India

India

1. Introduction

India (population in 1941, 318.7 million) was crucial to the global Allied war effort and strategy. To a greater extent even than during the First World War, it became a source of fighting men, money, raw materials, and key manufactures. Because this was a worldwide war, it stood also as a geographically strategic hinge: facing Africa and the Middle East, it confronted a possible Axis thrust from the west; to the east the Japanese drive through South-East Asia to India's own borders from 1942 physically imperilled its north-eastern territory and eastern seaboard. So significant was the subcontinent that when the UK faced invasion at home the viceroy and the secretary of state for India thought it might provide an alternative imperial capital; and later India and its resources made it possible for the Allies to drive back through Burma and into South-East Asia (see Burma campaign). To the Americans there was a further dimension to India's role, as the base for the Hump air supply route to China.

Because India was under direct British imperial rule (except for the French enclaves of Pondicherry, Mahé, Karikal, Yanam, and Chandernagore, and the Portuguese one of Goa) it was not a free agent in relation to the war. The UK expected the subcontinent's resources to be placed at the disposal of metropolitan Britain and its allies, assuming as it had for three-quarters of a century, that India had a vital role to perform for the UK, not least in imperial finance and defence. Consequently in September 1939 Lord Linlithgow (1887–1952), who was India's viceroy from 1936 to 1943, simply declared that India was at war with Germany. Although this procedure was constitutionally correct, his failure to consult broadly with leaders of Indian public opinion was politically disastrous. For at least 20 years the British had recognized that the country could not be governed autocratically and had made constitutional provision for the incorporation of articulate, educated Indians into the administrative and decision-making structures of the Raj. Ironically, much Indian opinion was broadly sympathetic to the Allies and their war aims. Among the western educated, many had been to England or were steeped in British history and literature and prized the values of liberalism, democracy, and the rights of small and suppressed nations, however much they criticized imperial practice in India. Few had any sympathy with the values and aims of the Axis powers. Jawaharlal Nehru, for example, was caught between hatred of imperialism and fascism equally, and eager to find a way of supporting the Allied war effort without buttressing imperial rule. A small section of India's politicians, personified by M. K. Gandhi, were on principle opposed to violence and were consequently hostile to Indian involvement in any war. A tiny number in India and abroad, like Subhas Chandra Bose, supported the Axis powers and hoped to use the war to overthrow the Raj. Most ordinary people knew little of the war in its early stages, given poor communications and low literacy levels; though from 1942 they began increasingly to suffer from inflation and acute shortages.

2. Domestic life, economy, and war effort

India's massive war-time mobilization of people and resources in a predominantly agricultural society had a profound effect on its economy and the lives of its people. This was particularly so because, even though the British government would ultimately pay for much of the military effort, payment on the spot had to be made by the government of India. The solution to this short-term problem was a mixture of increased direct taxation, loans raised within India, and an expanded money supply. (The total money supply was Rs. 317 crores [crore = 10 million] in August 1939 and Rs. 2,190 crores in September 1945.) Purchasing power was increased by new money, but goods available to the civilian population were paradoxically reduced because of the diversion of India's expanded product to the war effort, the decrease in exports and the disruption of communications. The result was inflation, particularly severe once the Japanese campaign was under way. (See Tables 1 and 2.) The cost of living index had risen, from a base of 100 in mid-1939, to 168 by 1942–3 and by 1945–6 stood at 231. Control of inflation and direction of the economy towards war ends involved the government in intervention on an unprecedented scale. Taxation to provide revenue and absorb excess purchasing power, savings schemes, controls on share issues, licensing of new industrial ventures, requisitioning of manufactures for the army, and ultimately price control, food rationing, and official control of food and grain marketing changed irrevocably the relationship of the government to the economy. Weary civilian administrators took on an unprecedented range of duties to control the economy, a burden which contributed to the near-collapse of the civilian government by the end of the war. India may thus have been able to swell the war effort; but it could not feed its own people or save them from severe shortages of goods. The worst catastrophe was the food crisis which began in 1942 and culminated in the Bengal famine of 1943. This was the result of the failure of harvests, the loss of the Burmese rice supply, disruption of transport because of the primary needs of the war effort, but above all the inability of the government to break down regional barriers to free movement of food and to organize distribution efficiently and fairly. It was only with great difficulty that General Wavell, who became viceroy in October 1943, was able to extort even the most minimal help in terms of grain from the Allies, despite the magnitude of the crisis and its potential political as well as military repercussions, even though stocks were available in Canada and Australia for example. Helping to feed Indians meant taking urgent shipping space away from the direct war effort; and in Whitehall's calculations starving Indians came second in priority. Probably more than 3 million people perished in this greatest calamity to befall India for decades. In the longer term India's economy was left with increased industrial potential, though this was mainly in the sectors which had produced strategic goods. It is estimated that between 1941 and 1946—which included the years when it was a supply base for Commonwealth, Chinese, and American forces as well as its own troops in the re-taking of Burma—India produced £286.5 million worth of materials, and for US forces in India alone nearly £130 million worth of supplies. Industrial products included guns, ammunition, machine tools, aircraft supplies, armoured vehicles, surgical instruments, chemicals and drugs, and textiles. It also sent food and made an extensive contribution to shipbuilding and repairing. In India itself 200 airfields were constructed, 130 new hospitals were built, railways and ports were expanded, new depots and camps were set up, and new roads constructed in the difficult north-eastern border lands. However, no general break-through in industrialization occurred, because of the effects of government control, shortages of capital goods, and lack of skilled manpower. In relation to the UK, India was by the end of the war a creditor rather than a debtor, having accumulated sterling balances in London of more than £1,300 million on account of Indian local expenditure in the war effort.

