Happy Birthday Subhas Chandra Bose( Founder Of Indian Army)

[tom brady]

Gr8 man...

[swadesh]

[b][u]The Quit India Movement[/u][/b]
[b]This is Subhas Chandra Bose speaking to you over the Azad Hind Radio.[/b]

Comrades! Since I spoke to you last, about two weeks ago, the movement in India has been continuing with unabated vigour, and has been spreading like wild fire from the towns to the countryside. Throughout the month the British propaganda machinery has tried to give the impression that the campaign is now subsiding and that things are quietening down. But this attempt has completely failed, because in the same breath the BBC and its agents have given, or rather have been forced to give, news of more shooting on unarmed men and women all over the country. I can assure you that in the year of grace 1942, India can no longer be isolated from the rest of the world, however much Britain may try to draw a veil over that land. As a matter of fact, every bit of news regarding India's national struggle, every incident in Indian towns and villages, every case of shooting, whether in Ramnad or in Wardha, in Bikrampore or in Lucknow, is immediately flashed all over the world, is broadcast over the radio and published in the Press in all those countries that are either hostile to the Allied Powers or are neutral. Comrades, I know very well how in all the previous campaigns we were hard put to it to inform the outside world about the happenings in India and about the atrocities committed by British imperialists. Today the problem does not exist, and it is my pleasant task to keep the outside world informed about all events in India and to secure all the sympathy and help that India may need in her hour of trial. If today you could see with your own eyes and hear with your own ears all that is being propagated by your friends abroad about India's epic struggle, you would realise the measure of sympathy that India is receiving from the enemies of British Imperialism. And this sympathy for India is bound to grow in volume and intensity as British terror and brutality increases. The more we suffer and the more we sacrifice in the pursuit of our national freedom, the more will India's prestige go up in the eyes of the world.

I should like to tell you further while we have gained the moral sympathy of public opinion throughout the world, it is also possible for us to obtain from abroad any help that we may need for our emancipation. Therefore, in the fight against all the modern forms of terror and brutality, if you feel overwhelmed at any time and if you desire your friends abroad to give you the hand of assistance, you have only to say so. But these friends, who are anxious to see India free, will not offer their help to you, so long as you do not need it, and for our national honour and self-interest, we should not ask for any assistance so long as we can do without it.

In this connection, I would appeal to you once again to trust fully your countrymen abroad who are working heart and soul with you for the speedy liberation of India. We are today the custodians of India's national honour, the unofficial ambassadors of free India. As at home, so also abroad, we stand always for Independence, and we shall never permit vital encroachments on our national sovereignty by any foreign power.

Do not be carried away by ideological considerations; do not bother about the internal politics of other countries, which is no concern of ours. Believe me when I say that the enemies of British Imperialism are our friends and allies. It is to their interest to see the British Empire broken up and India once again free. And they know very well that so long as India remains under the British yoke there can be no victory for them and there can be no peace. In the political field, I should be the last man to expect foreign Powers to sympathize with us if it were not in their own interest to do so.

Comrades, you must have observed how during the last few months the British Empire has been passing through its darkest hours. Gone are the days when London was the metropolis of the world. Gone are the days when kings and statesmen had to wend their way to London in order to have their problems solved. Gone are the days when the American President had to come to Europe to meet the British Prime Minister. As an English poet, Tennyson, has himself said, "The old order changeth yielding place to new, and God fulfils himself in many ways.” Consequently, the British Prime Minister has now to run to New York and Washington, and Americans in Britain are declared to be outside the jurisdiction of British laws. Thus, Britain and her Empire are fast becoming a colony of Roosevelt's ‘New Empire'. But India has no desire to remain in any empire, and she must, therefore, now fight the old imperialism as well as the new. The most interesting phase of the metamorphosis that has overtaken the British Empire is the fact that the High Priest of Imperialism, the arch-enemy of Indian nationalism, the sworn opponent of all forms of Socialism, the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, has had to swallow all his former imperialist pride and present himself at the gates of the Kremlin in Moscow.

