It is rather unusual and disturbing to find that for two decades, from 1948 to 1968, the Government of free India placed several members of the family of Subhas Chandra Bose under intensive surveillance. Subhas was Nehru’s political co-worker for more than a quarter of a century, but the IB discretely kept the track of the family members of Subhas Bose when they travelled around India and abroad, recorded minute details regarding the persons they met and what they discussed. No wonder, his grandnephew Chandra Kumar Bose finds these events strange and says, “Surveillance is conducted on those who have committed a crime or have terrorist links. Netaji and his family fought for the freedom of the country; why should they be placed under surveillanceIJ”
The Indian National Army (INA) of Subash Bose set up the provisional Government of free India. They were the first to raise the Tricolour on the Indian soil. It is intriguing that the Government of free India continues to hold files relating to Netaji classified as “top secret”. These “Netaji files” have been held close to its chest by several Governments for nearly 60 years. The declassification of these documents have been avoided with the PMO stating that this would “prejudicially affect relations with the foreign countries”. Such events blur and try to hide a vital part of the history relating to the creation of this nation.
There has been a parallel study one has read to stomach. From 1955 to 1965, a man crossed into India via Gorakhpur border and lived in self-imposed isolation at some location at lucknow, Sitapur Basti and Ayodhya. This man lived in a room at the back of a house in the middle of Faizabad, obviously as a special tenant of Thakur Gurudutt Singh. One is further told that over these two decades the landlord never saw the face of the special tenant. To some in the rest of the world, he was known as Gumnami Baba. He had visitors from Bengal and other places through covert night access. It is said that this person died on September 16, 1985 and was cremated at the Gupta Ghat in the presence of thirteen persons draped in Tricolour aided by the headlamp of motorcycles. It is reliably reported that there are 25 iron trunks full of Gumnami Baba’s possessions kept by court order in the custody of the District Magistrate at the Faizabad district treasury. It still remains a mystery whether this Baba was Netaji in guise.
It does not behove a nation to treat one of the persons responsible for its own freedom in this hush-hush and secretive manner. There is hardly any justification in continuing to hold the papers in a “classified” form by the government of India and the other authorities. The plea of “relations with foreign government” does not appear to be a convincing one, when the papers relate to a period of six to seven decades ago and that too to the history of the country.
The true facts must stand revealed. We must know the details of our own history, however unpalatable it may be. lessons are often derived from such unusual past. We are also not being fair to the next generation in denying them access to the truth relating to the history of our nation. It is very difficult for a man to alter the facts of history, though it may be feasible on his part, to some extent, to alter the details of geography.
*While at the national level, we suffer such a malady and meet out unusual treatments to those who made sacrifices and expedited the dawn of Independence on the Indian sub-continent, here in Odisha we have it as a headline in a local daily “130 cops for CM Naveen, just 1,000 for whole city”. From one form of abuse of police, we march on to another arena of misutilisation of the police force. Reliable reports say that as at present not less than 130 policemen provide security to Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. This number stood at around 70 in 2002. Ironically, about 10 lakh people, who live in Bhubaneswar, are left to be protected by 1,000-odd policemen. No wonder, crimes keep rising higher and higher. Rape cases in Bhubaneswar shot up to about 72 last year from 51 in 2013. Surprisingly and disturbingly, most of the rape victims or survivors have been minors. Around 27 minor girls were allegedly subjected to rape in 2013 in Bhubaneswar whereas the factors had stood at two in 2012 and rose to 43 during the year 2014. These figures would speak for themselves. Shortage of adequate staff is the lame excuse for permitting such increasing incidence of criminality in the State capital city.
From the national scenario involving a stalwart of freedom movement to the scenario of Bhubaneswar city involving the ruler of today tell two different tales. This is the reality of the situation on the Odisha New Year Day of 2015.
Apart from the lopsided security policy, even Mahila police stations claim lack of adequate staff to provide security to women. The arithmetical perversity of the deployment of policemen to provide security to the Chief Minister and those providing security to the citizenry at large is indicative of the insensitivity of concerned persons in power and lack of concern from those from whom the power is derived. Whether it is covering up the details of history with no logical justification or denying adequate security to the tax-paying population, both are indicative of bad governance and are demonstrative of the insensitivity both in attitude and through actions towards the events of the past or the problems of the present. The remedy for both these must be determined by the dominant youth power and their lack of concern can be detrimental to the future of the society including the emerging youth power. Inaction and silence at this stage relating to matters as above are causing immense harm to our society and need to be revisited and changed for the better without any avoidable delay. But this clarion call must come from the alert and concerned youth power. It is, however, not to be limited to them alone. This concerns us all.
(The writer, a Senior Advocate, is a former All India Service officer, a former diplomat, a former editor and a former Advocate General of Odisha. jayantdas@hotmail.com)