Eighty-three years after Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose raised the flag of a free India on foreign soil, the sacrifices of the Azad Hind Fauj still echo in official memory. Rajasthan Chief Minister Bhajan Lal Sharma on Wednesday, 21 October 2026 paid tribute to the soldiers of the Indian National Army on the Foundation Day of the Azad Hind Fauj, invoking the movement's iconic marching anthem to honour every fighter who gave their all for India's freedom.

Quoting the stirring lines 'Kadam kadam badhaye ja, khushi ke geet gaye ja' ('March on step by step, sing songs of joy'), CM Sharma offered what he called koti-koti naman — a crore-fold salute — to all the 'immortal martyrs and brave soldiers' who consecrated themselves to Ma Bharati ki swadhinta, the independence of Mother India.

The Day That Shook British India: 21 October 1943

On 21 October 1943, Netaji Bose proclaimed the Provisional Government of Free India (Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind) in Singapore and reorganised the Indian National Army — the Azad Hind Fauj — as its armed force. The government was immediately recognised by the Axis powers and declared war on Britain and the United States, marking one of the boldest gestures of defiance in the entire independence movement.

The INA went on to fight British and Allied forces through Southeast Asia and the northeastern frontier of India, planting the tricolour briefly on Indian soil at Moirang in Manipur in 1944. Thousands of soldiers — many of them former prisoners of war — chose the hazardous path of the INA over the comparative safety of British captivity. Their campaign ultimately faltered militarily, but its moral force reverberated across the subcontinent and put the question of armed nationalist resistance squarely on the table.

Why BJP Governments Keep the INA in the Frame

CM Sharma's message is part of a consistent pattern of annual official remembrance — but it carries a particular political texture. BJP governments at the state and central levels have made a deliberate effort to foreground Bose and the INA in India's freedom-struggle narrative, broadening the pantheon of independence heroes beyond the Gandhi-Nehru mainstream long associated with the Congress party.

The Azad Hind Fauj's story — armed, uncompromising, rooted in nationalist fervour — lends itself naturally to that reframing. By leading with the INA's anthem and invoking its martyrs, Sharma places Rajasthan's official voice squarely within that tradition of remembrance on a day that has no new policy announcement, only the weight of history.