Is it not significant that in his desperation this representative of British imperialism should do everything else, but under no circumstances will he think of recognizing India's independence? India is the jewel of the British Empire, and in order to keep this jewel the British people will fight to the last. The Indian people, therefore, and particularly the leaders, should banish all hopes that Britain will accede to India's demands, and should carry on the struggle till the last Britisher is expelled from India. In the last days of our campaign there will be much suffering and sorrow, much persecution and slaughter, much suppression and massacre. But that is the price of liberty and it has to be paid It is but natural that in its last hours the British lion will bite hard, but it is after all the bite of a dying lion, and we shall survive it

In this critical hour our strategy should consist in continuing the fight for our independence regardless of the consequences The British Empire will soon collapse and break up as a result of shattering defeats in all the theatres of war. And when the final dismemberment of the Empire takes place, power will automatically come into the hands of the Indian people. Our final victory will come as a result of our efforts alone. Consequently, it does not matter in the least if we in India suffer temporary set-backs, specially when we are confronted with machine-guns, bombs, tanks and aeroplanes Our task is to continue the national struggle in spite of all obstacles and set-backs till the hour of liberation arrives.

There is no cause to be depressed because the leaders are imprisoned. On the contrary, their sufferings will serve as a perpetual inspiration to the entire nation. Moreover, those who are now away from the field of action have given you the plan that has to be executed by you now.

Comrades, I have already assured you that whatever I have been doing abroad is in accordance with the wishes of a very large section of my countrymen. I will not do anything which the whole of India will not whole-heartedly endorse. Ever since I left home I have remained in intimate contact with my countrymen at home through more channels than one. in spite of all the efforts of the Intelligence Bureau of the Government of India and the British Secret Service. During the last few months you have had proof of my close contact with my countrymen in India and many of you know by now how you can communicate with me whenever you so desire I may now tell you that it is no longer possible for the British to prevent my going to India or getting out whenever I wish to do so.

At the present moment all the countries that are being suppressed or dominated by Britain are either in a state of revolt or are preparing for one. If we in India continue our struggle we shall not only effect our emancipation speedily, but will also expedite the liberation of all countries exploited and dominated by Britain. On the other hand if the Indian people remain inactive, the enemies of Britain will take the initiative in expelling the British from India. The British Empire is in any case doomed, and the only question is as to what will happen to us when its final dissolution takes place. Shall we obtain our freedom as a gift from other Powers or shall we win it by our own effort?

I would request Mr Jinnah, Mr Savarkar, and all those leaders who still think of a compromise with the British, to realise once for all that in the world of tomorrow there will be no British Empire. All those individuals, groups or parties who now participate in the fight for freedom will have an honoured place in the India of tomorrow. The supporters of British Imperialism will naturally become non-entities in a free India. I will appeal earnestly to all parties and groups to consider this and to think in terms of nationalism and anti-imperialism, and to come forward and join the epic struggle that is going on now. I appeal to the progressive elements of the Muslim League, with some of whom I have had the privilege of cooperating in the work of the Calcutta Corporation. I appeal to the brave Majlis-i-Ahrar the Nationalist Muslim Party of India that started the Civil Disobedience campaign in 1939 against Britain's war effort before any other party did so. I appeal to the Jamiat-ul-Ulema the old representative organisation of the Ulemas or the Muslim divines of India, led by that distinguished patriot and leader Mufti Khifayat Ullah. I appeal to the Azad Muslim League, another important organisation of the nationalist Muslims of India. I appeal to the Akali Dal, the leading nationalist Sikh party of India. And last but not the least I appeal to the Praja Party of Bengal, which commands the confidence of that province and is led by well-known patriots. I have no doubt that if all these organisations join in this struggle the day of India's liberation will be drawn nearer.

