India's biggest cover-up

by Anuj Dhar

  The conjecture that “whatever records were there might have been destroyed” has nothing to stand on. Japan never said the records of Bose’s death and cremation were destroyed. It only insisted that they were created in the name of Ichiro Okura.

  So does the Government of India somehow regard the Okura record a proof of some sort of Bose's death? No way! Before Pranab Mukherjee set out on his "mission impossible", the then Joint Secretary (Internal Security), Ministry of Home Affairs, wrote a Top Secret letter dated 21 October 1994 to Joint Secretary (Asia Pacific region) in the Mukherjee-headed Ministry of External Affairs. He sought "a copy of the Japanese government report on the death of Netaji which is stated to be available in MEA".

  In response, the MEA sent him the Gaimusho's 1955 letter claiming that a cremation permit issued for Okura was "believed to be" for Bose. On its receipt, the confused Joint Secretary telephoned the MEA to say that his ministry "would like to have confirmation that the Japanese government had indeed confirmed" Bose's death. The MEA obviously did not share the Japanese government's belief that Okura record pertained to Bose. On November 10, the JS (AP) stated in a Top Secret note that

  for us to state on this basis that the Japanese government had indeed confirmed the death of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose would be going beyond the scope of the Japanese government letter and have major internal ramifications for us.

  The Government of India now insists that Bose died in Taiwan. So, wasn’t he cremated there? Then why isn’t his name there in the contemporary Japanese register detailing each and every person who was cremated in August 1945? Is the cremation record which the Government was itself looking for in the 1950s not relevant anymore?

  According to the queer logic offered by the Government in the affidavit, the “non-availability of records” does not disprove that Bose died in the plane crash because there were people who said he had died. But the “non-availability of records” proves that Prime Minister Desai lied to the country when he spoke in the Lok Sabha in August 1978 that there were good reasons not to accept the so-called eyewitnesses’ version. The “non-availability of records” also does prove, as per the Government thinking, that Bose never made it to the USSR.

  Justice Mukherjee's visiting certain Russian archives, his not finding any relevant documents among the declassified lot and the inability of certain witnesses to throw any new light do not add up to mean that Bose never made it to the USSR. Obtaining classified information and records from a foreign nation requires a resolve on the part of the government seeking it. A foreign state will never easily give out a secret which might affect its interests. And certainly not without a high-level intervention. Before Justice Mukherjee visited Russia, Dr Joshi in a letter to the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pressed that “it would be necessary to approach the present Government of Russian Federation at the highest level”.

  There is nothing on record to show that our government ever made adequate, high-level attempts to get information from the Soviets and the Russians. In fact, the efforts made by other countries in similar cases make India’s approach appear highly suspicious. [See Chapter 8: How India dealt with Russia over Subhas Bose’s fate]

  In the affidavit, the Government vehemently “denied and disputed” the opposing parties’ charge “that the reports of the earlier committee and commission were resurrected” as a stratagem to dismiss the Mukherjee Commission report. The affidavit claimed that those reports—held sacrosanct by the Congress party and its proxies—“were never rejected by any authority in the Government of India”.

  The answer comes from the topmost government authority on “Bose died in Taiwan” theory. Thus spake Pranab Mukherjee in the Lok Sabha on 18 May 2006:

  Sir, when this commission was established, the Government itself had rejected the two earlier commissions, namely the Shah Nawaz Commission [sic] and the Khosla Commission and that is why this commission was established.

  Government contention: “Justice Mukherjee Commission appointed, inter alia, in deference to the judgment of the Hon’ble Kolkata High Court, contradicted the findings of the earlier committee and commission, but did not do so convincingly and conclusively. It was, therefore, not possible to accept same.”

  How could Justice Mukherjee have made himself more convincing? By bending rules? Writing flowery English? Or by hushing up evidence? Maybe badmouthing the Japanese would have been in order. Or, better still, vilifying Netaji as their puppet and pawn would have done some good. Exonerating the Government of all wrongdoings would have been a sign of political correctness on the former Supreme Court judge’s part. It would have been fantastic if Justice Mukherjee had published a juicy book based on his inquiry and released it before his report was tabled in Parliament. Penning a biography of the Prime Minister or Pranab Mukherjee alongside the boring inquiry would have been an excellent idea. If only Justice Mukherjee had bought a present in Taiwan or Russia for someone in New Delhi, he would not have to undergo humiliation there.

  It is a great shame, but according to the Standard Operating Procedure adopted by the Congress-led government, anything which did not conform to its world view was not conclusive. “It took 21 years and nine commissions of inquiry for the victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots to get their first token of justice” [48] in shape of the Nanavati Commission report. In August 2005, the same Government of India, the same Shivraj Patil dismissed the findings of this commission. The “action taken report” in this instance said that the commission was itself not certain of the involvement of Congress leaders in the genocide and, therefore, “any further action will not be justified”. [49] Then, the Opposition members and the people of Punjab lunged at the throats of the ruling class and there was this complete about-turn. Patil assured the lawmakers in the Lok Sabha that “all the recommendations” of the commission would be implemented by the Government “as it is”. [50] It would seem the main reason the Government got away with the blatant dismissal of the Mukherjee Commission report was that the people, especially in Bengal, took it lying down.

