sarahz said: hmm 2 words Kohima and Imphal. The Japanese did invade India.(or try too anyway) It did not end well. My father was in the West Kent's and fought the Japanese invasion he would be mightily miffed that people are asking what if's when it actually happened. OTL Click to expand...

Alexniko said: Multiple people have talked about logistics allready, so I won't.

Yet another factor is worth mentioning:

London feared that if Japan entered India, a popular revolution against british rule might break out. We know from OTL that that didn't happen, but even if the japanese advanced further most indians would have opposed them.

Though most indians hated the british occupation, fascist Japan was (rightly) seen as even worse.

Neither the INC nor the Musilim League nor the Communist Party were ready to cooperate with the IJA. Only Bose's Azad Hindh regime was pro-japanese but it had very limited popular support. Click to expand...

Well, your father was a British colonizer we're glad to have kicked out of the motherland, so, in conclusion, nuts!It's something of a major blind spot, isn't it? Gee, what do the Indians want? I would say that cooperating with the Japanese (and more broadly, sympathy for the Japanese) was certainly present in influential Indian circles, Bose being the obvious example, but also the Indian judge at the post-war Tokyo Trials, Radhabinod Pal, choosing to find the Japanese not guilty of war crimes, etc. And as we can see from the Red Fort Trials, sympathy for the INA and Bose was a mainstream affiliation, and any attempt by the British colonizers to persecute them quickly lead to mutinies.So why didn't the British Indian Army or Navy basically "turn over the keys" the moment the INA showed up? Why was it treated as a "invasion" and not a "liberation"? I think that this at least partially must come down to the split opinions between the Muslim League/Congress, the general sense that the British could be forced out of India after WW2, and the fact that nobody with national stature like Gandhi threw his weight behind Bose. I think also that affection for the Japanese was probably a more elite phenomenon, limited to those who were literate, educated, and were familiar with the frightful history that had led Asia to such an inglorious end. I doubt that the ordinary peasantry, especially in Assam or Manipur or the like, was all that familiar with the Japanese.So-- if the Muslim League in TTL doesn't throw its weight behind WW2, Japanophilia is a little stronger in the pan-Indian elite, and Gandhi or other senior Congressi cadre + Jinnah call for revolution, things could play out quite differently. It's easy enough to imagine a past where Bose is welcomed to India as a liberator, and alongside Japanese detachments, moves around the country ending things in the mutineers' favor, the British officers are rounded up and put in POW camps, the Axis nations recognize Indian Independence, with the Allies, influenced by Churchill, refusing to do so. In all likelihood, India signs a friendship treaty with Japan, but stays-- at any and all costs-- out of the war, maybe sending Japan a few volunteers instead, or easing Japanese logistics*. Post-war, either Labor recognizes Indian Independence as a fait accompli, or the US stomps all over the idea of invading a sovereign India to restore British tyranny.This might be the only timeline where the British officials are held to account for the Bengal famine, tried, found guilty for the two million dead, and justly hanged. Also, without Britain deliberately screwing with the Partition process, Partition might happen more slowly, and with greater regard for all involved, thus averting the millions killed from entirely avoidable bloodshed; if not butterflying the hostility between India and Pakistan entirely, thus saving the peoples of the subcontinent three wars and much heartache. I get that our dead were very brown and very illiterate, but what was done to them was deliberate and evil.*I don't consider a Japanese occupation of India to be seen by the Japanese as a desirable, or even achievable end. An independent India would naturally be hostile to British and other Anglo powers.