Today's Editorial 02 March 2014

              Case of the missing files

Source: By Nirupom Som: The Statesman
Among the long list of great men to whom India owes her independence, the first three names are usually Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose. While the lives of the first two are like open books to Indians, it is impossible to see Netaji clearly through the fog of controversies, speculation and information unsupported by verifiable evidence that swirls around him. The fog is as thick to most of his relatives like me as to others.

Subhas is a flawed president of the Indian National Congress, a might-have-been great Prime Minister of India, a leader who as per Nehru’s comments ~ obviously biased, in his Autobiography ~ tried to build his new political party, the Forward Bloc, through threats and violence, perhaps a war-criminal who threw in his lot with the Axis powers in World War II, a “dog” of Admiral Tojo according to the Communist Party of India (Marxist), a patriot who wept like a child at the sight of the tomb in Burma of Bahadur Shah II, the last Mughal Emperor of India. Netaji had reportedly married his long-time friend, Emily Shankel (a German) shortly after he had reached Berlin, having escaped from India. He had a daughter by her, but no registration document of or witness to the marriage had been discovered. Nor did he ever mention them during the entire period he led the Indian National Army in South-east Asia. And lastly, according to one report, he died in an air crash at Taihoku Airport on 18 August 1945 and his death was confirmed by the Government of India as well as by two commissions ~ the Shah Nawaz Commission and the Khosla Commission. However, according to some scholars and Russologists, there is some evidence of his presence in Russia in 1946.

According to Rathin Maharaj, alias Swami Jyotirupananda, a long-time in-charge of the Ramkrishna Mission office in Moscow, Subhas died in 1956 in a prison at Omsk in south-western Siberia. While in prison, he was visited by Vijaylakshmi Pandit, India’s Ambassador in the USSR, and also by Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, who had succeeded her. According to Rathin Maharaj, during his last years in prison, Subhas was without adequate warm clothing, was severely ill and mentally deranged. The monk’s remarks, however, carry no weight as they are not supported by personal evidence or any valid document.

Whether we take 1945 or 1956 as the year of termination of a stormy and enigmatic life, more than five decades have passed since then and we should have been able to rejig the puzzles, but this has not been done. For the Government of India, whose primary duty is to clear this great deluge of doubt, the problem does not exist at all. For them both the Shah Nawaz Commission and the Khosla Commission have come to a definite conclusion that Netaji died in a plane crash at Taihoku Airport on 18 August 1945 and the body was burnt and the ashes kept in the temple at Renkoji in Japan. Does the finding of the two commissions really unveil the mystery surrounding the disappearance of Netaji? Apparently they do not, according to important personalities and most members of Netaji’s family.

Surprisingly enough, the fact that the Government of India was in possession of documentary evidence questioning the correctness of the final verdict of the two commissions was eloquently declared by the then Prime Minister Morarji Desai,  in a speech in Parliament on 28 August 1978. After referring to the findings of Shah Nawaz and Khosla Commissions, he declared, “Since then, reasonable doubts have been cast on the correctness of the conclusions reached in the two reports and various important contradictions in the testimony of witnesses have been noticed. Some further contemporary official documentary records have also become available. In the light of these doubts and contradictions and those records, the Government finds it difficult to accept that the earlier conclusions are decisive.”

On 14 May 1999, the Centre appointed a third Commission of Inquiry presided over by Justice Monoj Kumar Mukherjee to inquire into the disappearance of Netaji and particularly to find out if he had died in the plane crash, as alleged.  This followed the persistent demand by a large number of important personalities, including members of Netaji’s family, as well as a unanimous resolution passed in the West Bengal Assembly on 24 December 1998 and a judgment dated 30 April 1998 of a Division Bench of Calcutta High Court. The Mukherjee Commission made a determined effort to collect from the Prime Minister’s Office, Cabinet Secretariat and the concerned offices of the Centre, material relevant to his inquiry as per his terms of reference, particularly the documentary evidence on the basis of which Prime Minister Desai made his statement in Parliament.. But according to his findings, he received negative replies from all the offices and the photocopies of the most important secret file bearing No. 2/64/78- PM (Pol Sec) received by him from the PMO did not contain any relevant material at all.

In his final report, he was driven to conclude: “While the Commission finds it extremely difficult to persuade itself to believe that the Prime Minister of the country would make an incorrect statement on the floor of Parliament to invite the risk of breach of privilege, in the event of non-availability of the contemporary official records referred to by him then, their non-availability now, as asserted by the senior officers of the ministries/offices concerned of the Government of India has undoubtedly put a spoke in the wheel of the inquiry.”

According to the Mukherjee Commission’s report, the inquiry at Taihoku Airport was more fruitful as he was able to come to a definite conclusion that Netaji did not die in the plane crash, as alleged. Secondly, on the basis of an analysis of medico-legal evidence, he was also able to establish that the ashes in the Renkoji temple were not of Netaji.

The Mukherjee Commission submitted its final report to the Central Government on 7 November 2005 but the Government rejected it outright without even a discussion in Parliament. Surprisingly the Forward Bloc did not call for a discussion of the report. The Manmohan Singh government appears to have faith in the reports of the two earlier commissions that Netaji had died in the plane crash. It is not interested in Justice Mukherjee’s comment that non-availability of records had put a spoke in the wheel of his inquiry or his painstaking investigation in Taihoku which enabled him to come to the conclusion that Netaji did not die in the plane crash or his detailed analysis of medico-legal evidence which again enabled him to conclude that the ashes in the Japanese temple were not of Netaji. The prominent leaders of the Forward Bloc have not been vocal on the Mukherjee Commission’s report.

It appears that when Indira Gandhi was the Prime Minister, an officer of Government of India, swearing on affidavit before the Khosla Commission, stated that more than 34 “confidential files” relating to the “Netaji Mystery” were either “destroyed or missing.” Justice Khosla noted this as a matter of routine and never inquired from the Government how it could have happened, under whose order the files had been disposed of in this manner, and whether photo-copies had been kept.

A few years back, Kamal Pandey, the then Union Home Secretary and incidentally a brother-in-law of Murli Manohar Joshi, HRD minister in the Vajpayee cabinet, disclosed that there were a number of files relating to Netaji in the custody of the Government, but their contents could not be made public as that would violate the provisions of Sections 123 and 124 of the Indian Evidence Act and Article 74(2) of Constitution. Apparently the two sections and the article provide room to wriggle out of the matter. And the lacuna is being exploited by the parties. Sometime back, about 50 members of Netaji’s family reportedly requested the Prime Minister to declassify all files, but no action has thus far been taken. Such declassification will not yield data to reconstruct history, but will give the lie to the story of death in the Taihoku air crash, perhaps corroborate the story of entry into the USSR, and also throw light on the report of Rathin Maharaj.