Some exerpts from a grandson of an INA Army person: Courtesy Rediff.com (see the link above).
In post-Independent India the INA's role was played down. The official evaluation was that its activities had little effect. Militarily speaking that was true because the army was not that well equipped, but the British made a great political mistake by putting three INA officers on trial at the Red Fort (in Delhi), expecting that people would look down on them as traitors. The opposite happened and the trial publicized the efforts of the INA, which had previously been censored.
Until the trial little had been known of the INA or the Government of India in exile in 1943 when they tried to send food to Bengal during the Great Famine. All of a sudden this trial made everything known and it revived the struggle for independence in India, which had been lagging because the leadership of the Congress party and other groups mostly had been imprisoned. Their efforts like the Quit India movement had not been successful and so this gave a new dawn to the movement.
As a consequence of the INA's efforts, large numbers within the British Indian Army -- which was not just British but for the most part Indian -- became unreliable. There was a mutiny in Bombay (by the Royal Indian Navy), which showed the armed forces could not be depended on. The administrative system was what had controlled India and with the army unreliable the British realised India could not be held as a colony any more. This led to the transfer of power. It was meant to have taken place a few months later, but it was brought forward to August 1947.
You could therefore say the INA had this effect of destabilising the British hold on the Indian army and reviving the independence movement within India.
The INA certainly has its place in Indian history.
When the first few INA soldiers returned to India they were treated as heroes, but I must say in the later stages India has not treated them very well. The INA veterans were not recognised as army veterans and for a very long time they were not even recognised as freedom fighters, which meant that certain benefits such as a pension and free rail travel were denied to them. Many members of the INA were reduced to poverty and some of them died in hunger. These were simple people and could not find their way that easily in the country to which they returned.
India has not behaved towards this group in an honorable or fair way.
