By: Dr.Dipak Basu
June 03, 2006
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(The author is a Professor in International Economics in Nagasaki
University, Japan)
Mukherjee
Commission did its job perfectly within the limits of the legal
formalities and as a result the main question was not answered: what has
happened to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose when he had embarked upon his
journey from Bangkok on 14th or 15th August 1945.
The whole
nation should be grateful to Anuj Dhar of Hindustan Times and Prof.Purabi
Roy of Jadavpur University for compiling and discovering some information
that may help us to imagine that fateful journey of Netaji. Dr.Hirendra
Narayan Sarkar’s book , ’A Homage to Netaji: a Commentary on his life &
Activities’ is also a helpful addition.
The affidavit of Prof.Purabi Roy to the Mukherkjee
Commission is in the website created by Anuj Dhar: www.hindustantime.com/news/specials/Netaji/purabi.htm.
Nehru and
Netaji:
Although
some politicians are trying to put the blame on Jawaharlal Nehru for not
trying to uncover the mystery, Nehru was at best a helpless spectator not
an actor in this matter.
When the
Khosla commission was appointed in 1970, Shyamlal Jain from Meerut gave
his statements to the commission. He was asked by Nehru to come to Asif
Ali’s residence with the typewriter on 26/ 27 December 1945. He was given
a letter to type; with a vague signature at its bottom. It had the
following content:
“Netaji
reached Dairen in Manjuria at 1:30 pm on 23rd August 1945, from Saigon by
plane. The plane was a Japanese bomber. He had plenty of gold with him in
bars and ornaments. After disembarking, he ate banana and drank tea. He
and 4 others, one of them a Japanese officer Shidei; got into a jeep and
went towards the Russian border. After about 3 hours, the jeep came back
and gave the pilot instruction to fly back to Tokyo.”
Nehru asked
Jain to type a letter to the then British prime minister Clements Attlee.
The letter had the following content
Mr Clements Attlee
British Prime Minister
10 Downing Street, London
Dear Mr Attlee,
I understand from most reliable source that Subhash 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
care of it and do what you consider proper and fit.
Yours
sincerely,
Jawaharlal Nehru
On August
23, 1945, the home member of the Indian government, Sir R.F.Mudie prepared
a report (Ref: Top Secret Letter no. 57 dated 23 August 1945) as to how to
handle Netaji. It was addressed to Sir E.Jenkins. The viceroy submitted
this report to the English cabinet. ‘Russia may accept Bose under special
circumstances. If that is the case, we shouldn’t demand him back’ was the
cabinet’s decision on this. After considering this, the British prime
minister Clements Attlee decided ‘Let him remain where he is now’. This
decision was taken in October 1945. It clearly indicates that he was alive
even in Oct 1945.
In 1946,
Nehru met Mountbatten in Singapore. On no occasion after this meeting,
Nehru has been reported of praising the INA. He had agreed to the demand
from the Indians in Singapore to place wreath and flowers at Netaji’s
martyr dome there, but withdrew quite dramatically on the 11th hour.
Hari Vishnu
Kamath M.P. demanded a probe into Netaji's absconding in the parliament in
1952. Nehru didn’t agree to this at first! (Ref: Page 103, Annexure 21,
Appendix I to Parliamentary Debates, Fifth Session 1952). When those who
demanded the probe made amendments for a non-official commission under the
great Dr Radhavinod Pal, who was one of the 11 Judges in the Tokyo trial
of the Japanese War-time prime minister Tojo and his associates in 1948;
all of a sudden, Nehru incepted the Shah Nawaz commission on 5th April
1956! What is most interesting was the commission was neither allowed to
visit the place of accident nor did the government seek the permission of
the Formosa government.
It is
important to know that Shah Nawaz Khan, the commanding officer in the
Kohima front had close contact with his brother, an officer in the
British-Indian army in Kohima and has revealed the codes and the military
plans of the Japanese and the Azad Hind Army. As a result Netaji removed
him from that position and sent him to Burma. Shah Nawaz Khan became a
Pakistani citizen but was invited by Nehru to be a minister in India and
to investigate about Netaji, whom he betrayed during the Azad Hind Army’s
campaign in Kohima.
