Cawthorn, Auchinleck and British Countermeasures against the Indian National Army

Abstract

This article challenges the depiction of the Indian National Army (INA) as either having played a direct and central military role in India’s independence struggle, or as an irrelevance in the fighting in Asia after 1942. It argues that British fears about the INA’s psychological threat to the Indian Army’s loyalty persuaded the Commander in Chief India (C-in-CI), General Claude Auchinleck, to sponsor a series of countermeasures named JOSH (pronounced JOASH), and the Director of Military Intelligence (DMI), Major General W. J. Cawthorn, to champion a policy that would have profound implications in 1945 and arguably accelerated the end of British Rule in India, the Raj.