Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose has found an enduring place in the hearts and minds of his people. It is now 72 years since Netaji disappeared. It is alleged he died in an air crash in Taiwan (then Formosa) on 18 August 1945. But questions remain.

On 16 August 1945, the Japanese, who had been Netaji’s allies in South-East Asia during the Second World War and had supported him to form and arm the Indian National Army to fight the British on their eastern front, were escorting Netaji to safety. The Second World War was effectively over by then, with the defeat of Nazi Germany in May 1945, and the surrender of Japan on 15 August 1945, following the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945.

The mystery over what really happened to Netaji after 18 August 1945 continues to challenge us despite three official inquiries. The official Japanese report is that there was an air crash on 18 August 1945 and Netaji died as a result of third degree burns that he sustained when the said military aircraft caught fire on hitting the ground from a height of about a hundred feet, as reported by Habib-Ur Rahman and other so-called eye-witnesses. Some passengers including Habib-Ur Rahman survived.

It is possible for passengers to survive if an aircraft comes down from a height of 100 feet. Unfortunately, Netaji, according to the Japanese report, was alive after the crash, but succumbed to the serious burns that he suffered in escaping from the burning aircraft.

There have been, to date, three official inquiries into the so-called disappearance of Netaji. According to the first two—Shah Nawaz Committee (1956) and Khosla Commission (1970)—Netaji died in the alleged air crash on 18 August 1945. According to the findings of the third inquiry, the Justice Mukherjee Commission (2006), there was no plane crash and therefore Netaji could not have died in the alleged crash.

Prime Minster Narendra Modi decided last year to declassify all files relating to Netaji in the custody of Government of India and release them to the public domain. PM Modi released all the files on 23 January 2016. The National Archives of India has been given the responsibility to digitalise the files and place them on their website. They have been doing so almost every month since last year. Anyone interested to access these files can go to www.netajifiles.gov.in.

I will come back to the topic of the current status of declassification of Netaji files and the surrounding controversies after I have written about Netaji—the man.

BOSE, THE MAN

Among the pantheon of leaders we have seen over 100 years of India’s struggle for independence, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose stands out. He has found a permanent place in the imagination of the people despite efforts on the part of various Congress regimes to erase the man and his role from records. School textbooks include, at best, a brief and cursory mention of Netaji’s role in the struggle for independence.

It is time for us to rectify such distortions of history. We need to document the impact of the Indian National Army, the first and only revolutionary army of India, which led the final assault on the British Empire from the eastern front. The profound impact that the trial of the INA officers had on the British Indian armed forces and the revolutionary fervour that it unleashed are hardly known. Our current historians have ignored such facts of history. Foreign scholars have done more in this regard. For example, Joyce Lebra, an American scholar, in her book The Indian National Army And Japan, writes, “Despite the military defeat of Japan and with it the INA, popular support for the INA ultimately helped precipitate British withdrawal from India.”

Here is an American scholar who is recognising the critical role of the INA in our freedom struggle, which most Indian historians, with the exception of a few such as Ramesh Chandra Majumdar, have not done. Indian historians, many of whom claim to be Nehruvians, have unashamedly written a biased history of India.

Gandhi, Nehru and Patel collectively failed to deliver a free and united India, which Netaji and his brother-in-arms Sarat Chandra Bose had worked towards all their lives from the 1920s. From the war front in Burma, Netaji appealed to the Mahatma not to give in to partition, which would only bring disaster. Even as partition plans were being made later in 1947, Sarat Chandra Bose fought a lone battle to save the unity of India and Bengal. He failed. The result—endless conflict in our region.

Subhas Bose was a man ahead of his time—a statesman. He was a man of vision—of a free and independent India where all of its people, regardless of religion, caste, gender or creed, would enjoy the benefits of the resources and wealth of Mother India, where every person would have enough to eat and every child would attend school. His Haripura address is just one of his many statements on this vision. He once wrote, “Fearlessness in thought and action is to me is the supreme virtue in life.” Throughout his life, he showed fearlessness both in a moral and physical sense. His moral courage was evident when he threw away a promising career in the Indian Civil Service because he felt he could not serve two masters, the British rulers and his motherland.

Netaji’s fearlessness did not have any limits. He took off from Calcutta while under house arrest, on a long and perilous journey right across India and Afghanistan, via Moscow, to Germany, determined to enlist foreign assistance to fight for India’s freedom. His submarine journey from Germany back to South-East Asia during the height of the Second World War was a death-defying exploit. Netaji’s aide, Abid Hasan had spoken about how Netaji continued to strategise about his dream of a free India while they journeyed through the turbulent high seas.

In retreat from Burma with the advancing Anglo-American army, Netaji shared the immense hardships of the soldiers of the INA. Netaji personally ensured that the soldiers of the Rani of Jhansi Regiment were able to navigate their way through the jungles safely back to Thailand and to their homes. Netaji had a choice to travel in an army vehicle, but chose to walk with the Ranis.

Netaji never hesitated in standing up for what he thought was right, whether towards the British authorities, his jailors in India and in Mandalay, and later in his dealings with the Japanese Imperial Army generals when he did not agree with them.

Even with the Mahatma himself over the fundamental issue of the use of force to achieve Indian independence, Netaji stood his ground. And the Mahatma respected him for it. Of their final meeting Subhas reported (The Indian Struggle), “If his (Subhas’) efforts to win freedom for India succeeded—then his (Gandhi’s) telegram of congratulation would be the first that he (Subhash) would receive.”

Netaji was a man of action, a dynamic and utterly committed life force who inspired all who came in contact with him. He, in the short space of less than a year, returned from Europe to Asia, negotiated at the highest levels of the Japanese government, revived the INA, formed the provisional government of Azad Hind, and led the INA as supreme commander in a battle against the Anglo-American forces on the Indo-Burmese front. The energy, commitment and sheer perseverance of this man were seemingly inexhaustible.

Netaji was also a champion of gender equality and saw in Indian women much more than the traditional and time-honoured roles of running households and raising children. As a young man, he had supported C.R. Das in calls by the Swaraj Party of the early 1920s, for women to have not only the right to vote, but to be able to do so at a younger age than males. He believed passionately that women had a vital role to play in the political, economic and social life of India. Perhaps his crowning achievement in this respect was the formation of the all-female Rani of Jhansi Regiment of the INA.

NEED FOR CLOSURE

It is now time to bring closure to the mystery as to what happened to Netaji after 18 August 1945. To do this, I, on behalf of the Bose family and all those who have been part of the declassification campaign, have appealed to Government of India, particularly to Prime Minister Modi, to release all the remaining files in the custody of the government, including intelligence files that can help us to get to the truth.

We have also urged our government to request the governments of Japan, Russia and the United Kingdom to release whatever information they might hold about Netaji. Netaji was in Japanese care in August 1945 and so we must appeal to the Japanese government to provide whatever additional information they may hold which might help to reach a closure.

It is now more than 70 years since Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose was reported to have died in a plane crash, when he was on the way to Manchuria via Tokyo. Questions still remain. We need answers, soon.