by Anuj Dhar
Then Sugata Bose asserts that Nehru formed the Shah Nawaz Committee in deference to public demands to take what he calls “a comprehensive look at all the evidence”. As a grandnephew of Suresh Bose, Sugata Bose should have known that the committee was set up by the Government only after they were confronted with the prospects of a civil society inquiry headed by Justice Radha Binod Pal. The classified notes discussed in the chapter “Big brother watching” support the long-standing allegations that Shah Nawaz's inquiry was initiated with a view to meeting certain predetermined objectives.
The professor could have been oblivious to the secret records, but not to the allegations. Yet, by not paying any heed to them, and supporting the government line without demur, he shows where his heart lies.
The professor lauds the Shah Nawaz Committee’s recommendation that the Renkoji ashes be brought to India and is disappointed that the Government failed to follow it up. He doesn’t tell why. The Bose family refused to have them in India and the Government had no option but to let them where they were. Sometimes you need a secret report to confirm something that is a matter of public knowedge. The following 1957 Top Secret letter written by Joint Secretary JS Mehta to CS Jha, the Indian Ambassador in Japan, reiterates that Bose family did not share the government view about his death.
Sugata Bose also joins the league of some extraordinary men—Jawaharlal Nehru, his minister Shah Nawaz, his friend GD Khosla and his ardent follower Shivraj Patil—in branding his own granduncle Suresh Bose a liar. All on the basis of a note created fraudulently by the government nominee on the committee. Blood is usually thicker than water, but political inclinations often dilute family ties. Sugata Bose should have known better that Suresh Bose had no need to change his mind about Subhas Bose’s assumed death after June 1956, as this “injustice league” propagated throughout the years. From the day one to his last, Suresh shared his elder brother’s, Sugata’s grandfather’s, views about their younger brother’s disappearance.
A few years ago Chandrachur and I met a former Gaimusho official in New Delhi. Tomoji Mutoh had in May 1956 liaised with the Shah Nawaz Committee and especially Suresh Bose. He told us that he accompanied Suresh Bose to the residence of Katanko Tojo, the widow of war-time Prime Minister Hideki Tojo. “He cried there. He said ‘my brother did not die’,” the retired official told us. Mutoh asked us to visit the Renkoji temple and see for ourselves how respectful the Japanese are towards “Chandra Bose’s ashes”. “Your respect for Netaji is not in doubt, and we are grateful for that,” we told him.
If he were alive today, Suresh Bose would have been greatly pained to see his own grandnephew terming his view as “rambling dissent”, borrowing the word “rambling” from GD Khosla. Suresh Bose was not an accomplished writer and at that he was not given enough documents or facilities to produce a slick report. But he did make some valid points and he did set a standard in probity and openness as he called upon the people to not to believe his dissent or the majority report until the Government had made public all relevant records.
There is no chance of misconstruing that the Harvard professor is so impartial and objective that he has not even spared his granduncle. Because in his zeal to back the government version, he has lauded someone who came closer to getting jailed for trying to vilify Subhas Chandra Bose and a friendly foreign nation which sacrificed thousands of its men in helping India attain freedom. This was GD Khosla, whom Sugata Bose describes as “eminent jurist”. Worse, Sugata makes libelous statements against Justice Mukherjee.
It is horrendous that a Bose family member should use a glowing term for a man who portrayed Subhas as an impractical hothead and a puppet of the Japanese in his report. This abhorring idea was not an aside but part and parcel of Khosla’s report. The Bose family dragged him to court and he could wriggle out only after rendering a written apology.
According to Prof Bose, Khosla’s report “fell victim to political partisan” whereas the Congress-led government “quite sensibly, rejected outright” the Mukherjee Commission's report. He is disheartened, as a Congressman at heart should be, that Indira Gandhi’s government which had been compelled to institute Khosla’s inquiry lost elections in 1977 and the Janata government set aside Khosla’s findings. Such unabashed whitewash makes me feel worried about the professor’s American students. Between September 1974, when Khosla Commission’s report was tabled in Parliament and 1977, when Moraraji Desai became Prime Minister, India had for most part been under an authoritarian rule. It was the biggest blot on Indian democracy, the best legacy of the British Raj. It was during this dark age, when prostitutes were paraded to create fervour in favour of the government and innumerable people were forcefully sterilised to stem India’s population boom, that Khosla’s report was finally approved in Parliament sans Opposition.
