India's biggest cover-up

by Anuj Dhar

  Compare these words to those of Home Minister Shivraj Patil in the Rajya Sabha on 24 August 2006 as he rejected Justice Mukherjee’s report and you will know that just because a section of our society has learnt to dress and speak like the Westerners, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we have imbibed all the good things coming from that part of the planet.

  Six years’ time was given. More time could have been given to him. He was allowed to travel to any country. He did travel to many countries. All assistance, which could have been given, was given to him. After that he comes to a conclusion. What is the conclusion? On an issue, which is of great importance, whether he has died in any manner at any other place and if so, when and how, “in the absence of clinching evidence, a positive answer can’t be given”. You expect us to accept this finding! And you find fault with us! If it is not for political reasons, for what it is?

  This year, the Swedish government is commemorating Raoul Wallenberg´s centenary by honouring his memory, not diluting in any way its resolve to know the truth about his fate. The official website for "Raoul Wallenberg 2012" repeats that "the Swedish government is still demanding an explanation" [53] for Wallenberg's disappearance. That resolve has got a new boost from Moscow with a former Special Archive head revealing in January that he saw a file concerning Wallenberg, "challenging the FSB's insistence that it has no documents about the man". [54]

  Against this backdrop, let’s see where does the Bose case stand today in respect of official Indian and Russian views. The Russians are continuing to replay the old theme. Another note verbale was issued by them in 2003 when the NDA government had to again take up the issue at the prodding of the Mukherjee Commission. The Government of India’s favourite judge, GD Khosla, had never thought of anything like that. He did not raise a finger when the Soviet embassy in Delhi issued a statement relevant to the terms assigned to the commission he was heading.

  According to the 2003 note, a “search was made for documents related to the fate of SC Bose in the following federal archives: Russian State Military Archives (RGVA), Russian State Archives of Socio-Political History (RGASPI), State Archives of the Russian Federation (GARF), and Russian State Historical Archives of the Far East (RGIADV). The information requested for was not found on the GARF, RGVA and RGIADV archives.” The note squarely stated that

  no information has been found about the fate of SC Bose in the central archives of the Russian FSB, the Central Archives of Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, in the manuscript section of the Russian State Library or in the State Archives of Photographic Documents (RGAKFD).

  To break it down in comprehensible language—the Russians said they did not know where and how Bose had died.

  In the final assessment, the information contained in the Russian note verbales is no gold standard of proof as the Government of India would like to believe. We cannot overlook the Raoul Wallenberg and Katyn forest massacre cases, where the Soviets had lied for years before coming out with the truth under duress.

  An obvious counterargument can be that the USSR was a different entity and democracies like Russia can not cover up things so brazenly and certainly not for a long time.

  Not really. If disclosure of something is not going to serve the interest of a nation—democratic or otherwise—its rulers will never disclose or accept it, unless there’s some sort of pressure working. Japan revealed in March 2010 that for 40 years it had kept a lid on the very “existence of a secret Cold War deal allowing the transit of nuclear-armed US vessels through its ports”. [55] The hi-voltage disclosure—Japan is the only nation to have suffered a nuclear Holocaust—came after decades of downright denials by the officials.

  Not that we Indians have never feigned ignorance over things which actually happened. Lies are often given out for reasons that have nothing to do with national interest. In 1987, a Swedish journalist broke the news about kickbacks paid by AB Bofors to top Indian officials. In his reaction in the Lok Sabha, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi not only denied the claim—subsequently established—he actually termed it a “foreign conspiracy” to destabilise India.

  Sitting heavily on our collective memory is the recent case of Radia tapes. When the media first suggested that many important people had been bugged, the Government denied it outright. Had it not been for the subsequent leak of a secret government record online and the pressure mounted by bloggers, journalists and politicians, the UPA government would have hushed up the matter.

