Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Read online

  By not doing so, the Commission lost a major circumstantial source of evidence and could term Sarkar’s revelation as ‘hearsay’ in his report.

  This includes my deposition at a very early stage in the Commission, when I submitted my Times of India article and an interview of Leonard Gordon, and tried to bring to Justice Mukherjee’s notice a most revealing British letter.

  However, even my name was not mentioned among the people who were questioned when the report finally came out!

  ‘Sarkar also informed the Commission that he had revealed this information to only two others – Prof. Samar Guha, who had been an MP when the Morarji Desai government was at the Centre, and a newspaper reporter in 1989.

  ‘Zerobin told me that Netaji was looked after well and was given a car and a personal attendant at the camp,’ Sarkar informed Justice Mukherjee.

  ‘Sarkar claimed he met Zerobin when he was sent to Russia by his office, the Heavy Engineering Corporation. He said he took the information that Zerobin gave him to the Indian Embassy in Moscow, sometime in June or July 1962, but was shocked at their response.’

  ‘Sarkar was reportedly told by the secretary of the then Indian ambassador that, “I shouldn’t discuss this information with anyone, nor disclose it. I should mind my own business and do what I had been sent for”.’

  Sarkar also claimed that after he ‘disclosed’ this to the embassy officials, he was recalled to India in August the same year by his company. He alleged that the embassy complained about ‘my meddling in something which I was not supposed to’.

  ‘When Justice Mukherjee asked Sarkar why he had kept this information to himself for so long, the latter replied that he feared this would jeopardise his career prospects. Since he had retired in 1970, Sarkar added, he hadn’t had an occasion to disclose the information.’

  I reproduced my whole report from my reportage in The Indian Express, October 5, 2000.

  Instead of following the clues, Sarkar left for a wider investigation into who was the then Indian official and ambassador, and Justice Mukherjee, returned after his frustrating visit to Russia and hearing a ‘no’ everywhere. Mukherjee had believed that the Russian government would not take the risk of destroying its image globally by admitting or owning up to the sins of Stalin and his predecessors so easily.

  Furthermore, Atal Behari Vajpayee and his home minister L K Advani, unlike Morarji Desai, would oblige Justice Mukherkee and dub these oral disclosures as “hearsay”, including even the oral evidence given to the Commission by Dr Purobi Roy (report Vol 1).

  An example, from my report would explain Vajpayee and Advani’s position. During the time when the Commission was conducting its business, Atal Bihari Vajpayee had visited the Renkoji temple. Though Justice Mukherjee told this writer, rather angrily, that he would seek a ‘clarification from the Prime Minister’ (I did not know whether he did it, but it explained that Vajpayee, a Nehru ally, did not quite attach any importance to the Commission.

  It was a political compulsion to keep off a section of the Left from the Congress-proposed alliance (to keep the Forward Bloc/RSP out of the Congress fold), with the promise of a fresh look into Bose’s fate. Vajpayee wanted this desperately to install a National Democratic Alliance government and keep the Congress at bay.

  Kremlin keenly followed newspaper reports about the Mukherjee Commission regarding Bose’s last destination being Russia. As the issue resurfaced time and again during the proceedings of the Commission without anybody reacting to it in any way, Kremlin had enough time to eliminate the records or removing them from their archives. They had, by then, learnt this from the Indian government headed by the Congress dynasty, long before Justice Mukherjee could visit Russia.

  ‘Even some of the top secret documents were sold out to other superpowers or individuals, including moneyed Indians or foreigners, for money,’ said Purobi Roy in her book on the issue.

  KGB officials, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, merely changed the name of their security organisation. Here I would like to mention the killing of a former KGB man in London in 2007 as he was leaking dangerous details about a killer Russia under the Stalinist regime.

  He was given highly radioactive plutonium 10 in tea by an unsuspecting country man, a fellow Russian sent to London, and he perished within 15 days.

  Newspapers globally forget such victims even though their deaths might look strange and inhuman.

