by Anuj Dhar
A bewildering truth was revealed today afternoon. Unthinkable are its possibilities; everything associated with it is unimaginable. I will not try to express in language or analyse my feelings. I will only say that O God of miracles, I see again that suddenly some things happen somewhere—the eternal impossible appears in the form of the eternal possible. Those, whom I shared this with, reacted in various strange ways. [Translated from Bangla]
Thereafter she called a meeting of Sree Sangha confidants and close relatives. Sunil Das, Shaila Sen, Ajit Nag, Helena Dutta, Santosh Bhattacharya, Sagrika Ghosh, Bijoy Nag, Basana Guha and her husband Prof Samar Guha attended. On March 23, accompanied by Shaila Sen and Prof Guha, Leela Roy arrived at Naimisharanya.
According to many followers and local media reports, she was not the first high-profile woman visitor received by Bhagwanji. Anandamayee Ma was one of the most respected Hindu saints of her times; someone who knew Gandhi, Nehru, Bose and attracted a large number of Westerners. A video of hers on the YouTube shows Prime Minister Indira Gandhi paying a visit to her in the 1980s. The mighty Indira is seen in the video to be treating Anandamayee Ma with utmost deference. This Anandamayee Ma was said to have made some efforts before Bhagwanji allowed her to establish contact with him.
Leela Roy endured a tearful, three-day long ordeal before Bhagwanji agreed to meet her. Srikant Sharma, who played the role of mediator, told me that Bhagwanji paid no attention to either Shaila Sen or Samar Guha. “He told me that Guha was just a child when he left India.” Bhagwanji gave Roy some instruction written by him in Bangla. But he was not yet ready to let anyone take a specimen of his handwriting. “My hands trembling—had to write every (Bangla) letter remembering after two decades of lapse. Please transfer it to your own writing and, return the paper.”
Convinced that Bhagwanji was Subhas Bose, Leela Roy on her return to Kolkata told her adopted son and nephew Bijoy Nag about the incredible meeting. "He has done so much for the country. He is suffering even now." Some time later, Pabitra again went back to Bhagwanji along with former revolutionary Amal Roy. They stayed there for a month.
The first person Leela Roy sent to Bhagwanji from Kolkata was an alternative medicine practitioner and a former freedom fighter. Kamalakant Ghosh took care of Bhagwanji’s immediate medical needs. Santosh Bhattacharya, another emissary Roy sent would get to spend a lot of time with Bhagwanji. Bhattacharya was sure that Bhagwanji was Bose, whom he had served as young party worker in the late 1930s. He and Dulal Nandy—who lives near Kolkata—doubled as packers and movers whenever Bhagwanji shifted his residence. It was Dulal who presented the Rolex watch to Bhagwanji; Leela Roy gave the Omega gold.
At Bhagwanji’s instance, Leela Roy informed a few of Bose’s former political associates about “him”. But none believed her, because they thought if he was indeed back, he would have contacted them before anyone else. Leela Roy also sounded out some people who knew Bose intimately: Brother Suresh Bose, childhood friend Dilip Kumar Roy, political compatriots Trailokya Nath Chakravarty and Ashrafuddin Ahmed Chaudhury, industrialist Ashutosh Ganguly and ascetic Swami Asimanand Saraswati. Only one or two among them were able to pay Bhagwanji a visit subsequently. Some of these people were seen in the pictures later sent to Bhagwanji. One for instance showed elderly Suresh Bose paying homage to Leela Roy.
The message to Dilip Kumar Roy, who studied with Bose in London but became a holy man afterwards, was conveyed through a hand-delivered letter in 1963. Wrecked physically by a recent stroke, Leela Roy wrote with a shaking hand…
I wanted to tell you about your friend. I am not entitled to speak much, but I can only inform you that “He’s alive—in India.” He has mentioned about your friendship with him many times. For example, “It was Dilip who always wanted to make me mystic.”For this reason, this letter is important.... If you trust me, then it is 100 per cent correct. No one else should know about it—this is the stern injunction on me. [Translated from Bangla, except the words empasised] [5]
Reaching Trailokya Nath Chakravarty “Maharaj” was not easy for he was in east Pakistan, the present-day Bangladesh. “Maharaj” had troubled the British during the freedom struggle so much so that he had to be kept behind the bars for 30 years in all, more than ten years of which were in the notorious prison hell in Port Blair.
