MOIRANG (India): A bare metal flagpole jammed into a stone base marks the spot where the soldiers of “Free India” first raised the Indian flag on Indian soil.

Alongside is a museum, filled with forgotten memories of World War Two — helmets and rifles, Japanese cyanide bottles and photographs of the campaign to overrun the Indian town of Imphal and free the country from British rule.

“If they had captured Imphal, India’s history would be different,” says Manindra Singh, an adviser at the museum in the town of Moirang in northeastern India.

It was in this ramshackle market town that a renegade Indian army, which had invaded from neighbouring Burma alongside Japanese soldiers, raised the Indian flag in May 1944.

Their leader, Subhas Chandra Bose, had sought help from Britain’s wartime enemies, Germany and Japan, to persuade Indian prisoners-of-war to turn against their former masters in the British Indian army and join the Indian National Army (INA).

In doing so, he earned the adoration of his followers and condemnation by the British as a traitor. And he left behind a question which plagues his supporters to this day: Would Indian history have been radically different had he succeeded?

The plan was to overrun Imphal and the Indian northeast and head towards neighbouring Bengal, Bose’s home state, where he was convinced the people would rise up to fight with him.

In the end, his troops were driven back into Burma (now Myanmar), many dying of dysentery, malnutrition or malaria on the way.

Three years later, the British walked out of India anyway — dividing it as they left into Pakistan and India. Many of his followers believe Bose could have averted this bloody partition had he succeeded.

“He was opposed to partition along religious lines,” says his great nephew, Sugata Bose.

Recalling the former INA soldiers who used to come and stay in the family house, he says: “All of them were convinced that if he had been successful, India would have remained united.”

GROWING LEGEND: Now more than half a century later, he is if anything gaining in stature as a hero of India’s independence movement, praised both by those on the Hindu right and the communist left.

“He is untainted by the disillusionment of the post-independence period,” says Sugata Bose.

That his legend lives on is highlighted by an ongoing government inquiry in Bose’s home town of Calcutta into the highly contested circumstances of his death.

Official reports at the time said Bose died in an air crash in Taiwan in August 1945, and his cremated remains were taken to Japan. But some believe he faked the crash in order to escape unnoticed to the Soviet Union.

There maybe he disappeared, or, according to others, came back to India disguised as a Hindu holy man, waiting until the time was ripe to reveal himself in public.

There are some who are convinced a mysterious holy man, last seen in the northern town of Faizabad in 1985, was Bose but no one has clearly explained why he would remain incognito for so many years after British rule ended.

The government inquiry has collected documents worldwide and heard hundreds of witnesses. It is considering making DNA tests to try to match the cremated remains with blood samples from his vast extended family.

Somewhat bizarrely, it is also considering doing DNA tests to try to match a set of false teeth allegedly left behind by the Hindu holy man in Faizabad with family blood samples.

Sugata Bose blames the many stories about the independence leader’s death on wishful thinking by those who thought he would come back and save India from its troubles.

IMPATIENT: In the years leading up to World War Two, Subhas Chandra Bose, popularly known as “Netaji” or leader, was a senior member of the Indian Congress Party, pushing for freedom from British rule.

But disillusioned by what he saw as the slow pace of the pro-independence movement, he decided to leave India to seek help abroad, escaping from house arrest in Calcutta in January 1941.

He made his way via Afghanistan to Germany where he met Adolf Hitler but found him lukewarm about his plans and later returned to Asia by submarine to seek help from the Japanese.

In the Indian National Army, he made a point of bringing together Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus at all times.—Reuters