India's biggest cover-up

by Anuj Dhar

But in the statement that Rahman wrote in Taiwan just two days after the so-called crash and later handed over to SA Ayer, this took place several hours earlier, near the wreck of the plane at a time when, according to the professor’s book, Rahman had probably passed out. When Rahman appeared before the committee, he remembered everything down to its minute details so the question of misplacing such a heart-wrenching moment—if it had indeed happened—did not arise.

  On page 310, Prof Bose says public reception to INA heroes from November 1945 onwards startled the British and they came to suspect that Bose was alive. However, an inquiry headed by Finney “reached definite conclusion” that he had died. This he has sourced to Shah Nawaz’s report to play it safe so that if it comes to that, the blame can be shifted on others. So where is the application of a great mind of the Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs?

  The dossier of selected reports sent by the Intelligence Bureau to the Shah Nawaz Committee contained three reports Philip Finney had sent from Bangkok. The first was dated 5 October 1945. Its very vintage belies the professorial whim that the British were led to believe that Bose was alive only after the INA trials began. This report was based on the view of two informants. Finney wrote that one informant was of the view that Bose was on his way to Tokyo and that this was corroborated by the statement of General Isoda. But he also added that Bose had been trying to persuade the Japanese to allow him to go to Moscow since October 1944. This piece of information defeats another of the professor’s claim—which is also the view of the Government of India—that the “inclination” on the part of Subhas to go to Russia first manifested in May 1945.

  Towards the end of his report, Finney wrote that the possibility of Bose being alive at that time could not be ruled out in view of his intention to escape to Russia. I have already demonstrated in chapter “The search for Bose files” that the IB doctored this report so that the official line that Bose had died in 1945 could be substantiated. Government men Shah Nawaz Khan and GD Khosla supported the authorities in boosting this impression; and now we have Prof Bose doing the same even though he is aware of File No INA 273 kept at the National Archives in New Delhi. This file contains a copy of Finney’s report in full.

  Finney’s second report was dated 10 November 1945. It added further little information received since Finney’s previous note. It said nothing to approve the air crash theory and only dwelt on the information provided by a source. The third report of November 12 outlined the information given by a Japanese interpreter who had attended a confidential conference where Isoda was speaking about sending Bose to the Russians. The report falsified Isoda’s previous statement that Bose was going to Tokyo.

  I don’t know how these three reports put together can give any impartial person the idea that Finney reached a “definite conclusion” about Bose’s death. Finney’s name also appears on an intelligence record in INA 273 in a summary of information on record. This summary was prepared for a meeting to be attended by Finney. If Finney had firmly concluded in November 1945 that Bose was dead, why was he going to attend this meeting in April 1946? To exorcise Bose’s ghost?

  Prof Sugata Bose is clearly aware of this record as he has quoted from it. And like GD Khosla, he has tried to undervalue it by quoting one part of it where some unsubstantiated intelligence report about Nehru receiving a letter from Bose in Russia has been discussed. Sugata characterised it as a “rumour” which is not fair. One can excuse a commission of inquiry for not acting on intelligence reports because they are inadmissible in evidence, unless someone associated with them comes and testifies. But researchers and journalists cannot and should not dismiss intelligence reports. Interestingly, while trying to support the official view based on doctored and selected intelligence reports, GD Khosla, ended up making a most valid remark about the war-time intelligence reports about Bose’s death.

  These documents were prepared officially by an agency directed to find out the truth and not serve a partisan cause or purpose, nor to make a tendentious report. The Government of India and the Army authorities wanted to know what had happened, and deputed their trusted and reliable officers to enquire, to interrogate individuals and submit the conclusions of their investigation. These officers made direct inquiries, not lending a credulous ear to rumour and gossip. The officers knew that they would be judged by the measure of their competence and honesty in conducting the business entrusted to them. They did not want to, indeed they did not dare to, invent sensational, unwarranted or unsupported stories of deep intrigues, miraculous escapes and fantastic encounters. [20]

  So it would have been better if Sugata Bose had also touched upon the report’s other explosive content—that Rahman and others had not been truthful and Russian diplomats were giving hints that Bose was in the USSR when there was no reason for them to “bring Bose into fabricated stories”—and especially its conclusion that “Taihoku, Congress and Russian representatives in Tehran and Kabul are the most important objectives in this case as it stands now”. If this is where the case stood in April 1946, how could one accept that Finney had in October 1945 uncovered convincing evidence of Bose’s death?

