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By Root 4597 0

fragmented into local religious groupings. This absence of a single community identity had frustrated the Japanese during the occupation, when they had tried to foster branches of Bose’s Indian Independence League in Saigon and Hanoi. When one finally did appear, it seems to have functioned chiefly as a protection racket, siphoning off funds from the big merchants, Chettiyars from southern India, into the pockets of the League’s officers. But the local Indians’ relative anonymity evaporated when Gracey arrived with the 20th Indian Division. Vietnamese resentments bubbled up when Indian soldiers appeared to be helping the British and, through them, the French to regain power. Half a dozen local Indians were murdered during the September outbreak and nearly seventy were kidnapped by militants. Indians presented huge compensation claims to the British authorities against the Vietnamese rioters, to add to their numerous headaches.41

Despite all this, the 20th Indian Division did not waver when, in late December and January, the Viet Minh tried one last push from Bien Hoa down towards Saigon. The poorly armed Vietnamese were mowed down by machine-gun fire as they encountered disciplined Gurkha and Indian soldiers. As the occupation came to an end, Gracey issued a ‘Divisional commander sahib ki paigam’. This was an eloquent Urdu address in which he praised his soldiers for their steadfastness and bravery, saying that the name of the 20th Indian Division ‘would shine throughout the world’ (20 Hindustani Division ka nam tamam duniya men roshan hai). But the end was near for the Indian Army as an instrument of British world power. In October 1945 Lord Wavell, viceroy of India, had urged that Indian soldiers should be withdrawn from Indo-China as quickly as possible as Nehru and Patel inveighed against their use abroad. As 1946 wore on it became apparent that the leadership of the Indian National Congress was emerging as a regional and even international power. Further British action against national liberation movements with Indian soldiers would be impossible. This began to limit severely British options in both Burma and Malaya.42

The year 1945 drew to an end amid antiquated but highly symbolic ceremonial. On 30 November Mountbatten, inspecting Allied forces in Saigon, accepted Count Terauchi’s sword as a formal signal of surrender. Earlier Gracey had worried that in the disturbed conditions of Indo-China this might seem to indicate that all authority had been abrogated. He urged instead that the ceremony take place in Singapore, where British power was fully re-established. Mountbatten also had had qualms: ‘I do not wish to drag an invalid man of sixty-seven through a humiliating ceremony.’ The Japanese field marshal was still suffering the after-effects of his stroke. Mountbatten concluded that the scale of Terauchi’s humiliation should be limited by inviting few guests and reporters. Yet the surrender must be completed. Mountbatten required one sword for himself and one for his king-emperor. Terauchi duly sent an aide to retrieve his finest swords from his home in Japan and transport them to Saigon. At the ceremony, a Times of Saigon reporter noted, they were ‘encased in draped boxes which according to Japanese tradition enhanced the act of presentation’.43 Terauchi died shortly afterwards in Singapore, where his ashes were interred in the Japanese cemetery.

The Times of Saigon was a cyclostyled broadsheet with an issue of 500 daily. On 15 January 1946 it published its last issue. This recorded one final, slightly bizarre ceremony that had taken place the previous day. General Gracey and General Leclerc took the salute in the shadow of Saigon’s French cathedral. The march-past took place to the music of the Dogra Pipe and Drum Band, a curious amalgam of Scottish bagpipes and the music of the Kashmir hills. The band’s favourite tunes included ‘Killiecrankie’ and ‘Scotland the Brave’.44 It was accompanied by a French military band playing the battle music of the French Republic. Then the two generals went off to Government