  “It is also reiterated that the report of the Justice Mukherjee Commission was examined in-depth and the action taken report reflects that,” trumpets the Government in the affidavit.

  The one page memorandum of the action taken report carrying big signature of Shivraj Patil tabled in Parliament reflected only one thing: Whitewash. What else can you read into one-liners? Or are there some hidden details written with some sort of invisible ink supplied by the Intelligence Bureau?

  The Government affidavit further says: “In compliance with the direction of the Justice Mukherjee Commission, Government of India produced all the documents before the commission which were available.”

  The catch lies in the phrase "which were available". Check out the following comparative chart of a specimen of records made available to the Mukherjee Commission, and the ones which were not. Please note that except one all of these "unavailable" records were in existence when the Khosla Commission was wound up in 1974. NIC is an abbreviation for "Netaji Inquiry Commission" and NC for "Netaji Commission".

  The take in the government affidavit is that “the findings of the Khosla Commission were accepted by the Government of India and placed before the Parliament”.

  Accepted by the Government in the 70s it was for sure. But who told the court in 1997 that a fresh “probe is required and the information that Netaji died in the plane crash on August 18, 1945 is full of loopholes, contradictions and therefore inconclusive”? Who else but the learned government counsel. Did the Governmet disown him after he said that? No! Actually, the quotation could be rephrased as: “The findings of the Khosla Commission were accepted by the Government of India and the report placed for approval before a rump Parliament during the Emergency when all major Opposition leaders had been put into jails.” Because Khosla’s report was cleared by Parliament during the phase India ceased to be democratic, public confidence in it was bound to be shaky. Hence, the Government notification of 1999 admi
tted: “There is widespread feeling among the public that the issue of finding the truth about Netaji still remains.”

  Today, the Government of India upholds the Khosla Commission report as the final truth. Therefore, all those who are with the Government on this issue should know that they are also effectively in unison with the authorities in holding that:

  * Netaji had “styled himself the Head of the State”.

  * Bose’s proposal that the INA men should lead the charge into India was “the proposal of a zealous but impractical patriot”.

  * “Bose entering India with Japanese assistance could only mean one thing, viz. India would become a colony or a suzerainty of Japan.”

  As for the rest, they should tell their friends in Japan that the following is the true estimate of their national character as made in a report the Government of India regards as gospel. The Japanese people and their government should know that the Indians who back their view on Bose’s death have nothing but utter contempt for all that they did for India’s freedom. They are currently of the impression that those who do not support the air crash theory are being disrespectful towards Japan.

  * “Despite the outward respect and honour with which the Japanese treated him, he [Bose] was looked upon as a puppet, a tool which could be discarded and ignored, when deemed no longer useful.”

  * Their “respect for Bose began and ended with his usefulness to them”. “They paid a certain amount of lip service” to him.

  * The “true attitude of the Japanese towards” Indians was best summarised by the quote, “What is the harm in being puppets? You should be proud to be puppets of the Japanese.” [All quotes taken from Khosla’s report]

  Lastly, the Government affidavit claims that the “Government of India have always acted promptly, honestly and fairly while handling a definite matter of public importance, namely, the disappearance of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in 1945”.

  I give up. Maybe I should write to the Oxford and Cambridge universities. The sense I get after checking definitions of the highlighted words in their dictionaries is not what I get when I assess how our government actually handled the issue of Subhas Bose’s fate.

  6. The search for Bose files

  My friends and I did not sit idle after the arbitrary dismissal of Justice Mukherjee’s report. Guided by the old saying “the truth will out”, we began collating information and leads from both within and outside India despite financial and other constraints. The net outcome of these efforts has led to one unsurprising conclusion: As opposed to advanced nations which have amazing levels of transparency and sense of fair play, ours continues to live in another era.

  Surely we have so many bright spots—the Right to Information is one of the best things to ever happen to us, the Central Information Commission is doing a brilliant job in overseeing it, government officials are sympathetic on personal level, the National Archives and Nehru Memorial Library staff at New Delhi are most cooperative, our media is fiercely free—but it will be a while before we get there.

  A few years ago, I requested the National Archive of Australia for information on Bose. The reference officer there was generous enough to photocopy the relevant dossier and send it across to me free of cost. Chandrachur had the same experience recently with the National Records and Archives Administration (NARA) of the US. It takes more than just being rich to do so. People there respond to appeals, especially emotional. In March 1949 an Indian student in Chicago, VP Varma from Patna University, sent a handwritten letter to the Secretary of State seeking clarification about the rumour that Bose was executed by the Americans. The acting assistant chief in the Division of South Asian Affairs responded with the assurance that “the report that Bose was captured by the Americans in Japan is obviously unfounded”. [1]

  Anyone daring to write to the Home Minister of India in the 50s or 70s on the Bose issue risked the chances of the Intelligence Bureau sleuths furnishing the “answer” in person.

