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 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.

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...