Heads of State of the Provisional Government of Free India [declared]
1942-1944: Subhas Chandra Bose (All India Forward Bloc)
After a long career within the Indian National Congress, Subhas Chandra Bose was forced out of the party by 1940. In its wake, he fled from India, and in 1941 he made his way to Axis Japan despite the ongoing war, which offered support for Indian independence albeit with certain conditions. His charisma was as such that he was able to recruit Indian prisoners of war to his cause, and by 1942 Subhas Chandra Bose led the so-called "Free Indian Army" to take over parts of the British Raj. Its offensive proved rapid, Subhas Chandra Bose's natural charisma proving able to overcome many Indians' suspicion of Japanese imperialism, and despite the Congress party denouncing Japan as a colonial empire in its own right, by 1943 the Japanese and the "Free Indian Army" were veering closer to Bengal.
However, reports came of Japanese mistreatment of Indian civilians as it swept through Assam. For a time these were swept under the rug, but as the Japanese came into Bengal, such reports became more and more commonplace. It was with the fall of Dacca in 1943 that such reports became undeniable. The Japanese army gunned down civilians as part of its takeover of the city, and it committed even worse atrocities. Despite their "Free Indian Army" allies attempting to convince them to stop, the Japanese army refused. The result was mass defections in the ranks of the Free Indian Army, as many came to realize that the Japanese were no friends of Indian independence and that Subhas Chandra Bose's charismatic support was misplaced. But he himself stood still, and he continued to support the Japanese and reassured his soldiers to stay the course. But as the Japanese army slowly advanced, and as it became entirely clear that the Dacca atrocities were part of a clear pattern, in January 1944 there was a mass mutiny in the Free Indian Army. Many were surprised when Subhas Chandra Bose put himself at the head of the mutiny and declared the Japanese every bit as much of a colonial power than the British. It remains controversial whether he planned the mutiny himself after a sincere Damascene conversion or whether he fell in with the flow after the mutiny’s scale became clear, but nevertheless the result was that near-entirety of the Free Indian Army followed its leader despite Japanese attempts to establish a new puppet army. Japan subsequently lost control over any part of Bengal, and then Assam, and by the end of 1944 it lost control of India entirely. Furthermore, Subhas Chandra Bose quickly negotiated the Free Indian Army's support of the Allies in return for assurances of independence. By 1945, the Allies won - and he began to force the issue.
Viceroys of India
1943-1946: Earl Wavell
Despite the success in repelling the Japanese, immediately after WWII, Lord Wavell faced immense strains. Subhas Chandra Bose quickly moved to attempting to force the issue of independence, and despite the consequences of his collaboration and despite the Congress party denouncing him as a traitor and supporter of Japanese colonialism, his ultimate Damascene conversion led him to attain a degree of popularity as he assembled his All India Forward Bloc into a party with unofficial paramilitaries formed from Free Indian Army veterans. By 1946 with the Royal Indian Navy mutinying and Subhas Chandra Bose strongly supporting it, Britain was forced to leave India, the strains proving too great.
Presidents of the Republic of India
1946-1955: Subhas Chandra Bose (All India Forward Bloc) [overthrown]
1946 def. Jawaharlal Nehru (Indian National Congress), Muhammad Ali Jinnah (Muslim League)
1951 def. Jawaharlal Nehru (Indian National Congress), Shripat Amrit Dange (Communist)
In the subsequent Constituent Assembly, Subhas Chandra Bose was able to get it to declare India a republic with a popularly-elected president, and his charisma won him election as India's president, even though his victory over Nehru was very narrow, far narrower than contemporaries expected. Subsequently, the new President got the Constituent Assembly to accept a constitution which gave him overwhelming amounts of powers in a quasi-federal unitary state. Subhas Chandra Bose got everything he wanted. For all intents and purposes he became India's caudillo. And now he faced a new question, what would he do with this power?
Initially, he leaned towards socialism. Even while fighting alongside the Axis, he supported Soviet-style economics, and now that he was in power, he would attempt to implement it. He established heavy state-owned industry across the nation on the Soviet model, despite opposition in many circles to his model. In 1948, he dissolved the princely states and declared his support of a plan of land nationalization to end feudalism and replace it with a system of common ownership. However, this quickly received the ire of Mahatma Gandhi, who declared the necessity of giving this land to villagers directly, and while the president accepted at first and established a system of village councils to administer this land, Gandhi launched a protest campaign to force voluntary land redistribution by landowners without Subhas Chandra Bose imposing his desired structure. After Gandhi achieved a few noted successes in forcing landowners to distribute land directly to villagers, the government viewed this as an attack on its very legitimacy. And subsequently it launched a campaign of repression. The President was always suspicious of democracy, believing India was not ready for it at its current state; this was the very excuse he needed to muzzle civil liberties, arrest opponents he was suspicious of, and enhance the power of a military under the control of centrally-appointed commissars. The land nationalization continued apace, and in many cases it forced villagers to move into the cities and work in the growing factories in the cities. At the same time, he nationalized the banks and legitimized the measure through a referendum, which proved a popular measure, all the while promoting a vigorous and militaristic nationalism which also proved popular. In 1951, Subhas Chandra Bose won another term as president, and though the elections were highly fraudulent, he was far from unpopular.
