by Anuj Dhar
Menon’s simple mind was to later deduce that these words were loaded with pointers. But, amazingly, this “prescient” statement did not create any curiosity in the great mind of the Harvard professor that has all the evidence for Netaji’s death. The great mind gets fixed on Subhas Bose “foretelling” one Nathalal Parikh about his death in 1939, but blocks out the words of a man who was confidential secretary to Subhas till 1945 and then to Sarat till he died in 1950. This great mind also does not attach any significance to Menon’s statement to the Mukherjee Commission that Sarat Bose “never believed air crash story”. It doesn’t see the signs that are clear because they won’t be visible to all those who prefer to have the “brand Congress” wool pulled over their eyes.
With that being the case with Congressman Sisir Bose's family, what makes Bose's daughter in Germany to support the air crash theory? This should be next natural question. She backs the NRB view; doesn't she? Why should we not believe her?
For reasons I am not able to understand so far, Dr Anita Pfaff has supported the minority view within the family. But her view is not worthy of credence because most of her family elders vehemently opposed the air crash theory. Her mother Emilie told her nephews and their children several times that she had been informed that Subhas Bose was in the Soviet Union after 1945. In his affidavit before the Mukherjee Commission, Surya Bose averred that his grandaunt told him “in January 1973 that Mr Raimund Schnabel, a German journalist who had settled down in East Berlin after the 2nd World War, had told her in early 1950 that he had been informed that Netaji was in the Soviet Union after 1945”.
Pradip Bose repeated this view of his aunt before Kolkata media in 2006. Pradip was on very good terms with his cousin sister. Surya remains close to his aunt Anita as ever, and, therefore, there is nothing more to be read in these statements. But I see in the official records an outline of machinations to bring around Bose family members to a specific view. I don’t know for how long this has continued and what all has been gone into. All I can do is to show you part of the “Top Secret” note No I/12014/27/93-IS (DIII) of February 1995 written by then Home Secretary spelling out the instrumentalities to achieve the desired results.
In pursuance of the government plan, futile attempts were actually made to bring Amiya Nath Bose around the official view.
Another Top Secret memo, No G-12(3)/98-NGO for Principal Private Secretary to Prime Minister, hints that the government objectives were probably partially met. The note informs that Indian Ambassador in Germany met Anita on 2 March 1998—after Emilie had passed away.
Dr Pfaff conveyed that she had not consulted all the family members regarding the proposal to move the ashes to India, but was confident that it would be acceptable to the family. She was also keen that there should be national consensus among political parties on this subject and that the best time for transferring them to India would be the second half of 1998.
The memo further states that Anita “has been to India twice in order to build up a consensus in favour of the return of the ashes, but is clearly uncertain about the results of her efforts. …She is equally uncertain about a consensus within the family”.
Another Top Secret memo on the subject "Return of Netajis ashes to India" dated 1 April 1998 by the same officer states:
EAM [Pranab Mukherjee] visited Germany in October 1995 and met Dr Anita Pfaff, who said that the ashes should be brought to Germany if their return to India was a matter of controversy. To this, it was pointed out that Japan was not in favour of moving the ashes to any third country. She also discussed the possibility of a suitable memorial for Netaji in India. EAM made no comments on this.
He couldn’t have. The official line in this regard had already been specified by Jawaharlal Nehru in a confidential letter [No 2474. PMH/60 dated 2 December 1960] to Bengal Chief Minister BC Roy:
As for a memorial, I do not think that such a thing before the Red Fort in Delhi can be done…. I should imagine that the ashes, if brought here, should be kept in Calcutta.
It is an open secret that Nehru did a wee bit for Bose’s legacy and whatever little he did, it projected Bose as a regional leader. Against such a backdrop, it is surprising that Anita should have told the Times of India in February 2000 that she “dismissed the popular perception that Jawaharlal Nehru looked upon Netaji as a rival and that Nehru and Indira Gandhi had ensured that Netaji’s role was ‘ignored’”. She even said, “It is unfair to paint Panditji as a villain.” [31]
Dr Pfaff appeared reluctant to spell out her view when my friends and I met her in New Delhi. Like her famous academic nephew and niece, she too—someone who taught in a university in the West till retirement—has not said a word about declassifying Netaji- related records.