India, Table 1: Indices of relative price movements, 1939–44 (August 1939 = 100)

	Rice	Wheat	Cotton manufactures	Kerosene
Rationing was introduced during 1944.
Source: Tomlinson, B. R., The Political Economy of the Raj, 1942–1947. The Economics of Decolonization in India (London, 1979), p. 94.
December 1941	172	212	196	140
December 1942	218	232	414	194
December 1943	951	330	501	201
December 1944	333	381	285	175

India, Table 2: Indices of goods available for civil consumption in India 1939–40 to 1945–6 (1938–9 = 100)

	1939–40	1940–1	1941–2	1942–3	1943–4	1944–5	1945–6
a annual pre-war average = 100
b in calendar years (viz. 1939–40 = 1939); 1938 = 100
Source: Tomlinson, B. R., The Political Economy of the Raj, p. 97.
Rice	109	92	103	97	121	111	104
Wheat	95	101	91	92	103	97	108
Other cereals	105	116	106	121	118	107	na
Sugara	162	121	86	106	123	95	97
Teab	122	115	93	226	173	31	na
Cotton piece-goodsb	96	88	84	60	82	81	84
Iron and steelb	100	na	81	40	63	63	80
Cement	62	49	47	16	57	55	141
Paper and pasteboard	95	80	59	33	30	39	58
Kerosene	103	97	86	54	42	47	61
Wool manufacturesa	100	26	31	13	4	18	37

3. Government and resistance

India's huge mobilization for war took place in the context of, and contributed to, a break in the trend away from autocratic imperial rule to governance by political consultation and partnership with Indians which had been apparent since before the First World War. The British ruled two-thirds of the subcontinent directly, leaving the remainder under the control of India's surviving princely families who were none the less firmly subordinate to the British. In ‘British India’ a viceroy (crown representative from 1858) answerable to the secretary of state for India in Whitehall, who was in turn answerable to the British crown and parliament, presided over an executive council and an administration divided into provinces, each with a governor, and manned by a civilian cadre of generalist administrators, the Indian Civil Service (ICS). But in the early years of the 20th century, autocracy had been increasingly mellowed by pragmatism, in the face of growing Indian political opinion and national aspiration, a sophisticated élite of English-speaking professional men, and the uncomfortable recognition that even if in the last resort the army could buttress British rule, tranquil and economical governance, as required by the British parliament and taxpayer, depended on engaging the collaboration of Indians in administration and decision-making. The result was a series of constitutional reforms and conventions which culminated in the Government of India Act, 1935. This gave domestic autonomy to provinces which had been ruled by governors working in co-operation with Indian ministers responsible to the local legislatures, expanded the franchise to the provincial and central legislatures, and placed Indian politicians who could mobilize the electorate in positions of considerable power in Delhi and particularly in the provincial capitals. The ICS, once almost totally British, was steadily Indianized by a conscious recruitment policy, well before the Indianization of the officer corps of the army during the war.

