India's biggest cover-up

by Anuj Dhar

  The first man to call Khosla’s findings into question was Barun Sengupta. Soon after the commission report was tabled in Parliament, Sengupta began a series of fast-paced, incisive articles in Bangla daily Anandabazar Patrika. He accused Khosla of putting up the “pretence of an impartial inquiry” even though he suppressed vital records from the independent lawyers. “If they had access to these documents before the argument they could have brought out many secrets and the deceitful evidence of the so-called eyewitness would have been pierced with greater transparency.” [67] Sengupta mocked the way Khosla had glossed over the mismatch in various eyewitness accounts.

  If he believes that only the date of the plane accident and the death of Netaji in the hospital after the accident are the only matters of importance and significance then there is no doubt that all the Japanese witnesses and Habibur Rahman have given the same evidence. [68]

  Sengupta rebutted that if the Japanese had no respect for Bose, why was Lt Gen Isoda tailing him in his last known days? “How often during the liberation war of Bangladesh, our Lt Gen JS Arora was moving about with the acting president of Bangladesh…or their Prime Minister…?” [69] He concluded that from his analysis of the evidence advanced before the commission, “it is not at all established” that Bose had died in Taiwan. Rather, “according to a top secret plan and with the help of Japanese, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose disappeared from Saigon airport on 17th August, 1945”. [70]

  Before Khosla’s report could be discussed in Parliament, the Emergency was imposed and all leading Opposition leaders were imprisoned. Samar Guha was bundled into Rohtak jail with his friend Atal Bihari Vajpayee and giving them company were LK Advani and Devi Lal. Some 25 years hence, as Deputy Prime Minister of India, LK Advani would recall on Aaj Tak TV channel that Guha was “always talking and writing about Netaji”.

  The next year, when many leaders were still in jail, some glad tidings came from London. Thirty years after the end of the British Raj, Her Majesty’s Government released the single biggest compendium of official documentation for the period when the news of Bose’s death was received in India. The collection was volume VI of the mega Transfer of Power series, titled “The post-war phase: New moves by the Labour government, 1 August 1945-22 March 1946”.

  Post-Emergency, Guha rolled up his sleeves. For the first time in post-1947 India, the Congress party was not in power at the Centre. On 3 August 1977, Guha moved a motion in the Lok Sabha against Khosla’s report. He quoted from the records reproduced in the latest Transfer of Power volume. On the day Bose’s death was announced by the Japanese, Sir Robert Francis Mudie, Home Member (Home Minister) sent a note to Sir Evan Meredith Jenkins, Private Secretary to Viceroy Wavell, on how to deal with Bose. The note began with the premise that “one of the most difficult questions that will confront Home Department in the near future is the treatment of Subhas Chandra Bose”. Then it went on to list a number of options ranging from bringing “him back to India and try him either for waging war or under the enemy agents ordinance” to leaving “him where he is and don’t ask for his surrender”.

  But could the Home Department hazard a guess about Bose’s plans in post-surrender days? Certainly! The Allied intelligence had penetrated deep into INA, IIL set-up and whatever the Axis secretly deliberated on Bose was known to them. A lot of this was fed to the Intelligence Bureau, which functioned under the Home Department [ministry]. The department’s assessment was:

  In many ways the easiest course would be to leave him [Bose] where he is and not ask for his release. He might, of course, in certain circumstances, be welcomed by the Russians. This course would raise fewest immediate political difficulties, but the security authorities consider that in certain circumstances his presence in Russia would be so dangerous as to rule it out altogether. [71]

  Home Minister Charan Singh explained to Guha that it was quite possible that this assessment was made before the department received the death news. Guha then referred to documents created months later and doubting if Bose was indeed dead. One of these was a minute of the India and Burma committee held at 10 Downing Street under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Clement Attlee on 25 October 1945. It noted that “the only civilian renegade of importance” at that time was Subhas Bose. [72]

