Netaji Bose files trigger ‘war criminal’ row

mangaloretoday.com

New Delhi, Jan 24: Among the 100 classified Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose files released by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the freedom fighter’s 119th birth anniversary is one file that examines a question about whether the patriot, who raised an army to fight the British, was ever a war criminal.

The issue is moot because scholars who have questioned his demise in the August 19, 1945 air crash in Taiwan, have said Bose vanished from the public eye only because he was a ‘ war criminal’ wanted by the Allies, and who risked trial and execution if captured.

 

The British had briefly examined labeling Bose a war criminal in the closing stages of war, but swiftly given it up. The matter was laid to rest when a British military inquiry in 1946 concluded that Bose had indeed died after sustaining injuries in an air crash in August 1945.

The theory that Netaji had been declared a war criminal surfaced once again during the Khosla Commission of Inquiry in 1971 that probed the disappearance of the freedom fighter.

One important deposition was one of Shyam Lal Jain, Pandit Nehru’s stenographer, who claimed to have taken down a dictation from Nehru in December 1945. Jain claimed that the letter was addressed to then British Prime Minister Clement Atlee.

The deposition of Shyam Lal Jain finds mention in the declassified file ‘Disappearance/ Death of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose 915/11/C/6/96-Pol’ from the Prime Minister’s Office. This file encloses a 10-page explanatory note on Netaji by author Pradip Bose, in which the reproduces Jain’s recollection of the letter that Nehru purportedly wrote to Atlee.

“I understand from a reliable source that Subhas Chandra Bose, your war criminal, has been allowed to enter Russian territory by Stalin. This is clear treachery and a betrayal of faith by the Russians. As Russia has been an ally of the British- Americans, it should not have been done. Please take note of it and do as you consider proper and fit.”

However, the Congress claimed the letter was fake and called its release is a diversionary tactic by the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre. (See box) The Ministry of External Affairs’ File number W1/ 125/ 25/ 98-EW mentions the correspondence between India’s foreign affairs ministry and the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

The correspondence was initiated in 1998 based on an order of the Orissa High Court which responded to a public interest litigation filed by a former MP. MEA request British historians from the Imperial War Museum responded to the MEA’s request by saying that a list of war criminals was only drawn up only for German and Japanese nationals.

British authorities regarded Netaji as a ‘traitor and a political figure but not a war criminal’, a historian from the Imperial War Museum said. Bose’s fate as the ally of a defeated Axis power, formed part of the deliberations of the British government in 1945 in the declassified ‘Transfer of Power’ papers, Vol. VI, (Pages 138-139).

‘The treatment of Subhas Bose’, Viceroy of India Lord Wavell’s Indian viceroy noted, would be ‘among the most difficult questions that will confront the home department.’ On 11 August 1945, just two days after a second atomic bomb levelled the Japanese city of Nagasaki, Sir EM Jenkins, the Personal Secretary to Viceroy, and Governor-General of India Wavell suggested Bose be declared a war criminal.