  I would like to write about the fears of Ponda that he shared with me during those lonely afternoons in Ajoy Bhavan. ‘After sometime, the top secret files would begin to contain fake documents instead of originals so that all Russian clues could be destroyed forever,’ he said, citing the example of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s withheld secret pages from India Wins Freedom.

  When they were published after the stipulated time (a little more than four decades, as Azad did not want them to get included in the first edition), the secret pages caused no sensation nor any excitement, though there was a lot of speculation before they came out. ‘Those pages were rewritten by Congress writers,’ Ponda said.

  Thus it became amply clear that the Congress leadership, British authorities, and American administration came to know about Bose’s last destination and worked together to do him in.

  Ponda also gathered a revelation (I must admit I could not do enough research on his clues) from his Russian sources that ‘America dropped two atoms bombs on a military-ready to surrender Japan, primarily to kill Bose, and secondly, if the bombing failed to claim their target, to reduce Japan to such a state that it would hand over Bose to them.’

  US did it at the persistent instigation from the British government, who, by then, had realised that they might have won the war only to potentially lose it in the coming days, and a free Bose, unless assassinated, would only hasten the pace of the Empire’s disintegration.

  What, however, confused them was what could be the real Stalinist and inheritors’ intention with Bose during the Cold War.

  None of them were sure if Kremlin would set Bose free to create political trouble for them and prevent US military expansionism with Bose working out a consensus among the South East Asian leaders though two atom bombs on Japan had already got his chief ally (Japan) under American control forever.

  Though it was not immediately clear to them, but Nehru’s letter to Clement Attlee, the then British Prime Minister, after the war mentioned that ‘Bose as war criminal given shelter by Russia and it is clear breach of war treaty’.Mystery of Disappearance of Netaji Subhas Ch. Bose, Vol II, by All India Forward Bloc’s Lokmat Prakashani.

  Apparently, much less to say that both 10 Downing Street and Pentagon knew about Bose’s presence in the Soviet Union, like small time India’s Communist revolutionaries, Ajoy Ghosh and A S Dange came to know in 1950 and the Indian dynasty.

  It, therefore, wasn’t a coincidence that till Dange was in control of CPI why his party walked so close with Indira Gandhi, CPI even backed the notorious Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi to suppress a popular backlash under Soviet instruction.

  However, another top CPI leader Ronen Sen’s secretary, Sankar Ray, a former CPI leader and well-known columnist, told me whenever both Pentagon and 10 Downing Street stepped up ‘pressure on Kremlin for handing over Bose to them, Stalin maintained his ideological façade and told them that ‘he isn’t a war criminal but a patriot’.

  This apparently made Stalin’s former war allies uncertain about Kremlin’s plans with Bose, though they knew about the hostile feelings that Kremlin’s Indian friends had had towards Bose in New Delhi.

  Perhaps, barring former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri (who died under mysterious circumstances in Taskhent), and Morarji Desai, they were all jealous of Bose.

  Meanwhile, a new Japanese government was playing its role by sticking to a fake death story under the instruction of its new master, America.

  With a façade of respect towards Bose, but secretly celebrating his misfortune in Moscow as Russia helpe
d Japan like it helped British and American governments in post-war situation by keeping Bose a prisoner. In fact, post-war Tokyo also enjoyed Bose’s miseries.

  Japan spent millions of yens to keep the fake plane crash story afloat for years, along with the fake story of Netaji’s ashes being kept in the Renkoji temple.

  This was done with the help of Japan’s Indian stooges, some of them even belonged to Bose’s own family and were headed by the late Sisir Bose and his son, who now owns the Netaji Research Bureau.

  The much celebrated Prof. S Bose, son of Sisir Bose, did not even bother to come and depose before the Mukherjee Commission, despite the panel’s repeated summons to him.

  It’s not that Russian scholars and authors were absolutely silent about Bose’s fate in Moscow, especially after glasnost and perestroika, which led to the dismemberment of the former Soviet Union.

  We cannot ignore or forget the revelation of Leonid Katov’s article: Indiiskogo Gariboldi etapirovali v Siberia (Indian Garibaldi halted at Siberia), from Dr Purabi Roy’s The Search for Netaji, New Findings, Introduction.