Netaji’s
journey from Bangkok to Manchuria:
In 1952,
S.A.Aiyer, a senior government official and Nehru's friend, visited Tokyo,
after which he handed over a personal note to Nehru. The letter as it is,
is given below:
“This time I could gather a very important information. Col.Tada told me
that after the end of the war when Japan surrendered, Terauchi took all
responsibility to help Netaji and asked him (Tada) to go to Kaka Bose (His
Excellency Bose) and tell him to reach Russian territory - all help will
be given to him. It was arranged that Chandra Bose will fly in the plane
in which Shidei was going. General Shidei will look after Chandra Bose
upto Dairen, and thereafter, he could fall back on his own resources to
contact Russians. Japanese would announce to the world that Bose had
disappeared from Dairen. That would absolve them of all responsibility in
the eyes of the Allies.”
Nehru didn’t
inform this to the parliament despite controversies for a long time. He
even didn’t hand over his own files on Netaji to the commission. (Ref:
Prime Minister’s Special File)
This is the official death certificate of ‘Netaji’ issued by the Health
and Hygiene Bureau in Formosa, where it was necessary to produce the death
certificate for cremation.
Person died - Ichiro Okura
Date of birth - 1900 April 9
Cause of death - Cardiac arrest
Job - Soldier, temporary
Date of death - 19 August 4:00 pm
Date of permission for cremation - 21 August 1945
Date of cremation - 22 August 1945
Person requesting for the cremation - Dr Thaneoshi Yoshimi; doctor treated
The time of death in Habibur Rahman’s statements to different commissions
vary between 5 PM August 18th to 12 AM August 19th, and 4 PM 19 August.
Netaji was reported to be alive even after 1945 by the British
intelligence from Teheran and Kabul quoting the Russian embassy officials.
This was even stated in the Shah Nawaz commission report (File No. 10/ Mis/
INA-pp 38, 39). Reports of the officers appointed by Mountbatten and
McArthur, and the reports of BACIS (British American Counter Intelligence
Service) have all completely discarded any possibility of such a plane
crash to have happened. They all provided statements that Habibur Rahman
hasn’t told the truth; most possibly he has promised Netaji to hide the
facts.
The
statements by the INA officials, Japanese military officials, British
intelligence reports, and The Top Secret Files published by the British
government in 1976 all say Netaji was alive in Soviet Russia.
The INA
meeting in Kanpur from July 15 to 18, 1947 had requested Nehru to take the
INA soldiers in the Indian army. Even Mohammad Ali Jennah kept his word by
posting the INA members in his army; but Nehru didn’t.
One of
the three members in the Shah Nawaz commission was Netaji's brother Suresh
Chandra Bose. He didn’t agree to the report of the commission. He even
wrote to Nehru that his brother didn’t reach Taihoku; so he didn’t die
there! Nehru wrote back to him; "There is no precise or direct proof of
Netaji's death".
Netaji's
Confidential Personal Assistant, E.Bhaskaran gave this statement before
the Shah Nawaz commission about a letter by Netaji, addressed to John
Thivi, a minister in the Azad Hind government, written on 1945 August 17
at 3 am. The letter contains these words:
‘I am
writing this letter, because I am going for a long journey. Who knows I
won't get into a plane accident.’
The British intelligence has reported that Nehru knew where Netaji was.
Nehru took the Foreign Affairs portfolio himself and appointed none other
than Vijayalekshmi Pandit as the ambassador to Russia. After her term was
over, Dr S.Radhakrishnan became the representative to Russia. Dr Saroj Das
of Calcutta University told his friend Dr R.C.Muzumdar that Radhakrishnan
had told him that Netaji was in Russia. Radhakrishnan couldn’t come before
the Khosla commission due to ill health and treatment in Madras.