  If these are not good enough examples, worth recalling in some detail is an illuminating episode involving the governments of India and the United States: In 1963, US President John F Kennedy revealed to Sudhir Ghose, an eminent Gandhian and ambassador-at-large for Indian interests since pre-independence days, that the Chinese attack of the previous year had made Prime Minister Nehru beseech the US for military support. Two years later, on 15 March 1965, Ghose recalled the incident during a speech in the Rajya Sabha that “the father of non-alignment asked for American air protection” and the US President “did respond and order one of the American aircraft carriers to proceed to the Bay of Bengal”. [56]

  Though it was aimed at reminding the nation that America was after all India’s friend and Nehru gave precedence to national interest over the principles he talked about, the statement created a mega furore. Loyal Congress MPs mauled Ghose for making such an “outrageous allegation” to sully the memory of the late Prime Minister. Backed by the Left MPs, they sought clarification from the Prime Minister.

  Lal Bahadur Shastri summoned Ghose to his office, where in the presence of Home Minister Gulzari Lal Nanda and Foreign Secretary CS Jha, Ghose was told that there was nothing on record to suggest that Nehru had ever made such a request to Kennedy. Since Ghose had heard it straight from Kennedy, he stood his ground and asked Prime Minister Shastri to ascertain the facts from the US Ambassador in New Delhi before making a statement in Parliament. He said if he was proven wrong, he would apologise publicly.

  A day before the PM was to make a statement in Parliament, Ghose learnt from his American sources that Jha had been told by the embassy that the US Government did have the letters from Nehru and the same could be produced if the Government of India desired it. Thereafter, Ghose marched into the PM’s office to see Shastri who was unwilling to meet him because he had by then discovered that the copies of Nehru’s letters were indeed available with the Government somewhere.

  The PM went on to state in Parliament that Nehru did not ask for an American aircraft carrier. Shastri was playing with words and Ghose was not willing to play ball. Having lost face, he shot off a personal letter to Shastri, telling him that his clarification made no difference to the substance of his statement that India had sought military support from the US. Ghose repeated that Nehru’s letter to Kennedy, personally delivered by Ambassador BK Nehru, had sought “16 squadrons of fighting aircraft”, which was much more than a carrier. In his reply, Shastri—whose name is a byword for honesty in present-day India—asked Ghose to let the matter rest. Ghose would have perhaps let that be, but he was publicly humiliated when the US State Department backed Prime Minister Shastri’s statement that Nehru did not ask for an American aircraft carrier, leaving out other vital details.

  Ghosh then used his formidable connections and goodwill with the US lawmakers and managed to corner Secretary of State Dean Rusk during a public hearing in the Senate in 1966. Rusk was evasive at first and then said it was not proper for him to discuss correspondences between the two heads of the governments. Ghosh averred in his 1967 book that Rusk’s cross-examination “clearly established that India did ask for air protection and the US did respond to the request”. [57]

  It was not until recently—long after Ghose’s death—that his version finally prevailed. In 1998, the US government declassified the two letters that Nehru had written to Kennedy, and in November 2010, the Indian Express ran a story by veteran journalist Inder Malhotra laying bare their contents. Nehru had asked for a “minimum o
f 12 squadrons of supersonic all-weather fighters” and a “modern radar cover” and also the support of US air force personnel “to man these fighters and radar installations while our personnel are being trained.” [58] The letters had indeed been secretly delivered by Ambassador Nehru, who never discussed their contents with anyone but told Inder Malhotra that he had “locked them up in a safe that only the ambassador could open”. [59]

  In my sole memorable meeting with Malhotra years ago and a subsequent telephonic talk, he was kind enough to tell me of his astonishment that the Narasimha Rao government should not have tried to access Bose-related records after the fall of the USSR. When Malhotra asked his long-time contacts, who never “withheld anything from him”, to throw some light on the Bose mystery, they “just clammed up”. I took these words very seriously, having been generally aware of Malhotra’s enormous experience and stature. One of his deceased friends was Rameshwar Nath Kao, BN Mullik’s No 2 and the founder of R&AW.