  Even today, you write an email to anyone outside—government officials, researchers, journalists—and they reply. Here, inflated sense of importance takes precedence over courtesy. I sent out an email to several Indian and foreign journalists just before the Mukherjee Commission report was released. Only TIME magazine and the Guardian representatives answered. The British daily even carried an impressive story.

  I went to a newspaper office in Kolkata and requested the person in charge that I wanted Netaji-related news items for such and such purpose. The fellow wouldn’t budge from his seat. He would have jumped if I had asked for some trifle details about some actor or cricketer from his city. On another occasion, I rang up a senior Bengali journalist, regretted it and vowed never to put my little self in a position where I can be humiliated over so big an issue.

  As far as I have understood, Justice Mukherjee’s experiences mirrored the same pattern: Apathy at home; sympathy abroad.

  That the Indian establishment is just not willing to open up is no news. What perhaps is that whenever the Mukherjee Commission and later we “Mission Netaji” friends tried to make it open up, out came the signs of cover-up. Nothing would highlight that better than the case of the missing Taiwanese/British inquiry file.

  As discussed previously, in 1956 the Ministry of External Affairs approached the British High Commission in Delhi to make an inquiry about Bose’s reported death in Taiwan. The British reverted a few days after Shah Nawaz’s report was presented to the Prime Minister that there was no real proof of it. But from that time till today not a squeak about the Taiwanese/ British inquiry has been heard in India from the government side. While filing affidavits, making statements and submissions before the Mukherjee Commission, neither the Ministry of External Affairs nor any other ministry referred to the Taiwanese/British findings as they furnished all relevant information, including details about the missing or destroyed files. It was as though the Taiwan 1956 inquiry report never existed.

  Unfortunately for the Government of India it does. Declassified by Her Majesty’s Government, the original papers can now be accessed by anyone at the National Archives in Kew. The last page in the British file clearly mentions handing over of not one but five copies of the Taiwanese report to the Ministry of External Affairs in Delhi on 10 August 1956.

  That the MEA should have wished away all the five copies of a most credible report not supportive of the Government’s view about Bose’s death is an undeniable proof of highest-level conspiracy to hide facts from the people of India. Added to it is the rattling discovery by me that the Taiwanese report had been shown to Justice Khosla. And yet not a word about it is traceable in his report, which details in riveting prose all sort of absurdities with the hidden objective of turning the Bose mystery into a standing joke.

  Khosla was clearly a party to the dirty tricks of the establishment in concealing the truth, and he earned encomiums from Shivraj Patil. Former Supreme Court judge MK Mukherjee, whom the former Home Minister rated inferior to former High Court judge GD Khosla, located the report during his visit to Great Britain and used it to bring down the air crash theory.

  Information culled from the records of two commissions as well as the PMO records I accessed using the RTI also shows that in around 1956 a file was opened in Prime Minister’s Secretariat, as the PMO was called in those days, on the subject “Circumstances leading to the death of Shri Subhas Chandra Bose”. This file—No 12(226)/56-PM—was destroyed in 1972 along with several other irrelevant files, even though the Manual of Official Procedure in force at that time stipulated that the files of historical importance, especially those relating to issues agitating the public mind, would be kept in office for 25 years and then sent to the National Archives.

  According to unverifiable claims, this file was the master file of all Bose files—personally maintained by Prime Minister Nehru. As a Cabinet minister, Dr Subramanian Swamy had the opportunity to see the relevant papers. He stated a few years back that this “Nehru’s file” had been destroyed on th
e orders of PN Haksar, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s Private Secretary.

  The file must have contained something very problematic for Haksar to himself get rid of it at a time it was required to be sent to the Khosla Commission. It was clearly an illegal act but Shivraj Patil’s “good” judge saw no wrong. He agreed with the Government averment that the file was “destroyed in the ordinary course of routine according to which old and unwanted files are destroyed to lighten the burden of the record rooms”. [2]

  In contrast, Justice Mukherjee made attempts to know "the subject and contents" of this file and the circumstances under which it was destroyed. [3] In the course of this search, despite several reminders the Government did not send him even the rule book governing the destruction of official records in the relevant period. Meanwhile, Mukherjee discovered that Khosla’s job was sought to be done by Samar Guha. After he got wind of the file and its destruction, Guha wrote to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on 3 January 1974. The PM replied that the “file contained only copies of certain documents which are still available in other files” and that is why it was was destroyed.

  With such an assertion by the Prime Minister herself on the record, the Mukherjee Commission was encouraged to direct the Prime Minister’s Office, the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of External Affairs to furnish “authenticated true copies of all the documents, copies of which were lying in PMO’s File No 12(226)/56-PM, since destroyed, as also authenticated true copies of all those files which contain the said documents, the copies of which were lying in the said destroyed file as stated by the then Prime Minister”.