Last Updated:
If Subhas Chandra Bose did not die in Taipei, what happened to him? The Mukherjee Commission report says he was heading for Soviet Russia. The authors think accepting this will be the most obvious step
‘The Bose Deception’ is an account of enforcing the declassification of evidence when it was not done automatically. (Image: @chandrachurg/X)
On October 2, 1941, GS Sondhi of Panjab University, Lahore, wrote to ‘The Keeper of the Records of the Government of India’. The letter asked the government to allow Anup Chand to consult records relevant to his PhD thesis.
Chand was supposed to write a thesis on ‘The Problem of the North-West Frontier of India’. The request led to a long correspondence with the Imperial Record Department (IMD).
related stories
Another request was made to the foreign and political secretary since a few records also involved their department. The IMD agreed to share records up to 1880 with the researcher and provided the rulebook for historical research, viz record accession rules. This meant researchers in the early 1940s could have only accessed documents produced 60 years prior.
The National Archives of India (NAI) is full of such correspondences that uncover the bureaucratic regimes of archives and record accession in India. It includes Surendranath Sen, RC Majumdar, Narendra Krishna Sinha, OP Bhatnagar, David Erulkar, Parmatha Ranjan Dutt, Babu Chandra Ray, A Pspinell, Khan Bahadur M Azizul Haque, DN Banerjee and others before 1947.
Even later in the 1960s, Cambridge historians like Anil Seal had to undergo the same exercise. We’ve listed many names to stress that the challenges of consulting the records were equally daunting for everyone.
The ‘thirty-year-rule’ indicates some of the sloppiness of governmentality. This is as true of India as many other nation-states. It simply means that the government records are supposed to be transferred to the archives after 30 years and many times they are not.
Recently, it was revealed that the NAI has no records of the 1962, 1965 and 1971 wars, and even of the Green Revolution, which are landmarks of independent India. On this sticky wicket of a sloppy track record of the Archives, Anuj Dhar and Chandrachur Ghose rise to the occasion.
In the last two decades, these two authors along with their comrades-in-arms, namely Sayantan Dasgupta, Srejith Panichar and Vishal Sharma, have done more than anybody else to push for the declassification of records on Subhas Chandra Bose. Their Mission Netaji dedicated itself to the prime objective of ending the state secrecy surrounding Bose’s disappearance/death/afterlife.
Dhar and Ghose, individually and jointly, have written several books on Bose with the last ones being Conundrum: Subhas Bose’s Life and Death (Vitasta, 2019) and Bose: The Untold Story of an Inconvenient Nationalist (Penguin, 2022).
Their books have been adapted as a film and web series. It was not long ago that their efforts made an obscure publisher gain international repute when India’s Biggest Cover-Up (2012) was published. This book sparked nationwide debate about the mystery surrounding Bose’s disappearance/death.
It raised questions on whether information about Netaji was deliberately suppressed and the government’s motives. Why did Dhar and Ghose write one more book on Bose? Have they recapitulated evidence from their half-a-dozen or so books on Netaji? More importantly, why have they been writing on a contentious issue that even professional historians never engaged with?
After all, on the few occasions when they had face-offs with historians like Mridula Mukherjee, they were accused of misinterpreting and misreading the evidence. Mukherjee explicitly pointed out that these journalists and amateurs cannot handle archives! These issues and allegations must be examined by closely reading their latest offering.
NO AUTOMATIC DECLASSIFICATION
Automatic declassification of information is based on the occurrence of a specific date or event as determined by the original classification authority. The Bose Deception is an account of enforcing the declassification of evidence when it was not done automatically.
Spread over 11 chapters, the book commences as a setting for a fast-paced mystery thriller. First, we are given a panoramic account of events in the ministry of home affairs (MHA) on April 12, 2006.
The events had to do with the arrival of the printed copies of the ‘Report of Justice Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry on the Alleged Disappearance of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’ at the ministry. The commission was set up in 1999 to crack the most enduring mystery of Indian politics: the disappearance of Bose.
The authors describe the governmentality around the commission in such descriptive detail that Michel Foucault, the radical intellectual who coined the term, would beam with pride. For instance, precautions taken to maintain secrecy at the time of printing the commission’s report is a case in point.
However, the leakage from within the state apparatus is elemental to governmentality in India. Foucault never knew about it. Dhar and Ghose do.
They quote from a letter dated March 23, 2006 by an MHA official to Chander Mohan/Gita Offset Printers, who was printing the report: “As the matter is Top Secret in nature, all precautions should be taken to prevent any leakage at your end.”
The Mukherjee Commission’s conclusion and the government’s response made the front page of Hindustan Times on April 6. The authors recall that in 1956, the Shah Nawaz Khan Committee’s finding that Bose died in Taiwan appeared on the front page of a leading Kolkata daily a month before the report’s release.
What follows is an account of a battle of sorts. Shah Nawaz Khan and GD Khosla upheld the official view that Bose had died in Taiwan. The Mukherjee Commission ruled out the crash theory but couldn’t state conclusively what happened to Bose thereafter.
Home minister in the UPA government, Shivraj Patil dismissed the findings in passing. However, this crucial development provided authors with significant clues.
The Mukherjee Commission marked multiple selected documents as exhibits in its report for ready reference. The report referred to a list of 202 documents exhibited before the Khosla Commission.
The authors made an RTI (right to information) request to MHA seeking the “certified copies of all documents exhibited before” the two previous panels to reach the conclusion that they did. They narrate how they encounter more governmentality over ‘Section 8(1) of the RTI Act’.
How these records were termed as “sensitive in nature”. How the government thought these records “may lead to a serious law-and-order problem in the country, especially in West Bengal” and so on.