Undeterred by the boundary divide, Leela Roy asked her confidant Sailendra Roy, died a few years ago only, to sneak into east Pakistan and deliver the message. Formidable Chakravarty turned to jelly on receiving it. In 1963, he wrote his first letter to Bhagwanji.
After Partition, I decided I would not leave my country. Hence, I am staying in east Pakistan only. The person with whom I was lodged in Mandalay Jail, played tennis and participated in Durga Puja—I have not forgotten him. I’m still with him. In Delhi, in the year 1940, at Shankar Lal’s residence I was accompanying him. I was by his side while we toured United Province—on a chilling winter night in the Agra ground, hundreds of people were waiting for him till nine at night. I’m eagerly waiting for the same person. The oppressed and tortured people of East Pakistan are waiting for him. [Translated from Bangla] [6]
"Maharaj writes as if he's writing to my uncle," a nephew of Bose told me after going through the letter carefully. Shankar Lal was Forward Bloc’s general secretary. It was at his Delhi residence in New Delhi in 1940 that Trailokya had last met Bose. He was also with Bose when he was bundled to the dreaded Mandalay Jail in the 1920s.
Maharaj’s struggle went on even after 1947. He actively participated in the efforts to secure freedom for Bangladesh till he took ill, was brought to India and died in 1970.
Another senior revolutionary who came to know Bhagwanji’s secret through Pabitra Mohan Roy was Ashutosh Kali. An Anushilan Samity veteran like Roy, Kali too had been prevented by long years in prison (1916 to 1938 and 1940 to 1946) from playing a bigger role in the freedom struggle. In May 1963 he offered his services to Bhagwanji.
The moment we received your instructions we started maintaining secrecy. …I am determined not to allow any laxity on our part…any danger to your existence is not just so for you but also for us all. It can result in a great disaster as well as an immense damage to the nation. [Translated from the Hindi rendering of the original in Bangla]
Before he died in an accident in 1965, Kali visited Bhagawanji in May 1963. His another undated letter read:
Ever since we got news of you, all of us, the entire Anushilan group, have been yearning to gain from your guidance and work under your instructions. …I have crossed the age of seventy (but) the idealism that I imbibed from the valiant revolutionaries, the courage with which I fought everything is still burning bright within me. …If you exhort, even at this point of life I will not hesitate to join the movement. I wanted to inform you that Basanti Devi is desperate to receive news of you. She has requested us to let her know about your whereabouts. [Translated from the Hindi rendering of the original in Bangla]
I cannot vouch for it but the reference to Basanti Devi in Kali’s letter was probably to the wife of Bose’s mentor Chittaranjan Das, a motherly figure to Subhas. However, I am convinced that Subhas’s sejda Suresh Bose took Bhagwanji to be his brother. After being sounded out by Leela Roy and Pabitra, Suresh Bose told his confidant Sunil Krishna Gupta in late 1963 to go to Basti in UP and contact “Subhas”. Bhagwanji was the reason why Suresh Bose had stated before the Khosla Commission that his brother was alive.
Died in 2010, Sunil Krishna Gupta was one of the selected Bengali disciples of Bhagwanji’s. The rest were Sunil Das, Santosh Bhattacharya, Pabitra Mohan Roy (all deceased), Dulal Nandi and Bijoy Nag, the current editor of Jayasree. All of Sunil Gupta’s siblings were freedom fighters with elder brother Dinesh Gupta forming the Badal-Binoy-Dinesh trio. In a heroic tale not too well-known outside Bengal, the three teenagers in 1930 made a daring entrance into the Writers’ Building and shot dead a top cop for he had mishandled Subhas Bose. Today statues of the three martyrs are a popular landmark outside th
e seat of power in West Bengal.
Sunil Krishna Gupta assisted Amar Prasad Chakrovarty, the Forward Bloc counsel before the Khosla Commission. Many of Chakrovarty’s posers for the witnesses evidently came from Sunil and they certainly did not fit in present-day Forward Bloc’s confused worldview, which doesn’t see Subhas Bose emerging alive out of the USSR. This is despite Keshab Bhattacherjee, the lawyer who represented the party before the Mukherjee Commission, coming out openly in favour of the Bhagwanji angle in his 2011 Bangla book.