The people who fought against the Emergency were the people forming the “political partisan” against Khosla’s report. They included politician Samar Guha, lawyer Gobinda Mukhoty—who went on to fight for justice for the victims of 1984 genocide—and journalist Barun Sengupta.
Disregarding the actual turn of events, Sugata Bose further writes that more than twenty years after Khosla’s report was rejected, “yet another” commission was appointed by the Government. There is no light what had led to all this momentous decision. The setting up of new commission was not a government decision per se; it just had to obey the order of the Calcutta High Court. Sugata Bose is giving his readers an impression as if the formation of the new commission was result of some governmental whim at a time when his favourite dispensation was out of power.
The facts of Khosla’s closeness to Nehru, his self-proclaimed disagreement with Bose during their student days in London, his writing the biography of Indira Gandhi during the period he was heading the Netaji Inquiry Commission and his churning out a book from his inquiry, the apology he rendered to the Bose family have not shaken Sugata’s faith in him. But His Majesty’s opponent describes Justice MK Mukherjee as “retired Bengali judge” to impute impartiality to him. Added to it is the disparaging remark that he “held court” and provided “a venue for increasingly fanciful stories”.
Sugata Bose goes on to allege that Mukherjee “himself harboured a preconceived notion”. He thinks it is proven by two factors: In October 2002, the commission had asked some Bose family members to provide blood samples for a DNA match with Bhagwanji of Faizabad. Then in 2010 Mukherjee was seen on TV, making an off-the-record remark filmed without his knowledge that he was sure that Bhagwanji was Netaji. The history professor adds that there is no evidence to back this theory and Mukherjee’s entertaining a “most preposterous” claim about Bhagwanji caused confusion among the public. His stray comments about the Mukherjee Commission occupy no more than two paras and just with these he has trashed an inquiry which lasted for six years and indicted the Government of India on several points.
As a non-Bengali who followed commission’s work closely, I am in a position to assert some facts. The Calcutta High Court judgment which directed the central government to form a commission was issued by then Chief Justice Prabha Shankar Mishra. It is the norm in India nowadays for the chief justices of the state high courts not to be hailing from those states. Things seem to have changed from the days when Lahore-born GD Khosla could have become Chief Justice of the Punjab High Court.
I had the opportunity to speak with retired Justice Mishra in New Delhi a few years ago. He told me that the main reason for his reaching that decision was the disclosure made by the Government that it itself was not sure of Bose’s death.
Justice Mukherjee’s name as the chairman of the new commission was recommended by the Chief Justice of India. Incidentally, I don't find Sugata Bose mentioning, much less underlining, in his book that Mukherjee is a former Supreme Court judge. He just sees a “Bengali” in him. It is as if Sugata Bose is taking a leaf out of GD Khosla’s book. The judge's personal papers, now kept at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, also reflect a si
milar parochial point of view. Even after a case was filed by the Bose family against him in Kolkata for trying to defame Subhas “to please patrons for largesse and assignments”, Khosla was unrepentant. He filed—and apparently later withdrew—a transfer petition in the Supreme Court in which he painted the entire matter as a Bengali issue. He described Prof Samar Guha “a prominent Bengali member of the Lok Sabha” and claimed that he did not expect to “receive a fair and impartial trial” in Kolkata, home to his sister, and had “every reason to apprehend physical danger and injury to himself in the event of the trial being held in West Bengal”.
Sugata Bose's description of Jutice Mukherjee a “Bengali judge” is a low blow. This is not how we look at our judges. Justice SH Kapadia is not a “Parsi judge”; he is the Chief Justice of India. We associate people who occupy or have occupied high offices with a particular region or religion only in the complimentary sense.