Finally, in 2007, after the pressing persistence of the authors, the central information commissioner (CIC) directed MHA not only to provide them with 202 records but also release 70,000 pages to the National Archives.
NEW SOURCES, NEW QUESTIONS
After years of a tug-of-war, the MHA was finally compelled to release a portion of its extensive 70,000-page cache. In 2012, over a thousand files and items, including documents marked as exhibits by the Mukherjee Commission, were first handed over to the authors and subsequently sent to the National Archives as part of a larger cache. This remains the government’s biggest release of Bose-related records to date.
Once the records were catalogued and made accessible for researchers in November 2014, all hell broke loose. A snooping scandal surfaced.
Bose’s family and kin were under surveillance of the Intelligence Bureau for many years after 1945. Their letters were intercepted, and copies were kept on file.
Letters Emilie Schenkl wrote to the Bose family in Kolkata were also intercepted. Letters of Leonard Gordon and Indian-American historian Damodar Sardesai were opened, read, copied and kept on file. A 15-year-old schoolboy named Pirthi Lal Subba was surveilled after writing a letter to Sarat Bose in November 1949, asking if Netaji was still alive.
After May 2014, UPA was out of power. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) had taken charge. Bose family members, like his grandnephew Surya Kumar Bose, were on national television alleging: “It was very convenient for Jawaharlal when Netaji did not turn up after 1945, 18th of August. What happened after that is the bigger question. Whether Nehru had a hand in the conspiracy to keep Bose out of India or get rid of him.”
Such developments added to the revelation of more sources. On January 23, 2016, Netaji’s birth anniversary, Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally declassified the first lot of 100 files, some 15,000 pages in all.
Thus far, 304 files have been released by the Modi-led government, 200 are from the ministry of external affairs (MEA), which till about 1968 was the nodal ministry for matters relating to Bose’s disappearance. Consequently, what the book offers are insights based on these new declassifications. A few pointers are necessary.
The authors exhibit how declassified files do not provide any reason whatsoever as to why surveillance was mounted on people linked to Bose. The single most important declassified record from the government’s side is a 2006 MHA note, in which the reasons for rejecting the Mukherjee Commission’s report have been given.
The authors argue that Justice Manoj Mukherjee’s report and private statements are correct. They argue that these declassifications are incomplete because they lack central and state-level intelligence agency involvement. Intelligence agencies are crucial because surveillance is their domain.
Finally, the authors report that now we are in a situation where the Government of India accepts ‘May 2006 Cabinet Decision’ as a fact but claims to be open to revising its stand if new information emerges. The question remains how would new information emerge if new declassifications are not made?
NON-ACADEMICS OR WHAT?
Dhar and Ghose have called themselves “non-academic” and whenever they have engaged with academics, the latter have affirmed it. However, we have ample reasons to disagree.
The authors have done a commendable job of adding up evidence on Bose’s disappearance/death like none other. Their half-a-dozen or so publications on Bose could make it to a reading list of any course on historical methods in the JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) and DU (Delhi University) universe.
Their report and analysis of evidence in the light of emerging gaps should be a ‘ABC of Historical Methods’ to academics who replicate and reproduce footnotes for decades without any substantial changes in the interpretation. Only two examples from the book would clear things.
The authors in the afterword compare the depositions of Major Taro Kono, Col Tadeo Sakai and Col Shiro Nonogaki – the three survivors of the plane crash – that they made in front of the Shah Nawaz Khan Committee (1957), GD Khosla Commission (1971) and to Leonard A Gordon (1979).
They outline the contradictions and crucial discrepancies in the eyewitness accounts, that too as a table. Not quite difficult to read for anyone – be it academics or “lay” readers.
The authors clearly and simply exhibit how Maj Kono’s limited account presented by Gordon in his book differs from what he had told the previous inquiries. The method must compel a re-examination of evidence and resultant interpretation for an academic or anybody else.
Second. In the chapter ‘No Love from Russia’, the authors exhibit different evidence that Bose had a plan to go to Russia was the starting point of the hypothesis that he was there after August 1945. They compare Khosla and Mukherjee commissions, name different researchers and individuals, cite from communiqués, etc.
The Indian establishment disregarded many of these rumours, apprehensions, allegations, and Raj-era intelligence reports about Bose’s presence in Soviet Russia after August 1945. However, that’s the official stand.
What about the historical truth? Multiple evidence-based speculation and sometimes conjectures that have surfaced point out gaps in the official standpoint. Why shouldn’t it be (re)examined if more flinching evidence surfaces?
The book contains close to 120 illustrations of declassified archival documents, analysed and reported for the first time, that let the narrative pace up. The authors allow the evidence to speak up without muzzling the information through a high-handedness of interpretation.
They do raise queries based on the evidence and make them coherent in the larger picture while allowing the surfacing of research gaps. Do we need an academic sanction or a university job to exercise and apply research methods? A reasonable person would say no.
In the end, the authors leave us with further questions and a space for more publication and activism around the issue. The recent official statement that the case of Bose’s disappearance can be reopened if fresh information is brought forward has been answered, to begin with.
Dhar and Ghose provide sufficient grounds to prove that the story of Bose’s death in Taipei was an “elaborately crafted smokescreen”. If Bose did not die in Taipei, what happened to him? The Mukherjee Commission report says he was heading for Soviet Russia. How would we know for sure?
The authors think accepting the Mukherjee Commission report would be the most obvious step. More declassifications for gathering more evidence should follow!
Shaan Kashyap is a PhD candidate at Ravenshaw University, Cuttack. Currently, he is Sir Jadunath Sarkar Fellow for Indian History (2024-25). The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views
This post was originally published on here