In the 1990s, Sunil Gupta was the moving force behind Rudra Jyoti Bhattacharjee’s PIL leading to formation of the Mukherjee Commission in 1999. As his health failed, his nephew Surajit Dasgupta and Surajit’s friends Prof Nandalal Chakravarty and Dr Madhusudan Pal became a fixture at the commission. Because Sunil Gupta died in penury and an unsung man—he told me that he shunned publicity—people have trouble recalling his name. But the following certification from a most unimpeachable authority proves that Sunil Gupta was indeed quite close to Suresh Bose and the Bose family.
On 17 August 1956, Intelligence Bureau Deputy Director S Balakrishna Shetty wrote this to the Home Ministry:
We reliably understand that some of the Top Secret papers of the Government of India made available to the Chairman of the Netaji Inquiry Committee are now in the possession of one Sunil Krishna Gupta…. He appears to have obtained them through his friend Mr Bose who a was member of the Netaji Inquiry Committee and intends to show them to Muthuramalingam Thevar.
Upon receipt of the IB note, a Top Secret DO letter dated 23/24 August 1956 was written by Joint Secretary N Sahgal to SN Ray, then Chief Secretary of Bengal. The two ICS officers, two former toadies of the British Raj, then dissected the credentials of a freedom fighter. Sahgal suggested that Bengal government “might like to have the matter looked into and...have the premises of Sunil Krishna Gupta searched for the recovery of the file”. Ray’s Top Secret DO dated 10 June 1957 gave the result of the inquiry by the West Bengal Intelligence Branch, which utilised the services of two INA veterans:
Sunil Krishna Gupta…is well educated, possess considerable cultural attainments and is intimately known to the Bose family. All the members of Sunil’s family, including his two grown-up sisters were associated with the political movement in the Far East sponsored by the late Subhas Chandra Bose. ...A highly responsible member of the former Rani Jhansi regiment and a commander of one of the INA guerrilla regiments, both of whom were in the confidence of Shri Suresh Bose, told our agents that not even a scrap of the secret papers of the Government of India had so far come to the possession of the inner group of Shri Suresh Bose.
A 1999 TIME magazine article described Sunil Gupta as someone who “demands no recognition and even refuses to be named”. [7] I can vouch for it, having remained in touch with him for years.
There were many who kept in touch with Bhagwanji believing he was Subhas Bose. Letters of certain Bhoop Bahadur of Coochbehar and one VR Mohan were found in Rambhawan. The names sound like those of the former king of the region where Shaulmari ashram was located and a well-known distillery industrialist. The holy man would destroy much of his correspondence by burning and then scattering the ash. Some that have survived the destruction tell their own story. The following note for instance was presumably written by former West Bengal Chief Minister Prafulla Ghosh.
The writer “Malikanada Ghosh”—which was Prafulla’s alias—laments that his life would have taken a different turn if the events of “the Haripura session leading to the Wellington Square happenings” not taken place. Haripura Congress session witnessed the rise of Subhas Bose as the Congress president, and at the Wellington Square session, he was forced to step down. Bhagwanji discouraged his followers to speak or write about his identity but most could not stop themselves from dropping hints that they were aware of it.
Now, this should give goose bumps to the RSS/BJP/VHP rank and file. The Guruji of entire current top brass of the Sangh parivar—former Prime Minister Vajpayee, former deputy PM Advani, former HRD minister Dr Joshi, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, his predecessor KS Sudarshan—held Bhagwanji in highest esteem. It is evident from a letter written by Madhav Golwalkar to him. This too was found at Rambhawan.
Golwalkar starts the letter with salutation: “I bow before you a hundred times.” The content of the letter gives the impression as if Golwalkar, who ran India’s biggest social organisation, was taking orders from a nondescript hermit who hardly left his room. No, there is no doubt that this letter was meant for and was received by Bhagwanji. The letter carries faint notes in his handwriting mentioning the name of RSS founder Dr Keshav Hegdevar and some astrological calculation about Golwalkar, who was quite unwell at that time.
