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| Free India |
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There are six designs used on the 10 values of Azad Hind stamps, including
images of a farmer ploughing a field, a woman working a spinning wheel, a
soldier with machine gun, and a doctor with his patient. Two of the higher
values show a map of India and the chain of bondage breaking. |
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The Azad Hind stamps are recorded in the Michel German Specialised Catalogue, but little information on these World War II propaganda stamps is easily available. Some values keep appearing on the market, and we decided to write about them and the background events at that time.
What is the background to their issue? In 1897, Subhas Chanda Bose was born at Cuttack, India, the ninth child of a well-to-do family. He received his early education in India and attended university in England. He was a talented student. At the age of 23 he passed the Civil Service Open Competitive Examination in London, ranking fourth in that year. However, he resigned almost immediately and returned to Bombay on 16, July 1921, with the intention of taking up the struggle for Indian independence from Britain. He met with Mahatma Gandhi, but inclined more to Fascist principles, rather than the 'Non-Cooperation Movement'. The British authorities in India did not take kindly to his political ambitions and he was jailed a number of times. Like Hitler, he wrote a book in prison, which was entitled The Indian Struggle, published in 1934. Also, whilst in prison, he was elected Mayor of Calcutta (1930), and in 1938 he was elected President of the Indian National Congress Party. |
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| In league with Hitler |
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| The only misperfed example of the 12As+1R value |
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Early in the Second World War, the Defence of India Act was passed, and in July 1940 Bose was arrested. He was released in December due to the state of his health following a hunger strike. However, on January 26 1941 he disappeared from Calcutta and ' travelled to Germany, via Afghanistan and Eastern Europe. He signed a pact with Germany for the conquest of India, and spent the next two years attempting to create a Free India Army from the Indian prisoners of war captured in North Africa and held in Europe. Eventually, 3,115 Indians were recruited into the Indian Legion, forming the 950th Infantry Regiment. They were used primarily for anti-aircraft and coastal defence in France, although ending up in 1944 as part of the Waffen SS. |
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| Journey to Japan |
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| When Japan entered the war in December 1941, fighting drew closer to India's borders. Bose was invited to Japan in February 1943 and undertook a most hazardous journey by submarine that took 90 days. On his arrival in Japan he established the Provisional Government of Azad Hind, or Free India, and announced this to the world on October 21 at Singapore. The next day he declared war on Britain and USA. |
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