Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Read online

  This greatly helped Stalin to script the doom for post-independent India – with blotching up all hopes for honest men, and ensured the stooges walking to power.

  Of course, for Bose, an internment in a very massive Russian Bungalow in Moscow, and thence to a kind of total isolation ‘as differences between Bose and Stalin widened, and also, Kremlin came under constant pressure from his war time allies’ before the Cold War broke out in 1947.

  However, for a badly war tattered Moscow and its leaders, who knew they weren’t in a position to fight off ‘both America and a destroyed Britain with colonies to dig in for resources, Bose would be a big bomb to scare them off,’ said K Ponda.

  As I quoted in the introduction from my own report in The Indian Express, after a decade or more in Delhi, I chanced to meet a Left (CPI) intellectual and leader K Ponda, former CPI general secretary A B Bardhan’s office secretary, the Russian mystery became somewhat clearer.

  On 18th or 19th August, Bose was likely to have crossed over to the Russia-occupied Manchuria as Japan began to broadcast news of his death, and the process of his gradual elimination began. It wasn’t the beginning though, but later happened with a difference.

  Bose’s crossing over to Russia and also the danger he faced in doing so, was detected by a British bureaucrat, with feedback from Intelligence that Bose was in Stalin’s hand.

  R F Mudie told his bosses in a letter on 23rd August, 1945 a date which was just a few days after the fake plane crash story was announced, that ‘… don’t ask for his release...’, for it would have minimum problems ‘for us’.

  ‘Of course, under circumstances, he could be welcome to Russia, but security experts believe under certain circumstances it would be so dangerous for him as to rule it out altogether’ (see the whole letter’s text and my Times of India article, Transfer of Power, Vol. VI).

  It was a cruel turn of events for Bose, who, of all the men, was fated to choose Stalin, a man who had even poisoned his own ailing leader Lenin when he wanted to rectify his error of making him the party’s General Secretary.

  However, it helped both England and Japan, though at one point of time, I thought that the Japanese had killed Bose and faked the aircrash story as internationally it would have saved Tokyo’s image as Bose’s friend, and they would have been saved from a situation where they would have had to hand over Bose to Anglo-American forces. I cross-checked with some of Bose’s biographers, but the answer to my question was ‘no’. Instead, the information that came to me, pointed to a Russian butchery, and dusts of the mystery over Bose’s last odyssey settled with Kremlin’s dubious involvement.

  ‘The British government, perhaps once again, thanked their luck which had held good several times for them in the war. For the hollow victory that devastating end of the war brought for them, would have been thrown into jeopardy in India had he (Bose) “surrendered’’ with his remaining legionaries of the Indian National Army. Bose was a brilliant man... it was unwise to presume that Bose did not realise the embarrassment which his plain surrender would have caused to a victorious British government, nor did he fail to see that an eventful surrender would have turned his apparent defeat into nothing less than a victory. A few days before INA’s surrender (Bose came up with an alternative plan for his surrender), while attending a series of the most heated cabinet meetings, Bose himself proposed the plan for his surrender. Yet in the course, he persuaded himself that he must escape... The British, in such a case, would love every enemy to follow. And the British government was never too late to avail the opportunity,’ says this writer in an article dated 23 January 1989 Why British feared Subhas Bose so much, The Times of India.

  Ponda, who was in Russia in the 1980s during Andropov’s regime, and Chernenko came to know from Russian KGB officials and CPSU sources that ‘first, Bose was kept in Kremlin as Stalin had had some hope of convincing Bose about his plans about India and South East Asia, but as pressure mounted from Moscow’s World War allies, a nervous Stalin shifted Bose to “a VIP bungalow with restriction imposed on Bose’s movements”.’

  Ponda pointed to another miscalculation on Bose’s part. Immediately after the war, neither in military terms nor politically, a badly bleeding Russia also thought it wise to shoulder another movement against both Britain and America. ‘It wasn’t viable, like Bose thought,’ Ponda told this writer, ‘German attack almost mutilated Russia.’

  Rather, a servile CPSU occasionally abused Bose as fifth columnist and perpetrator of war crime in Pravda to work out a facade with plants that he could be in China.