The campaign that is now going on in India may be described as non-violent guerrilla warfare. In this guerrilla war the tactics of dispersal have to be employed. In other words, we should spread out our activities all over the country so that the British police and military may not be able to concentrate their attack on one point. In accordance with the principles of guerrilla war, we should also be as mobile as possible and should move continuously from place to place. The authorities should never be able to predict where our activities will emerge next. Friends, as you are aware, I have been through each of the campaigns between 1921 and 1940, and I know the causes of their failure. I have now had the opportunity of taking expert advice with regard to the tactics of guerrilla warfare, and I am in a position to offer you some suggestions as to how this present campaign should be brought to a victorious end. The object of this non-violent guerrilla campaign should be a two-told one. Firstly, to destroy war production in India, and secondly, to paralyse the British administration in the country. Keeping these objects in view, every section of the community should participate in the struggle.

Firstly, you should stop paying all taxes that directly or indirectly bring revenue to the Government. Secondly, workers in all industries should either launch a 'stay-in' strike or try to hamper production by conducting a 'go-slow’ campaign inside the factories. They should also carry out sabotage with such methods as the removing of nuts and bolts in order to impede production. Thirdly, students should organise secret guerrilla bands for carrying on sabotage in different parts of the country. They should also invent new ways of annoying the British authorities, for example, burning stamps, etc., in post offices, destroying British monuments, and so on. Fourthly, women, and especially girl students, should do underground work of all kinds, either as secret messengers or by providing shelter for the men who fight. Fifthly, Government officials who are prepared to help the campaign should not resign their posts, but those in Government offices and in war industries should give all available information to fighters outside, and should try to hamper production by working inefficiently. Sixthly, servants who are working in the houses of Britishers should be organised for the purpose of giving trouble to their masters, for example by demanding higher salaries, cooking and serving bad food and drinks, etc. Seventhly, Indians should give up all business with British banks, firms, insurance companies, etc. Eighthly, listen to the broadcasts of Col. Britton in the European Service of the BBC and apply the Colonel's tactics to the Indian situation.

For the general public I also suggest the following activities:
(a) Boycott of British goods, including burning of British stalls and Government stores;
(b.) Total boycott of all Britishers in India, and of those Indians who are pro-British;
(c.) Holding of public meetings and demonstrations in spite of official prohibition;
(d) Publishing of secret bulletins, and setting up of secret radio stations;
(e) Marching to the houses of British Government officials and demanding their departure from India;
(f) Organising of processions for entering and occupying Government offices. Secretariat buildings, law courts, etc. with a view to hampering the administration;
(g) Arranging to punish police officers and prison officials who oppress and persecute the people;
(h) Erecting barricades in the streets where there is a likelihood of attack from the police and the military;
(i) Setting fire to Government offices and factories which are working for war purposes;
(j) Interrupting postal, telegraph and telephone communication as frequently as possible and in different places;
(k) Interrupting railway, bus and tram services, whenever there is a possibility of hampering the transport of soldiers or of war material;
(l) Destroying police stations, railway stations and jails in isolated places.

Comrades, I can assure you that as soon as this programme is put into operation, the administrative machinery can be brought to a standstill. In this connection, I must remind you that in a non-violent guerrilla campaign the peasantry always plays a decisive part. I am glad to observe that in several provinces — in Bihar and in the Central Provinces — the peasants are already in the forefront. I earnestly hope that Swami Sahajanand Saraswati and other peasant leaders, who together with the Forward Bloc started the fight long before Mahatma Gandhi, will now lead the campaign to a victorious conclusion. I will appeal to Swami Sahajanand and the leaders of the Kisan Movement to come forward and fulfil their leading role in the last phase of the fight. We want Swaraj for the masses, Swaraj for the workers and the peasants. It is, therefore, the duty of the workers and the peasants to emerge as the vanguard of the national army at a time when the future of India is being made. It is the law of nature that those who fight for liberty and win it will retain power and responsibility.

It is very encouraging, friends, to find that the people of the Indian States have begun to participate in this all-India struggle. Reports to the effect have already come from Baroda, Mysore and Hyderabad, and I am confident that the day is not far off when the States people will line up with the people of British India and form a common front against the combined forces of British Imperialism and the Indian Princes.

