India's biggest cover-up

by Anuj Dhar

  The second Indian note verbale was sent on 27 July 1995. This time the ministry would have appeared to the Russian officers as acting as a proxy for Samar Guha, who was the one, according to the note, asking for clarifications from the Russians. The note requested that “all material available on this subject be examined for a final determination on whether or not Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose entered or stayed anywhere in the territory of the former Soviet Union in 1945 or subsequently”. The Russians sent a forceful reply:

  As a result of the investigations carried out at the central archival collection of the Federal Security Service of Russia, and the Russian Centre for Retention and Perusal of Documents of Modern History, no information whatsoever has come to light on the stay of Subhas Chandra Bose on the territory of the former USSR in 1945 and in subsequent years.

  Forwarding this note verbale dated 27 October 1995, head of the Third Asia Department in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Kotov, went a little overboard. He made a sweeping assertion that “we can be sure that Netaji has never set foot on Russian soil” and that “extensive research carried out upon the latest request of yours hardly leaves any doubts to this effect”.

  How can that be? How could Ambassador Kotov say that Bose never set a foot on the Russian soil when it is a historical fact that he had passed through Moscow on his way to Berlin in 1941? It’s quite simple. Touradjev’s KGB records-based article tells us: “On March 15, a visa with number 064033 was put up in the passport of an Italian citizen O Mazzotta with Bose’s photograph, allowing him to pass through the USSR without halt. The order for issuing the visa was given personally by the Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, A Ya Vyshinsky.” [39]

  So there you are. Touradjev further wrote that when a British envoy at Kabul later on asked the Soviet ambassador if “he knew anything about Bose and whether any visa had been issued to Bose to cross over to Germany”, the British diplomat was told that the “Soviet embassy at Kabul had no information about Subhas Chandra Bose”. Touradjev commented: “Formally it was true: the visa in fact was received by an Italian engineer Oralndo Mazzotta.” [40]

  Maintaining records under assumed, coded names or even numbers is not alien to governments. It comes quite handy when you have to deny the existence of certain information and yet be able to give out a legally tenable response. Wallenberg researchers came across evidence that the Soviets “employed a system of assigning numbers rather than names for special prisoners” and “during interrogations, prisoners were often registered under false names”. [41] Justice Mukherjee was told in Russia that if Bose had been assigned an assumed name upon his entry into the USSR, no records about him under his own name would ever be found.

  The formal Russian denials were buttressed by an inspired newsstory whose trail went back to the ubiquitous Pranab Mukherjee. Senior journalist Suman Chattopadhya wrote a polemical article titled “Netaji bhaktader tandab—andha biswaser grase subuddhi” (Vandalism by devotees of Netaji—good sense in grip of blind faith) in the Anandabazar Patrika. Chattopadhya’s own eyes had been opened to the truth at a “meeting in the Indian Embassy in Moscow in which one Russian historian, Mr Vergov, had stated that there was no question of Netaji going to Russia”. When questioned by the Mukherjee Commission in November 2000, Chattopadhya started dropping big names:

  Pranab Mukherjee, the then foreign minister of the country, showed me a letter in Russian language in which it was stated that there was no document relating to Netaji after 1945 in the archives of Russia. Later it was corroborated by Mr Ronen Sen, the then Indian Ambassador to Russia. [42]

  So, going by Chattopadhya’s statement, Pranab Mukherjee perhaps made an unauthorized disclosure of information received in confidence from a foreign state. As to why he could have done that would require going back to the mid-1990s when the Russian angle to Bose mystery was grabbing headlines in India. The genesis of this resurgence lay in a 1993 agreement between Kolkata’s Asiatic Society and Moscow’s Institute of the Oriental Studies to organise research in Russian archives to probe the missing links in Indian history. The agreement enabled Dr Purabi Roy, Sobhanlal Dutta Gupta and Dr Hari Vasudevan to scour through the Russian archives. There, while interacting with Russian scholars, the Indians got convinced that the Russian archives were holding secret records on Bose’s presence in the USSR beyond 1945.

