To All These Members Who Wrote and to the Many More Who May Not Have, I Must Agree That There Is a Certain Truth in All These Char- Ges

Home , Mohan Singh (general)

To all these members who wrote and to the many more who may not have, I must agree that there is a certain truth in all these charges. I will accept the gentleman’s offer of the new hat, doff it to him, and acknowledge the truth of all he said. For an editor is all of those things. It comes with the job. tie is a censor, a dictator, an autocrat, a sole voice, and a correcter and a selector, lle accepts and he turns down. He publishes or else he refuses to. But dictator- ships, the same as any other type of organized human activity, have also to have at their basis some fundamental set of goals. The Editor Speaks as the Fiihrer spoke. But in speaking he has also to remain consistant with these underlying purposes. Yet statistically I have been a mild dictator. Nearly every arti- cle and picture and indeed every advertisement eventually saw itself in print. This issue not only marks bringing the journal back up to date, it also marks the publication of the last of the old material sent in times past to the former editor. So these i~sues stand as m~ record. There is also no more material. It is now all in. That is all she wrote! We are living through an age when Americans are undergoing an emotion conflict between older concepts of individualism and democracy and the restraints and required obligations of life lived in a crowded, competitive society. Some people therefore use the officers of hobby clubs and social organizations as whipping boys for their own frustra- tions. Others just stop contributing. They break up the game and take up their bat and glove and go home, not wishing to play any more. It is more emotionally satisfying to eriticime and complain, to pull something apart than it is to contribute and build. But Mr. Yasinitsky’s werds still ring true today. We are now at a turning point. The future of the 40-page per month issue hangs in the balance. From now on the Medal Collector can be reconstituted. It can take any form the members want. Everything else in life has changed in the past 20 years so I guess O~SA can too. But if the Medal Collec- tor is changed then I feel that the organization itself will soon no longer be serving its original purposes. I suggest that O~4SA members pretend that it is 19~O again. Let’s start all over again and build a new Medal Collector if that is what is wanted. If not, then lets contribute to the old one and keep it go- ing. In either case, the Editor Speaks. So let him speak and help him to continue to do so by contributing,- even if without agreeing with him in every case. The Medal Collector is the glue that holds the Society together.

We have improved a lot in the past twenty years. Even beginners know more about medals than some so-called experts did when the Society was young. This is as it should be. The journal should reflect this. Some members have written fine reference books that should form the library of the novice. The ~ledal Collector should tell you more than what one should expect to find in a reference book. The really great articles that have appeared in these pages in the past have assumed as their premise that the members were advanced collectors and not beginners. They did their best not to insult the intelligence. The President has asked me to begin 1971, our 21st year as an organization, by extending the Greetings of your administration and my own plea for more material of the type you have been reading in the recent numbers. Host of these were the result of two of the in- grediants that Yash emphasised back in 1950,- research and mutual cooperation. ~te have the ball rolling; lets keep it that way!

28 THE DECORATIONS OF THE AZAD HIND FAUJ~ 194~-194~ by Edward S. Haynes (rights reserved) After the Second World War~ the Republic of India at- tained her independence from the British. No small part of the credit for this freedom is due to those Indians whom unlike Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, chose war-time opposition to the British rather than passive non-cooperation. Many Indians, led by Subhas Chandra Bose, forsook British India to fight for Indian freedom on the side of the Axis Powers. Those who fought under Bose in the Indian Legion of the Wehrmacht have been often discussed and the "Order of Azad Hind" has been the subject of many articles. Much less known~ however, are those decorations which Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose established after he arrived in Japan in May 1943 to take command of the Azad Hind Fauj (Free India Army or Indian National Army) which had been formed by Rash Behari Bose and Major-General Mohan Singh from In- dian prisoners captured after the fall of Singapore. It is believed that, sometime after Bose’s arrival in the East~ a series of decorations was created for rewarding military achievements. An order was apparently issued - of unknown date~ this order~ as found in My Adventures with the I.N.A~, by K. R. Palta (Lahore, Lion Press. 1946), pp. 124-125~ is: LIST OF DECORATIONS A. H. F. PERSONNEL

335. The following will be the order of precedence for Decorations awarded to members of the Azad Hind Fauj by the Provisional Government of Azad Hind: - I. Shaheed-e-Bharat 2. Sher-e-Hind 3. Sardar-e-Jang 4. Vir-e-Hind 5. Tamgha-e-Bahaduri 6. Tamgha-e-Shatru Nash II. In the future there will be two classes of the ’Sardar-e-Jang’ Medal according to the standard of individual bravery, devotion to duty and leadership exhibited in the field. The awards of ’Sardar-e-Jang’Medal made up until now will be of Class I of that medal. III. Members of the Azad Hind~ who render meritorious and commemorable service in the field, but fall short of qualifying for a decoration~ will be granted the certificate ’Sanad-e-Bahaduri’ by the Head of the State Provisional Government of Azad Hind. The award of Thagma-e-Shatru Nash is of the following classes: Class Ii: To be awarded to those members of the Azad Hind Fauj who kill or capture alive any British or American Officer or other ra~ either in single combat or in a group fight where qualities of individual initiative and individual bravery come into play. 29 Class I: To be awarded to those members of the Azad Hind Fauj who exhibit conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty in killing or capturing alive any British or American Officer or other rank either in single combat or in a group fight where qualities of individual initiative and individual bravery come into play.

PRECED~J]TCE, ETC. The Medal ’Tamgha-e-Shatru Nash’ shall take precedence after ’Tamgha-e-Bahaduri’. This medal may be awarded to a member of the Azad Hind Fauj in addition to any other decoration for which he may have qualified. Tamgha-e-Shatru Nash may also be awarded posthumously. The Provisional Government of Azad Hind has decided that the Medal ’Tamgha-e-Shatru Nash’ may be awarded to any person other than a member of the Azad Hind Fauj, whether outside India or inside, who~ while participating in or help- ing the war of India’s Liberation, qualifies himself for the decoration by fulfilling the conditions laid down above. This medal may also be awarded to any person outside India or inside - who helps the prosecution of India’s War of Liberation by killing or capturing alive any British or American~ other than Army personnel~ who is clearly an enemy in the path of India’s freedom.

I Some of the citations for these awards have been lo- cated in Kesar Singh Giani’s - Indian Independence Movement in East Asia (Lahore~ Singh Brothers. 1947). Some of these~ arranged by decoration are:

Shaheed-e-Bharat: Naik Molar Singh. In April 1944~ Naik Singh’s unit was in the Kaladan sector of Burma; while attacking an enemy hill pOsition, they came under heavy fire from a near- by machinegun emplacement. Naik Singh rushed forward~ destroying the emplacement~ but losing his own life in the process. Lieutenant Kundan Singh. In April 1944, Lieutenant Singh’s unit was ordered to explode a bridge in enemy territory, one hundred miles from friendly lines. Singh and his men evaded both observation and capture~ reaching the bridge; while they were setting the charges, the Lieu- tenant and his men came under heavy hostile fire. Un- der heavy attack, Singh and his men held off the attack- era, successfully accomplishing their mission. The commander of the expedition was~ however killed; Lieu- tenant Kundan Singh was awarded the Shaheed-e-Bharat for his bravery.