  Guha appealed that the Government should institute a fresh inquiry “without losing a day”. A number of MPs—from old-timer like HV Kamth to newcomer Dr Subramanian Swamy—supported the demand. “It is the unanimous voice of the House…it is a national question,” underscored Kazim Ali Meerza. Sasankasekhar Sanyal claimed that Khosla’s inquiry “was something like QED. This was to have been proved; this has been proved”. Almost giving up, the Home Minister said he was not “opposed to a fresh inquiry” but could not make any commitment. “The Government will consider it.” Guha moved a substitute motion, calling for the setting up of a three-man commission with powers to “scrutinize the secret official documents in possession of the Government of India” and obtain documents from the foreign governments.

  The Parliament session concluded at that juncture. In the intervening period Guha managed to overturn long-time government policy not to have Bose’s portrait in Parliament House. On 23 January 1978, President Neelam Sanjiva Reddy and Prime Minister Morarji Desai unveiled Bose’s portrait in the Central Hall, nearly thirty years after a demand was first raised by Kamath. Moved by the belated gesture, Subhas’s youngest brother Shailesh sobbed publicly. President Reddy looked at the portrait and remarked: “Netaji has come back today, though not as expected. …Some people say he is alive. I wish I could believe it so. If he is alive, let him come to us even for one day….” [73]

  In February that year, a most unlikely step was taken by a government official and it gladdened Guha no end. NG Goray, Guha’s friend and India’s new High Commissioner to the UK, took up the issue of Bose’s death with the last Viceroy and the first Governor-General of India. Lord Mountbatten’s encyclopedic memories of the India of late 1940s were as fresh as ever. A litte earlier, writers Larry Collins and Dominque Lapierre had met Mountbatten at his family mansion near Southampton and were struck when he recalled, one after another, the minute details of every big and small event down to the colour of horses and the make of the lanterns on his stately coach. And whenever he needed to refresh it, he would “go down to the basement of his mansion” to consult what the writers described as “the most extraordinary personal archive ever in the possession of a single individual”. [74]

  To such a man with such a wealth of information and experience, Goray addressed his letter. He drew Mountbatten’s attention to the records in the Transfer of Power volume and beseeched him to tell the truth about Bose’s death.

  As you took over from Lord Wavell it will not be wrong to presume that you must have come to know every detail about the incident…. Will it be possible for you to shed some authentic light on the Subhas episode...? [75]

  …

  You would say: “Why rake up the past?” My answer would be: Because there is a deep suspicion in India that Sri Bose took asylum in the USSR and all this was known to you, to Nehru, and the Soviet government. But all of you preferred to observe silence, an intriguing silence, I would say, because the British did not want to pick up a quarrel with their erstwhile ally and Nehru did not want to have a rival. [76]

  When Goray wrote this letter, two official panels appointed by the Government of India had already supported the air crash theory and Lord Mountbatten could have easily taken that line. But he didn’t. He dodged the query with an evasive reply on 10 March 1978 that “there was no official record of Subhas Chandra Bose’s death in his archives”. [77]

  That March, President Neelam Sanjiva Reddy released Guha’s book, the strangely titled Netaji: Dead or alive? For the first—and last—time since Independence, a head of the state openly strayed into the uncharted politically volatile issue. “Let us see him even for one day,” [78] Reddy wished 33 years after Bose’s death and remarked that “India wo
uld make another attempt to unravel the mystery of Netaji’s death”. Urging “the USSR to cooperate with the Government of India in ascertaining the truth about Netaji”, he said he “would coax the Soviet authorities to ‘send Netaji back if he is there’”. [79]

  Guha’s book took the readers through the Khosla Commission’s report with a fine tooth-comb. The narrative in Netaji: Dead or alive? often became obsessive and jumbled, but it nevertheless served its purpose. Unlike Suresh Bose’s Dissentient report, Guha’s book proved to be a hit. The most curious part of the book, though, was a passage in the forward, where Guha had made an astonishing claim that he “possessed some significant information which indicates that Netaji is still alive”.

