India's biggest cover-up

by Anuj Dhar

  Some thirteen years ago a court order reopened the case and the WWII mystery became a hot topic in the 21st century India. The inquiry of MK Mukherjee, a former Supreme Court judge, proved to be the gamechanger. The judge rapped the Government for not being sincere and evidenced that the story of Bose’s death in Taiwan was actually a Japanese smokescreen to obfuscate the trail of his escape towards Soviet Russia.

  The Government reacted with a vengeance as it received the report in 2005. Official sources trashed the judge and his “damp squib” [18] report in a Delhi newspaper leak. Sir Humphrey Appleby would have been proud of the Indian bureaucrats. They appeared to have picked up his stratagem on “how to discredit an unwelcome report”. Stage three: “Undermine the recommendations.” Stage four: “Discredit the person who produced the report.” [19]

  On 18 May 2006, the Justice Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry report was placed before Parliament with a single-page Memorandum of Action Taken Report signed by Home Minister Shivraj Patil. Even a school report card would have been far more detailed. And when the Opposition lawmakers rose in protest, they were taken head-on by two Bengali battering rams, shattering the myth that all Bengalis care too much about the fate of the most famous of them all.

  Minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi growled at the BJP members. “Why did the former Prime Minister Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee visit Renkoji temple and pay tributes to the ashes?” [20] Minister Pranab Mukherjee reasoned with the enraged parliamentarians: “You can have the full discussion, instead of making these types of off-the-cuff comments. Let there be a structured discussion....”[21]

  “Drop this sagacious tone, Mr Minister!” I said watching the TV. The Lok Sabha channel was beaming live the discussion, and conjectural visuals from another time and place were playing on my mind. To me it was “Pranab Mukherjee’s Mission impossible”. Should you find the title flattering because of the Tom Cruise-starrer it has been paraphrased on, let me put it crudely: The mission represented a botched attempt to cover up the Bose mystery.

  The old fox can’t deny it. It is on the secret files, partly, and also the lips of many Subhas Bose family members in its uncensored form.

  In 1995 a group of Japanese war veterans, proud of their association with the INA, made an appeal that the Indian government should take “Bose’s ashes” to India. The demand was discussed by Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao, Home Minister SB Chavan, Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee and the all-important Committee of Secretaries (CoS) headed by the Cabinet Secretary. The Intelligence Bureau’s was the voice of caution. “If the ashes are brought to India, the people of West Bengal are likely to construe it as an imposition on them of the official version of Netaji’s death.”

  How do I know this? Well, it is on record. In fact, let me show you the relevant portion from a Top Secret record accessed in public interest, which overrides everything else:

  [What is PI? Please see Copyright page for the stamps on images]

  The Ministry of External Affairs, however, stuck with the opposite view. “The ashes should be brought back to India.” It was even ready with the outlines of a “preparatory action” to create a “consensus in favour of burying the controversy” under which “respected public figures” could be “discreetly encouraged to make statements, including in Parliament, requesting the Government to bring back the ashes”. To sort the issue out, Prime Minister Rao asked the Home Minister to place the matter before the Cabinet. That happened on 8 February 1995.

  At the meeting, Home Secretary K Padmanabhaiah submitted a Top Secret backgrounder discussing the case as seen by the jaundiced eyes of the Government. While it was being prepared, the Home Ministry asked Mukherjee’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) to furnish a copy of the all-important Japanese record conclusively proving Bose’s death. The MEA responded that it had none.

  The Cabinet decided to stall for time and not bring the ashes to India. However, there was no stopping Pranab Mukherjee. Maybe he was privy to some ultra secret information. Or perhaps some Congress party psychic had told him, “Bose died in Taiwan; don’t bother about evidence.”

  So, the Bengali anti-hero—strictly in this instance only—hopped across the world in 1995 in a never-before quest to exorcise the ghost of Bose mystery. After meeting the Japanese Foreign Minister in Tokyo, Mukherjee flew to Germany. Sanitized official records speak of his meeting with Bose’s daughter Anita Pfaff who, against the wishes of her family, was eager to help Pranab Mukherjee in taking the ashes to India.