A reading of the footnotes to “A life immortal” has now made me realise that before we met Dr Pfaff, she had quietly approved the bringing of some ashes alleged to be of Netaji to India in 2006 without the knowledge of her other family members. This information was contained in two interlinked footnotes in Sugata Bose’s book. One stated that the Murti family had hidden away a portion of the ashes kept at Renkoji temple. The source for this information was an August 2008 affidavit signed by J Murti’s son Anand J Murti and attested by the Embassy of India. Prof Bose was apparently thrilled about this. “Copy in my possession,” he underlines in the footnote as if the affidavit contains some earth shaking new information from the R&AW.
The claim that the Murtis kept a small part of the ashes separately “lest the major might be confiscated by the British” [32] is not new. Ramamurti told this to the Khosla Commission. Restaurateur J Murti of failing memory was grilled by lawyers before he was able to recall “some kind of opening and dividing” [33] by his brother and SA Ayer who, on his part, told the commission that “nobody would commit the sacrilege of opening the casket”. [34]
Anyway, what makes J Murti’s son’s 2008 affidavit appear suspicious is the other claim of Prof Bose in the other footnote that the ashes kept by the Murti family were brought to Kolkata in March 2006 with Anita’s approval. He asserted that Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh was informed of the hush-hush transfer. It is obvious that whoever brought the ashes to India on the sly calibrated his moves with Anand J Murti. In March 2006, Justice Mukherjee’s report was yet to be made public and Pranab Mukherjee was back as the External Affairs Minister. Therefore, there was some definite intrigue behind the secret transfer of the ashes. Why did Anand J Murti not inform Justice Mukherjee about the ashes? Why was the entire operation carried out a month before his report was made public? Was this secret backchannel operation the reason behind the delay in tabling the report in Parliament?
I had a bad feeling about this and so did Chandrachur, who filed RTI applications to cross-check the professor’s statements. The Prime Minister Office denied outright having any knowledge about the secretive transfer of ashes or the receipt of any such communication, belying Sugata Bose’s assertion. Regarding his friend Anand J Murti’s affidavit, the initial response of the Embassy of India in Japan and the Ministry of External Affairs was that the “attestation of affidavit does not mean that the Government of India is aware of the contents of the affidavit”. Following an appeal, the ministry repeated that “the attestation of an affidavit by Indian missions deals only with authentication of the identity of the person. Missions do not go into the content of the affidavit”. The ministry emphasised that the “Government has not been made aware of the existence of the ashes of Netaji in the custody of Shri Ramamurti or his family”.
This just about brings out the catch in Sugata Bose’s much-touted “authoritative account” of the Bose mystery: The professor has falsified facts and distorted perspectives. Here too lies the rub.
IV: Was Subhas Bose a war criminal?
The genie of “war criminal” controversy surrounding Subhas Chandra Bose was released on 1 April 1956. Once out, it could hardly be contained in the secured premises of the Netaji Inquiry Committee. Soon people across
India knew—courtesy the man who had let it out.
Deposing before Shah Nawaz Khan, Forward Bloc leader and Bose’s friend Muthuramalingam Thevar said he wanted the Government to “make it known categorically to the public whether Netaji's name is still in the list of war criminals and if not, when it was removed and how?” [1]
“Will you please wait outside for some time?” the committee chairman requested him after hearing this. The proceeding was being held in camera. A foreign ministry officer was around and Shah Nawaz wanted to have a word with him in private. After an hour he sent for Thevar and told him, “The Government of India is not in possession of any information on this point.” Having waited for that long and then getting a non-answer annoyed Thevar. “Why is this information not in the possession of the Government when an Indian national of such eminence and importance as Netaji is involved?” he asked.