  Dr Hari Vasudevan visited the KGB’s central archival office and “was ‘aggressively rebuffed'” for asking about files on Bose. “I was told no requests would be entertained without considerable official pressure from India,” [43] he told Hindustan Times. The problems did not get resolved when the scholars sought intervention by the Indian embassy.

  What baffled the Asiatic Society team the most was the studied indifference of New Delhi. According to one member of the team, the then Indian ambassador in Moscow, Ronen Sen, made it clear that beyond the note verbale “that was as far as the embassy could go”. [44]

  The researchers turned to the Asiatic Society for help. Its general secretary, Chandan Roychowdhury, rose to the occasion. Normally, people sitting in some important position show you the door if you ask them for help on the Bose matter. On behalf of the society, Roychowdhury wrote letters of request to External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Minister of State for External Affairs Salman Khurshid, and then to Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao—a self-proclaimed “follower” of Bose—seeking access for the scholars to the Russian archives. Not everyone displayed the rudimentary courtesy of replying that they had received letters from such a reputed organisation.

  In September 1995, Roy, Vasudevan and Roychowdhury launched a never-before media offensive on the Bose issue. The Statesman, Delhi edition, carried report “Documents on Netaji lying in KGB vaults” on 14 September 1995. The report stated that “the scholars…regretted that in most cases, they were not allowed to study the required files and documents. The problems were further accentuated due to ‘restrictions’ imposed by a section of officials of the Indian Embassy in Moscow.”

  The Times of India quoted Dr Roy the next day as saying that the Government “should impress upon the Russian authorities to permit Indian scholars access to the KGB and the President’s Archives as it might help clear the mystery of Netaji’s disappearance”. Roychowdhury “said he had already sent letters to Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao and the External Affairs Minister to use their good offices in this matter”.

  Dr Vasudevan told the Indian Express on 19 September 1995 that “while scholars of most Western countries are making the most of the [Russian] archives, we are suffering due to the quirky attitude of the MEA”. For any government in a mature democratic polity such a public damnation over a national icon would have sprung the head of the government to issue clarification. But it was not for nothing that Narasimha Rao was likened to the Sphinx.

  A feeble counteroffensive was launched in December 1996. Researcher Joychandra Singh told media there was nothing more to the Bose mystery other than the Taipei crash. He claimed that Russia too upheld this theory. This he attributed to a response he had received from the Russian defence ministry archives in Moscow. Quite remarkable that a private citizen like Singh should have been able to elicit a direct response from the Russians, who hardly ever entertained such requests. But Singh had strong credentials. He had the tacit support of the Government. He had earlier been able to procure a counterfeit death certificate for Bose issued by Dr Yoshimi in 1988.

  The MEA records show that a Russian defence ministry note verbale dated 28 October 1996 was received by the Indian embassy from the Russian foreign ministry enclosing a letter from head of the archives in response to Singh’s letter. “There are no records with the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation about the catastrophe in August 1945 and death of...Bose.” Joychandra Singh put his own spin on this to give journalists the impression that Russia upheld the Indian government-approved theory. He harped on his “12-year-old research” [45] on the issue, which h
ad been inspired by a communication from the Indira Gandhi government urging him to propagate the Taipei death story.

  Singh ran out of steam soon after, while Dr Purabi Roy continued to take the Government to task alone. “If they are confident that Netaji was actually killed in a plane crash in 1945, why have they always tried to scuttle any fresh investigation? If they are clean, let them provide us access to the two archives and see what’s there?” [46] In 1996, she chanced to reach out to the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation. Viktor Chernomyrdin mooted the idea of an Indo-Russian commission to investigate the missing Indian nationals within the territory of the erstwhile USSR.

