Documenting a Freedom Struggle: Oral Histories and Indian Nationalism in Wartime South-East Asia (1940-1945)

During the Second World War, South-East Asia emerged as a major hub of the Indian freedom struggle against the British colonial rule, with Singapore as the epicentre of the transnational movement. This talk explores how Indian anti-colonial resistance extended across Singapore, Malaya (present-day Malaysia), Burma (Myanmar), and Thailand through the mobilisation of the Indian National Army (INA) supported by Imperial Japan. The INA and its affiliates recruited extensively from British-Indian Army prisoners of war captured by Japan, as well as from Indian diasporic communities settled across the region. Drawing on previously undocumented oral histories, collected through her archival project Agnijug Archive, oral historian Oyeshi Ganguly will talk about the lived experiences of the INA soldiers. By foregrounding personal narratives of key actors involved, the talk highlights the intersections of migration, nationalism, gender, and wartime experience in the Asia-Pacific theatre of World War II. 

Oyeshi Ganguly is the founder of Agnijug Archive, an oral history archive that digitally documents, preserves and shares the oral histories of the Indian nationalists between the years 1900-1947. Oyeshi holds a bachelors in Political Science from Jadavpur University, India. She completed her master’s in International Affairs from the Hertie School of Governance, Berlin, as an Indo-German Young Leaders Forum Scholar.   

Image: INA leader Subhas Chandra Bose and members of the Azad Hind Fauj, 1940s