The Netaji Mystery: 64 New Files Open to Public From Today

Mangalore Today News Network

Kolkata, Sep 18, 2015:  New secret files on legendary freedom fighter Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose were released by the West Bengal government today and will now be open to the public.

 

Hidden in government and police lockers for years, 64 classified files with over 12,000 pages will be on display at the Kolkata police museum. When the files are thrown open to the public from Monday, many more secrets are expected to emerge on Netaji, whose death has been an enduring mystery for decades.

Scores of files have been declassified over the years, many in the National Archives in Delhi.

One such intelligence file revealed in 1997 reports that eight months after Netaji purportedly died in an air crash in at Taihoku in Taiwan on 18 August, 1945, Mahatma Gandhi had publicly said he believed Netaji was alive.

Four months after he made the statement at a prayer meeting in Bengal, Gandhiji wrote an article: "No reliance can be placed on such unsupported feeling".

The intelligence file - dated 8 April, 1946 - noted that Gandhiji ascribed the feeling to "an inner voice" but Congressmen believed it was based on secret information he got.

The file adds: "There is a secret report which says Nehru received a letter from Bose, saying he was in Russia and that he wanted to escape to India... It is probable that the letter from Bose arrived about the time that Gandhi made his public statement."

Netaji’s grand-nephew Chandra Bose says Mahatma Gandhi knew something. "Gandhi insisted that the Bose family should not perform the shraddh because there is a question mark regarding Subhas Bose’s death," he said.

Ms Krishna Bose, head of Netaji Research Bureau and wife of Netaji’s nephew, Dr Shishir Bose, said Gandhiji explained it all in the journal Harijan in April 1946.

"Some years ago, it was announced in the newspapers that Subhas Chandra Bose had died," Mahatma Gandhi wrote. "I believed the report. Later, the news was proved to have been incorrect. Since then I have had a feeling that Netaji could not leave us until his dream of swaraj had been fulfilled. To lend strength to this feeling was the knowledge of Netaji’s great ability to hoodwink his enemies... These were the only reasons for my belief that he was alive."

"Therefore, I had nothing but my instinct to tell me that Netaji was alive. No reliance can be placed on such unsupported feeling," Gandhiji wrote. "In the face of these proofs I appeal to everyone to forget what I have said and... reconcile themselves to the fact that Netaji has left us."

"I personally believe in the air crash. But if something else comes, we will have to change our mind about it," said Ms Krishna Bose.

 

Courtesy: NDTV