Many followers who did not see Bhagwanji’s face for quite some time nevertheless believed that he was Bose because of his unmistakable voice and the ability to recall the details only Bose would have known. I have reasons to think that they were not bluffing. For instance, there is the case of AC Das of the INA secret service. Records declassified in 1997 and now available at the National Archives in New Delhi contain an intelligence report saying that on his last night in Bangkok, Bose had a long talk with Das about the underground work after the Japanese surrender. Another report speaks of the CSDIC’s anxiousness to nab him, as Das had gone missing after Bose’s reported death. [8]
Yet another record which was used as an exhibit by the Mukherjee Commission in some other context shows Bose writing to Hikari Kikan, the Japanese military body which liaised with the Provisional Government of Free India, to hand over one AC Das fifty revolvers, some wireless sets and some British currency for post-war work.
None of these documents were in public domain so long as Das lived. In 1955, the Shah Nawaz Committee examined Das at Bangkok and its report cited his evidence in support of the air crash theory:
When he [Das] heard the news of the crash, he like others did not believe it. But although Mr Sunil Roy had the wavelength, frequency, call signs etc. to contact Netaji, he tried in vain to contact him. They gave up the attempt after 10 days, and believed that the plane had indeed crashed with Netaji. [9]
Das eventually returned to India. He also gave evidence before the Khosla Commission, where he stated that he actually never believed in the news of Bose’s death. Das did not tell the commission that courtesy Leela Roy he was at that time in touch with Bhagwanji, thinking he was Bose. Rambhawan yielded several of his letters. The first one was written in 1964 and had been appended by Leela Roy along with her letter. Roy titled it “the credentials of Anil Das alias Renu” but it was something of an aide-memoire for Bhagwanji. In the letter, Das referred to his role in the freedom struggle that had began in 1930s and lasted beyond 1945.
On the night before he left Bangkok, Netaji took individual interviews of a number of people. I was one of them. When Netaji called me it was half past 2am. He told me about the post-war work and cautioned me against getting arrested. He gave me a letter addressed to Hikari Kikan. ...Netaji said that wherever he may go, he would remain in contact with us via wireless....
When I heard the news of the crash of Netaji’s plane, I knew such a news would come and it would not be true. I waited for over a decade and in 1956 I visited India and told everything to auntie [Leela Roy]. In 1961 I left Bangkok for good and last year auntie sent me to Naimisharanya and thereafter whatever small or big news I wanted to know I came to know from her. Now I am waiting for your orders. [Translated from the Hindi rendering of original in Bangla]
After perusing this letter, Bhagwanji specifically asked Das about what had really happened after 16 August 1945 and what statements were given by the captured INA personnel. Das elaborated in another letter that he
received two wireless sets and a few revolvers, pistols and stenguns from Hikari Kikan. They could not give me British currency. Then I went underground. Within six-seven days the British military reached Bangkok. …First Debnath Das surrendered before British military authority, and
he was let off after his statement was taken. [Translated from the Hindi rendering of original in Bangla]
Das, who did not marry, is now dead but his letters and the testimonies of people whom he regarded as his family make it abundantly clear to me as to what his belief was with regard to Bhagwanji. When he granted audience to Das, Bhagwanji corrected a few details about “their meeting” in Bangkok.
It is not that everyone with links to Bose gained access to Bhagwanji. The holy man was highly selective. At one point, political activist Manu Bhai Bhimani—who had been associated with Gandhi, Bose and other leaders before 1947—came in contact with one Bhagwanji follower. As Bhimani was sounded off about “Netaji’s” presence in India, he expressed some views which were jotted down in a short note in a small piece of paper and sent to Bhagwanji. The note, discovered from Rambhawan, said:
He [Bhimani] came in contact through a common friend. He talks too much. He says that:
1) If Netaji is in India why does he not appear or broadcast? All the people will accept his leadership at once.
….
3) He helped Shri Sarat Chandra Bose all the time till he was alive.
4) He helped Netaji when he escaped from Calcutta to Kabul. Sisir and Manu Bhai went with him. He has a special white bag which he used when he accompanied Netaji.
I verified the points 3 and 4 from Sisir Bose—Point 3 is correct, and point 4 is not correct. (and you can say also) Bhimani also sent me a letter which has been sent for your kind perusal.