In his second term, disappointed at the partial success of his projects of industrialization, Subhas Chandra Bose moved towards a more business-friendly model of industrialization which sought to include business into the nationally-owned industrial conglomerates. After this too fell prey to red tape and a series of corruption scandals, in 1953 he shifted course again and moved towards the same economic model of his Soviet ally, albeit with anti-corruption pledges. This erratic shift in policy served to discredit him, and Gandhi, ever a critic of the government, launched another protest campaign against it. He called for comprehensive land reform directly to villagers, as well as the establishment of a more decentralized and efficient system of government under a new constitution. This protest campaign intensified in support especially after massacres many compared to Jallianwala Bagh, and by 1955 it reached Delhi. The military, the very same military that Subhas Chandra Bose had empowered, watched these protests intensify, and it quickly came to a decision. It captured the halls of government, and Subhas Chandra Bose, dressed in his military uniform and sash, was found dead by the military with a shot to his head; officially it was a suicide, but many believed otherwise. And so, Parliament, under military guard, quickly declared the leader of the coup d'etat, Field Marshal K. M. Cariappa, the President. The age of Subhas Chandra Bose had come to an end, deposed by the very same military that made him.
1955-1963: K. M. Cariappa (Independent)
1955: elected by Parliament unopposed
1958 def. Lal Bahadur Shastri (Indian National Congress), Ram Manohar Lohia (Samyukta Socialist Party), Ramachandra Sakharam Ruikar (All India Forward Bloc (R))
Immediately President Cariappa convened a new Constituent Assembly to write a new constitution, one that was suitably democratic for the nation. While he believed in the necessity of the coup, he did believe in a sort of democracy. But as he watched the Constituent Assembly bicker and argue, he lost hope in democracy, and though he accepted its semi-presidential constitution in stride and allowed the new Parliament to be elected freely, the new Prime Minister, Jayaprakash Narayan, proved far more socialist than Cariappa would have liked and the two faced a tussle over power and proper division of administration. Cariappa believed JP to be no less dubious than Subhas Chandra Bose, and in 1958 he proposed a series of constitutional amendments which would abolish the post of prime minister and restore a strong presidency, which he put to a referendum; though this was non-binding, after it proved successful Parliament was forced to accept the whole of the amendment. And so Jayaprakash Narayan lost his office, and in 1958 a presidential election was held to legitimize Cariappa’s rule. The coalition between the Indian National Congress and the Samyukta Socialist Party collapsed, and with it so weakened any hope of removing the President. And he was further helped by an intervention by the CIA in his favour, the United States believing him a sure American ally, and in 1958 Cariappa won a decisive victory. His attempts to gain Gandhi's moral support for his regime failed; Gandhi died in 1959, a bitter man.
But nevertheless, freed from the constraints of civilian inefficiency, Cariappa now had the chance to establish his vision of an efficient technocratic government. He appointed a cabinet of economists and academics, which achieved successes in removing red tape and corruption in the administrative service. He vigorously promoted business, albeit in a manner which was highly statist and lacking free markets, and this achieved high economic growth. The Green Revolution saw the end of food insecurity once and for all. The protest movements fizzled out for a time. But then came serious issues. Land reform ceased to be pushed, and in many cases land nationalized by Subhas Chandra Bose was given to Cariappa's supporters rather than the people who worked on them. The de-nationalization of the banks led to banks in general becoming sparse outside major cities, slowing down economic growth. Slowly discontent rose and rose, though with the press still muzzled Cariappa did not notice. But indeed, he retained a level of popularity, and he thought he could win another election and firmly put India on the right path before finally retiring. This proved a mistake.
1963-xxxx: Aruna Asaf Ali (Indian National Congress)
1963 def. K. M. Cariappa (Independent), Ramachandra Sakharam Ruikar (All India Forward Bloc (R))
Aruna Asaf Ali had a long career before 1963. In the 1940s she served as a youth leader of the Congress party, and when in 1942 the British Raj suppressed the Quit India movement, she famously flew the Indian flag from Gowalia Tank Maidan while the British Army was firing at the assembly, for which she received the epithet "Grand Old Lady of the Independence Movement". After independence, she moved towards socialism, albeit in a form that was scornful of Subhas Chandra Bose and his eclectic ideology, and she quickly became a leader of the Congress party's left wing. It all led to the relatively free 1963 election in which, to the surprise of many, the Congress party was able to win. Cariappa, astonished, was forced to recognize the result and stepped down. A few weeks later, Aruna declared that, along with certain military elements, Field Marshal Cariappa planned a coup d'etat against her. Whether there was a real coup in play or Aruna wanted to preempt an actual coup by making an excuse to suppress the threat to Indian liberty that was the military, the result was that Cariappa was forced into exile and much of the military brass followed him.
This served to strengthen her position, and it gave her more confidence in laying out her vision. She declared the re-nationalization of banks and their expansion across the nation, and she also enacted far-reaching land redistribution laws which placed land in the hands of farmers. But this immediately led to the Indian National Congress to break apart on its seams. It was a party formed to fight for independence and democracy, and as such many different ideologies were represented within it; the result was bickering and party splits soon after it took power. But with her post as president, Aruna Asaf Ali had a firm position to push for an enact her vision on an independent and democratic India, and she had no intention of stopping....