Photographs by Akshay Kolse-Patil
Writer and historian Dr. Robert Lyman, whose book A War of Empires: Japan, India, Burma & Britain: 1941–45 documents Japan’s first defeat in World War II, refers to the battles of Kohima and Imphal as “a modern Thermopylae.” Referring to the famous Spartan standoff against the Persians, Lyman compares how a small number of brave men (about 1,500 Indians and British) fought against overwhelming numbers (about 15,000–20,000 Japanese) in remote northeast India.
The Battle of Kohima—or the Battle of the Tennis Court, as it has come to be known—was a significant event in the Second World War but does not often find a place in the larger discourse on the subject. The core of the battle was concentrated on a tennis court, built for the leisure of the British deputy commissioner, whose bungalow was nearby. The court provided the ideal flat land in what is an otherwise hilly terrain, then quite densely forested.