  And care was taken so that Russians who didn’t know much under the Stalinist regime’s social interventionist mechanism in Soviet society, knew even less about this handsome stranger in his lonely bungalow.

  ‘Or even if they were conscious, they were equally conscious about the hanging Stalinist axes over their heads, that any queries would push them towards,’ Ponda told me.

  ‘Even in the late 1980s, KGB’s grip did not slacken. The man who informed me at the gate of the library, wasn’t seen again,’ he said. What actually then helped Ponda were his sources in the CPSU, which did not dry up despite KGB interventions.

  Even Dr Purobi Roy, who made substantial studies on how Bose was captured in Russia, and whom I met in January 2012 again, after years, told me that Bose’s bungalow was rather huge with all facilities (especially with a Russian speciality water-heater to keep him warm and in good spirits).

  ‘A KGB man revealed all this to Ponda at the Moscow University Library where he was taking an indoctrination course and asked him to be quiet till the time he was in Russia,’ Ponda, whom I addressed as an elder brother, told me at Ajoy Bhawan, New Delhi, on countless occasions and, at times, with deep regret.

  When former CPI General Secretary Ajoy Ghosh, A S Dange, and Rajeshwar Rao with another one of his comrades, visited Moscow rather clandestinely in 1950, ‘Stalin informed them about Bose’s presence in Soviet Union’.

  ‘By then, Stalin had already met Bose at least thrice, and realising that Bose could not be a puppet, sent him to a Moscow bungalow’, putting Bose slowly on the rails of death.

  ‘They (Ajoy Ghosh, Dange, Rajeshwar Rao, and Bashupnia) were asked to be quiet about Bose, also. They knew the issue well, and kept it as a secret,’ Ponda told me.

  To a point, it explained why the CPI and Congress worked together and why the former’s Parliamentarian, Hiren Mukherjee, found less Left virtues in Bose than Nehru in his biography on the latter, as well as in Bow of Burning Gold (his rather impressionistic and childish assessment of Bose).

  Ponda, who got the information from his Russian sources which comprised the CPSU, the KGB, as well as his veteran Indian comrades, said, ‘Bose’s meetings with Stalin unsettled the Russian dictator, because of Bose’s rather outspoken criticism (of the Stalinist regime and) his plans about new India’. The meetings ended with bitter disagreements with the Russian dictator, and earned him isolation.

  Stalin was a habitual liquidator and hardcore killer, also a realist with an inferior intellect. He also had the perfect sense of a ‘communist gangsterism’, and emerging from a bitter war of succession after Lenin’s death, realised his purpose would not be served if Bose was allowed to re-enter India.

  Rather, it would spell doom for the ‘expansion of Soviet interests even during Cold War though Bose was an avowed anti-Anglo-American ideologue and globally recognised politician.’

  Bose, who could assess a correct international political positioning in the making (that is, the way the post-war world would take shape), however, knew less about this mediocre, conspiratorial, and natural killer, who would kill his critics at random.

  However, that did not entirely explain Stalin and his predecessors’ (including Nikita Kruschev) game plan with Bose. They ganged up and agreed that in the thick of the Cold War, after its split with China, let Bose meet his end in isolation while they would use his presence in the USSR to keep UK, US, the North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation (NATO), and New Delhi under a tight leash, thereby keeping them confused as ever on Moscow’s designs regarding Bose.

  Kruschev, a great friend of Nehru, despite his short-lived, anti-Stalinism had no different plans for Bose, either.

  Focussing the Indo-Soviet relation on Bose being a captive, he earned a special friendship with Nehru, and used Bose to keep the Indian political establishments under a constant threat.

  As for example, privately, Nehru could not answer or substantiate his claim that Bose died in the air crash as Kruschev never informed him. Though Stalin may not have liked Bose, but, as a strategist, he always kept an eye on Bose’s comfort, which had dipped during the reign of Kruschev.

  Kruschev, as a matter of secret policy, agreed with Stalin that ‘Nehru being a darling of US and UK couldn’t be trusted on the Bose issue.’

