by Anuj Dhar
Some time before the committee visited Japan, Amrita Bazar Patrika carried an “investigative” story “How Netaji met with plane crash” with “graphic details of Netaji’s fateful journey from Saigon”. This was a major scoop, carrying the sketch of the sitting arrangement of the passengers in the ill-fated plane.
The sketch was clearly a refurbished version of the one appearing in the secret Gaimusho report.
So how did reporters Hiren Singha and Deven Das lay their hands on the sketch and the other details? According to the paper, they had been “working for some time to unravel the mystery of Netaji’s disappearance”. But the two never really figured in the annals of the Bose mystery either before or since. Theirs was a “special appearance”, which bespoke of their being the beneficiaries of an obvious leak. But from where? Delhi or Tokyo? This was a local job. A clipping of the newspaper article was pasted on the Press Information Bureau sheet and kept in a secret file as a memento. Attached was a telltale note. “With the compliments of AR Vyas, Dy Information Officer, EA Ministry.” TN Kaul also sent the clipping to Shah Nawaz saying it would be “of interest to you”. When a government is gloating over a leak, you can be sure who is behind it.
On the eve of his crucial visit to Japan, Shah Nawaz frostily told Suresh Bose that as ordered by the Prime Minister he would examine a few witnesses and write the report. The committee members arrived in Tokyo in May 1956. Arriving in Tokyo in May 1956, Suresh Bose heard Shah Nawaz telling journalists that his “mission is mainly to interview people who might offer direct evidence on Subhas Bose’s death”.
Suresh Bose later charged that Shah Nawaz and Shankar Maitra “both connected with the Government” manipulated evidence “so that it could easily conform with the Prime Minister’s statements” that Bose had died in Taipei. He alleged that Shah Nawaz considered Unto him a witness as an “authoritative book” and
put leading questions to some witnesses from relevant portions of that book and at times allowed a few of them to peruse the book during their examination. Whenever any witness made a statement that did not fit in with his opinion, he would make a suggestion to him as to whether he remembered it definitely, as the incident took place about eleven years ago or would put other questions or suggestions to him to confuse him and to make him modify his answer or change his definite statement to a vague one. [27]
By mid-1956 Shah Nawaz had made up his mind what the NIC report would conclude. On June 23 he asked Suresh Bose what his findings were. “It’s like putting the cart before the horse,” Suresh replied. Jittery Shah Nawaz persisted that he needed to know Suresh’s mind beforehand. Suresh insisted that it would be possible for him to reach some conclusion only after he had evaluated the evidence on record.
On June 30 the three committee members met. Both Shah Nawaz and Suresh Bose took notes for personal references. Suresh’s note mostly recorded the views of the other two members for he “knew what my suggestions were”. Shah Nawaz set the tone by asserting that they were dealing with three issues: Bose’s death, his cremation and his ashes and “the last two would go a long way in proving the first one”. Suresh objected to his line of thinking. The ashes were not identifiable; they could be of someone else, he countered.
I suggested that it would be essential to record the suggestions for the draft report, which should be started with Netaji’s plan of going to Manchuria for continuing his activities for the independence of India in Russian territory…. [28]
This became point 1 of Suresh Bose’s note: “Since October 1944, when Netaji visited Tokyo, he carried out these intentions of his and attempted to contact the Russian Ambassador, and finally decided to go to Manchuria with that purpose in view”. [29]
Shah Nawaz and Maitra backed the air crash theory. Suresh duly noted it in points 2 and 3.
Whether the plane crash did take place: The plane carrying Netaji did crash. There is no other evidence to the contrary; the evidence should be considered carefully in details. [30]
Whether Netaji met his death as a result of this accident: There is no reason why they should be disbelieved. After a lapse of about 10 years, these witnesses, who belong to different walks of life and to different nationalities—Habib, an Indian and subsequently a Pakistani, and the others, who are Japanese, who are mostly unconnected with one another and no longer in the service of their government, and Japan not being a totalitarian state—would not be expected to state what was not true…. [31]
Point 7 again reflected Suresh Bose’s own ideas and belief. “Shri Thevar’s statements and statements of Shri Goswami. Their statements should be discussed while dealing with Netaji’s death or otherwise and a little more in detail separately later on.” [32]
After the discussion got over, the government nominee Maitra—who would ghost write the report for Shah Nawaz—played a trick. He asked Suresh Bose for a copy of his note on the pretext that he had not taken any himself.