Former
Indian ambassador Dr Satyanarayana Sinha once met Georgy Mukherjee, son of
Abani Mukherjee, one of the founder of the Communist party of India.
Georgey Mukherjee told him that his father and Netaji were prisoners in
adjacent cells in Siberia. He also told Sinha that Netaji had assumed the
name ‘Khilsai Malang’ there.
Abani
Mukherjee was the companion of Virendranath Chattopadhyay, brother of
Sarojini Naidu, imprisoned in 1937 by Stalin. Both Abanu Mukherjee and
Varindranath Chattopadya were killed by Stalin later. Dr Sinha came back
to India and reported this fresh news to Nehru. But to his great surprise
and frustration, Sinha was unexpectedly scolded by Nehru, and ever since,
the relationship between the two deteriorated. Sinha has written this down
in his book. He has even described this incident before the Khosla
commission.
There are
more details in Page 318 of ‘Netaji Dead or Alive?’ by Samar Guha. The
Hindu, 25.07.1995 wrote, : ”Prof. (Samar) Guha also wanted the centre to
seek documents from Russia, Britain, Japan, and Taiwan. A fresh and
thorough investigation is necessary. The Gorbechev regime has allowed
access to secret documents under Glasnost. He claimed that Mahatma Gandhi,
Jawaharlal Nehru and others were aware of Netaji's imprisonment in the
erstwhile Soviet Union after World War II. But they did not want him to
return to India as it would wreck the Govt. and the Congress party. He
claimed that Jawaharlal Nehru, who had defended the INA leader, became a
changed person and never spoke of that Army and Netaji after visiting
Singapore in 1946 at the invitation of Lord Louis Mountbatten. The British
authorities too had passed on vital information to the Govt. of Clements
Attlee about Netaji's disappearance. But the Govt. of India never took up
the matter with the British Govt.”
Russian Connection:
It is not
known in India that the Soviet Union, along with Japan, Germany, Italy,
Imperial China, Hungary, and Romania, has recognized the Azad Hind
Government of Netaji and allowed Netaji to open a consulate in Siberian
city of Omsk, as the most of the Soviet administrtation was moved to
Siberia during the Second World War.
According to Prof.Purabi Roy of
Jadavpur
University, Netaji went to Manchuria from Singapore and was received in
Manchuria by the Consul General of the Azad Hind Government's consulate at
Omsk city, Kato Kachu, on August 22-23, 1945.
"Kato Kachu was,
according to Japanese researchers, actually an Indian. That name was an
alias."
Alexander Kolesnikov,
a former major-general of the Warsaw Pact, who has accessed the files in
Paddolsk Military Archive, situated 40 km from Moscow in October 1996,
said that Josef Stalin, the general-secretary of the CPSU, and his
cabinet were considering various options to deal with Bose in 1946.
During a meeting with an Indian Parliamentary Delegation to the Russian
Federation in 1996, he gave a written account of all his findings. The
delegation, which included the late Chitta Basu and Sri Jayanta Roy of the
Forward Bloc, brought the writing back to India. This account is the
basis of the affidavit before the Mukherjee Commission submitted by Prof.
Purabi Roy of Jadavpur University who was sent as part of Asiatic
Society's three-member team to the Oriental Institute, Moscow to study
Indian documents from 1917-1947. Since Paddolsk was out of bounds for her
being a foreigner, Kolesnikov was assigned the job. Her findings are:
There are a lot of materials on Subhas bose in the Military Archive in
Omsk, where the Free Government of India in Exile (or Azad Hind
Government) had a consulate during the Second world War. Just a request
from the Government of India would be sufficient for the Russian authority
to open that archive. Prof.Purabi Roy wrote to the Government of India
about it and as a result her research was terminated by the Indian
government and she could not go back to Russia again.
Prof.Purabi Roy found out a report of a KGB agent in Bombay written in
1946 about the political situation in
India.
