Reports from declassified documents that two distinguished relatives of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose were put under surveillance for more than two decades apparently at the behest of then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru seem to have left the kin and admirers of the great freedom fighter “ outraged and flabbergasted”.
Even as the revelation promptly triggered a clamour for declassification of so-called “secret files” related to Netaji famed historian and his grand-nephew Sugato Bose said the surveillance that began in 1948 and ended in 1968 could be the outcome of an apprehension about a challenge from a “parallel ideology” that Netaji stood for.
“This is a story of disrespect shown towards a freedom fighter and we hope followers of the people who did it would apologise before the nation” Bose, a scholar who is also a Trinamool Congress MP, said, adding his “reaction is not as a family member of Netaji but as a historian.” The declassified documents show how Amiya Nath Bose, a barrister and also an MP, and his brother Dr Sisir Bose, a famous paediatrician, were kept under constant watch by the Intelligence Bureau and the Intelligence Branch of Bengal Police. Both were the sons of Sarat Chandra Bose, the elder brother of Netaji.
Sisir Bose had helped Netaji in his historical flight from house arrest at Elgin Road in Calcutta in 1940. He drove him up to Gomoh Station in Bihar from where Bose took train to Punjab and then fled to Germany evading the British police.
Reacting rather intensely to the reports of what Kolkatans called Indian version of the “snoopgate” Sugato Bose, son of Sisir Bose, demanded immediate declassification of all more than 50-year-old “secret files” related to Netaji.
“All files those are more than 50 years old and some of those that are more than 30 years old should be declassified” he said, adding “there is a general belief that such declassification could ruin diplomatic chemistry between India and certain other countries but that is not true because reports of that British Government had ordered assassination of Netaji had not spoilt Indo-British relationship,” he maintained.
Purabi Roy, a Netaji researcher, said the role of the Indian Government behind the fate that Netaji met in Russia should be investigated.
The documents show how the two houses belonging to the Boses one at Elgin Road and the other at Woodburn Park were kept under constant scanner. And matters were exchanged among the Intelligence officials to the minutest of details throughout the country. Even details of train journeys, hours of travels were recorded and exchanged, the documents showed.
One part of the document underscored the role of founder RAW chief RM Kaw whose name figured in a “very secret” record of an interception of Amiya Bose’s letter to Sisir Bose in November 1949. “Ironically these unsuspecting relatives of Netaji would not know that all details of their foreign visits and even family interactions were being watched by a pair of eyes in Delhi who was less confident when Bose was around and very apprehensive of his losing power to him if he came back,” said the former Bengal MlA, who had seen Netaji from close.
“One is shocked after seeing these documents how some people up there befooled the whole nation and conspired against it by planning Netaji’s incarceration in a distant country where he died a dismal death,” he said.
Netaji’s grand-nephew Chandra Kumar Bose wondered why surveillance should be conducted on people who were related to one of the tallest freedom fighters of the country. “This is done to a criminal or a terrorist and not to the kin of the greatest freedom fighter,” he said.
Anita Bose Plaff, the only daughter of Netaji, said she was astounded. “My uncle was politically active until the 1950s and disagreed with the Congress leadership. But what surprises me is that my cousins could have been under surveillance… they had no security implications.” On possible reasons of the whole snoopgate drama, Bose-Plaff said was those in power possibly believed that “my father was still alive” and his nephews were the most likely persons for him to contact should he try to come back to the country. Former Supreme Court Judge Ashok Ganguly said the “documents show the intensity of bias against the Netaji family,” particularly against the “man who sacrificed everything for the country”.
“This is not acceptable. Those who were in power then and those who still by their names owe a reply to the nation” says Sudhir Sen, a freedom fighter claiming how even after Netaji’s disappearance the family continued to serve the country. Sarat Chandra Bose, the elder brother of Netaji, played a huge role in bringing back two districts of Nadia and Murshidabad back to India from East Pakistan. “These two districts had gone to that country for three days after the Partition as Nehru had almost written it off but for Sarat Bose’s intense fight for them to be brought back to India.”