He then had typed copies made of the same and requested me [Suresh Bose] to sign on them and both of them signed on my manuscript note. I did not object to any of these requests.
Suresh Bose would pay a heavy price for this. The copy of the note signed by the three was subsequently given a headline “Principal points agreed to for draft report, dated 30.6.56”. Shankar Maitra, Shah Nawaz Khan, Subimal Dutt, Jawaharlal Nehru all then brandished it as a trump card against Suresh Bose’s dissent; the proof of his suddenly changing his mind. This officially sponsored hoax continues to be floated in our times. Shivraj Patil repeated it in the Lok Sabha in 2006. In a sense, it’s reminiscent of an old Bollywood plot: A village moneylender takes thumbprint of an unsuspecting farmer on a dubious document and the farmer spends his lifetime in meeting the mortgage payments.
But the truth is that Suresh Bose’s stand before and after July 1956 was the same. He was quite vocal about his belief in Subhas’s continuing existence, and the Government knows it too well. By parroting the Nehruvian line, Shivraj Patil merely misled the nation like others before him. This is one unfair deal; the Government sits on all records and throws selective bits at us. A fair one would require it to place all Bose-related records in the public domain and let the people see for themselves how tangled the web of deceit really is.
On 5 May 1956, a good two months before Suresh Bose is alleged by the conspiracy theory mongers to have agreed with the findings of his colleagues, a secret letter was sent by Anand Mohan Sahay to Jawaharlal Nehru. An ex aide of Subhas Bose, and India’s Consul-General in Hanoi at that time, Sahay had no compunction in spying on his former leader’s brother, who thought very highly of him, and badmouthing him to the PM:
I am sorry to inform you that I found Shri Suresh Chandra Bose, a member of the committee and brother of Netaji, having a very peculiar way of approach. It was very clear from his talks with me that he has gone with the preconceived ideas and is making all possible efforts to discredit the work of the Committee itself. I doubt if he is going to sign the joint report. He may, perhaps, submit a separate report based on his own fantastic ideas. …He is bent on proving that Netaji is alive….
A quick reading of this letter would make it clear to anyone that the Government was informed of Suresh Bose’s straying away from the guided path much before he was accused of doing it—that is after July 1956. Any doubts about the Government ignoring Sahay’s high value intelligence or not understanding its import must be removed because the PM saw this letter and asked TN Kaul to reply to Sahay on his behalf:
“We are aware of this problem and can only hope that the gentleman concerned will express a fair, unbiased and impartial opinion on the subject,” TN Kaul pontificated to Sahay in his May 26 letter.
Expressing his opinion fairly and squarely was Suresh Bose when the committee members met on 10 July 1956 in New Delhi. He enumerated a number of discrepancies and contradictions he had detected concerning the air crash and Bose's death. Five days later he formally rested his case, saying he was veering towards the conclusion that th
ere had been no plane crash at all. Shah Nawaz told Suresh Bose that in that case he would have to write a separate dissenting report. Suresh demanded that the copies of the draft report, relevant papers, exhibits and photographs be given to him.
The last meeting Suresh Bose had with Shah Nawaz as a member of the Netaji Inquiry Committee was on July 16. Shah Nawaz frowned and asked him to vacate the committee’s office. “Spoilsport” Suresh was now at the receiving end of the government officer’s tantrums. As per his account, he was humiliated, compelled to leave Delhi and “not a single piece of important and relevant paper or exhibit from the record”[33] was provided to him for writing his report.