The political organization which most articulately and systematically voiced nationalist demands and proved able to mobilize the admittedly small electorate was the Indian National Congress, founded in 1885. From a scrupulously loyal meeting of subjects of the empire it had become between the two world wars the largest pan-Indian force demanding independence. Its tactics ranged from outright co-operation in the reformed legislatures to varieties of non-violent civil disobedience under the guidance of Gandhi, whose spiritual and national vision, strategy of withdrawal of vital co-operation from government, and ability to appeal to a far broader Indian audience, drew to him Indians who were in no sense revolutionary in social or political terms but yearned for their country to have independence from imperial rule.

At the outbreak of the war in Europe in September 1939 Congressmen were in active co-operation with the British, manning the political structures at all levels, learning the procedures of democratic government, and beginning to play a constructive part in government and in the badly-needed processes of social and economic change. The 1935 Act had envisaged an even greater relaxation of control in Delhi, leading ultimately to Dominion status (see UK, 5) once India's princes joined the British provinces in a federation. Certainly the British retained considerable control, particularly over finance and defence; but this was imperial rule of a very different order and feel compared with the years before the First World War. But all this co-operation, and the hope for a future federation, were shattered by the war. Reversion to an older form of imperial control enabled the British to mobilize India for the war, but ultimately it destroyed the Raj.

Congress was internally divided between those committed to non-violence and those who wished to help the Allies at the price of major political concession by the British. From late 1939 to August 1942 Congress's internal debates interlocked with attempts by the British to achieve a new system of co-operation with Indian politicians. The first attempt in October 1939 collapsed, and Congress withdrew its men from all the provincial ministries and the governments they had helped to run, forcing the administration back on the provincial governors' emergency powers of direct rule. In the subsequent year Congress moved towards civil disobedience and, having rejected yet another constitutional offer, embarked on a Gandhian plan of individual protest against the war which was more symbolic than threatening to the structures of the Raj, thus unifying Congress and avoiding repression. The stalemate was broken at the turn of 1941–2 by the entry of the USA into the war, and then the fall of Singapore in February 1942, followed in March by the fall of Rangoon. Now the British were in grievous danger in India itself, and vulnerable to American criticisms of imperialism and disquiet in their refusal to apply the Atlantic Charter to India. However, the presence of Churchill as prime minister worked against any radical rethinking of imperial policy towards India; he was profoundly and unrelentingly hostile to Indian national aspirations and fiercely proud of India's imperial role. He only moved in order to soothe American critics and to moderate Indian opinion when it was absolutely necessary to do so.

In March 1942 the cabinet sent Stafford Cripps to try to achieve a new pattern of co-operation with Indian political groups. The basis of such agreement would be the promise of an electoral body after the war to fashion a new constitution for India, even one that presupposed complete independence, and immediate participation of representative Indians in the viceroy's Executive Council. Despite the genuine advance on the offers made in 1939 and 1940, Congress rejected the plan and the mission ended in bitterness and recrimination. Two major issues dividing Cripps and Congress were whether Indians should have control over military matters during the war, and whether the viceroy would function with his ministers with cabinet-style collective responsibility. From the point of this breakdown, the Raj took no further political initiatives, content to rule where possible with the co-operation of non-Congress groups which would form provincial ministries, or to rely on its constitutional powers for official rule in emergency or in the event of a breakdown in constitutional government. For its part Congress moved towards outright rebellion in the ‘Quit India’ movement of 1942. Many in Congress were still profoundly uneasy about such a total break with government and negation of constitutional co-operation, and fearful of Japanese invasion if the British were further weakened or India collapsed into disorder. But Gandhi ingeniously devised a formula demanding that the British leave, thus making India less desirable to a potential Japanese invader, yet agreeing that Allied troops should stay on Indian soil for India's defence. Even he hoped for last-minute talks with the viceroy, as had so often happened in the past on the verge of conflict between Congress and government. Instead the government, interpreting the challenge as a mortal betrayal when the empire was in danger, used its draconian emergency powers to ban Congress, break up its organization, and imprison its leadership within hours of the ‘Quit India’ resolution. Many Congressmen remained incarcerated for the duration of the war, though Gandhi was released in 1944 on grounds of extreme ill-health and frailty. Ironically Congress was in collision with a regime which had abandoned the strategy of collaboration and was prepared to use force at its hour of greatest danger: at no other time when Congress had clashed with the Raj had the authorities so many troops at their disposal and such a fixity of moral purpose. Bereft of the central leadership which opposed violence and terrorism, and allowed no time for careful planning, the movement disintegrated into localized movements directed by lower-level activists, and was rapidly crushed, with only a sporadic underground still active in 1943. Even so, the destruction and disruption were on a far greater scale than in any of the earlier civil disobedience movements, as was the government's repressive action. Bombay, Eastern United Provinces, and Bihar were the worst affected areas, the last being a particular danger because it imperilled communications with Bengal and Assam which were vital for defence against the Japanese. Government property, post offices, and railways were the prime targets. More than 50 battalions of troops were in turn deployed in suppression, over and above the police force.