  In his short letters to both Suresh Bose, Netaji’s brother, and his nephew Amiya Bose, Nehru agreed that he had no evidence to prove that Bose actually perished in an air crash just a month before he expired, though he (arrogantly) pleaded that he felt Netaji was dead.

  In his short letter to Amiya Bose in 1964, Nehru admitted that something needed to be done about Subhas’ death.

  ‘I have your letter dated 29th April. I agree with you that something should be done to finalise the question on Netaji’s death. But it is not quite clear to me how far it will be proper for me to ask the Chief Justice of India to look into this matter. It may involve visiting Japan and I am sure I cannot ask the Chief Justice to do so.

  Yours sincerely,

  Jawaharlal Nehru.’

  p351, Mystery of Netaji’s Disappearance

  This letter proved that Bose, who ‘expired in the mid-1950s, following a massive heart attack in Moscow, was kept a secret even from Nehru,’ said an old CPI leader. ‘The Cold War was more important than friendship,’ he hastened to add.

  Interestingly, Muddie’s letter wasn’t the only one to doubt the fake death story of Bose. American intelligence as well as British military intelligence, which wasted reams of papers on the issue immediately after the crash, were all left clueless.

  They felt that only men sitting in London would have a ‘better access to the answer of this question’ (a man in UK could quote the War Treaty conditionalities, and ask about Bose from Kremlin, but Kremlin had anyway stopped answering their call regarding Bose, by then). The Russian design was also meant to keep them equally confused. Read some of the very few recently declassified documents of the CIA, and they will tell you the truth about the Russians’ intention.

  At times, Moscow planted stories with the help of their Indian agents in political establishments about Bose’s comeback tale, often in the form of a mysterious ‘baba’ (saint), as they knew that Bose had had a spiritual streak since his younger days. This led one of Bose’s greatest and early biographers, NG Jog, to write: ‘even if Bose turned a yogi in the Himalayas, this amounts to his civil death.’ In Freedom’s Quest, Introduction.

  Moscow’s intention was clear with the Indira Gandhi-led Congress, whom their friends in Kremlin never kept in the dark on their plans regarding such plants (with the exception of the death story). So they were not exactly worried on that front. However, much to the chagrin of the Nehru dynasty and a few other Indian political establishments such as the CPI, leaks regarding Bose being in Russia did keep them under a constant threat.

  A few admirers of Bose, such as the late Satya Narayan Sinha and Prof. Samar Guha, kept both Nehru and his daughter restless by confidently leaking information about Bose’s presence in Siberia.

  As for example, Singh had to leave his job from the Indian Foreign Service owing to his differences regarding Bose with India, America, and Britain’s darling Nehru.

  Even India’s philosopher-President Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, who was also India’s former ambassador in Moscow, warned Sinha not to ‘meddle in these affairs’ (he was widely suspected to have been shown a mutilated Bose in a labour camp by Russian authorities under Stalin), which earned him the posts of, first, Vice-President, and then President, by superseding many senior Congress leaders.

  However, the fact that he had seen Bose in a bad shape wasn’t true.

  Radhakrishnan, when officially asked, said that he had met Bose in Darjeeling in 1940!

  It was widely believed that his role in suppressing information about Bose being captive in Russia not only made Nehru happy but Stalin even happier, as he gave him two interviews, though, at that time, he had not been on good terms with his boss Nehru.

  However, this process fetched Moscow and the Indian rivals of Bose important political gains. First, Indian people who had interest in Bose’s comeback got bored with such ‘tales’. And secondly, at the end they lost interest in his fate, and gradually became indifferent to the truth due to a relentless Congress doing what would have put Goebbels to shame – ‘lie, lie, and lie becomes the truth’.

  Pentagon knew that Bose was in Russia from its Japanese sources, but could not ascertain Kremlin’s intentions, though they did not (the US and the UK) have the guts to disclose it anyway.

  Despite Kremlin’s Fagin-like role, this globally earned Bose, a stature of the most feared non-communist Left leader in the post-war Anglo-American camp.