Sugata Bose was nowhere in sight when Justice Mukherjee examined the witnesses. Mukherjee put pointed, pertinent questions to probe whether or not the person standing in the witness corner possessed any evidence to back his statements. The former Supreme Court judge did not “held court”; he conducted proceedings according to the Commission of Inquiry Act.
Two of Sugata’s uncles that I have known, know it well because they didn’t have to let their imagination wander to visualize what had actually happened. Late Pradip Bose was there on some occasions, and Subrata Bose attended most of the commission’s public hearings. Later 43 members of the family, including these two cousins, issued a statement which expressed deep appreciation for “the arduous efforts” of “Mr Justice MK Mukherjee and his team in the commission”. [25]
Sugata Bose’s charge about Mukherjee having preconceived notions reflects his own. He was propagating them much before the commission’s inquiry ended. Sample two of his statements made on 23 January 2002 in Kolkata:
I have seen a lot of evidence from across the world and have also met people who claimed to have spotted him somewhere or the other…these do not amount to anything more than canards. Evidences to the contrary are so strong that one is forced to believe that Netaji’s life was tragically cut short.
Our family has all through been convinced that Netaji died in the air crash. But popular sentiment barred us from strongly opposing the theory of his “disappearance”. [26]
I don’t know which people claiming to have spotted “Netaji” met Sugata Bose but am sure that no one with reasonable knowledge of the Bhagwanji angle ever divulged anything to him.
Sugata’s charges about Justice Mukherjee prejudging the issue can be easily run down in a court of law. The former Supreme Court judge’s inquiry was one of the most transparent that this country has ever seen. At every hearing, the judge would release to deponents and one or two odd media representatives the copies of periodic status reports detailing that steps taken by the commission, why they were taken and a summary what responses had been given by the Government and others. All these reports were made part of his final reports as Vol IIA and IIB. These volumes are available on the Home Ministry website and it is for everyone to see that Mukherjee’s inquiry progressed logically on most reasonable grounds. His report clearly states that terms of reference assigned to the commission made him “proceed on the assumed premises that there was a plane crash as testified to by the witnesses”. [27]
Mukherjee did not discover the Faizabad angle; it was brought to his notice and he took steps he was supposed to under the law. The commission report appends a copy of the notification issued by it, which says the commission called upon everyone interested to make their case before it. [28] Since Sisir Bose’s family did not pay any heed to the notification, they assumed that others did not as well. The commission report says:
The story relating to death of Netaji in Faizabad originates from the statements (supported by affidavits) filed by Dr Alokesh Bagchi of Gorakhpur, Shri Ashok Tandon, Shri Shakti Singh and Shri Kailash Nath Jaiswal of Faizabad in response to the statutory notification issued by this commission. [29]
The professor’s next charge that the commission became a venue for “increasingly fanciful stories” is true for the Khosla Commission. The “eminent jurist” allowed all kind of people, even a person who testified that he was of unsound mental health, just to give credence to the view that the Bose mystery was a product of such minds. [30] Justice Mukherjee was a complete no-nonsense as chairman of the commission. He dismissed implausible and irrelevant accounts out of hand. I myself witnessed him cutting people short when they made allegations against Nehru. Mukherjee did not even bring such things on the record of proceedings. That is why his report contains no mindless elaborations, howsoever titillating to read.
The Faizabad angle was dwelt at some length because it entailed startling evidence. What Sugata Bose calls “preposterous” was found to be of significant importance by several journalists and had the backing of Suresh Bose’s daughter Lalita Bose, who had gone to court in its favour. With such being the state of affairs, no inquiry commission could have dismissed this angle out of hand just because it did not appear plausible.
Justice Mukherjee’s seeking blood samples from some Bose family members, including Sugata Bose, was perfectly in synch with his inquiry to ascertain the identity of a man whom many Bose aides of indisputable integrity had apparently taken to be the long disappeared INA leader. Going for the DNA test was an obvious decision. When this test was carried out first, Hindustan Times had already published a report of mine on the first page saying that the handwriting samples of Bose and the holy man were found to have been authored by same person by a top expert engaged by the paper.
