The Second World War generated one of the largest and most diverse populations of prisoners of war (POWs) in modern history, with an estimated 35 million individuals experiencing some form of military captivity between 1939 and 1945 (Cohen 2012).
Governed nominally by the 1929 Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War—ratified by most, though not all, belligerents—the treatment of POWs varied dramatically across theatres, regimes, and racial categories. POWs were not merely passive victims of wartime policy; they were also subjects whose experiences were shaped by political mobilization, forced labour, racial hierarchies, and ideological influence. The war’s global scope ensured that soldiers from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas found themselves in captivity far from home, navigating complex regimes of discipline, propaganda and survival. The Forgotten Indian Prisoners of World War II constitutes a valuable intervention in the historiography of the Second World War and, more specifically, in the study of India’s military and political entanglements during the conflict. While existing scholarship has examined the operational roles of Indian soldiers within the British Indian Army, the experiences of Indian prisoners of war—distributed across Axis-controlled territories—have remained comparatively marginal. This volume addresses that lacuna through a rigorously researched and analytically sophisticated account of captivity, coercion, and identity formation among Indian POWs. Hazarika draws upon an extensive corpus of testimonies, archival records, and contemporaneous film and video material (p. 20) to substantiate his analysis, enabling him to construct a compelling and richly documented narrative.
The book, divided into five parts, effectively documents the formation of the Indian National Army (INA), the challenges faced by it due to the change of leadership, the fate of dissenting Indian POWs, and what the end of the Second World War meant for the Indian soldiers (irrespective of their leanings). The first part is set in the year 1942; Japan invaded Singapore, and the British commanding officers were segregated leaving the defeated British Indian Army headless. Captain Mohan Singh of the 14th Punjab Regiment guided these soldiers towards the INA under Japan with the promise of these soldiers being treated as allies by the Japanese and being able to avoid the ill-treatments as POWs (p. 4).
Imperial Japan sought help from Southeast Asian locals to invade their land and reclaim ‘Asia for the Asiatics’ (p. 6), and the presence of more than 2 million Indians in the region piqued their interest in this group. Major Fugiwara Iwaichi was sent to cement the alliance but he went beyond the scope of his orders: to get help from the Indians and to not promise them anything in return. The agreement signed between these parties in December 1941, however, stated that in return for help by Indians in Malaya, Japan would support the formation of a volunteer army of Indian soldiers and civilians to achieve Indian Independence and would protect Indians in the occupied areas (p. 7).
The Indian POWs presented with the option of joining the INA faced the predicament of breaking their oath to the British King and join the Japanese in a fight to free India (thereby lose their credibility) or face the latter’s wrath (p. 28). Captain Singh and, later, Subhash Chandra Bose would send the recalcitrant anti-INA Indian POWs to the concentration camps (p. 45); eventually the biggest driver of recruitment became the fear of camps. The irony lies in the fact that the Japanese regarded the INA with a measure of disdain, viewing its members as soldiers who had surrendered and subsequently aligned themselves with their former adversaries. Further, several POWs became a part of the INA with the aim of rejoining the British as soon as they reached the Indian borders. This would help them avoid the hardships and protect the Indian women from what happened to those in Singapore (p. 50). The British planted spies within the INA in order to convey crucial information and sabotage the whole scheme at an opportune moment. The volume includes a dedicated chapter, ‘The Great Escape from Singapore’, which examines individual case narratives of several INA officers who succeeded in returning to India. The chapter offers a detailed account of the escape strategy and journey undertaken by Lieutenant MM Pillai and his colleagues, illustrating how the dense local population enabled them to blend into their surroundings and secure discreet support from sympathetic residents who facilitated their escape. By situating decisions to join—or refuse—the INA within the broader socio-political context of colonial subordination, the author demonstrates that POWs were neither simple collaborators nor straightforward patriots. Rather, their choices reflected a complex interplay of material constraints, ideological exposure, and historical contingency. This argument compels a rethinking of long-standing binaries in both nationalist and imperial historiographies.