  But wait, why ask the daughter when the mother is still around?

  I immensely enjoyed James Cameron’s Titanic. I read how a large number of Indians shed copious tears over a fictitious story of a woman not being able to overcome the loss of her love despite decades rolling by. And I fail to understand how the same Indians could never empathise with Emilie Schenkl, who was not at peace even forty years after Bose had disappeared.

  Just before she died, Emilie was given a rude jolt by Pranab Mukherjee. He asked her to sign a paper so that the ashes kept in the Japanese temple could be taken to India as Bose’s ashes. According to a less charitable and probably bloated account, octogenarian Emilie was offered “a blank cheque”. “She was told that she could earn any amount in any currency for such a favour. She took the blank cheque and tore it to pieces, asking the emissary never to approach her in the future.” [22]

  A less disgraceful, but authentic, version of the event later emerged from Subhas’s Germany-based grandnephew Surya Kumar Bose:

  On 20 October 1995 auntie rang me after 10:30pm from her daughter Anita Pfaff’s home in Augsburg. She was quite agitated. She told me that Mr Pranab Mukherjee was coming to Augsburg on 21st October 1995 to convince her and Anita to give their approval for bringing the so-called “ashes” of Netaji to India. Mr Mukherjee also wanted her to sign a document which he would take back to India as proof of her approval. She again emphasised to me that she had never believed in the plane crash story and would neither sign any document nor agree in any way to bringing the “ashes” to India or to anywhere else.

  On 21 October 1995 Anita and her husband Dr Martin Pfaff had to take Mr Pranab Mukherjee out for lunch as auntie could not tolerate any discussion on the so-called “ashes” in her presence. Auntie told Pranab Mukherjee quite clearly that she did not believe that Netaji had died in a plane crash…and that those “ashes”…had nothing to do with Subhas. [23]

  Emilie was just stating the standard view held by almost all the Bose family members, and for good reasons.

  Surya had to speak with his grandaunt again when an Indian daily subsequently carried a newsitem (mis)quoting Pranab Mukherjee as saying that Emilie “had given her approval to the Government of India’s plans for bringing the ‘ashes’ to India, and that he (Mukherjee) had a document to prove it”. Emilie turned livid and

  reiterated that she had signed no such document and had approved of nothing. Mr Pranab Mukherjee was propagating an untruth for reasons best known to him and the Government of India. [24]

  A decade later, Pranab Mukherjee was described in the Justice Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry report as one of the seven witnesses who had testified before it in favour of the story of Bose’s death in Taiwan. The rest included a fellow Congressman who did not know much; a former INA veteran who lied under oath and a prejudiced journalist known to Mukherjee.

  In an ironical twist, Mukherjee, having returned to power in 2004, then sat in judgment on the commission report along with his other Cabinet colleagues. Since the chances of minister Mukherjee taking an objective view of judge Mukherjee’s report were bleak, there were murmurs of protest. Pranab was accused of trying to scuttle the commission’s inquiry and that probably led to his facing “mob fury in Kolkata” while his car was entering a hotel on 18 June 2006.

  “Mukherjee later said the report had already been placed in Parliament and ‘we wanted a discussion on the report but the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stalled the debate’.” [25]

  Go
ing by the transcript of parliamentary proceedings, it was nothing like that. The promised “structured discussion” on the dismissal of the commission report took place in August 2006. In the Rajya Sabha, incensed MPs from different parties shouted at Shivraj Patil: “Why are you so keen to prove that Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose is dead?” [26] Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, another Bengali luminary, invited scorn that with his alleged help “Congress succeeded in putting to rest a debate on the subject”. [27]

  The highlight of the discussion in the Lok Sabha, before it was lost to interruptions, was the emotional defence of Justice Mukherjee and his report by Bose’s mannerly nephew Subrata Bose. He told the House that Mukhrejee’s name was recommended by the Chief Justice of India. He called him “a man of integrity”, who carried out “the inquiry with an open mind”. [28] Subrata could say so with conviction because he had closely followed the commission’s inquiry as a deponent. He accused the Government of deliberate “suppression of facts and information” and destroying files “which contained relevant information”. [29] His charge that the Government had indulged in destruction of evidence on Bose’s fate was seconded by Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee in her brief intervention.