  But was anyone interested in India? RL Narayan, the Joint Secretary in charge of Europe East Division of the External Affairs Ministry—JS (EE)—made an assessment of the situation in 1996. In the note of 12 January 1996, Narayan, who had had two stints in Moscow, admitted that “from time to time various articles have appeared in the Soviet/Russia press insinuating, though without any actual proof that Netaji in fact stayed/was incarcerated in the Soviet Union after 1945”.

  The note then set out to tackle the Asiatic Society’s poser that “unless the Ministry of External Affairs of our Government prevails upon the Russian authorities to allow our scholars access to KGB archives it is absolutely impossible for the scholars to pursue the matter further either of this country or of scholars of Russia”.

  Explaining the backdrop, Narayan mentioned that

  there are broadly three kinds of archives which may be of relevance. Papers relating to the Stalinist period (KGB archives) are kept separately and have so far not been accessed by foreign and even Russian scholars, with the exception perhaps of very limited and selected scholars like the late historian Volkogonov, who has published biographies of Lenin and Stalin on this basis. Papers relating to the post-Stalin period fall into two categories—governmental and Central Committee/Politburo (these are again kept separately). The Russian foreign ministry’s note verbale suggests that their disclaimer about Netaji may be based essentially on perusal of these latter archives.

  With this setting in mind, he opined:

  It would be unrealistic for us to expect the Russian authorities to allow our scholars access to KGB archives. What we can do is to request the Russian authorities to conduct a search into these archives, and let us know if there is any evidence of Netaji’s stay in the Soviet Union. It is recommended that we may request our Ambassador in Moscow to make a suitable démarche to the Russian authorities on the above lines.

  Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee saw this note and scrawled at the end that FS [Foreign Secretary Salman Haidar] should discuss the issue with the JS (EE) “urgently”.

  The details of that meeting between Haidar and Narayan are not known. Haidar goes off on TV these days talking at great length about all sort of happening in remote corners of the world, never saying a word about Bose.

  But the outcome of the meeting was evident in the actions that followed. No démarche was ever issued, as was recommended by Narayan. On the contrary, he started taking a hardline against the Asiatic Society scholars. Narayan was confronted with the problem yet again after Subhas’s nephew Pradip, son of Suresh Bose, wrote to Prime Minister drawing his attention to the information said to be available in Russia.

  The Joint Secretary now articulated in his note dated 7 March 1996 that the Asiatic Society scholars had “unearthed no hard evidence of Netaji’s stay in the Soviet Union” and yet requested the Government to make a formal request to the Russians. Pradip Bose, he noted, “has gone a step further and has requested [the] Government of India to seek access to these files for the scholars”. Narayan opposed it tooth and nail, saying that “no country in the world would permit access by foreign governments, let alone scholars from foreign countries, to its intelligence files”.

  We have no evidence that such files exist; on the contrary, the Russian government has categorically told us that they have no evidence in their archives that Netaji was in the USSR after 1945. ...In the circumstances, it is felt that it would not be appropriate for Government of India to request to the Russian government to open the KGB/Presidential archives to the Asiatic Society scholars. This would amount to our disbelieving the Russian government’s categorical and official statement on the subject.

  This note was seen by Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, who issued the following instruction through his secretary:

  PM would like our Ambassador in Moscow to make discreet enquiries at a high level to ascertain, if possible, the existence of such information in Russia; and the possible reaction of the Russian side if we were to request access. Foreign Secretary may kindly see.

  It is quite clear that the PM was well aware of the importance of a “high level” contact. But whatever the Ambassador did in Moscow did not change anything. In his November 1996 note, Narayan charged the Asiatic Society scholars with wanting to access Russian archives “essentially in order to go on a fishing expedition in search of material on Netaji” which they “have convinced themselves, exists in these archives”. Therefore,

  our seeking to obtain access to these classified archives on behalf of the Asiatic Society, after the Russian government has repeatedly and formally told us that they have no evidence of Netaji having been in the Soviet Union after 1945 can therefore be easily misunderstood by the Russian side. From the present perspective of Indo-Russian relations, such a request would serve no positive purpose, but could well have a negative impact.

