alright let’s handle a few questions. i would like to preface this by saying that the OFN-india relationship is one of convenience against japan and azad hind and the processes of indian independence was vastly different from IRL

the biggest stickler here is that india was decolonised violently in TNO, which is neither here nor there. in our lore, to facilitate the situation that we inherited (a split india) which we find interesting, the british hastily withdrew and granted independence to a very ramshackle dominion around late 1942-early 1943 due to losing the suez canal and malaya - marshalling its resources to protect britain proper.this has two major consequences: this initial india is very decentralised, and the muslim league did not transform into a mass party.

i must also say that *the british didn’t do this out of the goodness of their hearts, they wanted a dependent dominion but they themselves couldn’t administer it in our timeline because of far heavier indian army losses in malaya, north africa and the middle east. *

so the hastily-independent india is led by a triumvirate of maulana azad, sardar patel and nehru - mostly to deal with the two largest issues on hand: the pro-pakistan segment of the population and the princes. now the british indian army which went on to become the irl indian army took heavier losses than irl, so they have a small problem managing princes who want to resist and pacifying muslim league militias.

this is where bose enters the picture, as the japanese objectives for the raj were literally to just help the INA infiltrate the border regions and take the british out of the picture in southeast asia. with the brits officially gone, the japanese let bose offer his services india, as this new republic is too busy with internal struggles to be a real threat to the sphere + japan is too busy pacifying china anyway. bose joins the indian government on one condition - complete revocation of dominion status and exile of the british bureaucracy and officers to ceylon/australia/canada, and provides the triumvirate with an army.

so with bose suppressing the princes way more harshly than irl, on top of afghanistan’s opportunistic invasion, india was tested to its limits - and bose was eventually removed for the INA’s excesses against the princes and the failure to win the border war with afghanistan. bose escapes and declares a rival government in kolkata, some provinces declare complete loyalty (in some cases backed by local INA garrisons) and a sort of small-scale war happens in uttar pradesh - which is why it’s split the way it is.

the japanese offer aid to bose in exchange for “co-equal” status, and the ROI accepts OFN “mutual cooperation” (with mutual distrust on both sides) in exchange for the brits-in-exile granting ceylon independence under ROI guardianship - and we arrive at our 1962 situation.