  “The Government stands accused…in the court of the people of India,” Subrata wound up his address, demanding approval of the commission’s findings by the Government. “This will be the chance for the Government to amend [its]…willful misconduct of…over 59 years”. [30]

  Prabodh Panda, another member, took objection to the delay in making public the report as also the ATR report, which he described as “one page of white paper”. “The mystery has not been solved, but it [has] remained.” [31]

  The Rajya Sabha discussion on August 24 was also drowned in the din. For some reasons it was scheduled to the ungodly hour of 8pm. Lasting up to 11.30pm, it was unusually lively and had many participants, the most outstanding of whom was former HRD Minister Dr Murli Manohar Joshi.

  Opening the debate, Dr Barun Mukherjee said if indeed the Government’s decision to dismiss the commission’s main findings was biased, “the future generation will not forgive us for that”. [32] Dr Chandan Mitra said he could not understand why certain Bose files were kept classified in the name of ties with certain friendly foreign nations. “Are the friendly countries more important or are the people of India more important?” he asked. “It is not a political question, it is a question of our nationhood,” he underscored and predicted that “the people of this country will not rest quiet even if it takes three more generations” [33] to get at the truth about Bose.

  Shivraj Patil’s response was made up of legalistic, political mumbo jumbo and oodles of cynicism. “If he were alive, what made him stay away from the country? Why did he not come, if he were alive?” [34] Dr Joshi gave him a rejoinder: “Suppose Netaji was arrested by some country, suppose he was not a free man? How could he come? Now, this is a thing which you have to find out, which the country has to find out… That is the most important thing. If you want to know it, and, if you can help it, well and good; otherwise, people will decide themselves what to do.” [35]

  Patil went for the jugular, going so far as to denigrate a former Prime Minister no longer around to defend himself.

  Speaking in the Lok Sabha in 1978, Morarji Desai had to set aside the findings of GD Khosla and Shah Nawaz panels in view of glaring contradictions in evidence and “contemporary official documentary records”. After it was formed, the Mukherjee Commission directed the Government to produce those contemporary records.

  But on 18 December 2001, the office of Prime Minister Vajpayee, who had served under Desai as Foreign Minister, made an astonishing claim. A PMO affidavit said that “due searches” had failed to locate any such records and, therefore, the PMO was “not in a position to provide any clarification/explanation” why Desai “had made such statement on the floor of the Parliament”. Justice Mukherjee responded that some notings in a secret file suggested that such records were in existence earlier. Still the PMO had no clue.

  In 2006, the Congress-led UPA government latched on to the stand taken by the Vajpayee government. Home Minister Patil insinuated in Parliament that since the records referred to by Desai could not be traced, the former PM must have misled the nation. From this logic flowed Patil’s jibe that former PM’s 1978 “statement could have been motivated, not by reasons of law, but by reasons political”. [36]

  Hindus don’t end up in graves, or else Desai would have turned in his after this instance of the pot calling the kettle black. All his life, Desai had lived by Mahatma Gandhi’s ideals. He wore self-spun khadi till the end and made a nauseating fetish out of naturopathy. So far his pre-Independence politics went, for a while he was engaged in trying to queer Subhas Bose’s pitch. So, could he have lied in Parliament for a man he had never sided with?

  The Prime Minister’s Office would disagree. Desai’s profile on the official PMO site reads that “for him, truth was an article of faith and not expediency”. As a minister in Nehru’s cabinet Desai was never heard, even on the grapevine, saying anything which might be construed as favourable by those seeking the resolution of Bose mystery. As Prime Minister, Desai was as cynical as Patil. On 16 January 1978, he dismissed historian Dr RC Majumdar’s view that there was a “good case for the appointment of a fresh committee to investigate into the matter”. The words Desai had used then were echoed by Patil in 2006.

