What if we told you Nehru didn't write that letter.
The biggest talking point from the 100 files that were released by Narendra Modi pertaining to Subhas Chandra Bose seems to be a letter doing the rounds. In this letter, allegedly written by Nehru in 1945 to Clement Attlee, the former PM of UK, he apparently refers to Bose as a 'war criminal'.
In the letter, Nehru allegedly wrote: “Dear Mr Attlee, I understand from reliable sources that Subhas Chandra Bose, your war criminal, has been allowed to enter Russian territory by Stalin. This is a clear treachery and betrayal of faith by the Russians as Russia has been an ally of the British-Americans, which she should not have done. Please take note of it and do what you consider proper and fit.”
The unsigned letter ends with, “Yours Sincerely, Jawaharlal Nehru.”
It's being claimed that the letter was written in 1945, but all of this is a combination of lies. The letter was not written by Nehru, it wasn’t even written by his stenographer and has been part of the public domain for a while. The letter appears in an essay by Pradip Bose, Netaji's nephew, who had written a letter in 1998 to erstwhile Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in which he claims that the controversial letter is, in fact, quoting a report from the 1974 Khosla commission report where Nehru’s stenographer Shyam Lal Jain claimed he was asked to write the same. As you can see, there are a lot of claims involved.
In fact, one of the files declassified on Saturday answers the question of whether Netaji's name was ever listed as a war criminal by the UK after the end of World War II. Answering the question, Indian High Commission in UK said that his name was never part of the list of war criminals as the list was only drawn up for Japanese and German citizens.
Here is a screenshot of the related declassified file:
The Congress took offence to the letter and Anand Sharma was quoted saying: “It’s shameful when an attempt is made to besmirch the image of India’s great leader, a Mahanayak of freedom movement, (the) first Prime Minister, a world statesman.”
“It’s a deliberately created controversy to mislead people and try to belittle the great achievements of (two) stalwarts of the Indian freedom struggle,” Congress spokesman Anand Sharma said. “The way PM has carried this out raises doubts about the intentions of the Modi government. Nation needs to understand this,” Sharma added. “It’s extremely unfortunate that the PM is doing all this to deflect attention from his miserable failure on all fronts.”
Twitter reacted with its usual grace by creating hashtags like #NehrukilledBose and #Bhaktsfakeletter:
Here's what the pro-letter brigade said:
And some were at pains to point out that it wasn't true:
And then you see this:
Check out the file here (page 101 onwards): Netaji File
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