Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Read online

  A gradual settling down under the shadow of the mystery continued, till I could lay my hands on the ToP which I mentioned earlier.

  As my piece in The Times of India could not produce any reaction, I must admit neither could I sustain the momentum of optimism nor could I maintain it. I gave up again. However, for sometime, I thought I would rather concentrate on studying Bose’s political and socio-economic thoughts and ideologies.

  I could also never give up collecting books or writings, from as far as Lahore, on Bose, and reading them. Then there were also distractions which often haunt a son or daughter of a non- surplus-income-group family, both for professional and personal reasons.

  In December 1996 however, things took a positive turn, propelling me to my last leg of investigation, not in the realm of my consciousness, but purely circumstantial, actuating my decades of self-imposed quest to know what happened to Netaji in Russia.

  In December, The Indian Express asked me to join their Calcutta Bureau as a reporter. It was a turning point and as luck would have it, I met Dr Purobi Roy, a professor of Jadavpur University and a scholar associated with the Asiatic Society of Calcutta.

  She was also a scholar in the Russian language. Prof. Roy had also visited Russia more than once and revived the issue, much to the annoyance of Congress.

  My discussions with her again confirmed my worst fears about the fate of Bose. We had long discussions, several times. I could also lay my hands on sensational declassified KGB documents, which named 45 Indian communists, including the brother of Congress leader Sarojini Naidu, who were brutally executed by Stalin for having tried to block his Non-Aggression Treaty with Hitler.

  My meeting Dr Roy also coincided with the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government pledging to reopen the case of Netaji by setting up another inquiry commission.

  It was more than I expected. My quest woke up again. I began to delve deeper to know how honest and sincere the BJP-led NDA would be. However, I must admit that I still had no guts to meet Prof. Guha who was on his death bed.

  It was during this period that I gradually began to realise that Bose’s fate had got intertwined with the political ideology he professed.

  His deep loyalty to Indian culture, both the spiritual and materialistic aspect with which he would examine modern and emerging economic and political realities, never fetched him any decisive political advantage.

  The Indian streak in Bose’s character, in turn not only made pro-British (system) nationalists, like Gandhi (despite all his Indianness, his love for simple Indian village and his making an old Indian theme, non-violence, which flourished during Gautam Buddha and attained a political connotation later with Emperor Ashoka giving up his ambition of physical conquest of rivals his (Gandhi’s) political tool, he could never give up his faith in Victorian sense of British justice).

  And his England-educated coterie turned Bose’s enemies, but also British and Russian influenced Left and Communists and Fabians like Nehru, who singled out Bose as their natural enemy on the ideological plane.

  And for the British – administration as well as intellectuals – Bose was ‘high-grade uranium’, not only because of his uncompromising Left and radical political views, but also because they saw in him a man who would reinvent a nationalist way to reconstruct an economically backward nation more vigorously against the Britishers’ grand design of cultural conversion as Lord Macaulay had recommended in his 1835 report on education in India.

  The British government, which read Bose’s writings and heard his utterances very carefully, realized that he could not be allured or incorporated into their grand plan of both political and cultural conversion of the Indian middle class and in a larger sense, the common people.

  Later, after long discussions with veteran CPI leaders, I also realised that Bose’s Indianness also saw to it under hostile circumstances Stalin, one of the greatest misanthropists of the twentieth century, could never get loyal friend in Bose.

  Though he had no plans to torture him, he however understood that Bose’s presence was important for politically blackmailing America and UK. Thus, Stalin took a leaf from his new-found imperialist friends, America and UK, instead of setting Bose free.

  Thus on occasions, Stalin and other Russian leaders took full advantage of blackmailing their former allies from time to time, projecting Bose as a comeback force in different phases as Cold War spread since 1947.

  We come to know from some of the recent declassified CIA documents, but as I earlier said that it did not put an end to cruelties of fate on Bose in Soviet captivity.

  In my final analysis, going by both official documents and by interviewing political leaders who gave me much information, I was forced to conclude that Bose was the most feared, post-war, non-communist, Left leader who all post-war world powers wanted to kill privately, as they feared doing it openly would invite a public backlash in India and in many nations in South East Asia.

  While this doomed Bose’s career, it, however, explained his stature in history and earned him a place that none of his contemporaries could lay claim to.

  As for example, during some of his last cabinet meetings with his ministers, the visionary in him brilliantly explained what would be the next phase of political alignments and the global state of economic and political affairs even though the Allies had won the war.

  His brilliant intellectual acumen led him to a correct perspective and position when he told his men that despite the victory, the then coalition would break into two groups globally – one would be led by Anglo-American forces the other by Soviet Union, and he would see the latter emerging as a natural ally of the Indian people.

  His prophecy was not only correct, but as irony would have it, it also led him to a trap, walking into which, he could never come out again to lead the countrymen he loved so well.

  Here, I saw a profound political mistake of Bose, who not only misunderstood Stalin but could not keep himself in the know of the Stalinist brutalities and purges that he had carried out, both by deception and guile, including killing Leo Trotsky with the help of an agent, even after deporting him out of Russia.

  And consequently Bose, seized with momentous crisis, decided to get played out by choosing an unreliable ally.

