Seventy years is a long time to forget people, events, the past. In India, it doesn’t take that long. Even heroes are forgotten here in a matter of months, or a few years. In such a scenario, it’s not surprising that nobody has remembered the 70th anniversaries of the twin battles of Imphal and Kohima. There have been no newspaper ads, no radio jingles, no special programme on TV, absolutely no mention of the battle or its veterans anywhere, save a few stray news reports. But that doesn’t mean that the rest of the world is suffering from the same amnesia.

On Saturday, representatives from Britain, the United States, Australia and Japan, apart from an ever-shrinking group of veterans, would be part of a closing ceremony in Imphal of a three-month-long programme remembering those brave souls who had died fighting in two of the fiercest and most horrific battles mankind has ever known. There will be representatives of the Indian Army, too, who will quietly hope that someday their government would fully embrace these two battles as Indian, and acknowledge the role of the 2.5 million (25 lakh) soldiers who fought by the Allies’ side in the Second World War. Independent India has never shown any care or concern about the war veterans, as they are a living memory of India’s colonial past—men who fought a “foreign war” for a foreign government.Yet the truth is the battles of Kohima and Imphal, in fact the whole of the Burma Campaign , was the swansong of the old Indian Army. It was for the first time that the Indian Army fought a foreign invader on Indian soil—a subtle transition for a force that for centuries had been an imperial strategic reserve, an instrument of colonial expansion and retention of the British Empire. And it was the first time that the seemingly invincible armies of the Empire of Japan were decisively beaten by the same Indian soldiers whom the Japanese perceived as lesser men.“The two world wars showed the fighting quality of the Indian soldier to the world. Victory in the Second World War has been, by far, our biggest military achievement, yet nobody in India talks about it. It’s such a sad state of affairs that the country that sent the largest voluntary army in history to fight that war has forgotten the sacrifices of the millions of men and women. We expect the Narendra Modi government to do something about it. Of course, we are late, but better late than never,” said Lieutenant Colonel (retd) Anil Bhat, the former spokesperson of the defence ministry and Indian Army.Commonwealth War Cemetery, Imphal, Manipur (Photo credit: Dinodia/Corbis)The two battles resulted out of the 1944 U-Go Offensive of the Japanese 15th Army under Lieutenant General Renya Mutaguchi. The plan was to conquer India and use it as a launchpad of future Japanese military campaigns. Imphal, which was heavily invested by the 15th and 33rd divisions of the Japanese 15th Army, was defended by the IV Corps of the British Fourteenth Army, comprising the 17th, 20th and 23rd Indian Infantry Divisions, including the 50th Indian Parachute Brigade.Kohima, on the other hand, was defended by just 1,500 men of the 1st Assam Regiment, Assam Rifles, and 4th Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment. But they held off 15,000 invading Japanese for two weeks until they were relieved by the 161st Indian Infantry Brigade, a vital component of the battle-hardened 5th Indian Division.Incidentally, in Imphal, the Japanese were assisted by the Indian National Army, which had another objective apart from fighting: to try and make soldiers of the Indian Army defect. This strategy, of course, didn’t work. There were a few desertions, no doubt, but for every Indian Army soldier who switched his loyalty, 68 remained loyal.On July 3, 1944, the Japanese decided to retreat to Burma, but the retreat became a rout. Thousands of sick and wounded Japanese soldiers died by the wayside and were never cremated. London-based Japanese filmmaker, Junichi Kajioka, has made a film on this, named Imphal 1944. It will be screened in Imphal at the closing ceremony on Saturday.“Many Japanese still come to Manipur every year in search of the bones of their family members who lost their lives in this war. The battles of Imphal and Kohima are not forgotten by people, and a lot of unburied souls are still sleeping in Northeast India and the border of Myanmar. I believe they are still being taken care of by the people here. My film aims to be a symbol of peace between Britain, Japan and Manipur. The film offers the world an important message of friendship between old enemies,” Kajioka told this correspondent.Incidentally, June 28 will also be the 100th anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the erstwhile Austro-Hungarian Empire in Sarajevo, an event that triggered the First World War where 1.3 million Indian soldiers participated. But that’s another story for another time.