Modi will be first Indian PM to visit INA memorial

The Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi may be paying a  visit to the INA war memorial in Singapre, founded by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in 1945. If he does so, he will be the first Indian PM to do so.

The monument was built to commemorate the “Unknown Warrior” of the Indian National Army (INA). The words inscribed on the war memorial were its motto, which is Unity (Ittefaq), Faith (Etmad) and Sacrifice (Kurbani). It was built during the Japanese Occupation of Singapore as the Japanese and the INA had one enemy in common– the British.

Subhas Chandra Bose laid the foundation stone of the memorial on July 8, 1945, a few months before Singapore was recaptured by the British. The construction of the monument was proposed by Bose, the co-founder of the INA and Head of State of the Provisional Government of Free India. The INA was backed by the Japanese forces for wresting India’s independence from Britain.

Later in 1945 after the Japanese retreated from Singapore and thesubsequent surrender of the Indian National Army to the advancing British forces, the British commander Lord Mountbatten ordered the memorial to be destroyed. Mountbatten’s intention was to remove all traces of rebellion against British authority. “In fact, when Jawaharlal Nehru visited Singapore in 1946, he was advised by Lord Mountbatten to not visit the INA memorial. Nehru obliged”, Chandrachur Ghose of Mission Netaji  told Millennium Post.