Today, 14 April, is Moirang Day. On this day in 1944 Col. Shaukat Ali Malik, Commander of the Bahadur Group of the INA, hoisted the Indian National Army Flag in Moirang, a few miles off Imphal, the capital city of Manipur. This was a historic moment for India. The hoisting of the INA Flag of the Springing Tiger meant the official declaration by the INA that the part of Manipur that had been wrested by them from the British was now free and came directly under the sovereign administrative control of the Provisional Government of Free India headed by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.
The Indian National Army in alliance with the Imperial Japanese Army had badly mauled the British Indian Army and driven them away from Moirang to the adjoining hills. As per the agreement with the Japanese, the Provisional Government of Free India became the sovereign power in Moirang and they successfully administered the liberated land for nearly three months with their own bank, currency, stamp and all other administrative tools in operation. The local people heartily helped the INA with supplies and some even joined forces with them. However, the rapidly changing tide of the world war, the Congress leadership's antipathy to the advancing INA which they viewed in effect as the Japanese invasion of India and the roughest monsoon in decades joined hands to force the INA to beat retreat back to Burma, leaving the liberated terrain to British annexation again.
Seventy four years have passed since that day and we are today celebrating the seventy-fourth anniversary of Moirang Day and, with it, stepping into the Platinum Jubilee Year of the great event. In all these years the citizens of this country have not been made aware of the significance of this day owing to a distorted narrative of the freedom struggle having been dished out to them by the Nehruvian dispensation, and its legacy continues to this day despite tall protestations from the government of the day as being distinctly patriotic and, so, different from its siblings in power all these years. If shamelessly the PM does not remember to pay glowing tributes to the INA today and the CM steals the show in yet another petty political pretension, it will drive home the message to all and sundry whither we are headed as a nation.
But that must not detract us from doing our bit at this momentous hour and we must not fail the heroes that had fallen to free us, full 26,000 of them. I invite you all, my sisters and my brothers, to observe this day in a very special manner, remembering them who never failed to keep us ever in their minds till a bullet broke through their barrier and they fell on the Road to Delhi.
In tearful love to all those supreme followers of that supreme leader, who lay in the dust that day,
Jai Hind!
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