  He missed a point: a destroyed British empire could have never managed with his simple surrender along with his men; he missed it – a terrible strategic blunder – which would convert his apparent defeat into victory.

  In all fairness, it can be said for Bose that even if he knew the Stalinst structure he might have dismissed them as Stalin’s scheme of things to consolidate his own political gains in former Russia.

  He perhaps thought it was only limited to Russian political realities and may not necessarily affect the Russian dictator’s attitude towards non-Russians.

  A well-known columnist and a former CPI intellectual, Sankar Roy, who was secretary to Ronen Sen, a former member of undivided CPI’s Polit Bureau, told this writer: ‘It often seemed strange that Bose never found any fault with Stalin’s policies, his crude purges, and was blind to them.’

  Roy, who had full information about Bose being interned in Russia from Ronen Sen, knew more details which, of course, he did not share with me. However, he did give me clear hints that Bose was in Russia.

  Bose’s encounter with Hitler frustrated him, but confident and dignified as always, he curtly told Hitler that for the country’s sake, he had risked his neck and escaped the efficient British CIDs, and he would also escape his Gestapo if he found that his coming to Germany did not help his nation’s cause.

  Perhaps being impressed, Hitler did not order his arrest despite his outburst, and being curt, misled Bose into believing that his steadfastness would always put him in a good stead.

  Stalin, as much a misanthropist like Hitler, was neither impressed by his stature nor by his brilliance.. He especially abhorred Bose’s brilliance with liking for inferior elements.

  Throughout the thi
rty-two years of my quest and research, I just briefly concluded, remains the background culminating into a decision to write a book on Bose.

  It also detailed both on the basis of documents and versions of scholars and politicians that I could listen to. This led to development and evolution of my concept at different stages through an intense process of rejection and acceptance following a critical examination.

  The research also includes deciphering the truths from myths spread by a section of scholars and politicians who always insisted on his comeback-to-India tale and not without a reason.

  So many important people, let alone the official documents from the CIA or British or Taiwan governments, could not have a common agenda to corroborate the perpetuation of a lie to mislead at different times.

  What is even more important that all these political leaders and scholars I had had talks with were not related to each other in any way nor did they have any ideological links.

  Rather, at times, they belonged to intellectual zones which are diametrically opposite to each other in terms of interest and ideology.

  As I worked on my book for a very long period of time, I met several people who asked me if Bose was finally allowed to return and turned into an ascetic – an inner call or a spiritual inclination which always remained with him. I tell them, ‘no’.

  I have reasons to believe (again based on facts and cold analysis), that from time to time whenever some saints pretended to be Bose even remotely, they were all politically propped-up men either by the Congress or by Russians and their Indian collaborators or by other external political forces.

  This was also a point on which I had a profound disagreement with Prof. Guha, though I think he actually helped unfold dubious Kremlin’s role as far as Bose’s fate was concerned.

  Before I conclude this rather long prologue, I must make it clear that I did not choose to write a ‘biography’ of Bose, and that it is based on some of the more neglected aspects of Bose. However, these aspects unify to make a final point – Bose’s cruel end at the hands of the Russians.

  I have drawn up these issues and aspects which ultimately link to the end of Bose’s odyssey and how it was sadly inescapable for him.

  Introduction

  R

  eaders, and many others, may ask why an introduction is required when there was a rather long prologue which elaborated on a self-imposed mission to write a book on Bose, though nothing much on Bose’s last cruel days in Russian captivity came out while he remained a menace for major global political stakeholders as well as nations and men he struggled against to free his motherland.

  However, for me it was an inevitable part of the efforts I have made. My book, which only focusses on Bose’s remaining days of captivity in Russia (with a background on why it happened) yet triggering fear in the hearts of men who rule the Indian Subcontinent, the global stakeholders of the last Great War, especially the Allies who certainly never wanted Bose to come back to India with some of his erstwhile colleagues in the Congress, the Communist Party of India, and other political parties as they feared Bose’s hold on masses and his superhuman ability to do what they couldn’t.

  They opposed his return as they realised that it would spell political disasters for them. And for readers’ information, Moscow feared Bose no less either.

  The British government also knew that once Bose came back to India, whatever could be the legal interpretation of his war efforts in alliance with the Axis, it would be impossible for them to take him away for a trial and Bose could not be treated as a simple war criminal case as it would have caused a massive unrest within the British Indian Army, and the British feared it in no uncertain terms.

  On this issue, I would certainly have to admit that with limited resources (almost none to financially support travel into the lands, much less to continents), Bose traversed to free India, firstly from Congress’ long compromising political formula with the British, and secondly, destroying the Indian army’s loyalty to British Raj, it was a difficult task.

  And Bose did all this very successfully and effectively by breaking the ‘backbone of British rulers in India’ and forcing Congress and All-India Muslim League to accept the outcome of his single-handed efforts to script Independence for India.

  However, Bose’s noble efforts, in his absentia, could not prevent the Partition which the wily British along with their sub-continental accomplices executed. He doesn’t share the burden of the genocides of Hindus and Muslims that followed the Partition like it tainted other stakeholders such as the British government in India, Jinnah, Nehru, and to a far lesser extent, Gandhi.

