason India was considered pro soviet by both the Americans and British was its arms purchases from the Eastern bloc when the nation was expanding its forces in the 1950s

However, as detailed in Jagan Mohan/Chopra's "The India Pakistan Air war of 1965" and Bill Guston's "Mikoyan Mig 21", it was simply because the Soviets made much more business sense.

For example, the Americans rebuffed trade inquiries and refused to sell what was asked for, offering inferior alternatives instead. In a similar vein, the British held on to the newer Hunter variants and tried to hard sell their BAC lightening instead: which did not suit local requirements.

There is an anecdote on how the British refused to deliver the fleet of Vampires India had paid for, citing an old principle of maintaining a 3:1 ratio of aircraft with Pakistan. Since Pakistan had not ordered any Vampires, India would not get any!!

In contrast, the Mig 21, for example, was offered with all bells and whistles, was amenable to customisation, came with an agreement to license produce locally (hence would cost even less) and had a fraction of the fuel consumption and the maintenance requirements of the Lightining.

timmy/anand

Great observations on NAM - its strange and a hard fact how foreign policies are decided by whims and thinking of leaders. Nehru and others of his generation were socialists and his idealistic belief was to create a third front - China and Egypt et al tagged along. Nehru was caught on with the misplaced belief that his charisma and leadership carried lot of weight and never tired in lecturing Super powers especially US on morality Non violence etc. Nehru learned a tough humiliating lesson that caused his downfall the loss in 62 Indo China war. NAM movement survived in part due to a champion Indira who carried on nehru's legacy. Soviets used this bloc for garnering votes in UN hence earned suspicion of and animosity with US.

To digress What is ironic and very little known under appreciated the key role played by US in twisting British arm in granting India's independence. British SOE and intelligence folks were always suspicious of US OSS ( office of strategic services ) presence in India. there was no love lost between OSS / State office folks and Raj - each hated other. OSS and State officers were barred from meeting Indian leaders namely Gandhi and Nehru. OSS head Bull Donovans and Roosevelts favorite officer William Phillip was basically fired to pacify Churchill because he raised issues on morality of Raj and why support it was against US interests in long run - contrary to nation's ethos. OSS did run psywarfare units out of India and Burma / China theater. To read more about look up OSS women agents in New Delhi Joan Bondurant and Maureen Patterson. These ladies were Japanese lingo experts who learned Hindi - hosted parties for Lady Harding Medical college for women students checked nations pulse. They were also impressed by Gandhi's non violence movement and approach. Even though ironically while US still had apartheid kind of rules for minorities blacks etc. OSS has three offices in India Section 303 In Delhi, 505 in Calcutta, One in Burma ( first OSS office that conducted behind the enemy lines operations against Japs using Kachins ) and another one in Kandy Ceylon. Try to look up book Sister Hood of spies book.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_ ... c_Services
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Thanks for that, Navi -- will look into it.

I am quite convinced that Roosevelt's plan was to dismantle the British Empire so US business would have access to Empire markets. The three "Allies" played off against each other and Roosevelt worked with Stalin at Yalta toward this end. The Soviets got a war-shattered Central Europe, while the US increasingly picked up many of the pieces of the Empire, such as the Persian oil fields, etc.

Re: China & Egypt, the Chinese had few other places to turn after the Communists ran off Chiang Kai Shek for international support. The Egyptians made their move under Nasser, who successfully challenged the UK when the USA pulled the rug out from under Eden and threatened to sell the US-held British paper during the Suez Crisis.

I have often heard the complaint that Nehru was a socialist and that this meant that the USA would not support him. However, this theory has a large hole in it: The USA was the first nation to recognize Israel and supported it from 1948, and Israel was a decidedly socialistic nation. No complaint was raised against Israeli socialism at that time, and Israel was even buying arms from Czechoslovakia (Czech made copies of Me-109s, for example).

I have to think that Nehru was having none of replacing one master with another, and had no intention of letting US financial interests dominate newly free India. I also suspect that it was easier to maintain an independent policy by having ties with the USSR: What would the Soviets do if India denied it, for instance? While on the other hand, despite difficult relations, Nehru could ask Kennedy for help against the Red Army in 1962 and Kennedy could not afford to permit a Chinese military triumph at the time.

While I will admit that Nehru was forced against his will to ask JFK for help, he had little to lose and everything to gain by doing so. Also, I agree that Nehru was a spent force after that War, as well.

Regarding Nehru's pacifist pronouncements, I cannot blame him for his action in Goa. Despite the policy going counter to the pronouncements, it seems to me to have been the right move morally, and few non-aligned nations were going to shed tears for a colonial retreat for the Portuguese.

There can be no doubt that Nehru's giving Krishna Menon the Defence portfolio and letting him run the Armed Forces was a serious mistake and a bad judgment of character. My opinion would be that Menon had a worthy goal of building India's domestic arms industry, but his changes in the military don't seem to have prepared the Army for the Sino-India War very well.

Regarding your "digression," there is a lot to research there, thank you!

hamiclar, I have that book on the MiG21 by Gunston and am going over the part concerning the IAF -- very interesting!

Ngrewal and Timmy, wonderful posts.... please keep writing.

Pardon me for digressing but cant help after reading your recent posts.

As a journalists who probed deep into some international defence deals and exposed a few major scams I want to say (without getting into details of the evidence in a public forum) that India's pro Russia policies post 1947 not only made the country overtly dependent, stonewalled her chances of becoming self reliant but also gave birth to clandestine lobbyists and powerful middlemen who serve corruption.
Initially India's financial condition made the Rupee Rouble exchange rates and terms of the Escrow accounts more lucrative because no country in Europe would offer what Russia (then a mightier nation) used to. Add to that the barter systems in the 60s and 70s and Russia seemed to be the most convenient source of military hardware.
But, even when India was emerging as a power to reckon with in the 90s the priorities were never set in order.

TC