“The information lies with the UK and the USA,” Shah Nawaz replied.
Dissatisfied Thevar now pounded away at Shah Nawaz. “So, does the declaration made by the Allies in regard to war criminals has nothing to do with this Government? Would the Government state categorically that the declaration in regard to war criminals does not bind it?”
“Why should I go into the details?” Shah Nawaz retorted.
“And why should I cooperate with a committee constituted by a Government which is not in a position to be able to extricate Netaji from the position of a war criminal or give protection to him against previous commitment, if any, in regard to the ‘war criminal’ list,” Thevar rejoined. [2]
That was then, but even today some of Bose’a admirers feel perturbed about his name appearing on the “list of war criminals”. There is an online petition to get his name off it and an appeal was made in 1997 to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan for the same purpose. Replying to Air Vice Marshal Surenji Goyal (Retd) on Annan’s behalf, his deputy Shashi Tharoor—former Minister of State for External Affairs—wrote that the Secretary General was “powerless to undo any reference that may have been made in the past”. Many read too much in this consolatory response, seeing it in an admission that Bose had been declared a “war criminal”.
But was he?
There is no doubt that several INA men were branded “war criminals” by the Indian Army under the British. It is quite evident from the pre-1947 Ministry of Defence files now avalble in the National Archives in New Delhi. Many records provide details of alleged torture to which the loyal Indian Army soldiers were subjected to after they refused to join the INA. File No INA 221 even contains a list of “war criminals”:
Mohan Singh was the INA founder, Mohammed Zaman Kiani was the INA head after Bose, AC Chatterjee [Chatterji] and SC Alagppan were Azad Hind Government ministers. The list contains the names of many more “war criminals”: GS Dhillon, the Red Fort trial hero; Mahboob Ahmed, Bose’s military secretary; “plus complete staffs of all INA concentration camps”.
If that was that, why shouldn’t we assume that the leader of all these people was also regarded a war criminal by the colonial British and their Indian collaborators? Well, maybe we shouldn’t because all of the men listed in the National Archives list were formerly in the Indian Army. Unlike them, Bose was a civilian.
Suresh Bose reasoned in his Dissentient report that Subhas as “a British Indian subject” had “waged war against his king and emperor” and therefore invited this tag. In his view, Bose was “a top-ranking ‘international war criminal’, against which persons, after the last war, the maximum penalty was generally inflicted”. Bose had “collaborated” with the Axis countries whose leaders, like Japanese Premier Hideki Tojo, were hanged following war crimes trials.
The impression that Bose was going to be treated as a war criminal by the Allies was prevalent even among the Japanese and the Indians who backed him. Bose’s personal physician learnt on August 17 that he was going to Manchuria because “the Japanese did not want him to be caught as a war criminal”. [3] A similar suggestion was made openly as early as 29 August 1945 by Chicago Tribune stringer Alfred Wagg. In a press conference in New Delhi, Wagg asked Jawaharlal Nehru why shouldn’t Bose “be treated as a war criminal because his men fought and killed many Americans and he extorted money from the poor in Burma and Malaya”. [4] He was given a rebuttal by an Indian journalist who said there was no case of the INA “having fought the American forces had ever come to light” and “Bose’s Government levied some kind of tax on Indians only”. Nehru too rebuffed the idea that Bose was a war criminal.
Personally I should be very happy if all persons considered as war criminals are brought to trials and facts come out. …And in my list there will be many high officials sitting in Delhi who will be war criminals. [5]
We can go on and on with such arguments and their counters, but the only way to reach a conclusion is to assess the official information which has become known in the last few decades.
So far as the Raj era is concerned, the records released by the British Government create the following picture. On 28 July 1945, Home Member Francis Mudie received a letter from Viceroy Wavell’s Private Secretary EM Jenkins. Capturing Bose was on Wavell’s mind now that the defeat of Japan seemed imminent. Jenkins wrote:
His Excellency has just noted: "We should be thinking what to do with SC Bose. If the Japanese surrendered, we should presumably require him to be handed over to us. What then, should we try him in India, and if so by what kind of court?”