In the long term this breakdown of political co-operation was of profound significance, confirming the effects of war on the subcontinent, and on the relations of its peoples with each other and with the British. The experience of ‘Quit India’ and imperial repression made convinced nationalists of virtually all politically articulate and active people. By 1945 few Indians would have countenanced the survival of the Raj. Congressmen were able to weld themselves on their release into a more powerful and popularly-rooted political party which could far more realistically claim to speak for India's people when they demanded independence. Yet a tragic fissure had also opened up in public life which led eventually to the partition of the subcontinent in 1947 into a secular but predominantly Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. Muslim unease about Congress priorities and values, and some sectarian violence, had been apparent well before 1939. Yet even by that date Muslims were not a united community with a corporate strategy and a single voice. The British need to seek co-operation in the war effort, and to quieten the predominantly Muslim regions which produced most recruits for the army, and Congress's political self-denying strategy, encouraged the growth of the Muslim League, under the leadership of M. A. Jinnah (1876–1949), with his call for Pakistan, or a separate homeland for a Muslim nation. In the August offer of 1940 and the Cripps offer of 1942, the British made it plain that no minority would be forced into a unitary independent India. This gave Jinnah and the League a bargaining status which they used with consummate skill. Yet it must be acknowledged that when war ended Muslims were still profoundly divided by region, and few had any precise idea of what Pakistan might mean in practice.

The war also spelled out conclusively that the end of the Raj would come rapidly when hostilities ended. Cripps had made this clear; on that there could be no going back. For not much longer would there be Indians who would co-operate in the imperial structures, and even the loyalties of Indian ICS men were cruelly divided. Further, the war effort had irrevocably weakened the whole imperial machine, despite the temporary reversion to authoritarian government and the apparent ease of repressive control from 1942. Wavell, as viceroy, noted the running-down of the administration, and the increasing age and weariness of its members, who had received no new Indian or British recruits during the war. In his view once the war ended, British power to control events had almost disintegrated—a weakening compounded by the dangers of sectarian strife among the civil population, but even more dangerously in the army which ultimately was the bedrock of British power. It would have needed a massive injection of money, manpower, and resources to re-establish British rule; and for this the British public had no stomach, eager rather to welcome its soldiers home and to set about the task of domestic reconstruction.

Another factor was that India, compared with its contribution in the earlier years of the century, had declined in economic value to the UK; and Britain was for the first time India's debtor rather than creditor as a result of the war effort and India's vast sterling balances. In such a situation there could be no reassertion of empire. The end of the Raj in India was also highly significant for the future of Britain's relations with its other colonies and its attempts to construct patterns of world-wide defence. The protection of India and routes to India had been at the heart of imperial expansion in Africa and the Middle East; once India was independent the strategy of expensive imperial control in those areas lost its rationale. India might have been crucial to Allied victory: but the experience of war as it impinged on India helped to demolish the empire and to force the UK to find a new world role after 1947.

