Chapter 31: Stepping on to the International Stage

1945

In his private study in Allahabad, Ram reviewed detailed intelligence reports brought directly from the Burmese frontier by field operatives of the Samvardhan network, the deep-cover organisation Ram had built over years to safeguard Indian strategic interests across Asia.

Shaktidas stepped into the room, placing a fresh stack of decoded cyphers on the desk. "The political structure in Rangoon is reorganising rapidly, Ram," Shaktidas reported. "The anti-Japanese elements led by General Aung San and the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League have broken with Tokyo and are linking up with the British XIV Army. Aung San will almost certainly emerge as the premier and strongman of post-war Burma."

Ram picked up the cypher, reading through the names of Burmese nationalist commanders, tribal leaders, and political organisers.

"Ensure our Samvardhan cells embedded within the border tribes, the Kachin, Chin, and Shan tribes, remain fully active and well-supplied," Ram instructed, setting the document down. "We must ensure that any new Burmese nationalist government in Rangoon understands its limits. They must not be allowed to assume total, unchallengeable control over the frontier regions bordering Assam and Manipur.

"If Rangoon adopts an anti-Indian posture or attempts to persecute Indian merchant populations in Lower Burma, our influence among the border tribes will give us immediate strategic leverage."

He looked up at Shaktidas. "Furthermore, in the contested border tracts and tribal belts, lay the political groundwork now to demand local plebiscites, giving those populations the explicit choice to align with India or Burma. We will not leave our eastern frontiers vulnerable to the whims of a post-colonial Rangoon administration."

Beside the political files lay several crates containing captured enemy ordnance recovered from the Burma front. Accompanied by his senior mechanical overseer, Shivram, Ram spent hours conducting exhaustive, hands-on comparative evaluations between the captured Imperial Japanese military equipment and standard British Imperial issue.

Ram picked up a Japanese Type 99 Arisaka rifle, cycling its heavy bolt and inspecting the chamber. "The Japanese action is mechanically sturdy," Ram observed, tapping the receiver, "and the dust cover design is clever for jungle environments. However, late-war Japanese metallurgy is demonstrably inferior.

"Look at the tooling marks on the receiver and the inconsistency in the heat-treatment of the steel. The 7.7mm Japanese round lacks the uniform ballistic consistency and stopping power of the British .303 Imperial cartridge, which benefits from decades of standardised mass production."

He moved to a workbench where a captured Japanese Nambu Type 96 light machine gun lay disassembled beside a British Bren gun.

"The Nambu has a fatal engineering flaw," Ram pointed out, picking up the oil reservoir assembly. "It requires lubricated cartridges to prevent shell extraction failures. In a dusty field environment, that oil attracts dirt and sand, leading to severe jams during sustained rapid fire. By comparison, the British Bren gun, derived from the Czech ZB-26 design, is superior in reliability, gas cylinder adjustability, barrel change mechanism, and practical accuracy. We will not waste factory capacity trying to copy Japanese light machine guns."

He reached into a wooden box and pulled out a small, heavy bronze-coloured metal tube with a curved footplate: a Japanese Type 89 50mm Grenade Discharger, commonly known as the "knee mortar."

Ram’s eyes sharpened as he examined the compact weapon. "This, however, is a piece of tactical brilliance," Ram said, holding it up. "It weighs under ten pounds, can be carried and operated by a single infantryman, and fires high-explosive or smoke shells out to five hundred yards with deadly accuracy in thick terrain.

"The British have nothing equivalent in their platoon-level organisation; their two-inch mortar is heavy, cumbersome, and requires a crew of two. Shivram, take this back to the Kanpur foundry. Blueprint every component. We will standardise the manufacturing of this light mortar design for our regional defence units across every province."

On April 12, 1945, the world was shaken by the announcement that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had died suddenly of a cerebral haemorrhage at Warm Springs, Georgia.

Recognising the shift in global power dynamics, Ram immediately drafted two formal diplomatic communications. The first was an official letter of condolence addressed to the United States Government and FDR’s widow, Eleanor Roosevelt. In it, Ram eloquently praised Roosevelt as "one of history’s most towering champions of human dignity, an unyielding foe of totalitarian tyranny, and a true friend to the democratic aspirations of the Indian people." The letter was designed to butter up the American establishment and appeal directly to New Deal liberals who favoured rapid global decolonisation.

