Calcutta under Fire

December 1942: Calcutta is bombed by the Japanese air Force. In the ensuing panic, one and a half million flee the almost defenceless city. The Japanese, having stormed through Malaya, Singapore and Burma, appear unstoppable-and on their way to India. David Lockwood investigates the reactions and plans of the Congress, the British and the Indian National Army (INA), concluding that the episode revealed a good deal about plans for India after the war, the impossibility of the INA’s military solution, and that it was a part of the transition of the Indian state from the British to the Congress.