4. Armed forces

(a) Army

The Indian Army was a professional volunteer army with a proud tradition, but still in 1939 largely officered by British men who made it their career. It was under the control of a British C-in-C who was also a central figure in the government of the Raj because internal and external security were of paramount importance to British rule. (During the war the most important figures to hold the position of C-in-C were Auchinleck and Wavell. From October 1943 Indian troops were also under Mountbatten, the supreme commander of South-East Asia Command.) However, the need to govern India economically, the wish to conciliate Indian political opinion, and the increasing pressure of Indian politicians over the Indian central budget meant that in practice the Indian Army had become by the outbreak of war old-fashioned in equipment and attitudes, large enough to provide for little more than India's own defence and internal security. In the knowledge of impending war the British planned a rapid and much-needed modernization of the army; and a new agreement was reached between London and Delhi in November 1939, laying down the relative military expenditure of the metropolitan government and the dependency. Basically, India was to pay for its own defence while the UK would pay for modernization, capital outlay for industrial expansion for the war effort, and all costs not deemed essential to India's own interests. Between 1939 and 1946 the UK's share amounted to nearly £1,400 million—for the first time in the Indo-British relationship the UK paying something like a market price for India's contribution to imperial defence. The rise in the government of India's own military expenditure reflected in part the rapid and dramatic increase in the size of the Indian Army (see Table 3).

India, Table 3: Defence expenditure in India, 1939–45 (in Rs. crores: 1 crore = 10,000,000)

	1939–40	1940–1	1941–2	1942–3	1943–4	1944–5	1945–6
Source: Tomlinson, B. R., The Political Economy of the Raj, p. 93.
Chargeable
to India	49.54	73.61	103.93	267.14	395.86	458.32	395.33
Chargeable
to HMG (London)	–	53.00	194.00	325.48	377.87	410.84	374.53
total	49.54	126.61	297.93	592.62	773.73	869.16	769.86

The C-in-C India was the commander-in-chief of all three services and also the defence member of the viceroy's Executive Council. Directly under him came the Defence Department (War Department from July 1942), the link with the civilian government, the army's GHQ at Delhi, and the HQ of the other two services.

In April 1942, to counter a possible Japanese invasion of India from Burma, the C-in-C India, Wavell, restructured India's defences by abolishing the army's three independent commands (Northern, Eastern, and Southern), and Western Independent District, and replacing them with a new structure (see Map 51). This comprised Central Command, and three armies: North-Western, Southern, and Eastern. It was Eastern Army which attacked into the Arakan in December 1942 and which, in October 1943, became Slim's Fourteenth Army. In mid November 1943 the operational responsibilities of GHQ Delhi and air force HQ were transferred to South-East Asia Command (SEAC).

The pre-war Indian Army was structured along British Army lines and had similar regimental traditions. But it was almost feudal in its outlook and personal loyalties, and its rapid expansion—which meant the absorption of a largely uneducated mass of volunteers who reflected the country's multifarious races, castes, creeds, and languages—created enormous difficulties which took time to overcome. In 1939 it totalled 205,000 Indians, 63,469 British troops, and 83,706 troops from the princely states (see Table 4). But though the other ranks were overwhelmingly Indian, there were very few Indian officers—396 out of 4,424—and the army's complement of officers for its size was half that of the British Army. Despite British insistence (against the legislature's wishes) that it garrison areas of British interest (such as the Anglo-Iranian oilfields), as well as defend India, it was poorly equipped. In September 1939 its cavalry regiments were still mounted; the infantry was without mortars and anti-tank guns; and there was a serious shortage of transport, and of modern signals and engineering equipment.

India, Table 4: Indian armed forces recruit intake by provinces and states, 3 September 1939 to 31 August 1945

		Indian States
Province	British Territory	State	Intake		Total
a Intake after 1–2–42 only. Prior to this date personnel were enlisted direct and not included with figures rendered by military recruiting authorities.
b Recruited for Ordnance Factories early in the war but not shown separately in return.
Separate details of recruitment from Indian States were not available before July 1942. In order to arrive at the above figure the total intake during the period September 1939 to June 1942 was adjusted on the ratio of actual recruitment between British Territory and Indian States over the period 1–7–1942 to 30–9–1943.
Assam	19,702	Minor States	567	567	20,269
Baluchistan	2,154	Minor States	840	840	2,994
Bengal	171,252	Minor States	4,621	4,621	175,873
Bihar	93,533	Minor States	2,777	2,777	96,310
Orissa	8,142	Minor States	4,254	4,254	12,396
		Hyderabad	22,334
Bombay	107,117	Kolhapur	7,272	51,482	158,599
		Minor States	21,876
C.P. & Berar	48,172	Minor States	1,262	1,262	49,434
Coorg	973	–	–	–	973
Delhi	8,058	–	–	–	8,058
		Cochin	20,142
		Mysore	12,912
Madras	475,984	Pudukottai	2,856	117,448	593,432
		Travancore	81,291
		Minor States	247
N.W.F.P.	95,541	Minor States	7,573	7,573	103,114
		Jammu & Kashmir	65,362
		Jind	7,907
Punjab	617,411	Kapurthala	7,154	137,140	754,551
		Nabha	7,063
		Patiala	30,012
		Minor States	19,642
		Alwar	9,518
		Bharatpur	4,544
		Bikaner	5,431
Rajputana	12,418	Jaipur	17,232	77,466	89,884
		Jodhpur	11,627
		Mewar (Udaipur)	5,069
		Minor States	24,045
Sind	9,853	Minor States	622	622	10,475
United	352,797	Tehri Garhwal	2,646	7,964	360,761
Provinces		Minor States	5,318
Miscellaneous	24,323	–	–	–	24,323
total indian	2,047,430	–	–	414,016	2,461,446
nepal	–	–	–	120,280	120,280
grand total	2,047,430	–	–	534,296	2,581,726
Notes: Above figures include the following:
(i) R.I.N.	28,972a	(iii) N. Cs. (E)	613,930
(ii) R.I.A.F.	52,845a	(iv) Civilians	8,980b

