India's biggest cover-up

by Anuj Dhar

  My efforts to ascertain the identity of the bearded man with a passing resemblance to Bose from Vietnam history experts in America and Vietnam did not yield any results. None could identify him. The Vietnamese foreign ministry did not respond to my email. The Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam directed me to Historical Research Department in the ministry. As of this writing, there was no response from the department.

  Anyway, I circulated the picture among a few of my friends. We studied the picture carefully but were unable to form any opinion—either way. But even if we had, it would not have mattered, for this is a job for forensic experts. We observed that the overall contours of the bearded man's visage remind one of Bose. Given the quality of the image, one can't say if he is 72—which Bose would have been in 1969—but he is definitely old as he has bags under his eyes. Much of his face is covered with moustache, beard and big framed glasses, one friend pointed out. It is unusual for diplomats and Southeast Asians to sport beards like this. Another friend thought aloud that the hair and beard of this man looked fake to him.

  Bhagwanji not only took interest in makeup tools and accessories, on occasions he altered his facial features to avoid attention as he ventured out, his followers told me. They also said that by the mid-1960s there was considerable loss of hair on his head compared to when they last saw "him" in 1939-1940. He had grayed, put on more weight around waist but his face was not wrinkled. One follower who had seen Bose several times before 1940 caught a glimpse of Bhagwanji and found him to be “more radiant than before”.

  For argument's sake, if Bose was present in Paris in 1969, wouldn't the Americans spot him? The declassified US records concerning the Vietnam War that I rummaged through show nothing to support the claims made in Oi mahamanaba asey. As a matter of fact, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the top US military spy agency, has informed me under the FOIA that it does not have any intelligence information reports pertaining to Bose’s claimed involvement in the Vietnam war.

  However, I am intrigued by the fact that when Bhagwanji talked of dumping drugs in south Vietnam, it was not probably fully appreciated that one of the reasons for US defeat would be the use of narcotic drugs as weapons by the Vietnamese. The first hint to this effect came when in 1971 Nixon’s deputy assistant for domestic affairs informed him that up to 20 per cent of US soldiers were heroin addicts. Other high-ranking generals and top officials “believed that Chinese Communist and Soviet-north Vietnamese operators had flooded south Vietnam with heroin, facilitating the escalation of use by US soldiers”. [47]

  I am not aware as to when this became public knowledge. I am also not aware if the typed copy of a newsitem recovered in Rambhawan was actually copied from a published report. If it was, then we are in for bafflement. According to the inventory prepared at the High Court’s order, the item No 1767 recovered from Bhagwanji’s room was a typed copy of a 15 May 1970 newsitem published in certain “Evening Post”, possibly published from Karachi, Pakistan.

  The purported newsitem is about the “Asian and Pacific Conference on Cambodia” being held in Jakarta and former US Defence Secretary Clark M Clifford. That Clifford was successor to McNamara and he attended this conference are recorded facts. What are not recorded is what Clifford is seen telling journalist Michael Joseph in the typed copy. He refers to the existence of a “missing WWII general” in the Viet Cong army. According to the typed copy, Clifford refused to disclose the identity of the general.

  And I can relate two incidents. I don’t know how to characterize the first, but the second is a slim lead—a lead nevertheless.

  Late Balraj Trikha, a leading Supreme Court advocate and former Advocate General of Manipur, excelled himself before the Khosla Commission by his incisive cross-examinations of the Japanese witnesses. He first appeared as junior counsel to Amiya Nath Bose and later represented pro-Shaulmari sadhu All-India Netaji Swagat Samiti. Saradanand was at that time in Dehradun, and it was well known to his followers.

  In November 1971, Trikha followed the commission to Vietnam. A few days later, Trikha claimed that he had seen Bose at a south Vietnamese airport. Justice Khosla noted in his report that

  he spoke of this to Shri Prem Bhatia, High Commissioner for India in Singapore, a few days later, and briefed newspaper correspondents to publish his claim of having met Bose. …In view of the publicity given to this strange encounter at Saigon, I considered it necessary to call Shri Trikha as a witness, but as soon as summons, for his appearance, were issued, Shri Trikha completely disappeared, abandoning his brief on behalf of Netaji Swagat Samiti and remained absent until the conclusion of the proceedings. [48]

  Thereafter, Khosla summoned the high commissioner. A word about the legendary Prem Bhatia: A British Indian army veteran, Anglophile Bhatia became one of the top most journalists of his times. At present, the trust being run in his name awards India’s equivalent of Pulitzer Prize for journalism. The trust has had for trustees luminaries, such as Dr Manmohan Singh, MK Rasgotra, Soli Sorabji, Inder Malhotra, Prof Mushirul Hasan, Shekhar Gupta, Alok Mehta and HK Dua.

