Key Points
New Delhi: Lakhs leaving cities with whatever they could carry, dangerous animals being killed, governments dispersing from administrative capitals such sights would normally be seen in a country being invaded by a foreign army...
In this case, however, there was nosuch foreign invasion.It wasjust apanicsituationor flap during World War II in India,saidjournalist and author Mukund Padmanabhanat a discussion about his new book,The Great Flap of 1942: How the Raj Panicked Over a Japanese Non-Invasion, at New Delhis India Habitat Centre...
The conversation, of which former diplomat Navtej Sarna too was a part,brought out the horrifying stories of how Indiansthrough British action or inaction as the case may beleft their citiesin 1942in droves, expecting a Japanese invasion...
As Padmanabhan writes inThe Great Flap of 1942, almost 7,00,000 residents(about 90 per cent of the total population)in Madras(now Chennai), by one estimate, left the city...
As the Japanese laid waste to Pearl Harbor in the United States in1941, an army consisting of about 60,000 troops sailing from Hainan Island in China launched an amphibious assault on Kota Bharu in northeastern Malaysia..