  Narayan—a would-be ambassador—also tried to reason why India could not seek access to security and intelligence-related archives in Russia like the Presidential Archive, the archives of the Foreign Security Service and the Archives of the Army General Staff:

  Was the task as uphill as it appeared from Raisina Hill? “Access” is not to be understood in its general meaning. If the R&AW were to give some MI6 expert probing terrorist outfits threatening both nations an access to its records, it wouldn’t simply invite the expert to visit its ultra secret record room and let him roam free and pick out anything he wants. The “access” would be a controlled release of information sought by the expert, but vetted and cleared by the Indian officials. This was precisely what then Intelligence Bureau chief Atma Jayaram meant when GD Khosla asked him if the IB had “presented whatever material you had to the Shah Nawaz Committee”.“We do not present any material as an organisation but we have given them access to our material.”[47]

  Around the time the Indian government refused assistance to the Asiatic Society scholars in accessing security and intelligence-related archives in Russia, the members of Russian-Swedish Working Group on Wallenberg were being given an access to such archives. It is axiomatic that where there is a will, there is a way. The very idea of the formation of this group had been suggested at a meeting between Swedish Ambassador and Soviet foreign ministry and the KGB officials in 1991. Most significantly, “Kryuchkov, then head of the KGB, received Örjan Berner, the Swedish Ambassador, and undertook to release all KGB employees with some knowledge of the matter from their pledge of secrecy.” [48]

  Will the Russians ever do the same for Subhas? Can we expect our IB and R&AW chiefs to make similar announcement?

  Accessing intelligence archives in Russia was not that sort of an issue that our government made it out to be. Given the friendly vibes between the Russians and us, they would be much more open to us than they were to the Swedes—who were openly hostile towards them. Furthermore, it was preposterous to speculate what we would do if the Russians asked us for access to our archives. Because, one, we had no skeletons to hide and, two, it was fairly common for two friendly nations to exchange current, operational intelligence, leave aside records from a bygone era.

  A classic illustration was recently provided by Prof Christopher Andrew, world’s most respected intelligence scholar and writer of the authorised history of the MI5. He told the DNA of Mumbai in an interview that during the Nehru years the Intelligence Bureau h
ad actually invited the MI5 “to come over and have a look at the records that the IB has collected on the Moscow subsidies to the Communist Party of India”. [49] The point to ponder is that can a government which itself is sitting on loads of classified records on a man have the face to ask a foreign government to release records about him? We Indians should first make a clean breast of whatever we know about Netaji and then approach the foreigners. Charity should always begin at home.

  Speaking of foreigners, there are great many things—more about compassion than investigation—that we need to learn from the Swedes. In 2000 the Russian-Swedish group presented its findings on Raoul Wallenberg. The Swedish report concluded that "Wallenberg's death could only be accepted if it were confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt" and that it had "not happened, partly for the want of a credible death certificate, and partly because the testimony about Raoul Wallenberg being alive after 1947 cannot be dismissed". [50] That is, the Swedes refused to treat the Smoltsov memorandum as evidence of Wallenberg's death even though it mentioned his name. And here we are in India, willing to accept the Japanese foreign ministry's assertion that the records pertaining to soldier Ichiro Okura were for Bose somehow.

  Quite pertinent for us to see how the Swedish government reacted to the findings. No one rued about the time and money invested in reinvestigating the case. Writing the preface of the Swedish report, State Secretary for Foreign Affairs Hans Dahlgren hoped that the report "will contribute towards increasing our knowledge about him and lead to suggestions for new lines of inquiry". [51] The day the report was made public, the country's Prime Minister, Göran Persson, issued a statement promising that "our efforts to obtain an answer on what really happened to Raoul Wallenberg will be continued. ...The Government will therefore be allocating further resources in order to follow up the working group's reports." [52]