  However, the US, which favoured Pakistan used to get confused over such plants because, despite the Partition, Bose was still very popular there, at least till the 1964. In fact, when the BBC carried out a survey on Asian leaders even as late as in 2006, Bose missed the first place by a few inches such was his popularity.

  This is despite the Indian government not spending any money to promote Bose like they do on Gandhi and Nehru.

  As far as the US confusion regarding Russia’s game is concerned, it comes clear from a declassified Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) document.

  It read: (from an airgram from the American Consulate General, Bombay, May 231946, to the Secretary of State, Washington DC, A-175, May 1946, CONFIDENTIAL) ‘X (name deleted) approached me several days ago with aquestion on Subhas Chandra Bose. X said that the hold which Bose had over the Indian imagination was tremendous and if he should return to this country, there will be trouble, which in his judgement, would be extremely difficult to quell. According to X, it should be reasonably easy to establish, beyond the shadow of a doubt, whether Bose is dead or alive...’

  ‘Then again in February 1964: ‘X relates to story concerning possible return of one Subhas Chandra Bose. The individual is a former, deposed President of the Indian National Congress (1935-39, report carried a wrong date it should be ’38-’ 39) and is believed to have died in an air crash after the war. However, there exists a strong possibility that Bose is still leading the rebellious group, undermining the current Nehru government. X relates the story orally...’

  The Mystery of Disappearance of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, p 281.

  Two documents that were declassified in 1994 by CIA, leaves ample evidence on how Russia used, by then, dead leader (it was widely suspected that S Radhakrishnan being allowed to see a mutilated Bose in Siberia was a fake story, but Stalin may have allowed Radhakrishnan to meet him in Bose’s Moscow bungalow) to spread a disinformation campaign to strike terror in the US heart in the midst of the Cold War.

  Very recently, I got a declassified document from CIA which was managed from the Agency Release Panel under the US Freedom of Information Act. The document said: ‘Bose is alive and is in Siberia’. CIA’s Indian source said: ‘India (in 1950) faced some real potential danger, that is, Bose is alive and is in Siberia where he is waiting for a chance to make a big comeback’.

  ‘Recently, his life story was told in the Indian theatres. Every time the actor representing Bose appeared on the screen, he was loudly applauded... this expression of great enthusiasm clearly indicated to me that Bose is a national hero... native Indians’ explanation for this was founded in the fact that Bose took definitive action against the British rule.’

  ‘Several educat
ed Indians said that they feared that the USSR would actually send an imposter as Bose to India.’

  This document from CIA proves how Kremlin used Bose to strike fear not only in the American bloc, but even terrorised Indian political establishments. Even Nehru never felt quite at ease with Mountbatten having already kept him informed about Bose’s presence in Soviet Union. And when Indian people and a section of Indian leaders, primarily non-Congressmen, asked Nehru to come up with a clear-cut explanation on Bose’s Taihoku death, he had no answer other than to show them lies packed in both fake documents and an air crash that never took place.

  I will quote another report of mine posted on 4 October 2000 (which even Google has now dislodged), as I went to cover Justice Manoj K Mukherjee Commission’s proceedings as a reporter. We heard a retired Public Sector Undertaking (India) official, Ardhendu Sarkar, who kept his meeting with a Russian engineer in 1962 a secret for nearly four decades, ‘until last week’.

  ‘Deposing before the Justice Manoj Kumar Mukherjee Commission, set up to probe Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s disappearance, Sarkar disclosed that a German engineer, known as Zerobin, who was forcibly brought into Soviet Union, had revealed to him that Bose had been seen in a Siberian “VIP camp” in 1948-49.’

  Incidentally, Zerobin was one of the many German scientists and engineers who were abducted from Berlin and contributed to make a technologically-backward Russia as competent as its major global enemies.

  However, for strange reasons, the Mukherjee Commission left the investigation at that level. Sarkar, who revealed about this to a third secretary, an Indian embassy official who got him deported to India for having met Zerobin and for having come to know about the truth, but could not inspire Commission chairman to enquire about who was that secretary under whose direction Sarkar was deported from Moscow.