  It would be wrong not to highlight from this side of the fence, Bose’s contribution could be truly evaluated not only from a perpetual British hatred towards Bose, but also their Indian accomplices’ efforts, like the Congress in India, to thwart any attempt to open up on his journey’s end in Russia.

  Once I was in Kolkata as a senior Bengal correspondent with The Indian Express. At that time the Justice M K Mukherjee Commission was carrying out its investigations into Bose’s disappearance from August 18 1945.

  I was invited with a few journalists to attend a tea party with the former British Secretary of State Jack Straw at their Calcutta Consulate.

  After the light and friendly talks were over, we were taking leave, but I felt tempted to know from a British Secretary of State to what extent the hostile attitude of the British towards Bose actually melted with the end of the Cold War and the favourable global economic and political changes.

  I also wanted to know to what extent the British government would co-operate with the Commission.

  At my questions, Straw immediately stood up. He grew stiff, with the air of friendship fast evaporating, and a sense of diplomatic protocol suddenly stirring up.

  He said, ‘Sir, I think my deputies would have a better answer to your questions.’

  He pointed towards the High Commissioner and his deputy. From Straw’s stiff jaws and lips and his suddenly becoming conscious of the protocol, he said it all.

  Not only could no British co-operation be expected, but their doors remained as shut as ever. And exactly what happened when the Commission visited England? The UK didn’t co-operate.

  Strange as it seems, Bose’s end was also never probed by Nehru and his dynasty-dominated Congress, or by other governments, such as Lal Bahadur Shastri’s or Morarji Desai’s, which from time to time broke the Congress’ consistency of power in Delhi.

  For it appeared dangerous to them – both weaklings globally and with vile intent. They would even ask their Russian counterparts not to open up their archives to Indian scholars and to keep it shut in their archives or ‘destroy them’, even during the reform movement Perestroika and Glasnost programme in Russia. Though ironically, Russian scholars provided enough clues during those opening up days in their writings and utterances.

  Here, I will bring in one example when Asiatic-Society-sponsored scholars tried to put their hands deep into the truth and made a request to the non-dynasty Congress Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, ‘he was so angry that he cancelled his visit to the Society and sent his Cabinet Minister Pranab Mukherjee to Kremlin to tell them to not open up their archival materials.’

  Such clandestine efforts also included Mukherjee’s calling on Emilie Schenkl, Subhas Chandra Bose’s wife, to get her nod for Bose’s much-publicised, Congress propagated death story. However, Mrs Schenkl, both surprised and shocked, asked Mukherjee to leave her home.

  However, despite Nehru and his daughter’s attempts to seal up the leaks, they weren’t successful at all ends. It was also apparent that Nehru and his efforts to seal the fate of Bose created a strong political lobby within political parties who would smite down any effort to bring out the truth.

  Another example is when the Justice M K Mukherjee Commission was probing the fake death of Bose, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee visited Renkoji Temple during his Japan tour. A
fter all, it was his government which set up the commission and he defied it when, Justice Mukherjee was still probing Bose’s fake death story.

  Justice Mukherjee reacted bitterly and The Indian Express carried a report by the present writer, but it certainly did not stir up great heat and dust in the political circles.

  An angry Justice Mukherjee told this writer that he would seek an explanation from Vajpayee, but he was, after all, the Prime Minister! Paradoxically, the Justice Mukherjee Commission was appointed by the BJP-led NDA government itself!

  Interestingly, Vajpayee was a BJP Prime Minister unlike the non-dynasty Congress Prime Minister Narasimha Rao. Barring the Janata Party’s Morarji Desai, I hardly found any Prime Minister who not only rejected the findings of the Shahnawaz Committee and the Khosla Commission which tried to confirm the fake air crash story, but on several occasions pointed his fingers to the Nehru family on the issue with an uninhabited mind.

  So was Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, an exceptional former Indian President, who even wanted to have a dialogue with his counterpart in Kremlin on the issue.

  It is also important to express gratitude to honest politicians and bureaucrats, such as Satyanarayan Singh, NG Goray, Member of Parliament Professor Samar Guha, who made a very serious contribution of leaking information about Bose’s captivity in Russia with leaders in the Pentagon, 10 Downing Street, London and Teen Murti in New Delhi, knowing full well that Bose was in Russia.

  Though Sinha and Goray did not write any book on their efforts, but Professor Guha did.

  Thus, it wasn’t an easy job, even for a reporter such as me, with limited resources, to complete a book on the issue.

  However, I am grateful to circumstantial advantages I always enjoyed to get people who knew it too well and would speak to me about their experience in Russia, and what they were told by the men at Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti (KGB) and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) about a very sad end of Bose, as well as those who have great integrity.

  Nevertheless, amidst these advantages there were also disadvantages. For example, the Congress propaganda on Bose’s fake death was so strong, it not only made the Indian historians blind, but media editors often doubtful about what a handful of men such as us who wanted to tell or report on this issue. These forces were stubborn enough, like the Congress propaganda, to leave researchers in the quest of truth, downcast and demotivated.