Probing Netaji’s disappearance a third time
By Hameeduddin Mahmood

THE Government of India, on March 25 last, instituted a third probe panel to investigate the disappearance of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. It is hoped that it would finally put an end to the mystery of Netaji’s disapperance. The writer puts some questions for this panel to answer.

Wars and mysteries are always intertwined. And a war that involved 18 Allied Nations and three Axis Powers and lasted from September 1, 1939 to May 9, 1945, in Europe and from December 7, 1941, to August 17, 1945, in Asia was too large an operation to yield its secrets. The disapperance of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in Formosa (Taiwan), following the crash of the plane he was taking to flee from the Allies was an issue that became controversial. The great man involved in this episode matters to India and the history of Indian freedom struggle. The event occurred on the day Japan’s General Tojo was to sign the instruments of surrender on board the USS Missouri anchored in the Tokyo Bay. Was the air crash manipulated by the surrendering Japanese? Did Netaji really die in the crash? What was the destination he was heading to? Are the ashes kept in a Shinto shrine in Japan those of Netaji’s mortal frame? Why was Netaji fleeing? What plans had he chalked out to continue his war of liberation against the British?

Answers to all these questions, except one might not be available. With the help of today’s technology, it is possible to determine by DNA examination if the ashes really are those of Netaji. If this answer is negative, it will open the proverbial Pandora’s box.

The third probe panel aims to find answers to some of the above questions. It is planned to be a total and conclusive probe into the Netaji episode. But the sad fact is that as yet even the chief of this probe panel has not been appointed. The six-month term will no doubt be extended several times before the panel can submit its report.

Prophet Muhammed has said: "To frame a question beautifully is like acquiring half the knowledge." In administrative parlance, this is called framing the terms of reference. But that is only half the job done. The other half is the modus operandi of the probe panel. If the third probe panel is going to re-examine the same set of witnesses the first and the second panels did, the exercise would be futile because the memories would have faded further and been papered over with romanticism. A fresh angle is needed.

What can that fresh angle be?

Unlike all other leaders during the war days in undivided India, Netaji was the only one who had been sucked into the vortex of international politics. In his quest for freedom, Netaji had met Adolph Hitler who had passed him on to the Japanese. It will be good to remember that besides the active combatants in the war, there was another party that was fighting its own war on the side of the Allies, namely the World Jewish Congress.

In the eyes of the Jews of the time, any one who was with Germany, Italy and Japan was by the same logic against the Jews. Did the Jews then engineer the air crash in which Netaji is supposed to have died? Unlikely, because the Zionists have never left a job half-finished. If they saw Netaji as the enemy of the Jews, they would have also most certainly fished out his corpse to proclaim the fall of one of their "enemies". Netaji had not had the occasion to pronounce himself on the Arab-Jewish question, except by way of routine party statements supporting the Arab cause, which did not amount to denying the right of Israel to come into being.

There were innumerable German Jews during the war who were double agents, including Rothschild. Some worked for Germany and Britain, while others worked for the USA and Germany while still others worked for Germany and Russia. The Cold War between the Allies

had already started after the 1943 Teheran Conference. Yet, there was unanimity on one issue: total destruction of the German fighting machine. The goals of Netaji’s militant struggle for India’s freedom were not a factor towards this end. He was a fierce nationalist. India came first and last in his calculations. A live Netaji would not have been an asset to the defeated Japanese. Nor could Japanese benefit from

Netaji continuing his liberation struggle. The USA could have had some use of Netaji but at that time it would not have done anything to embarrass its "natural" ally, Britain.

Therefore, one has to ask: Who could have benefited from Netaji staying alive and who from the death of Netaji. A dead hero is good only for commemoration but a live hero could have been a rallying point for continuing India’s war of liberation. Herein resides the clue to what happened to Netaji in Formusa.

Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the Allied victory over Germany, Soviet Land, the USSR embassy journal published from Delhi, ran a three-part series on Netaji’s great contribution to the Indian Independence struggle. Our journalists were used to throwing away all material received from Soviet and East European embassies, without taking a look at them. So they have totally missed the Soviet account of the war including some of its little known secrets, such as Britain having readied itself to receive the German Prime Minister Herman Goering at a country house near London on August 22, 1939, barely nine days before the start of the War, in which Britain became the first country to declare war upon Germany Or, interestingly, Britain was supplying textiles made in India for uniforms of the German armed forces during the war.

It is yet improbable to think that Britain would have passed on Netaji into Soviet Lands, knowing his ‘nuisance value’ for the future of the British empire. It is exactly at this point that the three part Soviet Land tribute falls silent after mildly criticising Netaji for having chosen wrong friends. Who, then in the view of Soviet Land, could have been the right friend of Netaji? Towards the end of the war, the USSR had given refuge or support to Walter Ulbrich who set up the German Democratic Republic (East Germany); Josep Broz Tito who created the Yugoslav republic, Kim II Sung who took over North Korea, Ho Chi Minh who led Vietnam’s freedom struggle, besides continuing support for Mao Ze Dong’s war of liberation in China.

Did the erstwhile Soviet Union of Stalin eye Netaji for stirring up revolution in India? Was it Rothschild who arranged the deal with Stalin? Hence, was the air crash in Taiwan faked to cover up Netaji’s flight to the USSR via Sakhalin? Was Netaji kept in detention in Siberia to negotiate a deal?

Hardly half a year later, the Royal Indian Navy strike broke out in India on February 18, 1946, and just two days later British Prime Minister Clement Richard Attlee announced in Parliament, Britain’s intention to quit India before October 1948. This was the deadline the Jews had set for the creation of Israel.

To relocate Netaji in India for possibly a continuation of the war of liberation had, in a way, been pre-empted by Britain, with the announcement of its decision to quit.

The Telengana peasant insurgency had already erupted but since Netaji’s background was not agrarian, he could not have taken up its leadership. Was he, therefore, detained longer than needed?

Herein lies the relevance of Blitz report about a sadhu living near Ayodhya in mysterious circumstances. He had apparently landed there after Indira Gandhi’s last meeting with Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet boss in 1960s. Some time after Indira Gandhi’s assassination on October 31, 1984, a small news item had appeared, saying the Ayodhya sadhu had committed suicide by shooting himself. Was he Netaji?

There is no doubt that Indira Gandhi admired Netaji and would not have tolerated his detention in Siberia in the erstwhile USSR. Did she negotiate his return to India and kept it under wraps? What happened to several trunkloads of cash and documents the sadhu had retained in his custody?

The third Netaji probe panel must really start from delving into the historicity of the Blitz report. The panel should ask: if the anonymous sadhu living near Faizabad was really Netaji? Why did he not surface?

The Allies had declared Netaji a war criminal. And India, having been one of the allied powers that defeated the Axis powers, was legally bound to hand him over to the International Tribunal for War Crimes. The safest course was to keep him as an incognito guest for life. After all, Soviet Land had suggested Netaji had chosen bad company!

There are other more vital questions connected with the final determination of the Netaji disapperance controversy. As The Hindu said in its edit (May 7, 1999) "Netaji’s faith in the diversity and unity inspired millions of people. He symbolised the values, vision and determination of a poor nation to free itself from colonial rule. His ideals and philosophy are as relevant today as they (sic) were five decades ago."