Most gratifying of all is the news that the clarion call of liberty has reached the ears and the hearts of our soldiers at home and abroad. They have no doubt been court-martialled with characteristic British brutality. But the fire is spreading from one place to another. A number of soldiers have voluntarily deserted to join the Axis forces in Egypt and they are being welcomed with open arms by them. All the Indian fighting units have been withdrawn from the El Alamein front, as being unreliable. No wonder some supporters of British Imperialism have been brought up from India in order to impress the Indian troops. But their efforts have so far failed. I will be able to keep the outside world informed of all the facts of the Indian situation so as to secure from the enemies of Britain all the help that India may now need.

In conclusion, I must point out that the campaign in India should be carried out for weeks and if necessary for months. If the non-violent guerrilla war should continue sufficiently long, freedom will come because British imperialism will ultimately break down owing to the cumulative effect of defeats sustained on different fronts. Do not forget for one moment that the British Empire is now on its last legs.

At the same time, be prepared for every suffering because the apostles of freedom and democracy and the authors of the Atlantic Charter may do their very worst in the days to come. Before dawn comes the darkest hour. Be brave and continue the struggle, for freedom is at hand. Let your slogans be 'Now or Never', 'Victory or Death’. 'Inquilab Zindabad'.

[swadesh]

[b][u]Speech at a military review of the Indian National Army[/u][/b]
Soldiers of India's Army of Liberation! Today is the proudest day of my life. Today it has pleased Providence to give me the unique privilege and honour of announcing to the whole world that India's Army of liberation has come into being. This army has now been drawn up in military formation on the battlefield of Singapore — which was once the bulwark of the British Empire. This is not only the army that will emancipate India from the British yoke, it is also the army that will hereafter create the future national army of Free India. Every Indian must feel proud that this army — his own army —has been organised entirely under Indian leadership and that when the historic moment arrives, under Indian leadership it will go to battle.

There are people who thought at one time that the Empire on which the sun did not set was an everlasting empire. No such thought ever troubled me. History had taught me that every empire has its inevitable decline and collapse. Moreover I had seen, with my own eyes, cities and fortresses that were once the bulwarks but which became the graveyards of by-gone empires. Standing today on the graveyard of the British empire, even a child is convinced that the almighty British empire is already a thing of the past.

When France declared war on Germany in 1939 and the campaign began, there was but one cry which rose from the lips of German soldiers — "To Paris, To Paris!" When the brave soldiers of Nippon set out on their march in December 1941 there was but one cry which rose from their lips — "To Singapore, to Singapore!" Comrades! Soldiers! Let your battle-cry be — "To Delhi, To Delhi!" How many of us will individually survive this war of freedom, I do not know. But I do know this, that we shall ultimately win and our task will not end until our surviving heroes hold the victory parade on another graveyard of the British empire — the Lal Qila or Red Fortress of ancient Delhi.

Throughout my public career, I have always felt that though India is otherwise ripe for independence in every way, she has lacked one thing, namely an army of liberation. George Washington of America could fight and win freedom, because he had his army. Garibaldi could liberate Italy, because he had his armed volunteers behind him. It is your privilege and honour to be the first to come forward and organize India's national army. By doing so, you have removed the last obstacle in our path to freedom. Be happy and proud that you are the pioneers, the vanguard, in such a noble cause.

Let me remind you that you have a two-fold task to perform. With the force of arms and at the cost of your blood you will have to win liberty. Then, when India is free, you will have to organise the permanent army of Free India, whose task it will be to preserve our liberty for all time. We must build up our national defence on such an unshakable foundation that never again in our history shall we lose our freedom.

As soldiers, you will always have to cherish and live up to the three ideals of faithfulness, duty and sacrifice. Soldiers who always remain faithful to their nation, who are always prepared to sacrifice their lives, are invincible. If you, too, want to be invincible, engrave these three ideals in the innermost core of your hearts

A true soldier needs both military and spiritual training. You must, all of you, so train yourselves and your comrades that every soldier will have unbounded confidence in himself, will be conscious of being immensely superior to the enemy, will be fearless of death, and will have sufficient initiative to act on his own in any critical situation should the need arise. During the course of the present war, you have seen with your own eyes what wonders scientific training, coupled with courage, fearlessness and dynamism, can achieve. Learn all that you can from this example, and build up for Mother India an absolutely first-class modern army.

