On Netaji file, official response big let-down

In telling the Central Information Commission that it is not going to declassify the files related to Subhas Chandra Bose, the Prime Minister’s Office has done itself no service. As is well known, Netaji Bose was last seen on August 18, 1945, when his plane crashed in Taiwan. He was reported to have died and been cremated by Japanese authorities, who were the occupying force in Taiwan. Subsequently, his ashes were transferred to the Renkoji shrine in Tokyo.

There are those who believe Netaji Bose did not die on August 18, 1945, and/or was not on that plane. A whole subculture and history of conspiracies has emerged in the past 70 years. Some of these theories are no doubt overdone, including the assertion that Netaji Bose returned to India anonymously and lived as a monk. Why would he choose to do so is a mystery, and as such this narrative is extremely implausible.

There are others who suggest that Netaji Bose ended up in prison in the Soviet Union, seen as an enemy by Joseph Stalin, as he(Netaji Bose) had been an ally of the Axis Powers during the World War II. There are still others who believe the Congress Government in India knew about Netaji Bose’s incarceration but was happy to see him out of the way and a potential domestic political rival to Jawaharlal Nehru removed.

The previous paragraph is largely speculation and conjecture. little hard evidence has been cited to prove or disprove such allegations. Depending on political convictions, the tale of Netaji Bose’s imprisonment in Siberia is either supported or debunked.What is certainly true, however, is that in the early years after 1945 — in the aftermath of World War II and the initial decade of independence — there was a widespread suspicion that Netaji Bose was not dead, that he had escaped from the burning plane, perhaps used the crash as a diversion. Even Mahatma Gandhi casually alluded to the possibility. 

Part of this was due to the fog of war and the absence of real-time, authentic news. Part of it was the Subhas Bose mythology — this was a charismatic and enigmatic man who had famously escaped the police outside his house in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and turned up in Europe via Afghanistan, disguised variously as a Pathan and an Italian traveller. Since he had done it before, was it possible that he had done it again and once more fooled the British and the alliesIJ

Obviously many people were interested in knowing if Netaji Bose was still alive and planning a return at a time of his choosing. He was a popular man in India and many ordinary citizens would have hoped against hope that his death had been faked. The Congress would have been concerned about the emergence of a potential political rival, to Nehru nationally and to the party in Bengal in particular. 

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel — no friend of Netaji Bose for a whole host of reasons, including Netaji Bose’s close association with the Sardar’s older brother, Vithalbhai Patel — would also have been inquisitive. As the Union Home Minister and the man in charge of internal stability, it was his job to anticipate new developments in the polity. For that matter, even the Government of Pakistan may have had questions at the back of its mind. If Netaji Bose had indeed come back in, say, 1947 or 1949, he may well have had an impact on the public mood in East Pakistan (the former East Bengal). There were also former soldiers of the Indian National Army who had settled in West Pakistan.

On their part, the British and the Americans would have been seeking conclusive evidence of the death of Netaji Bose because he was on their list of leading war-time opponents in Asia. As the Cold War commenced, the Americans would have legitimately theorised the chances of Netaji Bose having found refuge in the Soviet Union, either as a prisoner or a guest, and wondered if and how Stalin would use his quarry to advance Moscow’s geopolitical cause in the subcontinent. 

It is reasonable to expect that some or all of this figures in Government documents and secret files. Much of could be idle chatter, without a shred of evidence. Some of it could be correspondence between over-imaginative and over-interpretative operatives of British and Indian intelligence agencies, who maintained a close, fraternal relationship till at least the late 1950s and may have considered the search for Netaji Bose a common endeavour.

Some six decades later, it beggars belief that the Government insists these papers can’t be released because they contain contemporary and actionable information that could jeopardise relations with other countries. If the correspondence from the PMO to the CIC is the work of a bureaucrat who has simply photocopied an earlier such letter, then the person in question needs to be pulled up and amends need to be made. On the other hand, if this letter is the genuine, well-considered view of the Modi Government, then a political explanation is called for. The Prime Minister cannot afford to just duck this.

Many Netaji inquiry committees have been set up in the past six decades. They have not established that he did not die in the 1945 air crash. However, neither have they identified his remains or ascertained whose ashes lie in that casket in Renkoji. The Justice Manoj Mukherjee Commission, set up in 1999, came closest. It had photographs of the contents of the urn sent to the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, to see if a DNA test were possible “on the bones found in the ashes”. 

The CCMB replied: “If the bones were collected from the burnt ashes it would not be possible to isolate DNA from the bones for DNA test, as DNA would have been completely destroyed but if those were remains of bones (not burnt bones), then presence of the DNA was likely to be there though in a degraded form but still usable for establishing identity.”

The reply may sound grisly but leads to another tantalising question. Was the body of the person whose ashes are in that urn in Renkoji cremated as per Hindu traditions or Japanese traditionsIJ If the latter, then, at least one authoritative and official source suggests, simply due to the different process of burning the body, chances of finding “remains of bones” and establishing DNA are that much greater. In such a situation, DNA samples can be matched with the current generation of the Netaji Bose family. Also, Netaji Bose’s dental records, from his student days, are still preserved. 

It is important to insulate the mystery of Netaji Bose from a modern-day Congress-BJP contest. That is a secondary issue. The dignity of closure that Netaji Bose, one of the heroes of the national movement, deserves is of greater value. It is here that the PMO’s perfunctory secrecy is disappointing and frankly unforgivable.

(The writer is senior fellow, Observer Research Foundation. He can be reached at malikashok@gmail.com)