Shahid-e-Bharat

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Shahid-e-Bharat
Shahid-e-Bharat.jpg
The Shahid-e-Bharat medal.
Awarded by Azad Hind
TypeMedal
EligibilitySoldiers of the Indische Legion, Indian National Army, and the Wehrmacht.
Awarded forThe Fallen
StatusCurrently not existent.
Statistics
First awarded Second World War
Last awarded Second World War
Total awardedUnknown
Posthumous
awards
Unknown
Precedence
Next (higher) Vir-e-Hind
Next (lower) Tamgha-e-Bahaduro

The Shahid-e-Bharat (Martyr for India) was a military decoration awarded by the Azad Hind Government to honour the fallen. It was awarded in gold or in silver. First instituted by Subhas Chandra Bose in Germany, it was later also awarded to troops of the Indian National Army in South East Asia. The award could be conferred with swords for valour in combat, and without swords for non-combat awards.

Subhas Chandra Bose 20th-century Indian nationalist leader and politician

Subhas Chandra Bose was an Indian nationalist whose defiant patriotism made him a hero in India, but whose attempt during World War II to rid India of British rule with the help of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan left a troubled legacy. The honorific Netaji, first applied in early 1942 to Bose in Germany by the Indian soldiers of the Indische Legion and by the German and Indian officials in the Special Bureau for India in Berlin, was later used throughout India.

The Indian National Army was an armed force formed by Indian nationalist Rash Bihari Bose in 1942 in Southeast Asia during World War II. Its aim was to secure Indian independence from British rule. It formed an alliance with the Empire of Japan in the latter's campaign in the Southeast Asian theatre of WWII. The army was first formed in 1942 under Rash Behari Bose, Mohan Singh, by Indian PoWs of the British-Indian Army captured by Japan in the Malayan campaign and at Singapore. This first INA collapsed and was disbanded in December that year after differences between the INA leadership and the Japanese military over its role in Japan's war in Asia. Rash Behari Bose handed over INA to Subhas Chandra Bose It was revived under the leadership of Subhash Chandra Bose after his arrival in Southeast Asia in 1943. The army was declared to be the army of Bose's Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind. Under Bose's leadership, the INA drew ex-prisoners and thousands of civilian volunteers from the Indian expatriate population in Malaya and Burma. This second INA fought along with the Imperial Japanese Army against the British and Commonwealth forces in the campaigns in Burma, in Imphal and at Kohima, and later against the successful Burma Campaign of the Allies.

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