by Anuj Dhar
Home Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri stated in a September 1962 letter to Shaulmari sadhu acolyte Uttam Chand Malhotra that “Bose’s name was not included in the list of war criminals, drawn up by the United Nations War Crimes Commission”.[12] Malhotra, or for that matter most people in India in those days, hardly knew what the UNWCC was.
During a parliamentary debate on 22 August 1963, lawmaker BD Khobaragade remarked that “it is generally believed that Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose is still alive but that he is not coming out of hiding because if he comes out, perhaps he may be treated as a war criminal”. This made another member AM Tariq query whether a “confirmation has been taken from the American government and the German government that he is not in the American government's list of war criminals”. Dinesh Singh, Deputy Minister for External Affairs, replied, “No.” “So far as ascertaining it from the American government is concerned, this question has never arisen because they have never said that there is any list in which he figures,” he told the MPs, including Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Lal Bahadur Shastri as Prime Minister repeatedly faced the same question and his answer was always on the same lines. SM Banerjee put this to him in the Lok Sabha on 29 March 1965: “There is a fear in the minds of many people, who still believe that Netaji is alive, that he is regarded as a war criminal by the Britishers. They want a clear declaration from the Government regarding this.” Shastri’s reply to this was: “So far as Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose is concerned, of course, there is absolutely no doubt in the mind of anyone in this country that he would be welcome here as one of our greatest heroes.” [13]
In 1964 Sunil Das, who had been associated with Subhas Bose, gave Bhagwanji an input to the effect that the Government took the war criminal angle rather seriously, irrespective of the public statements. Das wrote on the basis of his talks with MP Surendra Mohan Ghose, who had enquired into the Shaulmari episode on Prime Minister Nehru’s directive. Ghose told Das that the Government’s understanding was that the Allied Powers had struck off Bose’s name from the list of war criminals because they thought that he was dead. Das rejected Ghose’s version, and so did Bhagwanji.
The holy man was said to have been greatly angered in January 1971 when the news of India’s accession to a UN treaty on the war criminals came. The “convention on the non-applicability of statutory limitations to war crimes and crimes against humanity” ensured that persons responsible for war crimes during the World War II would “not escape prosecution merely because no legal case is brought against them within a specified period after the commission of the crime”. The parties to the convention undertook “to adopt domestic measure for the extradition of persons responsible for these crimes”. [14]
The report about India ratifying the convention was brought to the notice of GD Khosla by lawyer Niharendu Dutt-Majumdar representing the Bose family. The record of Khosla Commission proceedings show Dutt-Majumdar arguing…
So I submit that this is raising grave forebodings in many minds and therefore Your Lordship may also be pleased to consider requesting or summoning the Foreign Minister, Shri Swaran Singh, to come as a witness to clarify and place the necessary facts before this commission. [15]
It appears from the subsequent proceeding that Justice Khosla took the UN convention issue lightly. “I shall pursue the matter—may be it is a routine matter—we shall find out about it,” he told Dutt-Majumdar.
Dutt-Majumdar had even suggested that to clear up the whole issue about Bose having allegedly been termed a war criminal, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi should be asked to give evidence in person. Khosla did not summon the Prime Minister or the External Affairs Minister and was criticized for it later.
To be fair to him, I don’t think he could have done that. But then, it would have been better if Prime Minister Gandhi had issued some statement to put the controversy at rest. After all, apart from being a front-ranking leader, Subhas was also a friend of her father. As a poignant illustration of the days of Nehru-Bose bonhomie, it can be recalled that when young Indira accompanied her gravely-ill mother Kamla Nehru to Vienna for treatment, Bose received them on their arrival, accompanied them to the hotel “and continued to visit Kamla daily during their stay in Vienna”. [16]
GD Khosla devoted considerable space to the war criminal issue in his report, but without mentioning anything about the UN convention. He put on Dutt-Majumdar the onus of proving his case, which the eminent lawyer apparently wasn’t able to. Supporting the official view that Bose’s name never figured on any list of war criminals, he set aside the charge of Dutt-Majumdar that the “Government of India has deliberately suppressed or destroyed evidence which would have proved that Bose's name was included in the list of war criminals”.
There has been no international agreement or subsequent charter which would bring Netaji (were he alive today) within the mischief of any war crimes tribunal. The Government of India has given no undertaking to any international body to hand Bose over to it, nor has there been any bar on his movements or his entry into India. The argument relating to Bose being accused of war crimes is, therefore, nothing but the purest conjecture, put forward not as an argument but as a piece of rhetoric and casuistry to cloud the issue and to distract attention from the real points for determination. [17]
The reason that led Khosla to conclude this was that the Government had convinced him that Bose was never a war criminal. Not to put too fine a point on it, Khosla's assertion was not completely honest. All that the records shown to him had said that "without access to the records and files of the United Nations War Crimes Commission" it could not be confirmed whether or not Bose's name figured there. Yet, Khosla somehow deduced all that he did.