  The British suspicions had nothing to do with whatever happened in India after the INA men and women were brought back. From the time the news of Bose’s death was announced and the manner it was released made the British suspicious at the level of the Viceroy. Wavell’s personal diary and his comment that he thought Bose had probably escaped was made public in a book form several years ago. I am sure a copy must be available at the Harvard University library.

  Professor Bose regrets that the mystery did not end even after the July 1946 inquiry of Colonel JG Figges confirmed Bose’s death. Yes Figges does write that in his report after speaking to some Japanese and his friend Ramamurti, but there are some hiccups in accepting his finding as final.

  The need for this inquiry in Japan arose because Finney and other officers in India, who had carried out the most detailed investigation, were not sure of Bose’s death. In any case, if one takes a look at the copy of Figges’report, one finds pieces of information countering the other in different reports. For instance, according to this report, Dr Tsuruta issued a death certificate for Bose in Taiwan. But on page 313 of his book Sugata Bose states that it was Dr Yoshimi who, according to his statement to Captain Alfred Raymond Turner in October 1946, issued the same. The professor writes that this certificate was not found and spares his readers of the vital details as to why the death certificate for a VIP had vanished when the records concerning an ordinary soldier dying at around the same time were found intact?

  The professor has tried to whitewash the numerous discrepancies in the so-called eyewitness accounts before the Shah Nawaz Committee insisting, just as Government of India does, that they were “minor” and were due to eleven-year gap. What eleven years? The contradictions were there in the first year itself. How could the doctors, who were to remember minute details for decades afterwards, make contradictory claims about Bose’s death certificate in 1946? The answer was later uncovered: None of them ever issued any certificate for Bose; they merely put their signatures on papers concerning the death of a Japanese soldier whose body was passed as that of Bose’s.

  Prof Sugata Bose teaches in a top American university and if he had tried a little he could have easily accessed a declassified US army dossier on Bose. My friends and I did so sitting in New Delhi. It has Figges’s July 1946 report and other American intelligence reports of 1945 based on the interrogation of Habibur Rahman. There is also the all-important May 1946 assessment made by the Pentagon and State Department. The higher-ups did not find Rahman’s version conclusive. They said “there is no direct evidence of Bose’s death”. I do not know about the reviewers, but I am going to place my trust in the word of State Department and the Pentagon. Just because a professor can play with words it doesn’t mean he one ups the US Government.

  More importantly, Ramamurti’s pal Figges figures in official Indian
records as one of the members of “the gang” which looted the INA treasure. Jaya Murti himself admitted before the Shah Nawaz Committee that Figges wanted them to take up British nationality—something that a secret GOI record confirms. [21] This sort of association is better explained by the idiom “birds of same feather flock together”. In Hindi there’s a better substitute which when translated implies that two thieves are cousins by virtue of their being in the same profession. I put it to you my dear reader: Will you believe the words of those dacoits? Isn’t obvious that all of them—the father of professor’s friend Arjun Adurapai, the father and uncle of his acquaintance Anand J Murti and the British officer whose report he regards credible—stood to gain from the continuation of the official version that Bose died following the crash and the treasure was burnt with the plane?

  Prof Bose has made one or two arguments that I gather have been found convincing by those who have little idea how deep the rabbit hole goes. The first of which is discussed on page 313 of the professor’s book. It is to the effect that in 1946 Indian journalist Harin Shah visited Taipei in 1946 and collected evidence of Bose’s death. The centrepiece of his evidence was the account given by nurse Tsan Pi Sha who had taken care of dying Bose.

