The Forgotten Indian Soldiers of World War II Who Refused to Join the INA
A Forgotten Chapter in India’s Wartime Story
When Singapore fell to the Japanese on February 15, 1942, the British Empire suffered one of its most humiliating defeats of World War II. More than 80,000 Allied troops were captured, and among them were about 65,000 soldiers from the British Indian Army — men who had served across the Malayan Peninsula under British command. These captured soldiers, exhausted and disoriented, suddenly found themselves facing an impossible choice: remain prisoners of the Japanese or pledge allegiance to a new army — one that claimed to fight for India’s independence.
Two days after the fall, on February 17, thousands of these men were assembled at Farrer Park in Singapore. There, a young officer named Mohan Singh, formerly of the 14th Punjab Regiment, stood before them. With the encouragement of Japanese officers, he urged his compatriots to take an oath of loyalty to the Indian National Army (INA), which he proposed to form to liberate India from British rule.
It was a moment thick with tension and symbolism. For many, this was the first time the idea of an Indian-led army fighting against British colonial power had taken tangible form. Around 20,000 of the captured soldiers eventually joined the INA. But a majority — more than 40,000 — refused. Their story has long remained in the shadows of Indian history.
Choosing Loyalty Amid Chaos
The soldiers who declined Mohan Singh’s call were not simply loyalists of the British Empire. Their decisions emerged from a complex web of moral conviction, loyalty to their comrades, fear of Japanese intentions, and perhaps, uncertainty about the INA’s promises.
According to The Forgotten Indian Prisoners of World War II: Surrender, Loyalty, Betrayal and Hell by Gautam Hazarika — on which The Indian Express article is based — the “refusers” faced enormous pressure. The Japanese, through propaganda and threats, sought to swell the ranks of the INA, while those who resisted were branded cowards or traitors to their own people. But many of these men held firm to their oaths as British Indian Army soldiers, unwilling to abandon the discipline and duty they had sworn to uphold.
Among them was Lieutenant Markandan Mairugesan Pillai of the Royal Bombay Sappers and Miners. When confronted with the choice to join the INA, Pillai and a few others chose instead to escape captivity. Alongside Lt. V. Radhakrishnan, an engineer, and Lt. Dr. Natarajan of the Indian Medical Service, he risked everything to flee Japanese-controlled territory. Their daring attempt was not just an act of defiance but a statement — that loyalty, even in the face of imprisonment and torture, could be a form of resistance too.
The Harsh Fate of the Refusers
Those who refused to join the INA paid a terrible price. The Japanese treated them with suspicion and cruelty, often deporting them to prison camps across Southeast Asia. Many were sent to the infamous camps in Indonesia, including those in Sumatra and Java, where conditions were brutal beyond imagination.
Hazarika’s research, cited by The Indian Express, reveals that these prisoners were subjected to forced labour, starvation, and repeated beatings. Some were executed for alleged disobedience or espionage. Others simply vanished — victims of disease, exhaustion, or summary punishment.
For the Japanese military, Indian soldiers who refused to join the INA were a liability — men who would neither serve their cause nor be trusted as passive captives. Many ended up working on railway lines, in mines, or in jungle camps, far from home, their sacrifices erased from the grand narratives of both colonial and nationalist histories.
A Moral Battlefield Beyond the Frontlines
The story of the INA has long been portrayed as one of patriotism and rebellion — Indians fighting under Subhas Chandra Bose’s leadership to free their motherland. Yet the moral landscape of that moment was far more complex. The men who refused were not necessarily against India’s independence; rather, they questioned the means by which it was to be achieved.
To some, aligning with the Japanese — an occupying power with its own imperial ambitions — seemed a betrayal of moral principle. Others remained sceptical of Bose’s assurances that Japan truly sought India’s freedom. For soldiers like Lt. Pillai and Lt. Radhakrishnan, it was not blind loyalty to the British that guided them, but a sense of integrity and duty that transcended political slogans.
Their decision reflected a deeper struggle — between two kinds of bondage: the colonial subjugation of India under British rule, and the coercive “liberation” promised by an imperial Japan. These men stood on the fault line between the two, making choices under unimaginable duress, with little certainty of survival.
Forgotten in Victory, Lost in Memory
When World War II ended, and India eventually gained independence, the INA was celebrated by many as a symbol of resistance. The trials of INA officers at the Red Fort in 1945 stirred massive nationalist fervour, and even the British recognised the depth of public sympathy for Bose’s soldiers.
But in the triumphal memory of the INA, those who had refused to join were all but forgotten. Their names rarely appeared in history books. Their sufferings — the starvation, imprisonment, and forced labour — received little official acknowledgment. Some were quietly reinstated into the post-war Indian Army; others died in obscurity, their loyalty never publicly honoured.
This silence is perhaps rooted in the uncomfortable fact that India’s wartime experience cannot be easily divided into heroes and traitors. The lines of loyalty and rebellion were blurred. Both the INA fighters and the refusers made choices shaped by coercion, conviction, and the crushing pressures of war.
The Need to Revisit Their Legacy
The rediscovery of these “forgotten soldiers” invites a broader reflection on how India remembers its past. Histories of the independence movement often celebrate defiance — the act of rebellion against colonial power. Yet resistance can take many forms, and sometimes, refusal to bend to new coercion is a quiet but profound act of courage.
These soldiers remind us that loyalty and integrity, even under captivity, are as much a part of India’s wartime story as the dramatic calls to revolution. Their lives challenge the binary of “patriot versus loyalist” and offer a more human, more nuanced picture of what it meant to be an Indian soldier in the 1940s.
Their stories also underscore how ordinary men, caught between empires, bore the cost of decisions made far above their heads. They were victims of the politics of war — and of the selective memory that followed it.
Honouring the Unseen Patriots
Eighty years on, as historians revisit the role of the Indian Army in World War II, the courage of those who refused to join the INA deserves a rightful place in our collective memory. Their suffering was not in vain. By holding fast to their conscience amid manipulation and brutality, they embodied a different kind of bravery — one defined not by rebellion, but by steadfastness.
These forgotten soldiers remind us that history is not a tale of one kind of heroism. It is a mosaic of choices, moral struggles, and endurance under fire. Whether in the jungles of Sumatra or the camps of Singapore, they kept faith with their ideals — and in doing so, wrote an untold chapter of India’s long and complex journey toward freedom.
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