PM declassifies 100 files related to Netaji, doubt lives

PM releases secret files

In a significant step which may help in clearing the air regarding the long-standing mystery of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s disappearance and “death”, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday made public 100 secret files related to the freedom fighter on the occasion of his 119th birth anniversary.

Interestingly, one of the declassified files, consisting of Cabinet notes exchanged within the government as late as in 1995 (when the Congress was in power), indicate that the Centre had adopted the position that Bose was killed in the air crash on August 18, 1945, even as the controversy over the INA chief’s disappearance continued. “There seems to be no scope for doubt that he died in the air crash of 18th August 1945 at Taihoku. The Government of India has already accepted this position. There is no evidence whatsoever to the contrary,” a Union Cabinet note of February 6, 1995, signed by then home secretary K. Padmanabaiah, said. The note said, “If a few individuals/organisations have a different view, they seem to be more guided by sentimentality rather than by any rational consideration. The belief of these people that Netaji was alive and out of contact with any individual, but would appear when found necessary, has also lost relevance by now.”

The Cabinet note was prepared for the government to take a stand on bringing the “mortal remains” of Netaji from Japan, kept in the Bose Academy in Tokyo.

But the files also reveal that five days after the air crash, a top British Raj official had weighed the pros and cons of “trying” Netaji as a “war criminal” and suggested that the “easiest way” would be to leave him where he was and not seek his release, suggesting that he may be alive then.

Chandra Kumar Bose, spokesperson of the Bose family and grandnephew of Subhas Chandra Bose, who was present at the ceremony, said: “We welcome this step by the Prime Minister wholeheartedly. This is a day of transparency in India.”

However, he also said: “We feel that certain very important files were destroyed during the Congress regime in order to hide the truth. We have documentary evidence to understand this. So we feel that the Indian government should take steps to ensure the release of files lying in Russia, Germany, UK, USA.”

He said from whatever documents “we could go through, there are only circumstantial evidence of the air crash but no conclusive evidence of the air crash. Even in one of the letters that we saw here which was written by Lal Bahadur Shastri to Suresh Bose that there is no conclusive evidence about the air crash, only few circumstantial evidence,” Mr Bose said.

Consisting of almost 17,000 pages, ranging from information dating back to the British-era to as recent as 2013, the files were put into the public domain at a ceremony held at the National Archives of India (NAI).

Earlier in the day, Mr Modi tweeted about the occasion, “Remembering Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose on his birth anniversary. His bravery & patriotism endears him to several Indians across generations.” He tweeted, “Today is a special day for all Indians. Declassification of Netaji files starts today. Will go to National Archives myself for the same.”

Meanwhile, the Congress pitched for declassifying all files related to Bose, adding that the way Mr Modi has set about the task raises doubts about his intentions.

“The Congress has already said that it would like to see all files to be declassified because attempts are being made to raise a controversy and misguide people of the country through a mischievous political campaign,” senior party spokesman Anand Sharma claimed.

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee demanded that Bose be given the title of “Leader of the Nation” and said the country has the right to know the truth about his mysterious disappearance.

Among the documents released was also a series of letters exchanged between the government and various official agencies, after late MP Samar Guha claimed that Bose had made a speech on Radio Moscow following the signing of the Tashkent Pact between Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri and Pakistan President Muhammad Ayub Khan in the presence of Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin on January 10, 1966.

Mr Guha and several MPs had also raised the matter in Parliament, quoting Indian and Western press reports.

After releasing the files, Mr Modi, along with his Cabinet colleagues Mahesh Sharma and Babul Supriyo, went around glancing at the declassified files, and spent around half-an-hour at NAI. He also spoke to the members of the Bose family.

The declassification came after Mr Modi met the family members of Bose in October last year and announced that the government would declassify the files.

In addition to the 100 files, the NAI plans to release digital copies of a set of 25 declassified files on Bose in the public domain every month. NAI also opened a dedicated website to store all the declassified files related to Bose.

While two commissions of inquiry had concluded that Bose had died in a plane crash in Taipei on August 18, 1945, a third probe panel, headed by Justice M.K. Mukherjee, had contested it and suggested that Bose was alive after that. The controversy has also split members of the Bose family.

The first lot of 33 files were declassified by the Prime Minister’s Office and handed over to the NAI on December 4 last year.

Subsequently, the ministries of home affairs and external affairs too initiated the process of declassification of files relating to Bose in their respective collection which were then transferred over to the NAI.

The secret files being made public meets a “long-standing public demand” which would facilitate scholars to carry out further research on Bose, an official statement said.

In 1997, the NAI had received 990 declassified files pertaining to the Indian National Army (Azad Hind Fauj) from the ministry of defence.

In 2012, 1,030 files and items pertaining to the Khosla Commission and Justice Mukherjee Commission were received from the ministry of home affairs. All these files and items are already open to the public under the Public Records Rules, 1997, the statement added.

Netaji’s nephew Ardhendu Bose, who also attended the ceremony, said: “The Bose family and the entire country has been waiting for this moment for the last seven decades. We feel these files would be able to throw some light on it.”

The declassification of the 100 files by the Central government came four months after the West Bengal government had released 64 secret Netaji files kept in its police and state government lockers.

Besides the controversy over whether Bose died in the 1945 air crash at Taihoku in Taipei or not, those who believe he was alive after that have different theories about what happened to the leader thereafter.

While one of the theories says Bose fled to the former Soviet Union to continue to fight for India’s independence but was later killed there, another says that Netaji returned to India as an ascetic, named “Gumnami Baba”, and continued to live in Uttar Pradesh’s Faizabad till 1985.