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Netaji mystery: The trial of Jawarharlal Nehru

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Anuj Dhar
Anuj DharNov 14, 2015 | 13:22

Netaji mystery: The trial of Jawarharlal Nehru

I hate to think of it on his 125th birth anniversary, but, supposing he were alive today, could a case be made against Jawaharlal Nehru over his mishandling of the Subhas Chandra Bose "death" case?

Richard Nixon, the only American president ever to be impeached, was charged by the House Judiciary Committee in 1974 with "obstruction of justice", "abuse of power" and "contempt of Congress". On available evidence concerning the Bose matter, Nehru would fare a little better, leave aside his culpability in the illegal, decades-long snooping on the nears and dears of Netaji.

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Facing considerable public pressure, in 1956 Nehru set up an inquiry committee led by Shah Nawaz Khan, then a Congress party MP, to inquire into Bose's fate. To properly understand the severity of lapses which occurred subsequently, you would do well to scrutinise the following details as if they were about some present-day scandals making headlines for their sensational or sleaze value.

Official notes make it clear that Nehru and his officers in the Ministry of External Affairs ran the Shah Nawaz Committee from behind like a puppet. "Our effort should be to get as many facts as possible about Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s last days—the disappearance or death or whatever it was. Apart from direct evidence which we have thus far received and which may further be obtained, it seems to me almost inconceivable that Netaji should be alive," Nehru noted on April 2, 1956 setting the agenda for the inquiry.

Hence, the inquiry committee came preloaded with the assumption that Bose had died following an air crash. Shah Nawaz’s original draft of the committee’s basic term of reference—“to inquire into the departure of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose from Bangkok on or about 16th August and the subsequent events leading to his disappearance”—had been okayed by MEA Deputy Secretary AJ Kidwai. “This appears to be a sufficiently elastic formulation and the word ‘disappearance’ is more appropriate than the word ‘death’ which we have used so far,” he noted. Not for TN Kaul, who was one of the officers working as an interface between the PM and the inquiry matter. “I would suggest ‘alleged death’ instead of ‘disappearance’,” he countered. The final text approved by Foreign Secretary made the aircraft accident a foregone conclusion. The dotted lines were drawn.

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During the course of inquiry, Shah Nawaz faced demands to carry out an on-the-spot inquiry in Taipei where Bose had reportedly died and his alleged remains cremated. Since India did not have diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Shah Nawaz suggested to Indian Ambassador in Tokyo that Japanese help be taken.

“My view [is that] the committee should be permitted to approach the Japanese government for their good offices in the matter, even if the embassy keeps out of it,” the Indian Ambassador in Tokyo informed New Delhi after hearing from Shah Nawaz.

New Delhi’s response to this was:

“Matter has been placed before Prime Minister....We have considered the matter again and are not in favour of the committee visiting Formosa [Taiwan]. Japanese good offices may enable committee to land there, but it is unlikely that the Formosan government will give any facilities. In fact, they may put obstacles and suggest degrading conditions. Apart from this, politically, this will be very embarrassing for us and might lead to complicating the situation.”

This was a clear case of New Delhi acting mala fide. Afterwards, when the government sought British help to get some evidence from Taipei, the Taiwanese responded in the most considerate way possible — nothing like what the Nehru government had charged that they would.

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However, Shah Nawaz did not wait for the British feedback and hurriedly submitted his report to the PM. Just a week later, the British/Taiwanese report reached New Delhi.

The specific queries of the Indian government to the British had been forwarded to the Chairman of Taiwan provincial government. The chairman, in turn, ordered the Department of Health to carry out an investigation. The findings of the official who supervised all crematoria on the island were reported back to the British High Commissioner on 4 July 1956.

A Franklin, the British Consul in Tamsui, Taiwan, reported to the Foreign Office in London on July 10 that “it will be seen that most of the witnesses the Indian authorities requested us to obtain evidence from, have either died, disappeared or know nothing”. Put differently, there was no real proof of Bose’s death. The old Japanese records said to be for Bose turned out to be for a Japanese soldier. The man who had been cremated in Taipei was not Bose, but one Ichiro Okura.

And then, those who were imputing trickery to the Taiwanese wished away the British/Taiwanese report. Nehru did not utter a word about it in his subsequent statements.

It was as if the British/Taiwanese report never existed. But exit it did and is now available, to the misfortune of government of India, at the National Archives at Kew in London, having been declassified and put in public domain by Her Majesty's government.

On the last page of this file lies the damning proof of Nehru's act of omission. It states that not one, but five copies, of the British/Taiwanese report were handed over to the Ministry of External Affairs in Delhi on August 10, 1956. Nehru himself was the Minister of External Affairs in those days. That he chose to hush up the report concerning the fate of a front-ranking freedom fighter was obstruction of justice, plain and simple.

For the “abuse of power” part, sample this information. Still classified files available with the PMO and MEA show that Nehru government was fully aware that the INA treasure, the war chest created by Bose to aid the freedom struggle, had been looted by Munga Ramamurti and S A Ayer. Ramamurti was Indian Independence League head in Tokyo; whereas Ayer was Bose's information minister. Files make it rather clear that Indian officials in Tokyo as well as New Delhi were convinced of their involvement in the loot. And yet Nehru let them go scot free. Ramamurti was not touched as he settled down in Chennai. Ayer, who after 1945 had become a Nehru-bhakt, was shockingly given a plump position in the PM's Secretariat (PMO).

Earlier, Parliament was misled by Nehru following a hush-hush 1951 enquiry by the same Ayer to ascertain Bose's fate. That a man of such dubious credentials should have been chosen to carry out such an important inquiry was in itself unacceptable. Ayer went on to interview former Japanese military officers and others. Japanese-speaking Ramamurti acted as his interpreter.

As he met the prime minister in September 1951 in Delhi, Ayer furnished the material he had gathered. The prime minister then asked Ayer to "write out a full report about this".

As directed by the PM, Ayer wrote a report. Datelined 24 September 1951, Churchgate, Mumbai, it was loaded with his own assumptions, sitting well with the official view. In the Lok Sabha on 5 March 1952, Nehru read out aloud the conclusion reached by Ayer: "I [Ayer] have not the faintest doubt in my mind that the ashes that are enshrined in the Renkoji temple are Netaji's."But the report that the PM tabled in Parliament was a sanitised version of the original. Expunged from it was the portion where Ayer had referred to a secret, high-level Japanese plan to "drop Netaji and General Shidei at Dairen" in Manchuira.

"The intention was that General Shidei would look after Netaji in Dairen as long he remained there. Then Netaji would disappear with a view to crossing over to Russian-held territory and thereafter the Japanese would announce to the world that Netaji had disappeared," the expunged portion read. It is to be noted that as late as 2004, the Congress-led Central government was unwilling to accept that there was a Russian angle to the Bose mystery.Fully aware of these and many more insights hinting at the possibility that Bose could have been in Soviet Russia after his reported death an in alleged crash (which we now know never took place), Nehru kept on making statements in favour of the air crash theory.

Oh dear! In some other place and time, things would have been tough for Nehru!

Last updated: November 14, 2015 | 15:31
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