  Bhatia was too wise a man to have lent ears to a claim that even conspiracy theorists find hard to digest. That being the factual context, just see what Bhatia told Khosla about Trikha’s statement:

  He called on me at the Chancery, which means the office, and I had not met him before but I recalled his name. He said he had come to pay a courtesy call. We started talking and then I asked him over to a meal at my house and he was good enough to accept my invitation. [49]

  Now let me put this to you. How would you react if you were the high commissioner and told by someone that he had seen a man believed to have been dead for 25 years? Would you invite that man to an official dinner after hearing him out?

  I tell you what I would do if I were in that position. I would tell that man to get lost and consult a shrink immediately.

  But Bhatia—a man of outstanding intelligence, experience and eminence—said he was "taken aback" by Trikha's statement, which he "mentioned to more than one person" [50] and also brought it to the commission's notice through a confidential letter.

  Therefore, please go easy with all that I have written in this chapter. Like Prem Bhatia I too have been taken aback and am just sharing everything with you.

  The second incident is also based on a journalist’s experience. It happened in 1994 when she was in Vietnam to cover the state visit of Prime Minister Narasimha Rao. The journalist had no interest in Bose and it was just by chance that one official from the Vietnamese foreign ministry passed on a lead to her on condition of anonymity. He said that Vietnam was holding some material which could shed some light on the disappearance of Bose. What made the officer pass this information to the scribe was that the Indian embassy had shown no interest in their documentation.

  The journalist filed her story, and it was carried by her paper. Now this makes her story all the more credible. That paper is the Telegraph, till recently the no 1 English daily in Bengal. The paper and its sister publication Anandabazar Patrika are, for the last few years, scarcely interested in covering the Bose mystery from the perspective of those who seek to resolve it. Many of the stories carried by them are dismissive in tenor and want to establish that Bose died in Taiwan. At a time when the rejection of the Mukherjee Commission report was getting first page coverage in newspapers in Hindi heartland, the Telegraph assigned the news a single column space in one of the inside pages, indicating the importance they attached to this momentous event.

  Hence, there is no way the paper would peddle any story which might go so far as to support the Bhagwanji angle. But here is how the relevant portion of the published story read:

  "There is accessible material here on Netaji’s stay in Saigon in 1945…. However, the Indian government is reluctant to pursue this lead, which is likely to help us unearth some exceedingly interesting material on Netaji’s disappearance since it will re-open the entire issue,” said a highly-placed source. …Material on Netaji is also believed
to have been accessed by the government here while collecting archival material on both the World War II and the Vietnam war period. [51]

  The only historically known contact Bose had with the Vietnamese was when his representative Anand Mohan Sahay met Ho Chi Minh in 1945. It is a matter of common knowledge that the Vietnam war began years after that, so the very existence of some archival material on Bose from that period would be quite intriguing on the face of it.

  Okay, okay you are right in concluding that I have raised more questions than answers. Yes, I too am dissatisfied with the things as they are now.

  There are several limitations in carrying out a self-funded research on a topic your favourite historian or journalist will never be interested in. We must get at the truth about Bhagwanji—whatever it is. The issue must be inquired into further. There are people saying that he was an impostor, set up by some government agency to throw the public off the scent of Russian angle. Let us factor in every possibility. If Bhagwanji was one, let it be exposed so that those behind him can be unmasked.

  We cannot arrive at a conclusion by endlessly arguing what we believe and what we do not. We have to get in proactive mode before it is too late. As I see it there is no sensitivity left in this case on the external front. Even if Bhagwanji was Bose and he really did all that he claimed, still the friendly foreign nations would not let those blasts from the past spoil present-day robust ties with India, and vice versa.

  It is clear to me that there must be some official record about Bhagwanji in India somewhere. There are good enough reasons to believe that our intelligence agencies must have something on the holy man of Faizabad. Sayed Kauser Hussain, the former Northern India Patrika newseditor, told the Mukherjee Commission that “there were four investigations at the instance of central government”.

  The police inquiry report of 1985 itself stated that when Bhagwanji “was in Basti he had become a matter of inquiry and it is reported that some central intelligence agency had conducted a thorough inquiry about him”. So where are the reports of the inquiry by this central intelligence agency (IB)? No such report was made available to the Mukherjee Commission.

  The IB’s list of records on or about Bose do not show anything about Faizabad. It also doesn’t show those reports about Shaulmari and two others who were taken as Bose which were once available with the organisation, as per a document available in the National Archives.

  It is utterly unlikely that the IB and other intelligence agencies were not drawn to Bhagwanji episode when even the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS)—an open source intelligence gathering component of the CIA which is now called Open Source Center—had not failed to take a small note of it. The Near East South Asia report No JPRS-NEA-86-040 of FBIS noted a February 1986 story appearing in a New Delhi newspaper that mercurial politician Raj Narain "firmly believes that one Gumnami Baba who died at Faizabad was none other than Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose" and that he had "sufficient proof of this fact". "The sad demise of the Baba" shocked Narain "to the extent that he had to be hospitalised".