Four animal transport companies participated in the fighting that led to the fall of France in June 1940 and thereafter Indian troops fought in many theatres (see Map 52). In particular, they fought and won the Burma campaign, where they also took part in the two Chindit operations (out of one million troops commanded by SEAC, 700,000 were Indian).

As men were called to fight, so women increasingly came into the military effort in a wide range of non-combatant support roles as the famous WAC(I)s—the Women's Auxiliary Corps (India). Founded in April 1942, the corps was over 10,000 strong two years later, providing not only a crucial element in India's war role but also giving those involved, Indian and British women alike, a revolutionary expansion of social and professional opportunities compared with their previously circumscribed worlds and limited expectations. Most women served in the army, and a few in the air force, but there was also a naval wing which was renamed the Women's Royal Indian Naval Service in March 1945, though it remained part of WAC(I).

Although morale in the army was problematic before the arrival of Mountbatten as SEAC's invigorating supreme commander, most Indian troops never wavered in their loyalty to India's imperial rulers. The Axis-controlled Indian Legion and Indian National Army were never significant military forces, partly because of their numbers, but also because the Axis powers were ambivalent and discouraging about their status and role.

By the end of the war the army's infantry battalions had increased from 113 to 268, and the total numbers, which included 8,300 Indian and 34,500 British officers, had risen to 2,500,000, the largest volunteer army in history. Its casualties amounted to 24,338 killed and more than 64,000 wounded, nearly 12,000 were missing, and nearly 80,000 had been taken prisoner.

(b) Navy

The Royal Indian Navy, only inaugurated in 1934, expanded from 1,708 men in September 1939 to 30,478 in July 1945. From 1939 it assumed responsibility for India's coastal defence, when India no longer contributed to Commonwealth naval defence, and increasingly it became involved in operations and convoy work as far afield as the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. At the start of the war it comprised just 8 small coastal vessels; by its end it had 10 sloops, 3 frigates, 4 corvettes, 17 minesweepers, and a number of smaller warships, and it also had a landing craft wing of 41 boats. In 1940 only one officer in four joining the RIN was Indian; by 1945 this position was almost exactly reversed.

(c) Air force

The Royal Indian Air Force, begun in 1933, expanded from 1,628 men in 1939 to 1,638 officers and 26,900 other ranks in 1945. At the start of the war it did not even have one complete squadron; by 1945 it had nine, three fighter reconnaissance, two ground attack, two light bomber, and two fighter. A shortage of suitable recruits meant that RIAF squadrons also contained RAF personnel, but the number of Indian officers rose from just 14 in September 1939 to 1,375 in September 1945, nine of whom held the rank of wing commander or above.

5. Intelligence

India was the centre for several intelligence organizations. Force 136, the Far East section of SOE, had its HQ there; the British codebreaking organization at Bletchley Park had an outstation, the Wireless Experimental Centre, at Delhi, which contributed to the Allied successes in decrypting Japanese Army codes (seeULTRA, 2); and there was also a branch of the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre at Delhi, where Japanese prisoners were interrogated. Tactical military intelligence gathering during the Burma campaign was mostly undertaken by V-Force personnel.

Judith Brown

Bibliography

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Voigt, J. H. , India in the Second World War (New Delhi, 1987).
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