Declassify all Netaji files

Bose addressed INA soldiers in the first week of Sept. 1945, after he reportedly died in a plane crash.

Fresh disclosure about snooping on the family members of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose during the government of Jawaharlal Nehru and thereafter has again rekindled the old controversy about his death. The mystery surrounding Netaji is reminiscent of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, the last sovereign of Imperial Russia, and his wife, Tsarina Alexandra Fyodorovna.

The Tsar was assassinated with the whole family by members of the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police, on July 17, 1918. But rumour spread thick and fast that Anastasia had escaped. The rumour got further credibility from the fact that the location of her burial was unknown during the long period of the Communist rule. Several women came forward to falsely claim that they were Anastasia.

The best known impostor was Anna Anderson whose body was cremated upon her death in 1984 but DNA testing in 1994 on available pieces of Anderson’s tissue and hair conclusively disproved her claim. But again, leading Russian historian Veniamin Alekseyev has raked up the old controversy by his new book published from Yekaterinburg, the scene of the slaying of the Russian royals, challenges the view that all Romanovs were shot in a dank cellar in July 1918. He suggests that Anastasia escaped to the West.

Countless stories have been revolving round Netaji about his death and possible escape. One Gumnami Baba was taken to be Bose. A self-proclaimed godman, Jai Gurudev, of UP, who had successfully hoodwinked a large number of people into becoming his disciple, also wanted to impersonate Netaji.

In early 1980s, it was announced in Kanpur that Netaji would resurface. A huge crowd of people was waiting with bated breath for his arrival. All of a sudden Jai Gurudev appeared on the dais and proclaimed himself to be Netaji. But people recognised him and feeling betrayed they pounced on him. He would have been lynched by the mob had the police not whisked him away by force.    

The disclosure that Netaji’s family members were under surveillance bolsters the notion that Netaji did not die in the plane crash and that the then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru was quite scared of him. Nehru was, doubtless, a patriot with a modern outlook, but he had two fatal flaws- love for power and dynasty. Nehru never refused any post, either in the party or in the government.

In 1929, at the Lahore Session of the Congress, the Provincial Congress Committees recommended the name of Mahatma Gandhi for the presidentship but he did not agree. Nehru has written, “At the last moment he (Gandhi) pressed my name forward…I have seldom felt quite so annoyed and humiliated as I did at that election…I would have rejoiced if I had been elected in the ordinary way. But I did not come to it by the main entrance or even a side entrance; I appeared suddenly by a trap-door and bewildered the audience into acceptance.”

Though Nehru has been honest and candid, the unmistakable conclusion is that he loved power. He was appointed vice president of the executive council of the viceroy on September 2, 1946 and became PM on August 15, 1947, and remained on the post lifelong. In 1947, he appointed his sister Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit ambassador to the USSR, and gave important positions to his cousins, Ratan Nehru, B K Nehru etc.

In Moscow prison

It is said that when Pandit was in Moscow, Stalin took her to Bose who was in prison there and asked her to convey to Nehru that he should not lean towards the USA, otherwise, he (Stalin) would send Bose back to India and then Nehru would lose power. When S Radhakrishnan succeeded Pandit, he is also said to have met Bose, and he blackmailed Nehru that he would expose him if he were not made the President of India.

In 1952, he was made vice president. In 1957, Nehru wanted him to succeed Rajendra Prasad on the ground that since the PM was from the North, the president should be from the south but Maulana Azad opposed strongly saying that Radhakrishnan never fought for the independence.

The plane crash theory is a humbug. Captain Abbas Ali, in an interview to the author, telecast on DD News, said that in the first week of September 1945, that is after August 18, 1945, when he reportedly died in the plane crash, Netaji addressed soldiers of the INA at officers’ mess, Singapore. There is no mention of Netaji’s death in plane crash in record of Formosa municipality either. And if he died, what happened to his dead body?

Though there is much talk of the INA trial (sedition trial against Shahnawaz Khan, Prem Prakash Sehagal and Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon), nobody talks about such trials against 45,000 other soldiers of the INA. In fact, four soldiers of the INA were hanged a few days after Nehru assumed the rein of the interim government, and Nehru kept mum. The best course would be to declassify documents pertaining to Netaji.