Historic Alleys

A famine and the cholera epidemic....1943

Everybody talked about the Great War as the summer months of 1942 scorched the southern regions of India. The eastern allied bastions fell one after another, by February 42 Singapore had capitulated and in March 1942, Rangoon had fallen and Port Blair in the Andamans had been taken. The overjoyed INA factions in Malaya and Burma were waiting for directions from their new leader Subhas Chandra Bose ensconced in Rangoon, while at the same time, hundreds of thousands of panic stricken Indian refugees (Burmese workers) were in full flight across the seas and borders into India, their ancestral home. Their belief was total that the British Raj would do nothing to help them, for their brethren had not received any great support either at Malaya or Singapore. One could hear the refrain – that invasion was imminent, the Japanese were coming, and that the British are set to flee India. With censor controlled war news channels focused on the action in Europe, rumor machines in India took over and wild tales were told and retold. The Japanese soldier, though smaller than a Burmese elephant, evoked a bigger fear, rivaling a dragon.