Netaji’s death: The quest for closure

The most abiding mystery in recent Indian history is getting curiouser and curiouser what with intense efforts being made by status quoists to prove that Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose did indeed die in an air crash in Taiwan in 1945. Even as the Justice MK Mukherjee commission debunked this theory proving that no air crash took place in Taipei on August 18, 1945, one of Netaji’s numerous grandnephews Ashis Ray has rushed in to ‘prove’ the contrary. Laid to Rest — released recently — has a foreword by Netaji’s daughter Anita Pfaff who, after an ambivalent stand for decades, tries to discount the Mukherjee commission report saying: “A former Indian diplomat to Taiwan informed me that he had been told a plane crash had taken place there at that time.” It’s a different matter that India and Taiwan have no formal diplomatic relations! Till recently, Pfaff’s view was that the Netaji matter should be brought to a closure by doing a DNA test on the ashes lying in Tokyo’s Renkoji temple. The ashes purported to be that of Netaji were taken from Taipei after the so-called air crash.

Suresh Chandra Bose, Netaji’s elder brother was the dissenting member of the Shah Nawaz Khan Committee which in 1956 (without going to Taiwan) had declared that he had died in the air crash. Suresh did not agree with the proposition and Ray in his book claims that: “One of Suresh’s sons and a nephew and few linked to the Forward Bloc threatened him with dire consequences if he lent his signature to the formal document.”

“Netaji belongs to the nation, not to the extended Bose family, many of whom are encashing the Netaji name for their own purposes,” says Choodie Shivaram, a serious Netaji researcher. She adds: “My belief is that Netaji escaped to Soviet Union where he perished.” Purabi Roy, a former professor and now member of the Indian Council of Historical Research, is also more than 200 per cent certain that Netaji was in USSR after 1945 and perished there. She has also procured a photo of Netaji in Russia with great difficulty which she put on the cover of her 2014 book The Search for Netaji: New Findings. Roy says that Netaji’s presence in Soviet Union can be proven up to 1956 and asserts that there are files on Netaji in the archives of Chief of Intelligence Directorate near Moscow. But these files are not open to all and neither has the Government of India gone all out to request the Russian government to dig out all details from their files. 

Most Netaji researchers, including this writer, believe that after faking a crash, Bose landed in Manchuria which was just coming under Soviet occupation. But Iqbal Malhotra, a Netaji buff, produced a documentary film in 2017 which suggests that Netaji escaped to Vladivostok (USSR) in a submarine from Singapore. Netaji escaped to USSR because he had presciently predicted that post World War, the global order would change and Soviet Union would stand opposing USA and Great Britain (his arch enemy). At first Stalin entertained Netaji because in him he saw an Indian leader who could counter Nehru. Stalin perceived Nehru as a British stooge. After the death of Stalin in 1953, the political climate changed in USSR and there was no use for Netaji. Consequently he was possibly sent to Siberia where he perished.

There is a view subscribed by researcher Anuj Dhar  that the holy man Gumnami Baba who stayed in Faizabad (UP) and died in 1985, was none other than Netaji. But with no photograph of the Baba there can be no conclusive proof. Moreover why should an outspoken man like Netaji remain in hiding for 30 years? The latest theory is that Netaji was nabbed in Saigon by the French police before he could flee and that was the last heard of him. The French war time intelligence files that can throw light on this, remain classified.

The author is an eminent  journalist and the author of the book Netaji: Living Dangerously