The second letter was addressed directly to Vice President Harry S. Truman upon his taking the oath of office as President. Ram acknowledged Truman’s succession, offering congratulations and expressing complete confidence that the United States would continue to exert its moral and economic leadership to foster post-war freedom, industrial progress, and self-determination across Asia.

Simultaneously, Ram directed Shaktidas and his foreign intelligence liaisons to construct a detailed, granular intelligence dossier on Truman and his immediate political circle.

"Truman is an entirely different beast from Roosevelt," Ram remarked during a late-night intelligence review. "Roosevelt was an aristocratic visionary who managed global grand strategy through personal charm and broad imperial compromise.

"Truman is a pragmatic, midwestern machine politician who rose through the political gears of Pendergast’s Kansas City network. He is transactional, direct, and fiercely focused on domestic political survival and practical outcomes."

Ram thumbed through the draft dossier, which contained detailed profiles of Truman’s key advisers, military aides, and cabinet members, including Harry Hopkins, James Byrnes, and key figures within the State and War Departments.

"Identify every individual in Truman’s inner circle who has financial vulnerabilities, business interests in Asian trade, or ambitions that require post-war capital," Ram commanded. "Map out their industrial allies in American steel, oil, and shipping lines. When an independent India needs industrial machinery, surplus transport aircraft, heavy locomotives, or diplomatic leverage against British obstructionism at the United Nations, we will not rely on moral appeals. We will know precisely which political doors to open in Washington and which commercial levers to pull."

Unlike in previous years, when his international contacts were kept entirely underground, Ram began making open, public visits to foreign consulates and diplomatic missions in India, including the Soviet, French, and American consulates in Calcutta and New Delhi. Arriving in his sleek black Hudson sedan, dressed in formal Indian attire, Ram met openly with foreign diplomats, commercial attachés, and intelligence representatives. He presented himself not as a clandestine rebel, but as an influential industrialist and nationalist statesman laying the diplomatic and economic foundations for an imminent, sovereign Indian Republic.

On May 8, 1945, Nazi Germany surrendered unconditionally following the death of Adolf Hitler in his underground Berlin bunker. Victory in Europe (VE Day) was declared across the globe.

Ram immediately dispatched formal cables of congratulations to Soviet Marshal Joseph Stalin in Moscow and President Harry Truman in Washington, praising the heroic triumphs of the Red Army and the Allied forces in destroying Western fascism.

These open, high-level international manoeuvres sent shockwaves through global intelligence apparatuses. In Washington, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) opened a comprehensive dossier titled Gupta, Ram Prasad, while in Moscow, the NKVD’s foreign intelligence directorate began compiling regular assessments on his activities. Foreign intelligence analysts noted with growing fascination that Ram had quietly positioned himself as a major global political force, an articulate, highly pragmatic strategist operating alongside historic leaders like Subhas Chandra Bose and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.

Amidst these global developments, Ram maintained a secret, highly secure line of communication with Subhas Chandra Bose, who was then reorganising his remaining INA forces in Southeast Asia following the retreat from Burma. Ram dispatched a top-secret cyphered communique to Netaji through a diplomatic pouch routed through neutral Swedish channels.

In the letter, Ram expressed his profound admiration for Bose’s revolutionary courage, but strongly implored him to immediately sever all operational ties with the collapsing Japanese Empire and return to India through underground routes, or seek political asylum in the Soviet Union via Manchuria.

Ram warned that remaining bound to the Japanese war effort as Tokyo faced total defeat would allow the British to brand the INA as mere fascist quislings and diminish Bose’s political leverage in post-war India.

A month later, the reply arrived in a sealed, double-encrypted dispatch from East Asia. Bose’s answer was brief, written in his unmistakably bold, fiery hand.

My Dear Ram, Bose wrote. I receive your counsel with the respect due to a brother who has laboured tirelessly in the same vineyard. But my path was chosen when I crossed the borders of India in darkness. I cannot and will not abandon the brave men and women of the Azad Hind Fauj who laid down their lives under our flag, nor will I disavow the alliance I forged to strike at the heart of British imperialism.

A revolutionary does not alter his convictions when the weather turns. If it is my fate to perish in this struggle, my blood will serve as the seed for India’s final awakening. Maintain your hold on the foundation within; I shall fulfil my destiny from without.

Ram set the letter down, a heavy sadness settling in his chest. "A man of absolute conviction," Ram murmured to Shaktidas. "Brilliant, fearless, and utterly unyielding. He will not bend for his own survival, even when the world is crumbling around him."

A/N: Let me know your thoughts in the comments. Stone me?

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