  Despite a much heated debate, Leo Trotsky could not be rehabilitated as Mikhail Gorbachev went ahead with his glasnost and perestroika. Hence, Kremlin thought it would be even more dangerous to open up regarding Bose issue, officially.

  This is because, with respect to the issue of Bose, after the end of the Cold War, Kremlin would have been accused of helping the interests of the American and British establishments, which they were supposed to oppose by doing Bose in!

  However, Russian scholars, in the changed political situation in their country, dared to open up, and left enough hints, though the Indian government, being as afraid as Kremlin, did not have any intention to follow up.

  ‘There is another version: Bose was abducted by Stalin, who, by then, began to collect interned political figures from foreign countries. As a matter of fact, on one side, Bose was a recognised national leader, and on the other, the political situation in India was contradictory and unpredictable. Then why should not Bose be kept near him for sometime? Stalin had taken the last emperor of China as his captive. If this version is to be believed, probably there should have been some secret gentleman’s agreement between the USSR and Great Britain because Bose was considered an ally of the anti-Hitler coalition. It is remarkable that none of the special commissions, subsequently instituted in India to enquire into Bose’s death, agreed with any of these versions. This is the mystery of the century. This is the mystery of India. This is a mysterious point in the Soviet-Indian relations. There was no definite reply from the Soviet side to the repeated statements that Bose remained alive and he was in Russia.’

  A Russian Tribute to Netaji Subhas, Alexander Kolesnikov, a former Warsaw Pact General in Mainstream, New Delhi, 19 July, 1997. Also courtesy, The Mystery of Disappreance of Netaji Subhas Ch. Bose, Vol II.

  Alexander Kolesnikov happens to be one of the major Russian military-men-turned-scholars who tried to help the unwilling governments.

  Kolesnikov was right when he said that neither Russian authorities nor Indian establishments took any interest.

  An example would stand my allegation on a strong ground. Decades ago, when Indian President Neelam Sanjiva Reddy released Prof. Samar Guha’s book Netaji Dead or Alive, he assured, in a big function in the Parliament Annexe, that ‘if Netaji was kept in Russia, in my capacity as President of India, I would immediately take up the issue with Kremlin. After all, they are our friends...’. Invited by Prof. Guha, I was present in the function.

  However, the next day, not only did all the major newspapers ignore the news, but Russia itself did not show any element of courtesy to respond to the Indian President’s announcement. Even the CPI and the Congress ignored it.

  Another element was the Indian media, in collaboration with the Congress, helped the mystery grow, and contributed towards its ultimate rejection by the people.

  That was the gain that the Congress achieved by practicing lies which would outwit the Goebel. For example, I faced an embarrassing moment in 2012 when Dr Purobi Roy showed me a picture of Bose that she got from Russian archive.

  As a correspondent of a Mumbai-based national daily, I thought the report would immediately create ripples globally and editors would have a better sense to understand its immediate and enormous impact. However, as I submitted the report, a very senior editor asked me ‘every year we get to know something or the other about Bose, though in any case, we might run the report.’ However, it was never actually run.

  The report stated: ‘A photograph of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose from the Russian State Archive of Film and Photographic Document or RGAKFD, with a caption as “Subhas Chandra Bose during Second World War’’ may bring a massive surprise for people in various parts of India who believe that Bose was in Moscow after Japan surrendered.’

  ‘Dr Purabi Roy, who held a chair in the St Petersburg University, told this writer on 15 January 2012, during her research in Russia that ‘I had an opportunity to locate a unique photograph of Subhas Chandra Bose taken during Second World War.’

  According to Dr Roy, the said archive had no photographs of any other Indian nationalists other than ‘Gandhiji and Netaji’, and ‘keeping in mind the Bose story’s Russian connection, I found the photograph very interesting.’

  ‘Interestingly, Roy was relaunching her book on Netaji at the end of January, 2012. When asked about more details, Dr Roy refused to elaborate as she told this writer that she could only get the picture from the archive on the condition that ‘I would have to take permission from the Russian government before sending it to publication.’