On July 29 Suresh Bose received a communication from Shah Nawaz demanding he should submit his dissenting report in two days. He saw the Government’s hand behind the pressure tactics. A few days later the Shah Nawaz-Maitra findings were leaked out to a Kolkata newspaper. Suresh immediately sent a letter to Shah Nawaz with a copy to the Prime Minister. The PM’s August 13 reply brought him little comfort. Nehru wrote that the leak “was some kind of an intelligent guess by some reporter or some clerk in our office here. Obviously, the chairman of the inquiry committee had nothing to do with it”. [34]
Suresh Bose reacted angrily. In his response, he termed government officials as “callous, non-obliging and indifferent” over the way they had treated him and accused Shah Nawaz of “making diabolic false statements”.
When the chairman curtly turned down my request for relevant papers, I suspected that without inspiration from higher ups, he would not have had the audacity to decline the legitimate request of his colleague. My opinion has now been confirmed. [35]
Pandit Nehru did not respond to this scathing attack accusing his government of trying to muffle Suresh’s views. A controversy at this stage had to be avoided. After some gap, Bengal Chief Minister Dr BC Roy started backchannel manoeuvrs. Those were rainy days for Dwijendra Bose, son of Satish Chandra Bose, the eldest among the Bose siblings. The Chief Minister spoke to him over the phone.
“Hello! Dwijendra, I am in search of you. Why are you afraid of seeing me? Come to my office, my dear!”
The discussion continued in the Chief Minister’s office.
“What are you doing in this business, earning a thousand here or a thousand there? How will you keep your family prestige with this paltry income? I will give you business.”
Dwijendra wasn’t averse to the idea. “You are a friend of the family. Rather you were—in the 30s and in the 20s. If you are in love with the family again, I am here, you may give me business. I will take it.”
“You get the report of Shah Nawaz signed by Suresh and I will give you whatever business you want,” Roy proposed.
“Not at that cost! I will never ask my uncle. And for argument’s sake, why would he listen to me?” Dwijendra said resenting.
Roy then had Suresh Bose come over to the Writers’ Building. As he entered his chamber, Roy confronted him. “Subhas is dead. How come you are stating to the contrary?”
“Who told you that Subhas is dead?” Suresh shot back.
Roy recounted the statements of some witnesses and Suresh discounted them citing the findings of intelligence agencies. Thereafter, Roy asked Suresh if he would like to be a Governor. This led to a fresh exchange of heated words. [36] Suresh Bose recalled a few years later that if he had signed the official report, his "reward would have been the Governorship of Bengal". [37]
On 3 August 1956, the Shah Nawaz-Shankar Maitra report was handed over to the Prime Minister. It concluded that “Bose met his death in an air crash, and that the ashes now at Renkoji temple, Tokyo, are his ashes”. [38] One major reasoning behind this finding was that “the evidence given by witnesses before us as to Netaji’s death is corroborated by the findings of British and American intelligence organisations...and the conclusions of an unofficial enquiry conducted a year later by an Indian journalist [Harin Shah]”. [39] The report recommended that the ashes should be “brought to India with due honour, and a memorial erected over them at a suitable place”. [40]
Three days later a copy of the report was sent to Dr BC Roy. The accompanying letter by Foreign Secretary Subimal Dutt in part connoted a sort of “mission accomplished” feeling. Dutt wrote the report was “quite interesting” and Roy “might find it worthwhile to glance through it”. Most of the letter reviled Suresh Bose—as a matter of government policy perhaps. The contents of the letter are going to offend Suresh Bose’s daughter Shiela Sengupta & the son of his other daughter—West Bengal Finance Minister Dr Amit Mitra.
We had also reports from our Ambassador in Tokyo, Shri BR Sen, that Suresh Babu behaved rather queerly when he was in Tokyo. For example, he used to meet people without the knowledge of the other members of the committee and made a little too much of his connection with Netaji. Simultaneously he used to pay visits to the Japanese foreign office and contact junior officers there to explore possibilities of establishing trade connections, apparently on his private account, with the Japanese.