  Khosla did not issue any rejoinders. As a judge he was not supposed to and he had no face to. Last days of Netaji had annoyed a section of the Bose family so much that, led by Dwijedranath Bose, they filed a suit against Khosla for trying to demean Bose. In a re-run of the defamation case filed by Justice Sikri, for more than a year Khosla was literally on the run. Finally, on 1 April 1978, he, a retired high court chief justice, accepted his comeuppance in a magistrate’s court in Kolkata. For the second time in his life, he had to wriggle out of a situation of his own creation by making an unqualified apology in which he accepted that Bose was “the liberator of our Motherland”.

  The high point of the year, and Guha’s achievement of a lifetime, came in the second half when the Lok Sabha was about to resume the discussion on Guha’s motion. In the weeks leading to it, Guha met Prime Minister Morarji Desai several times and sought a formal scrapping of the Khosla Commission report. Desai chided a much younger Guha like a schoolboy. “How can I reverse the stand of previous government?” Guha continued to insist and Desai confronted him: “Why do you say that Subhas babu is alive? If he had returned to the country in 1946, he would have become all-in-all. There would have been no Nehru, none from the Nehru family.” [80] Guha had no cogent answer. He said he had not met Bose but had been informed by some “honest people with no political ambitions” that Bose was now a holy man.

  Guha wouldn’t climb down and that put Desai in a bind. The proposed inquiry—possibility of which was being looked into by Desai’s Law Minister Shanti Bhushan—would have led to parliamentary questions, incisive reports from recently unshackled media and demands for declassifying secret files. It was a new era of great expectations and the bar was high for the Janata Party government. Even the officialdom was willing to venture into the hitherto forbidden Russian angle to the Bose mystery. A note in a secret PMO file actually contemplated the scenario of Bose’s possible escape to the USSR, and even the wild assumption that he could have got out of there, as theorised by Guha.

  In the face of evidence which has already been collected by the two committees it is only a strong positive evidence that can establish the faked character of the air crash and the fact that Netaji survived and went over to Manchuria and thence to Russia. The question will still be a million-dollar question. What happened to him when he went to Russia? Was he liquidated, as was the fashion in the time of Stalin, or did he escape? If so, how and where he got the asylum.

  The Janata Party government was not ready to dwell deep into this question publicly. It was simply not worth the trouble. An upright judge could have given the government a headache. So Desai made a bargain. He made Guha drop the demands for a fresh inquiry and in lieu of it gave out an honest appraisal of the Bose case.

  On 28 August 1978, Desai stood up in Lok Sabha, looked Guha in the eyes, and said: “I may differ sometimes from honourable friend, Mr Samar Guha, but I can never doubt, even in my sleep, his sincerity. I have great admiration for the dedication with which he is pursuing this cause and yet we have to be realistic.” He said the Government found it difficult to accept that the findings of Khosla and Shah Nawaz were decisive and requested Guha to withdraw his motion. Just as he had attained his finest moment, Guha got carried away and undid it all. With the rush of adrenal, he said:

  For me, there is no necessity any more of fresh inquiry. I got the report quite earlier and some important information also from very responsible quarters that Netaji is alive. Today for me there is no question of indecisiveness in any way. In the name of God, I announce in this House that I know that Netaji is alive.

  A hush fell before it was replaced by shouts and sniggers. The MPs gawked and smirked and laughed. Quite naturally. But the misty-eyed Guha went on and on with his impassioned outburst no one was taking seriously.

  Naturally, my friends will ask the question, why are you not divulging his whereabouts? I am too eager, too impatient to let the country know what I know, but then I have not the freedom yet to disclose what I know. ...But this much I can say, Netaji is nowhere under duress. He is a free man. I again pray to God along with all of you so that Netaji keeps well and we get him back in our midst as early as possible.

  This went on till the time the Speaker firmly asked Guha if he was formally withdrawing his motion. As he sat down agreeing, Guha murmured, “There is no necessity of any fresh inquiry because Netaji is alive.”