The report is saying, "…. it is not possible to work with Nehru or Gandhi,
we have to use Subhas Bose”. That implies in 1946 Subhas Bose was still
alive.
The
Investigation Commission of Justice Mukherjee, initiated at the time of
the Prime Minister Vajpayee, was cut short and the Justice Mukherjee was
not allowed to go to archives in Russia as the Government of India refused
to request the Russian government to allow Mukherjee Commission to do so.
Kamal Pandey, the then Home Secretary has refused to give any access to
Justice Mukherjee of the documents still in the hands of the Government of
India. Shah Nawaz Khan Commission and the Khosla Commission have never
visited Russia or Taiwan to investigate, they never sought any help from
the Soviet authority either.
BBC
World Service has reported on 4th February 2005 that according
to the Taiwan Government there were no plane crashes at Taipei between 14
August and 20 September 1945; thus Netaji could not have died on
18th August
1945.
On
14th August 1945,
Japan has surrendered. There were literary hundreds of
Allied battleship and aircraft carriers all around
Japan and USA had
complete control over the airspace of
Japan.
It was impossible for any Japanese military aircraft to go from Taipei to
Tokyo without being attacked by the US. Why on earth Netaji would like to
go back to Tokyo to surrender himself to the U.S army who would definitely
hand him over to the British to be killed “ on the spot” as demanded by
Lord. Mountbatten! Given the fact that Japan had no hostility with the
USSR during the whole of the Second World War, it was only natural for
Netaji to go back to the Soviet Union, where he went first in 1941 to seek
the help of Stalin to liberate India.
Two Alternative
Possibilities:
From
the Russian archives it is possible to trace Netaji up to 1948; thereafter
his whereabouts are unknown. After 1955, when Stalin was denounced in the
Soviet Union, and the victims of Stalin were rehabilitated, there was no
reason for the Soviet authority to hide the facts on Subhas Bose. Indian
government has never asked the
Soviet Union or Russia in
this matter. Mukherjee Commission was not allowed to touch this matter
either. As a result, we still do not know the whether Netaji was directly
killed by Stalin in the Soviet Union sometime after 1948.
However, from
Anuj Dhar’s website another possibility has emerged. There are reports
that people have seen Netaji as a prisoner of British military officers in
Quetta in 1948, who took him away to the ‘no-mans land’ in the border
between Baluchistan
and Iran, most possibly for execution. Both General Wavell and
Lord. Mountbatten wanted to kill Netaji on the spot without giving him any
chance of huge publicity through any legal trial. The question is whether
Stalin has exchanged Netaji for some very important Russian prisoner in
the hands of the British. One such prisoner was General Vlasov of the
Soviet Army who in 1942 became a prisoner of war in the hand of the German
army. General Vlasov later while being a prisoner wrote a leaflet calling
on the officers of the Red Army and the Russian intelligentsia to
overthrow the Soviet regime of Stalin whom he accused of being guilty of
all the disasters, which had befallen Russia. General Vlasov had formed an
army of more than 200,000 men to liberate Russia from Stalin but was
forced to surrender to the British in 1945 after the defeat of Germany.
In 1948, General Vlasov and his men were sent back by the British to
Stalin. General Vlasov and most of his men were executed. It is not
improbable that Stalin gave Netaji to the British in exchange for General
Vlasov, and British have executed Netaji in the Baluchistan-Iran border.
This question was not examined by the Mukherjee Commission, as it had no
access to the Russian archive.
Conclusion:
The
Mukherjee Commission has raised a lot of questions but no solid answer
except for the one, which is well known. Netaji could not have died in
August 18 in Taipei. Japanese authority had propagated the story to
safeguard the life of Netaji from the British and American intelligence
services. Habibur Rahman, as loyal companion of Netaji, kept his promise
not to reveal the truth. As a result, the story of the aircraft accident
became the “established truth” and the facts remain buried. However, the
behaviour of the India government is still a mystery. There is no
particular reason why the government is so shy to ask the Russian
authority to unearth the facts.
Dr.Dipak Basu
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