28.6.14

India forgets Imphal

Not many in India remembered the 70th anniversary of the twin battles of Imphal and Kohima. There were no newspaper ads, no radio jingles, no special programmes on TV, save a few stray news reports. But the rest of the world isn't suffering from the same amnesia.
On Saturday , representatives from Britain, the United States, Australia and Japan, apart from a shrinking group of veterans, will take part in the closing ceremony of a three-month-long programme in Imphal remembering those brave souls who died fighting two of the fiercest battles in history. There will be representatives of the Indian Army too, who quietly hope that some day, the government will embrace these two battles as Indian, and acknowledge the role of 25 lakh soldiers who fought by the Allies in World War II.
The battles of Kohima and Imphal, in fact the whole of the Burma Campaign, was the swansong of the old Indian Army . It was for the first time that the Indian Army fought a foreign invader on Indian soil. And it was the first time the seemingly invincible armies of the Empire of Japan were decisively beaten by Indian soldiers.
Lieutenant Colonel (retd) Anil Bhat, former spokesperson of the defence ministry and Indian Army , laments, “Victory in the Second World War has been, by far, our biggest military achievement, yet nobody in India talks about it.“

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