By the end of 1942, the Axis powers seemed to be on the backfoot: intensifying the previous clash of interests between Japan and the INA, it subsequently led to the arrest of Captain Mohan Singh and the dissolution of his INA. The Japanese, however, refused to accept this and kept an interim INA under the leadership of Rash Behari Bose. The second part of the book discusses this ‘interregnum’ between the INA 1.0 and the INA 2.0 or the Azad Hind Fauj under Subhash Chandra Bose. Most Sikhs, Punjabi Muslims, Dogras, Garhwalis, Jats, Kumaonis and the Gorkhas stayed away due to their loyalty to Singh (p. 129); which also meant that the dissidents (over 17,000 POWs) would be shipped to the Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA) (p. 155). The study’s third part discusses the symbolism of Bose as the leader of INA 2.0 and more specifically the fate of most Indian POWs: While Bose was a more dynamic leader and aroused the enthusiasm of the Indian soldiers, he remained quiet about the fate of the Indian POWs being sent to the ‘Torture Islands’. The book’s seventh chapter, ‘In Hell Ships to Torture Islands’, provides an in-depth account of the tumultuous journey to the SWPA and how during the Allies counterattack, the supplies to the region were cut by the enemies. This resulted in smaller rice rations, men eating leaves and grass, and there were even reports of the Japanese resorting to cannibalism (p. 172). Hostile environmental conditions resulted in rampant malaria, dysentery, and beriberi, with bare minimum medical aid to get by. For instance, of the three thousand POWs sent to New Guinea, only one man returned alive at the end of the war (p. 231). The volume further records instances of Japanese brutality, including the June 1944 massacre, during which more than 291 Indian personnel were executed—shot and subjected to grenade attacks—within their camp confines (pp. 174-175). One of the most harrowing instances concerns the construction of the 420-kilometre Thailand-Burma Railway, undertaken by the Japanese as a strategic measure to counter an anticipated Allied invasion of Burma. In this effort, approximately 60,000 British and Australian prisoners of war and more than 180,000 civilians—predominantly Indian and Malayan—were conscripted. The so-called ‘Death Railway’ resulted in the deaths of nearly one-fifth of the POWs and roughly two-thirds of the civilian labourers involved in its construction (p. 186).
The Japanese invasion of India and the initial successes of the 1944 campaign brought the movement’s euphoria to its zenith. Bose believed that ‘once the tricolour was unfurled on the Indian soil, the people and Indian Army would flock to him’ (p. 193). The INA soldiers had hoped that Gandhi, Nehru and Bose would be able to negotiate favourable terms with the Japanese;
and prayed that the rape and other atrocities that they had previously witnessed in Malaya could be avoided on their soil (p.
194). While popular narratives often claimed that the INA had orchestrated the invasion in collaboration with the Japanese, the numerical disparity—4,000 INA personnel alongside nearly 87,000 Japanese troops—suggests the opposite. Moreover, the campaign dispelled several prevailing myths surrounding the movement, including the notions that the Indian Army lacked the willingness or capability to resist, and that the Allied forces were too weak to mount an effective defence—assumptions that had underpinned expectations of an assured Japanese victory. The INA, eventually, had to retreat into Burma; inadequate logistical support from the Japanese resulted in thousands of deaths from starvation and disease. Despite the increasingly untenable military situation, Bose remained resolute, believing that such sacrifice would galvanize Indian public sentiment. His assessment proved prescient: although the INA was militarily defeated, its efforts elicited widespread sympathy and admiration among the Indian populace in the post-war period (p. 212).
The final section of the volume examines the return of INA personnel to India and their subsequent reintegration into society. The author incorporates testimonies from affected families, highlighting the experiences and hardships endured by the wives and mothers of these men during the war. The British, meanwhile, confronted the challenge posed by POWs who sought justice for alleged mistreatment by the INA (p. 250), as they navigated the intricate process of determining appropriate punitive measures for those deemed disloyal. The author acknowledges that the price paid in Indian lives and the risks taken in asking the most fascist leaders in history for help were not as evident in 1946 (p. 266). While comparisons among the varied experiences of wartime victims are inherently fraught, the scale and severity of Japanese atrocities against Chinese and Korean civilians were extraordinary. It would be particularly illuminating to ascertain whether the founders of the INA were aware of these abuses and how such knowledge may have shaped their perceptions or choices.
The Forgotten Indian Prisoners of World War II succeeds as both a historical recovery project and a critical contribution to the study of wartime subjectivity and colonial military history. It illuminates an overlooked dimension of the global conflict and offers a framework for future research on South Asian soldiers, transnational captivity regimes, and the politics of historical remembrance. The thematic organization—moving from capture, to camp life, to political mobilization, and finally to postwar memory—facilitates a clear analytical trajectory. The legacy of WWII captivity continues to shape international humanitarian law, national memory, and scholarly understandings of violence, coercion, and human vulnerability in modern warfare.
Reshmi Kazi is Professor, Department of Political Science, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.