The controversy received a new lease of life in 1998. Responding to a PIL filed by former MP Shyam Sunder Mohapatra, Chief Justice Phukan of Orissa High Court directed the Centre to take up the matter with the UK government so as “to remove the name of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose from the list of war criminals”. In February 1999 then Home Minister LK Advani informed Lok Sabha members Ram Gopal Yadav and Ish Dutt Yadav that as per the information furnished by the UK government, Bose’s name was “not included in any list of war criminals drawn up by them”.
Before the Mukherjee Commission was set up, two individuals in their personal capacities tried to ascertain facts from the Indian and British governments. Lawyer Bijan Ghosh’s query actually prompted an enquiry in the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations in New York. The mission told New Delhi that
the UN does not maintain lists of war criminals. In its archival functions, it simply maintains the records of the UN War Crimes Commission. It is not known whether Netaji's name in fact figures on any of the voluminous records of the Commission.
And
If we want to establish whether Netaji's name figures on the lists, we have to make a formal request from PR to Secretary General for access to the archives to establish this fact. This by itself would be an indication that we suspect he is on the list of war criminals. Since, according to the UN Secretariat, it is not possible to remove names from these lists, it is a moot point whether any purpose would be served by making this request.
Oslo-based late Amalendu Guha on 9 December 1998 requested Prime Minister Tony Blair to let him know whether “(i) Subhas Chandra Bose's name had been recorded as war criminal, (ii) if so, by which Government, (iii) since when”. The answer sent to him by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on December 22 was that
the question of how to treat Subhas Chandra Bose and other members of the Indian National Army was considered in 1945 by the Government of India in consultation with the HMG [His Majesty's Government]. All relevant official papers relating to this process are in the public domain. Some of the most pertinent are to be found in Vol VI of the Transfer of Power series. All others are available at the Public Records Office or the British Library.
This is essentially the Wavell-era correspondence, the crux of which has been referred to earlier
.
My own efforts came in 2003. I requested the NARA for any information in the UNWCC records concerning lists of individuals accused of war crimes against Indians during the Second World War. RE Cookson, Archivist for Captured German Records, informed me that “an examination of the minutes of the Far Eastern and Pacific Sub-Commission of the United Nations War Crimes Commission does not reveal any list of that description”.
In October 2003, Phillip Stonehouse, Director, India and South Asia Section in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Government of Australia was good enough to tell me that “Australia does retain records from the Far Eastern and Pacific Sub-Commission of the United Nations War Crimes Commission. However, the information you have requested is held by the National Archive….”
Loreta Tabellione of the National Archive in Melbourne was remarkably considerate in handling my request that the records be searched for Subhas Chandra Bose or Kata Kana, as Japanese called him. She undertook a basic search in consolidated name index to Australian and Allied lists of war criminal suspects sought or in custody, 1945-1950 and found no reference. The part of the list where Kata Kana could have figured but did not was sent to me. It was item no 4 of the series MP139522.
The archive did, however, mention that the topic is “such that would require extensive research”.
As I learnt later, the finding that Bose’s name did not figure on the UNWCC lists was conveyed to the Mukherjee Commission by the Ministry of External Affairs. The commission had ensured that the lists were checked. On 11 April 2002, Deputy Permanent Representative of Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations in New York wrote to the Joint Secretary (Americas) in New Delhi that a First Secretary (Legal Adviser) from the mission “had gone through the lists of war criminals in the records of the UN War Crimes Commission”.
“There is absolutely no indication whatsoever that Netaji's name was ever included in any lists and was deleted subsequently. Therefore, it would be same to conclude that the name of Netaji was not included in the lists at any time,” Deputy Permanent Representative A Gopinathan said in what was perhaps the last word on the controversy.
At the end of it all, the genie is still not back in the bottle because of one last hitch. Despite the Mukherjee Commission’s repeated requests, the Government gave no answer on “whether any treaty was signed/ratified by the Government of India in 1971 by which the limitation of time bar regarding arrest and trial of war criminals was withdrawn and, if so, who were the war criminals of India or of Indian origin or of British India for whose arrest and trial India signed the treaty in 1971”. [18]
V. The land of conspiracy theories
Mark Fenster’s Conspiracy theories: Secrecy and power in American culture is perhaps the most outstanding book of its genre. Fenster dwelt deep into the phenomenon in the 1990s and found out that much of it represented a futile “open-ended political struggle for equality, solidarity, and a transparent, participatory democracy”. [1]
Should Fenster ever decide to turn his attention to India, he will find the Indian scene different in one major way. Here to be a conspiracy theorist not only pays, the theories unleashed on the gullible masses can be successfully used as tool to further political and other interests, and that too at the highest level.
The examples that spring to my mind do not relate to the mystery surrounding Subhas Bose’s fate.
The detractors of Bose mystery, quite a few of them associated with or sympathetic to India's grand old party in one way or the other, have almost succeeded in convincing nearly the entire Indian intelligentsia that crackpots and conspiracy theorists alone have contributed to its build-up. Fenster writes that in a political or social discourse there can be no greater insult than this that someone’s position be dismissed as a conspiracy theory. So this is the tag the Bose mystery researchers like me have invited over the years. Inversely speaking, those who smear us with such charges think of themselves as the representatives of the lot that stands for sanity.