  I am not concerned with Raj Narian’s standing or credibility here. You are mistaken if you think that when even the Central Intelligence Agency was made aware of an “irrelevant” happening in a remote corner of India, our intelligence officers in Faizabad, Lucknow and Delhi were glued to their radio sets for the latest cricket score. When I visited that area, more than one journalist told me that the spooks snooped around in the area after September 1985. One said that he was sought to be dissuaded by an IB man from dwelling deep into the case. I am not surprised, and nor should you be. Is it a secret that in India until the recent past the focus of the intelligence agencies was on the developments of political importance?

  Don’t believe me? Then check out the responses of former IB officer SR Mirchandani during his examination before the Khosla Commission on 24 July 1972.

  Q: Does this department collect this intelligence of its own accord or when it is directed to do so by the ministry?

  A: It is a regular function. There is no day-to-day direction; it is a regular function of the Intelligence Bureau to collect about what is happening in the country.

  Q: May I take it that supposing something is reported in the newspapers—some story—which has a political bearing, it would be the function of your department to investigate about that?

  A: If the Government asks for it.

  Q: Otherwise not?

  A: Otherwise not.

  Q: That is why I asked you in the beginning that is it the function of this department to collect intelligence of its own accord, or as and when directed by the Home Ministry.

  A: It is the routine function of the department to collect intelligence and the directions are given by the Ministry of Home Affairs.

  Q: It is not clear to me. Supposing if a political news or something appears in the Press which has political importance and which can excite the public mind, will you wait for the directions of the Home Ministry or is it your function to collect on your own?

  A: That depends upon the importance of the news item.

  Q: I say, news about any political leader of consequence. Of course, no one is going to expect you to collect intelligence about the PM.

  A: It would depend upon what the contents of the news items are. May be that the news items would be a cock and bull story.

  Q: But how can you say it is cock and bull story unless you investigate it? If a cock and bull story appears in the Press, would you or would you not investigate?

  A: Yes, I would. [52]

  Mirchandani was an R&AW deputy director when he was compelled to admit this before the commission. What more can I say? There is no way the IB had no inkling about who this Bhagwanji really was or what he was up to.

  11. Subhas Bose alive at 115?

  The belief that Subhas Bose is alive and that one day he would appear before his people is still held by some of his staunch followers. What would you say to that? To the “right thinking” people, it is the most ridiculous thing to say about the Netaji mystery. The most used word to describe people besotted with this fantasy is “lunatics”. [1]

  The believers’ core argument that since Bose’s death has not been proven; and given that it is possible for humans to live up to 115 years or more, he could well be alive till today was taken care of by Justice MK Mukherjee. He adjudged in his report that “any person or authority entrusted with the duty of investigating into a question of fact has to find an answer thereto depending on whether it is ‘probable’—and not ‘possible’.” So he concluded, and rightly so, that the “only legitimate inference that can be drawn at this distant point of time is that Netaji is no more”. [2]

  The believers lay low for four years after the release of the commission report, until 2010 when Justice Mukherjee’s personal view about Bhagwanji became known. This new dimension revived another theory: That Bhagwanji did not die in September 1985.

  But how could that be when his body was cremated at Guptar Ghat?

  Hmm, as per the long standing local belief, there is something interesting about “Guptar Ghat”. It means “the river bank of disappearance” and that’s because it was here that Lord Ram entered a temple in Treta Yug and then disappeared into the river, now called Gaghar. The urban legend is that this spot was chosen because Bhagwanji had to “disappear yet again”.

  The belief in Bhagwanji’s “disappearance” predates September 1985. The holy man told his close followers that he “would go away yet again”, remain “out of touch” for some time and “will come back” at a time when India is facing a war-like situation both internally and externally. “Wait for the appearance and have faith that I am always with you,” he would say. Most died waiting and those living are waiting still. But why now? In 1972 Bhagwanji asked a follower how old he was. The follower said 75. “What? I have to be here for another 46 years?” was his reaction. So, if you believe the believers, the “reappearance” must happen in this decade.

&nb
sp; And what is their explanation for September 1985? Some of them I met in Kolkata told me that when they visited him during that period, he asked them not to come again. The local followers who witnessed the death and then cremated the body offer conflicting views. Bhagwanji felt unwell on the evening of September 16 and his attendant Saraswati Devi called Dr RP Mishra and Dr Priyabrat Banerjee. The younger doctor told me that Bhagwanji had died of cardiovascular failure before he arrived. He and Rajkumar, son of Saraswati Devi, said they saw his body.

  Dr Mishra, Bhagwanji’s principal follower at that time, has been acting oddly since that time. Now in his late 80s, he is said to have witnessed Bhagwanji’s passing away and there is no manner of doubt that he took custody of the body and was the master of ceremony, which ended with the cremation on September 19. During this period, hardly anyone was allowed to see Bhagwanji’s body by his family who kept a constant vigil around his room at Rambhawan. Landlord Gurubasant Singh was asked to keep out. Dr Mishra was seen to be on the edge throughout, upto the point the pyre was set afire, when he suddenly appeared free of tension.