  Even if one is to take the recent Russian responses on Subhas Bose’s fate as canonical, some grey areas will still require some explanation. The list of archives said to have been searched for Bose-related records does not include many important archives. For example, FSB is not the only successor to the KGB. It is like the IB of India. SVR is the Russian foreign intelligence service and in its record rooms there must be some information on or relating to Bose. In an email to me, Dr Gabor T Rittersporn of Center National De la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, wrote: “Documentation on cases resembling the Bose affairs are kept in inaccessible archives of the security agencies [in Russia].”

  You never know when you start dusting things off and a rack falls off. The Russians have a knack for discovering records accidently. A BBC documentary produced in the 1990s shows then director of Moscow state archives, Sergei Mironenko, making an interesting observation about the secret “Operation myth” files about the investigation into the death of Adolf Hitler. “We only discovered these files about two years ago. Before that, they were so sensitive that their very existence wasn’t even recorded here.” [60]

  That isn’t very surprising. Files are nothing, governments can even deny the existence of projects, departments and even massive organisations everyone knows about. Our Government did not accept that an entity such as R&AW existed quite some time after it was formed. In Britain, the home of democracy, the formal acceptance that MI6 actually existed came more than eight decades after it was formed.

  In an attempt to gain clarity about the Russian and Indian governments’ respective stances, I tried to access the entire Indo-Russian correspondence over Bose’s fate. Exercising the Right to Information, I requested the Ministry of External Affairs in 2006 to provide me “copies of the complete correspondence the MEA has had with the Governments of the USSR and the Russian Federation over the disappearance of Netaji” and supply information “whether the MEA sought information from the Russians by issuing mere note verbales, or some serious efforts were ever made from a higher level”.

  The MEA’s roundabout response only confirmed that it had not. It said that the “the request to Government of USSR and the Russian Federation were made through diplomatic channels at appropriate levels” and refused to provide copies “as it involves the relations with foreign state”.

  Dissatisfied, I appealed to the Appellate Authority in the MEA that “appropriate” was a qualitative term and its meaning could vary according to situation and persons looking into the matter. I further argued:

  It is not intelligible to me, and nor will it be to the people of India, as to how the disclosure of correspondence dealing with the disappearance of a national hero, whom the Government holds to have died in 1945, can be a threat to the “security, strategic, scientific or economic interests of the State” [India] in 2006?

  The appeal was dismissed as well. I was told that the information I had sought did not “constitute an ‘information’ as defined in the RTI Act” for I was seeking an “anecdotal reply”. The ministry was firm that “the requisite copies of correspondence cannot be disclosed as it involves relations with foreign state”.

  The matter was then referred by me to the Central Information Commission for a decision. One of my points was that the information sought by me was “not anecdotal but factual”. “Simply stating that inquiries were made at ‘appropriate level’ is a value judgment and not information,” I wrote in my appeal. Information Commissioner Dr OP Kejariwal, a reputed historian and former director of the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, agreed with me and asked the MEA to release the correspondence. The ministry stuck to its gun nonetheless and cited clauses in the bulky Indo-Russian protocol—which was actually shown to Dr Kejariwal—to deny me copies of the correspondence.

  Dr Kejariwal had to agree with the MEA but he still made a request in view of the overall importance of the subject matter that some sort of effort should be made. The ministry was now caught in a bind. On 2 November 2007, Dr Kejariwal was informed:

  Our embassy in Moscow again approached the Government of Russian Federation to get their consent to the disclosure of documents under reference; but the Government of Russian Federation reiterated that documents were submitted exclusively for official use by the Government of India…. However they state that the Indian citizen mentioned in the note of the embassy [myself] can approach the authorities of the Federal and State Archives of the Russian Federation, through the Embassy of India, for permission to get to know the materials deposited in Federal and State Archives of the Russian Federation. [Emphasis supplied by the MEA]