I do not know if this matter has been considered before, and His Excellency would like your advice, I am not sure of that because Bose is an Indian who joined the enemy by evading restrictions imposed on him in India, he must necessarily be tried here. He is one of the bigger war criminals and has offended against His Majesty’s Government quite as much as against India. [6]
Mudie received another letter from Jenkins on 11 August 1945. Thinking of the surrender terms to be imposed on Japan, Wavell was now not too sure if Bose and his immediate associates should be brought to India for trial. “It might be better to have them dealt with as war criminals outside India. His Excellency would like you to advise about this.” [7]
On the same day, Wavell sent a personal telegram to the Secretary of State for India in London apprising him of India’s “special interest” in dictating armistice with Japan with a view to sealing Bose’s fate.
It may be best that Bose and his immediate associates should be dealt with as war criminals outside India and should not be returned to this country.
On August 23 Mudie responded to Jenkins in this way:
I have examined your suggestion that Bose be treated as a “war criminal”. He is clearly not one in the ordinary sense of that word. Nor does he appear to come within the extended definition which has now been adopted by the United Nations. [8]
But the view in London matched Wavell’s thinking. Evidencing this is a minute of a meeting of India and Burma Committee of the British Cabinet presided over by Prime Minister Attlee on 25 October 1945. In the meeting
it was generally agreed that the only civilian renegade of importance was Subhas Chandra Bose. On the question whether Indian renegades rounded up outside India should be brought to India for trial, it was part of the general arrangements for dealing with war criminals that they should be taken back for trial to their country. [9]
The foregoing tells us that the British considered Bose to be a “war criminal” during that period. The same can be deduced about the American view because a chunk of Bose’s related records released by the US in 1997 were in compliance to the Nazi War Crimes Disclosures Act.
This goes with the rider that in a notice issued more recently, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Maryland, clarified that records released under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act and the Japanese Imperial Government Disclosure Act may “include mention of, or information about, persons having no connection to these activities”.
The question, therefore, now is whether or not Bose’s name wa
s officially put in a list of war criminals, and whether the Government of free India had any knowledge about it. Through the years this question was raised by general people as well as the lawmakers in Parliament. Every time the ministers responded that to the best of their knowledge Bose’s name was not borne on any list of war criminals. According to a statement made in the Rajya Sabha, “the United Kingdom High Commission in New Delhi issued a statement early in 1961 to the effect that his name does not appear and has never appeared in such list”. [10]
The “list of war criminals” of common parlance is actually the cumulative 80 lists of thousands of mostly German and Italian names. These were prepared by the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC) between December 1944 and March 1948. For example, the UNWCC list No 7 dated April 1945 had the names of Adolf Hitler and Martin Bormann. The UNWCC was created prior to the present United Nation’s birth and was assisted by a corpus called the Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects (CROWCASS).
The UNWCC also had a sub-commission at Chungking in China to investigate the war crimes allegedly committed by the Japanese. This sub-commission prepared 26 lists of its own. The records of the UNWCC, CROWCASS and Chungking sub-commission were in storage as classified material in different countries, especially the US, the UK and Australia, until fairly recently. British India as a member of the UNWCC received some of the lists when they were secret. Some of the UNWCC lists containing foreigners’ names can be seen among the declassified INA files kept at the National Archives.
Moving on chronologically, Prof Atul Sen accidently met Bhagwanji in 1962 and took him to be Subhas Chandra Bose. In August that year, the former MLA, who knew Bose and Nehru well, wrote a letter to the PM which is still on the file. Prof Sen stated that Bose was “yet regarded as Enemy No 1 of the Allied Powers and that there is a secret protocol that binds the Government of India to deliver him to Allied 'justice' if found alive”. Nehru in his response on 31 August 1962 stated that he had “never heard of any secret protocol” and Bose wouldn't be handed over “even if any country asks the Government of India to”. [11]