  I can see why Sugata Bose is giving importance to Harin Shah. He was not an ordinary journalist, but editor of the official journal of an organisation affiliated to the Congress party. Shah gathered evidence which he thought proved Bose’s death but actually blasted the official version.

  The professor should have told his readers that this journalist narrated his story under his own name ten years after he visited Taipei. To make it appear credible, he created at least two fictitious characters, one of which was nurse Tsan Pi Sha. His Majesty’s opponent has infused life into this figment of Shah’s imagination. Too bad that Her Majesty’s Government had carried out an investigation in Taipei in 1956 with the assistance of the Taiwan government and figured out that there was no proof evidencing the existence of this nurse.

  This British/Taiwanese report was given to the Government of India and was hushed up. It was shown to GD Khosla who did the same, even after his personally finding out in Taiwan about the factitiousness of some of the characters in Harin Shah’s tale. And looking at the “A life immortal” and its footnotes, I can’t find any reference to this report, now available at the National Archives in Kew. How can a “well-researched” study undertaken by a Harvard professor overlook a record so important that even the Lord Chancellor should have mentioned it in his letter to a House of Lords member who helped Justice Mukherjee?

  Two records from a secret government file would be sufficient to prove the fictitious origin of nurse Tsan Pi Sha. It so happened that Shah Nawaz himself knew that no nurse by that name was anywhere around when “Bose” died at Namon hospital. On 23 May 1956 Shah Nawaz wrote a secret letter to AK Dar, the pointman for his committee’s inquiry in Japan, giving the names of some people he wanted as witness. From the evidence of Dr Yoshimi—whose bona fides Sugata Bose doesn’t question—Shah Nawaz named four nurses who were there at the hospital in August 1945.

  These names were then forwarded to the Japanese foreign ministry by Dar. And as you can see, there was no Tsan Pi Sha even on Yoshimi’s list.

  When the back jacket of a book touts that the inside contains an “authoritative” account, one expects some erudite exposition. But how come is Prof Sugata’s version “authoritative” when all he has done is to serve a mishmash of known knowns?

  He has mentioned on page 315 that the “most compelling evidence” of Bose’s death came from the testimony of interpreter Juichi Nakamura who talked to a badly burnt Bose in Taipei. The professor also quotes from the testimony of Dr Yoshimi that Nakamura was a civil government official.

  There are good reasons to think that Nakamura’s evidence to the Shah Nawaz Committee can’t be taken on its face value. One, his case is no different than the other Japanese who kept repeating the official version in their national interest. Their national interest was not going to be served by causing furore in India, USSR, the UK and elsewhere by stating that they had misled the Allies and had actually helped a possible “war criminal” escape towards the Soviet Union.

  Two, Nakamura was not properly introduced by Shah Nawaz and Dr Yoshimi. He was, as Habibur Rahman identified him in his deposition before the committee, someone who “belonged to intelligence or security service”. Now isn’t that somewhat different from the innocuous sounding phrase “civil government official”?

  There is a scene in classic movie All the President’s men. The Watergate burglars are in the courtroom and Bob Woodward, played by Robert Redford, taxes his ears as the judge asks them to introduce themselves and state their professions. One says he is a “security consultant”. The judge asks, “Where?” and he replies: "Government…recently retired.” “Where in the government?” the judge wants exact details. He speaks in a muted voice, “Central Intelligence Agency”. “Where?” says the judge, startled. “The CIA,” the man says. The camera zooms in to capture Woodward’s astonishment. Rare are the occasions when a former spy decides to spill the beans. In India the most outstanding example of someone talking facts was of former IB Joint Director Maloy Krishna Dhar and his treasure trove of a book Open secrets. For most part, intelligence operatives, even when they have long retired, talk only the official version or something that has been sanitised by the government. So where was Nakamura exactly placed?