  Seizing the opportunity, on 26 November 2007 I requested Dr Kejariwal verbally and submitted in writing that it would be good if our Embassy in Moscow were to use “its good offices to specifically request the eight federal Russian archives”—including Arkhiv Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii (AP RF), that is Archive of the President of the Russian Federation, and Glavnoje Razvedyvatel'noje Upravlenije (GRU), Military Intelligence Directorate Archives—to:

  1. Check their holdings for any post-1940 classified and declassified records pertaining to Subhas Chandra Bose and Orlando Mazzotta, the Italian alias under which Netaji entered the USSR in 1941.

  2. Provide documents or annonated lists of material located.

  3. Suggest what the Government of India should do in case the records cannot be thoroughly searched for or provided under existing rules or any other restraints.

  I emphasised that such "a request from the Embassy of India would certainly carry much weight, considering the excellent relations India has with Russian Federation". I also clarified that "I would not want this exercise be carried out exclusively for myself" and the records thus procured could be sent to the National Archives. The letter was forwarded to the MEA by Dr Kejariwal, who put his comment on its top margin.

  And then the Ministry of External Affairs lapsed into silence.

  9. The ‘Dead Man’ returns

  Insurance agent Dilip Kumar Mukherjee’s years of persistent trying paid off unexpectedly. Sweat droplets appeared on his forehead as his distant uncle Dr TC Banerjee, a homeopath in the nearby Faizabad citys, told him that “Bhagwanji” had granted him his wish. Dilip was finally all clear to visit him along with Dr Banerjee’s family. “Don’t tell anyone anything!” elderly Banerjee forewarned his forty-something kin.

  Bhagwanji (pronounced “Bhag-one-g”) was the honorific for a nameless holy man whose very existence was hard to prove, even by his handful of followers. Almost all of them identified him from his stentorian voice from the other side of a curtain that blocked his sight completely. For the locals he was as good as an imagined figure. Someone only heard of; never seen. Despite his staying in that area for nearly three decades, no one had ever run into him in day time. The holy man remained confined to his room in rented accommodations he moved in and out of with unusual frequency. He preferred ungodly hours to emerge, and would still have his face covered. The few who entered his room met an eerie stillness and a somewhat
big structured, fair, old man crouching over, with a monkey cap or a cloth pulled over his face.

  When asked why he was unseeable, Bhagwanji’s evasive followers would say he was deep into a special sadhna or spiritual quest that forbade his appearance before anyone. In a country where numerous holy men and women engaged in all sort of Hathyoga and queer tantric practices, most people were satisfied by this explanation. At any rate, Bhagwanji was not a nuisance to anyone, so most did not bother beyond a point. Those who continued to be inquisitive invariably heard incredible whispers that Bhagwanji was “Subhas Bose in hiding”. Most laughed it all away and some tried to reach him. But there was never enough time; before long the holy man would be gone to some other accommodation in some other area.

  Bhagwanji maintained an air of secrecy around him and whoever couldn’t breathe in it wouldn’t get an access to him. His disciples had to keep their belief to themselves for fear of inviting the wrath of a man they considered god-like. No one wanted to fritter away the hard-earned privilege of being in contact with “Netaji”.

  Dilip Mukherjee’s was an exceptional case. In his first meeting, he went straight into Bhagwanji’s room. The Banerjee family had endeared itself to the holy man so much that he had granted them the prerogative of being with him without any barrier.

  In his mind Dilip had prepared himself well. “I thought I would ask him this and that question,” he told me in fairly good English for an elderly man living in Gorakhpur. But as his eyes met Bhagwanji’s penetrating glance from behind silver-rimmed glasses, Dilip recoiled, as if he had been hit by a thunderclap of an unimaginable reality. Knowing beforehand “who” he was going to meet didn’t quite lighten the blow of beholding “aged Netaji” in 1983. Born 23 January 1897, Subhas Chandra Bose would have been 86 if he were living then.