  If it is assumed that he were alive, I do not think he would have remained out of India till now. He would have doubtless come here soon after or later at any time during the last so many years. Even under the law if a person is not heard of for seven years, he is presumed to be dead.

  In fact, Desai was far more harsher. On February 2 he made this comment in a letter: “So many years after the event any fresh investigation seems to me to be a sheer waste of money or any further controversy about it a sheer waste of time.”

  Prime Minister Desai was all for continuing with the official policy on Bose’s fate. But he could not sustain it in the brazen fashion of his predecessors mainly due to the circumstances prevailing in 1978. Shivraj Patil was lucky to have not faced even a fraction of the pressure the MPs had mounted back then. They called for a fresh inquiry which could specifically sniff out secret records and reach out to the Russians. Desai bit the bullet and conceded that Bose death claims were inconclusive. There indeed were contradictions in evidence and the British Raj-era records did throw the air crash theory open to questions. Desai gave away this concession to get the monkey of “fresh inquiry” off his back. If there was any political dimension to Desai’s statement, it was this.

  The trouble for the Government started in 1999 when the Calcutta High Court assessed Desai’s statement in its right perspective and ordered that a new inquiry should be launched as a direct corollary to the PM’s admission in Parliament that the evidence on Bose’s death was inconclusive. Since Patil could not have faulted the court, he made dead Desai the fall guy. Official records show the UPA government using a shady logic to discredit Desai. It goes something like this: It is gospel when the “eyewitnesses” back the Taipei crash theory with contradictory statements and no supporting documentary evidence. But it is telling lies when a Prime Minister of India, a top notch follower of the Mahatma, makes a statement in Parliament repudiating the crash theory. Why? Because the Government can’t find the records on the basis of which Desai said so.

  But which government is it that can’t find the records? Is it not the one which by its own admissions to the Mukherjee Commission illegally destroyed and misplaced several Bose records in the past? You don’t have to be a former Supreme Court judge to make deductions as Manoj Mukherjee did. The bottom line in his report was that the commission found “it extremely difficult to persuade itself to believe that a Prime Minister of the country would make an incorrect statement on the floor of the Parliament to invite the risk of breach of privilege”. His conclusion, a fair one to arrive at, was that
the non-availability of records cited by Prime Minister Desai “put a spoke in the wheel of this inquiry”. [37] Funny how those who had shoved this spoke later complained that the wheel hadn’t moved enough.

  It beats me why the Government of India could not find the “contemporary official documentary records” Desai referred to when some of them have been clearly referred to in the official records. Published transcripts of parliamentary proceedings show them being read out aloud in the Lok Sabha in 1977.

  Writing to Prime Minister Desai on 13 December 1977, Dr Majumdar drew his attention to recently declassified British records containing expressions of disbelief in the news of Bose’s death. Desai was still not convinced. In his reply dated 16 January 1978, he argued that “presumably...they were not sure whether the Japanese announcement was correct”. He asked the historian to cite more records. Majumdar in his 3 February 1978 letter referred to a record where an American journalist was quoted saying that he had seen Bose after his reported death. He also quoted from an IB report speaking of “discrepancies” in the air crash theory which made it “little doubtful” to arrive at “any definite conclusion”.

  After going through Majumdar’s letters, the official records and hearing the MPs, who repeatedly spoke of Gandhi’s disbelief in Bose’s death, Desai deduced what anyone who is not biased would: There was no finality to the case.

  Another strong line in Shivraj Patil’s defence of the rejection of the Mukherjee Commission’s report was the flaunting of pro-air crash findings of a previous commission headed by High Court judge GD Khosla. Extolling Khosla’s “legal acumen to assess the validity and reliability of the evidence given by the witnesses”, Patil told Parliament that his report was more “unambiguous and conclusive” than Mukherjee’s and hence acceptable to Government. The “inconclusive” aspect of Mukherjee’s report pertained to its not been able to determine “in the absence of any clinching evidence” where and how Bose had actually died. The Ministry of Home Affairs picked on this.