  The Shah Nawaz’s report—which the professor repeatedly cites as if it’s a holy scripture—claims that Nakamura appeared before the committee on his own violation on 30 May 1956 in response to a newspaper notice. The Government of India files that I have accessed give no such indication. On the other hand, there is a secret letter dated 18 April 1956 through which TN Kaul is telling Ambassador BR Sen to request the Japanese foreign office to ensure the presence of Japanese witnesses. The attached list names Nakamura. The description next to his name is inspired by Habibur Rahman’s evidence before the committee on 9 April 1956. The next we know is that this former intelligence officer travels 1,200 km to tender his evidence before the committee in Tokyo. Can we rule out the possibility of his being propped up to support the official view?

  Four, according to the record of Nakamura’s evidence recorded on 30.5.1956 at 12.45pm in Tokyo by the Shah Nawaz Committee—the “full text” of which is with the professor as claimed by him in footnotes 26 and 27—the interpreter clearly states that when he reached hospital Dr Yoshimi identified a badly burnt man to him as Chandra Bose.

  But Dr Yoshimi told the BBC for its documentary “Enemy of Empire” in the 1990s that he did not know who the burnt man was until Nakamura told him so. “After he died, I was told by the interpreter Nakamura that it was Chandra Bose” were his words. Habibur Rahman, to add to that, told the committee that Bose was barely conscious after he was brought to hospital and soon slipped into coma. And yet Prof Bose claims that Nakamura still managed to talk to the comatose patient of Dr Yoshimi. Which researcher in the world would describe such evidence as “most compelling”?

  In his numerous media interviews after the release of his book, Prof Bose went around trumpeting that “contrary to doubts raised about his death, historical evidence indicates that Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose died in an air crash”. [22] What is this “historical evidence”? Shah Nawaz’s “made to order” report?!

  During a chat on the Rediff.com, Sugata Bose was asked why there was so much “secrecy surrounding Netaji”. He ducked it by answering that “we should pay less attention to myths and mysteries, and concentrate more on his life and work from which there is a lot to learn”. [23] Speaking to the Economic Times, he said, “I think his life and work is more important and fascinating and it should be before the reading public, especially those belonging to the younger generation.” [24] Now, believe me you, when I read this, my mind was transported to a newsitem from 1980. It was when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had launched the first
volume of the Collected works of Netaji edited by Dr Sisir Bose. She said, and I find some echo of hers in the professor’s statements, that Bose’s name was being “misused for political purposes by some people” she wouldn’t identify.

  The PM added that “Netaji should be an inspiration to the younger generation” and complimented Sisir Bose for his compilation. The government-approved Khosla Commission report had already inspired the youth by calling Bose a puppet of the Japanese.

  If you are still wondering exactly what does “authoritative” in the “authoritative account” of Sugata Bose mean, here is the right context. According to the Webster’s dictionary, “authoritative” means “having or proceeding from authority”. Since “authority” also means “government”, what it really connotes is that the version offered by the professor is that of the Government of India and that makes it “authoritative”. The blurb writer is right, after all. It is perfectly all right to back the government of one’s own country. I wholeheartedly support the stand of my Government on almost every issue of present and past. But on the Netaji mystery there is a major trust deficit.

  It is only when the professor covers the events of beyond 1947 that one realizes whose version he is amplifying. He writes that in 1951 SA Ayer met the crash survivors in Japan and on his return gave a report to Nehru. He feels sad that despite the Prime Minister’s presenting this report to Parliament, there was a “widespread refusal” to accept Bose’s death. We should be happy that the people did not agree with the treasure hunter’s findings. Because Ayer’s surreptitious visit to Japan, according to the records the Government of India refuses to share with the people, was essentially to cover his tracks and “divide the loot”—as then head of Indian Mission in Tokyo puts it.

  Ayer’s report placed before Parliament was its doctored version. It had been divested of the references to Bose’s plan to escape towards the USSR and the Japanese assurance of help.