The Union Cabinet approved the majority report on September 9. According to an official record, “the Cabinet also decided that ‘question of bringing over Netaji’s ashes to India might be left for future consideration’”.
On September 11, a reassured Prime Minister placed the report before Parliament. Newspapers the world over carried the news prominently the next day. “Anti-British Indian dead, inquiry finds,” was the New York Times headline. At home, the Hindu lead story was: “Death of Netaji established: Overwhelming evidence obtained.” In the Rajya Sabha, the Prime Minister adroitly fended off the few discontented lawmakers. “Mr Nehru said the Government felt that the evidence put forth in the report was adequate and no reasonable person who read it could come to any other conclusion. If a person had an unreasonable mind, it was difficult to reason with him.”
The Government also managed to block out with considerable ease the voices of criticism against the committee’s not visiting Taiwan to make local inquiries and ascertaining whether or not Bose had died there following an air crash and his body cremated. Shah Nawaz would go on to claim that
the matter was discussed amongst the members of the committee and it was decided not to go there. It was not under any pressure from our Government…. It was decided that no useful purpose would be served by going there after such a long time. [41]
It’s all about transparency. Shah Nawaz could not be hauled up for perpetuating a lie for no records whatsoever were in the public domain then. The situation is much the same even today and one cannot know the complete truth about the committee’s abortive Taipei trip. The concerned records remain confined within the impenetrable walls of the South Block, as if someone had wished them to remain there till eternity.
More than a month before he visited Japan, Shah Nawaz made a wish—quite obvious in the circumstances—that he should be allowed to visit Taiwan (Formosa). Hearing this, FS (Foreign Secretary) Dutt had a fit of paranoia. His FS/407 dated 18 April 1956 read:
As you are aware, we have no diplomatic relations with the Formosan government, nor do we recognise them. It is unlikely that they will give any facilities to our inquiry committee appointed by the Government of India in this matter. It is even possible that they would put obstacles in the way of the committee, and create difficulties and complications which would hinder rather than help the work of the committee. In these circumstances, we do not think it would be practical or advisable for the committee to go to Formosa.
Read “PM” for “we” in “we do not think” because the man really worried was not FS but PM. The following self-explanatory letter also dated April 18 issued by Joint Secretary TN Kaul was despatched by the diplomatic bag to Ambassador BR Sen in Tokyo.
Raise the matter again he did, Shah Nawaz. As anticipated by Kaul, he wrote to Ambassador Sen on 18 May 1956. It was elementary that an on-the-spot inquiry in Taiwan was going to serve a most useful purpose in a matter warranting scraping the bottom
of the barrel to scrub out the last vestige of doubts.
The Netaji Inquiry Committee has before it some evidence that the aeroplane carrying Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose crashed at Taihoku airfield in Taiwan (Formosa) and that his body was cremated there. In order to examine Formosan witnesses and to visit the alleged place of occurrence, the committee had before leaving Delhi enquired about the possibility of visiting Formosa and had written to Shri Dutt, Foreign Secretary. His reply dated 18 April was not very favourable. Since then, the committee has examined a number of witnesses in Japan and feel that it would be very desirable to pay a visit to Formosa, if it is at all possible.
Shah Nawaz exuded confidence that the Japanese “would be helpful if a proposal for the committee’s visit to Formosa is made to them”. He related a meeting with Hisaji Hattori, chief, Section 4 of Asian Affairs Bureau in the Gaimusho who gave him “to understand that such a request if made to them, they would be willing to use their good offices with the Taiwan authorities”.
“The committee has another 2 weeks in Japan and would be obliged if the possibility of paying a visit to Formosa is further examined to enable them to do so during this time,” Shah Nawaz beseeched.
Next day, Sen sent a telegram to the Foreign Secretary. Conveying Shah Nawaz’s thoughts, he added:
I feel that if approach by the committee is peremptorily dismissed the committee will have a grievance which may make their whole report infructuous in the eyes of some sections of our people. In my view therefore the committee should be permitted to approach Japanese government for their good offices in the matter even if embassy keeps out of it. Please place the matter before Prime Minister.