Even if GD Khosla had occupied Justice Mukherjee’s position, he’d have to order a DNA test in the circumstances. But it is to be noted that none of the family members who actually gave blood samples—Nirupam Som, grandson of Netaji’s elder sister and former Police Commissioner of Kolkata; Tripti Nag, granddaughter of Netaji’s sister; Sadhan Kar, son of the daughter of Netaji’s eldest sister; Subrata Bose, the son of Sarat Bose and Prof DN Bose, son of Dr Sunil Bose—protested even though they had little faith in Bhagwanji episode. Prof DN Bose went on to publish an article in the Statesman repudiating the Bhagwanji angle. So I don’t why Prof Bose has been making a dance and show about his being asked to provide a blood sample along with his other family elders.
Sugata Bose’s deduction that Justice Mukherjee’s 2010 admission about Bhagwanji was “preconceived” is awful because it is based on his insufficient and highly prejudiced knowledge of this particular episode. Justice Mukherjee came to hold this belief after he had assessed the evidence linking Bhagwanji to Bose. Sugata Bose does not have any idea what Mukherjee actually said because his source of information is a media report, which, like all the other media reports, contained only one-two bytes from Justice Mukherjee’s off-the-record interview lasting for 10 minutes or so.
In the full recording of the interview, Justice Mukherjee is seen giving his reasons, like apprehensions of a forensic fraud, Leela Roy’s belief etc. before expressing his belief about Bhagwanji’s identity. He is as much of a human as we are. He has remained dignified, but that is not to say that he is not dismayed with the way government trashed his historic inquiry and report. Sugata Bose appears to be gloating in His Majesty’s opponent the way Government covered up the issue. He supports the report’s arbitrary, undemocratic dismissal by the Congress-led government. What else would one expect from someone whose parents were in that party?
Just as the line taken by the Government of India in the Calcutta High Court, the professor has tried to prove in his book that the commission relied on the Taiwan government’s assessment that there was no air crash in 1945 solely because there are no records. I must press that the message from the Taiwan government originally sent to me is far more credible than the opinions expressed by our Government that has engaged in cover-up and those who have benefited from its largesse.
; The professor’s idea that since the Japanese were in control of Taiwan till the spring of 1946, the Chiang Kai-shek government which came afterwards couldn’t possibly hold any record relating to the event that took place before 1945 is wrong because the Japanese records of 1945 vintage are very much there even today.
On page 316 of his book, Prof Bose refers to an urn containing the ashes of General Shidei at the very crematorium where Bose too was allegedly cremated. The Taiwan government gave Justice Mukherjee the crematorium register for the entire period, not just the date on which Bose and Shidei were allegedly cremated. This Japanese register proves that neither Bose nor Shidei were cremated in Taipei during that period.
Lastly, Prof Bose has elaborated an instance of implied foreknowledge where Netaji had allegedly told some acquaintance of his in Mumbai that he would like to die by falling from the sky. I don't know what it is that the professor is trying to convey through this anecdote. Premonition is an absurdity, scientifically speaking.
I make simple deductions. There was a man called Major Bhaskaran Menon. Blind and staring death in the face, he could have told the Mukherjee Commission like Sisir Bose that he should be excused from making an appearance before it due to reasons of health if nothing else. But the sense of duty towards his leader and the quest of truth made Menon file an affidavit and then request that he be examined in his daughter’s home in Chennai because he could not get up from his bed.
His younger daughter Rema Ravindran standing by as a witness, Menon recalled for one last time before the commission’s secretary PK Sengupta what he had on several occasions for the last five decades. Convinced to his last that his leader went to Russia, Menon thought back to 17 August 1945—a day before Bose met with his death as per his greatnephew—when the INA leader was dictating him some letters. And then Bose said the words that he was leaving on a plane and was apprehensive that an accident might overtake him.
