This study traces the origins of the Indian National Army in the imagination of Iwaichi Fujiwara, a young Japanese intelligence officer, and the relationship between the Imperial Japanese Army and the Indian National Army as it evolved under the leadership of Bengali revolutionary, Subhas Chandra Bose. The study is unique in its use of Japanese archival sources for analysis of the relationship between Japanese policy formulation and the Indian independence movement in its military phase.

This is a ground-breaking history of the Rani of Jhansi Regiment, part of the Indian National Army led by Bengali revolutionary Subhas Chandra Bose during World War II. The Regiment, a hitherto forgotten part of "the Forgotten Army," was composed largely of teenage volunteers from Malayan rubber estates, girls who had never seen India yet were eager to enlist to liberate India from colonial bondage. Bose, creator of the Regiment, connected a historical thread extending from the original Rani of Jhansi, killed in battle by the British in 1858, through Bengali women revolutionaries of the 1930s, to the Regiment, which he hoped would spearhead the liberation of India. The Rani of Jhansi Regiment provides a model of empowerment relevant for contemporary Indian women.

A unique examination of the role of the Indian army in post-World War II India in the run-up to Partition. Daniel Marston draws upon extensive archival research and interviews with veterans of the events of 1947 to provide fresh insight into the final days of the British Raj.

Subhas Chandra Bose, 1897-1945, Indian statesman.

Radhabinod Pal was an Indian jurist who achieved international fame as the judge representing India at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal and dissented from the majority opinion, holding that all Japanese “Class A” war criminals were not guilty of any of the charges brought against them. In postwar Japanese politics, right-wing polemicists have repeatedly utilized his dissenting judgment in their political propaganda aimed at refuting the Tokyo trial’s majority judgment and justifying Japan’s aggression, gradually elevating this controversial lawyer from India to a national symbol of historical revisionism. Many questions have been raised about how to appropriately assess Pal’s dissenting judgment and Pal himself. Were the arguments in Pal’s judgment sound? Why did he submit such a bold dissenting opinion? What was the political context? More fundamentally, why and how did the Allies ever nominate such a lawyer as a judge for a tribunal of such great political importance? How should his dissent be situated within the context of modern Asian history and the development of international criminal justice? What social and political circumstances in Japan thrust him into such a prominent position? Many of these questions remain unanswered, while some have been misinterpreted. This book proposes answers to many of them and presents a critique of the persistent revisionist denial of war responsibility in the Japanese postwar right-wing movement.

This is the first study by a Western scholar of a significant facet of the history of the Second World War - Japanese-trained independence and volunteer armies as agents of revolution and modernization. At the time, the Japanese did not see that their military imprinting would affect a whole generation of political/military leadership of nations of post-Second World War Southeast Asia. Leaders like Suharto, Ne Win and Park are all products of Japanese military training.

Barkawi re-imagines the study of war with imperial and multinational armies that fought in Asia in the Second World War.