  Five months later followed a disaster which wiped out whatever credibility Guha was left with. On 22 January 1979 at the Calcutta Press Club he flaunted a photograph and told mediapersons that “Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose is alive, healthy and free”. [81] He said he had no intention of making political gain. “My moral responsibility impels me to let the people know that Netaji is alive.”[82] “No more inquiry commissions are needed.”[83]

  While paying our national tributes to Netaji on the occasion of his birthday, let our countrymen offer their prayers to the Almighty in temples, mosques, churches and everywhere for his long life and for his early appearance before his beloved countrymen. [84]

  Let this picture of Netaji taken recently (in India) dispel all certainties and doubts from their minds to know it definitely that their Netaji is living in intense tapasya (meditation) for the fulfillment of the unfulfilled mission of his divine motherland. [85]

  Guha said the picture was taken in 1978 in a temple in India and that he knew some non-political personalities who had had “the good fortune of seeing him”. [86] He claimed that the picture had already been shown to Jayaprakash Narayan, who had been “overwhelmed with an ecstatic joy”, [87] and the Lok Sabha Speaker KS Hegde. The others not named by Guha included President Reddy, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, HV Kamath and Gobinda Mukhoty.

  Disbelieving reporters hurled a volley of questions that Guha could not handle. “Please don’t cross-examine me. You are at liberty to take it at my word or reject it. I am not authorised to state anything more.” [88] “Excuse me, it is not possible at the moment to disclose where he is living.” [89] “Netaji...is a yogi of the highest order.... Netaji will not go the Sri Aurobindo way...the moment Netaji appears in public, there will be a political earthquake in India,”[90] Guha avowed he possessed “a host of information” that “countrymen will know from Netaji himself when he chooses his time to disclose it”. [91]

  Reporters, nevertheless, plied on and extracted something out of Guha. He told them that “the story of Netaji’s death in an aircrash in Formosa in 1945 was cooked up by his devoted accomplice Habibur Rahman, so as to cover up Netaji’s escape from approaching Anglo-American army. Netaji was in jail for many years in the Soviet Union”. [92] Guha would not say how “Netaji” had landed up in a temple in India, but couldn’t stop himself from launching a broadside against two former prime ministers. Desai’s statement in Parliament, Guha said, was “a step towards the present government’s undoing of a conspiracy”. [93] “The conspiracy of the father and daughter has now been undone by the present government.” [94]

  Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, Guha alleged, had committed “an unpardonable sin” by misleading “the people about Netaji’s fate and even undertook to hold a fake inquiry to fraudulently confirm the report of Netaji’s death”. [95] Nehru-bashing continued till the end of the press conference: “The
biggest treachery on the part of the first Prime Minister of India was suppression and concealment of convincing evidence….” [96]

  The next day, January 23, all major newspapers across India covered Guha’s press conference. Most either downplayed the announcement or tore into it. An editorial in the Tribune appealed to Prime Minister Desai to call Guha's bluff. No one responded. Guha's ridiculous claim about Bose being alive in 1979 and the serious charges against two former Prime Ministers were completely ignored by Desai. Ailing Jayaprakash Narayan did not issue any statement and nor did Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Probably they were much too embarrassed.

  But angered Congressmen decided to lock horns with Guha. They knew where to hit: Doubts had instantly been cast on the authenticity of the picture Guha had flaunted before the pressmen. They looked at it and knew it was a shoddy trick photography job. [The following is photocopy of the morphed picture Guha produced in 1979]

  Subrata Mukherjee, general secretary of West Bengal Congress (I)—still in active politics—later demonstrated that Subhas’s “head” was morphed on to a picture of Sarat Bose. Mukherjee dared Guha to prove his claim by producing Subhas Bose.

  The entire episode left a bad taste. For collateral damage, media disengaged itself completely from the Bose mystery. It was almost like the end of the road. In the years to come very little was heard on the issue on national level. Indira Gandhi returned to power in 1980. The call of duty for media was in Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir and Assam. There was no point in looking back.