The Bose mystery may have been inundated with whacko conspiracy theories but it has no monopoly over them. Conspiracy theories permeate everywhere in India; it is just that some people cannot see them, or are too weak-kneed to point them out or call them as such. The Bose mystery gets picked out as an easy target. Anyone can say or write that those wanting to know the truth about Bose’s fate are conspiracy theorists, but dare you hold a mirror to the others.
Some six years before the term, “conspiracy theory” was included in the Oxford English Dictionary, a most atrocious of its kind was propounded in the Parliament of India. Even though it related to a most shattering tragedy of our history, it was nonetheless one of the most absurd statements ever made by a top official. On 26 July 1991 when the Rajya Sabha was discussing the scope of commission of inquiry into the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Home Minister SB Chavan stated that while LTTE connection was a clear possibility, the hand of “any other international forces behind this conspiracy” could not be ruled out.
In fact the Home Minister said that he felt “confident that some of the agencies are known”. Chavan then went on to outline his theory based on a highly-exaggerated notion about Rajiv Gandhi’s standing in the comity of nations.
The leadership of the third world happens to be, whether we like it or not, with India and when we meant India, it was Rajiv Gandhi and none else. Therefore it is an irritant to some of the countries who are now left almost unchallenged as a super power....
Now a point which we have to consider is, if he was going to emerge as the leader of the third world, whether he should be allowed to remain or he was to be finished so that India would not have any leader of his stature who can possibly take up the issue and fight with the super powers. So this is the kind of suspicion that I have, and it becomes all the more necessary that we have to go deep into the matter and try to find out who are the conspirators against whom we can say that, these are the conspirators who are at the root of the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. [2]
It is abundantly clear from this passage that the Home Minister saw an American hand in Rajiv’s assassination, even though it was clear from the start that it was either an inside job or it involved a terrorist group operating from India’s tiny neighbour.
This utterly preposterous allegation about a world power hand in Rajiv assassination became a reason to set up Multi-Disciplinary Monitoring Agency (MDMA) in 1998 with top officers drawn from the Research and Analysis Wing, Intelligence Bureau, Directorate of Military Intelligence, Central Bureau of Investigation, Directorate of Enforcement etc. For the next decade or so this high powered group searched world over for the mirage of “international conspiracy”. Since such a “conspiracy” existed in the minds of certain people only, no evidence of any sort has till date been found. And having spoken to one or two people associated with the investigation into the assassination, I can assure you nothing ever will. The MDMA probably still exists, years after the LTTE owned up its crime and chief plotters and executers died or were killed.
It causes me considerable consternation to think that conspiracy theorist Chavan as Home Minister handled the Bose mystery case and his ministry helped outline a plan to stifle it in the 1990s. If ever the Government undertook comprehensive declassification, it would be fascinating to see what sort of view he had offered on the Bose case and then match those with the ideas he came up with while fantasizing which world powers were plotting to kill Rajiv Gandhi. And for what reason or gain, in the name of heaven!
But Chavan was not the first, nor the last conspiracy theorist from the Congress ranks. The 1970s were the golden era for Indian conspiracy theorists and the Congress leaders were better than the best. In 1972 Congress president Shankar Dayal Sharma—later the President of India—told media that the CIA was disrupting the “socio-economic life of country”. On October 20 in Bhopal the same year, he accused the agency of “colluding with opposition parties to ‘create chaos and frustrate our efforts to banish
poverty’”. [3] On 29 November 1974, twenty one Congress members of Parliament charged the US and the CIA of subverting India’s internal situation. “Though they did not name the present JP-led movement in Bihar and other parts of the country, they implied that the movement was getting help from the USA and its agency to upset the process of democracy in the country.” [4]
On 1 July 1975, just after the Emergency was imposed, Congress president Dev Kant Baruah told Youth Congress workers “that the Opposition in India with the support of reactionaries at home and abroad were determined to destroy democracy in India”. He “accused the RSS and Anand Marg of murdering Railway Minister LN Mishra and attempting to assassinate the Chief Justice of India”. [5] Led by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, these paranoid people whipped up such passions in the country that the American hand was seen behind small demonstrations in remote corners of the country. It is not my case that the CIA was or is a humanitarian organisation engaged in the welfare of mankind; but those who blamed the Americans for something which was not in their national interest did certainly possess a bent of mind ideal for breeding conspiracy theories.
The tradition continues and the undisputed king of the conspiracists in India is Osama Bin Laden sympathiser Digvijay Singh. Popularly called “Diggy Raja”, this senior Congress leader and a former Chief Minister has helped spread theories as wild and anti-national as the one alleging that 26/11 was carried out by the Intelligence Bureau in cahoots with the CIA and Mossad. On the scale of one to ten of most absurd conspiracy theories ever, this one probably ranks with the ones that claim that Bush administration itself plotted 9/11 or that it was result of a Jewish conspiracy. Digvijay Singh and a newage ideologue under his flank, Amreesh Mishra, who thinks that the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) was created by Dr Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi because the IB had turned saffron, continue to flourish in the grand old party. So, we can hope to hear more conspiracy theories in near future.