General Mohan Singh

General Mohan Singh (1909 to 1989) was a Sikh officer of the British Indian Army who raised the first Indian National Army (Azad Hind Fauj) from Indian prisoners taken by the Japanese in Malaya and Singapore. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says many of the volunteers who answered his call were Sikhs. He is not Manmohan Singh, the later Prime Minister.

He was born on 3 January 1909 at Ugoke, near Sialkot, the only son of Tara Singh and Hukam Kaur. His father died two months before he was born and he was raised at his mother's parents' home at Badiana.

Key moments

• 1927: joins the 14th Punjab Regiment. He is commissioned in 1934 (some accounts say 1935) and sails for Malaya as a captain on 4 March 1941.
• December 1941: separated from his unit after the Japanese attack, he surrenders in mid-December near Alor Setar, meets Major Fujiwara Iwaichi and Giani Pritam Singh, and after some hesitation agrees to organise Indian prisoners into a force. He is given charge of Indian prisoners and stragglers.
• 15 February 1942: Singapore falls, with about 85,000 troops taken, 45,000 of them Indian.
• 15 to 23 June 1942: the Bangkok conference forms the Indian Independence League under Rash Behari Bose and appoints him commander-in-chief of the Army of Liberation for India, the Indian National Army.
• 1 September 1942: the force is formally set up, with volunteers numbering about 40,000.
• 29 December 1942: he is removed from command and arrested by the Japanese military police, having come to believe Japan wanted the INA only as a pawn and would not recognise it as an independent army. By Asia Samachar's account he was exiled to Pulau Ubin.
• June to July 1943: Subhas Chandra Bose arrives and revives the force as the Azad Hind Fauj. The sources differ on whether Mohan Singh was restored: Asia Samachar and Wikipedia say he was not reinstated, while the Encyclopaedia says he was returned to his command with Bose as supreme commander.

After the war the British took him into custody and returned him to India. Wikipedia says that under pressure from the INA trials he was only cashiered from the army. After 1947 he came to India as a refugee and settled at Jugiana near Ludhiana. He joined the Congress, served as a Punjab legislator and sat in the Rajya Sabha for two terms, and campaigned for INA members to be recognised as freedom fighters. His books include Soldiers' Contribution to Indian Independence (1974). He died at Jugiana on 26 December 1989.

He is remembered as the founder of the first Indian National Army, which Subhas Chandra Bose later revived.