  The picture shows Bose was in a water heated air-conditioned Russian room.

  Whether Dr Roy said more about it or not, the photograph was a great outcome of her efforts which sprang a real surprise after sixty-five years of India’s freedom from British rule, as officially, both New Delhi and Moscow had maintained silence on this issue despite respectable politicians such as the late Satya Narayan Sinha, H V Kamat and Dr Samar Guha of the old Janata Party who were very emphatic about Bose’s links with Russia.

  A small part of the Combined Services Detailed Investigation Centre’s confidential report suggested that even at the early stage of Bose’s Russian connection, it reads: ‘... in December, are port said that the Governor of the Afghan Province of Khost had been informed by the Russian Ambassador in Kabul that there were many Congress refugees in Moscow, and Bose was included in their number. There is little reason for such persons to bring Bose into fabricated stories. At the same time, the view that Russian officials disclosing that Bose is allegedly in Moscow is supplied in a report received from Tehran.

  It states that Moraduff, the Russian Vice-Consul General, disclosed in March that Bose was in Russia where he was secretly organising a group of Russians and Indians to work on the same lines as the INA, the for freedom of India. Ibid.

  Yet indeed what also kept Nehru worried and sick was Stalin’s indifference towards all appeals to his government to establish friendly relations with India.

  However, there was contradiction in Moscow’s behaviour, as by then Stalin gave two interviews (met twice) to Radhakrishnan.

  There is another problem area; the Communist leaks about Bose being interned in the Soviet Union lacks consistency.

  While Ponda, whom I quoted profusely, indicated no physical tortures, Bose had to undergo mental torments.However, late Ronen Sen’s secretary Sankar Roy told me that in 1987, Rajeshwar Rao, CPI General Secretary (one of the men, who along with Ajoy Ghosh and A S Dange had met Stalin in 1950 in a party’s general body meeting) told members that ‘Bose was in Soviet Union, and was well taken care of, but told them to be absolutely secretive about what “I told you, otherwise I will kill you (perhaps a joke he chose to crack by highlighting that any leak on Bose by CPI members might invite punishment)”.’

  However, on the matter of keeping Bose well looked after, Ponda’s CPSU source did not wholly
agree with either Sankar Roy or Rajeswar Rao.

  I conclude that the men who still tried to safeguard Kremlin’s interest, tried their best to soften up its treatment meted out to Bose. In this case, Ponda was a rarity, I must admit.

  I would also like to give another example from Purobi Roy’s new book on Bose to point out their doubt about Bose and his escape. When the war was over, the German ambassador HA Pigler and the Italian envoy P Quaroni were brought to Butyrka prison in Moscow for interrogation by Soviet authorities.

  In the course of the interrogation, which was about the whereabouts of Subhas Chandra Bose in Kabul (when he was trying to escape to Germany after Soviet rejection), a detailed account was highlighted and thoroughly investigated.

  One of the questions was, ‘What was your (Pigler’s) and Quaroni’s purpose in sending Bose to Berlin?’ The answer was ‘Regarding the question of sending Bose to Germany, neither I nor Quaroni had any definite purpose or knowledge. We have just fulfilled the desire of our governments.’ Dr Purobi Roy, The search for Netaji : new findings, p 28.

  The Russians’ doubts were extremely great regarding Bose, even though by then, Bose was in Russian hands as a dignified prisoner.

  After former West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu, and later AB Bardhan publicly apologised, on behalf of former leaders, for giving Bose bad names. CPI General Secretary A B Bardhan told me in an unguarded moment in 2009 in Ajoy Bhawan: ‘Yes, there’s a Russian connection to Bose’s story.’

  Much latter, I realised how the Congress Party kept the conspiracy going, giving Moscow the much needed encouragement and confidence to keep silent on Bose’s eventual death in Moscow following a massive heart attack.

  CHAPTER SIX

  When Thunder Spoke

  I

  n absentia, like the ghost of Hamlet’s father, Bose hastened the pace of freedom.

  ‘As I was going up the stair,