To those of you who are officers, I should like to say that your responsibility is a heavy one. Though the responsibility of an officer in every army in this world is indeed great, it is far greater in your case. Because of our political enslavement, we have no tradition like that of Mukden, Port Arthur or Sedan to inspire us. We have to unlearn some of the things that the British taught us and we have to learn much that they did not teach. Nevertheless, I am confident that you will rise to the occasion and fulfil the task that your countrymen have thrown on your brave shoulders. Remember always that officers can make or unmake an army. Remember too that the British have suffered defeats on so many fronts largely because of worthless officers. And remember also that out of your ranks will be born the future General Staff of the Army of Free India.

To all of you I should like to say that in the course of this war you will have to acquire the experience and achieve the success which alone can build up a national tradition for our army. An army that has no tradition of courage, fearlessness and invincibility cannot hold its own in a struggle with a powerful enemy.

Comrades! You have voluntarily accepted a mission that is the noblest that the human mind can conceive of. For the fulfilment of such a mission no sacrifice is too great, not even the sacrifice of one's life. You are today the custodians of India's national honour and the embodiment of India's hopes and aspirations. So conduct yourself that your, countrymen may bless you and posterity may be proud of you.

I have said that today is the proudest day of my life. For an enslaved people, there can be no greater pride, no higher honour, than to be the first soldier in the army of liberation. But this honour carries with it a corresponding responsibility and I am deeply conscious of it. I assure you that I shall be with you in darkness and in sunshine, in sorrow and in joy, in suffering and in victory. For the present, I can offer you nothing except hunger, thirst, privation, forced marches and death. But if you follow me in life and in death, as I am confident you will, I shall lead you to victory and freedom. It does not matter who among us win live to see India free. It is enough that India shall be free and that we shall give our all to make her free. May God now bless our Army and grant us victory in the coming fight!

Inquilab Zindabad! Azad Hind Zindabad!

[swadesh]

[b][u]Subhas Chandra Bose: The Afterlife of India’s Fascist Leader[/u][/b]



The intriguing death of an Indian holy man in 1985 suggested that he was none other than Subhas Chandra Bose, the revolutionary and nationalist who, it is officially claimed, died in an air crash in 1945. The truth, however, is harder to find, as Hugh Purcell discovers.
On September 16th, 1985, in a dilapidated house in Faizabad, formerly the capital of Oudh province in India, a reclusive holy man known as Bhagwanji or Gumnami Baba (‘the saint with no name’) breathed his last. Locals had long suspected that he was none other than Subhas Chandra Bose (1897-1945), the Indian quasi-Fascist leader who in the 1930s had advocated a violent revolution against the British Empire to gain total independence for India.The Second World War had enabled him to practise what he preached and his Indian National Army had fought with the Japanese in Burma attempting to drive the British out of the subcontinent.
Although Netaji (Great Leader) Bose was reported killed in an air crash in August 1945, while trying to escape to the Soviet Union, many believed then and continue to believe now that, helped by his Japanese allies, he faked his death, reached Russia and returned to India many years later to lead the secret life of a hermit. Surprisingly for a poor sadhu(mystic) the ‘saint with no name’ left behind many trunks of possessions and in 1986, realising that these might solve the mystery once and for all, Bose’s niece Lalita obtained a high court order for an inventory to be made of their contents. Among the 2,673 items indexed, Lalita claimed she saw letters in her uncle’s handwriting and family photographs. Gumnami Baba’s belongings were re-packed in 23 boxes and sent to the District Treasury.
This was the latest but by no means the last of the dramas attending the fate of Bose. During the previous 40 years the Indian government had been forced to set up two inquiries into his death (the Nawaz Khan Committee in 1956 and the G.D. Khosla Commission 1970-74) and, although both confirmed the reported story that he died in an air crash, the rumours persisted. In 1999, reluctantly, but under pressure from Bose’s home state of Bengal in particular, the Indian government appointed Justice M.K. Mukherjee to ‘launch a vigorous inquiry ... to end the controversy ... over the reported death of [Bose] in 1945’.
On November 26th, 2001, Mukherjee drove up to the District Treasury in his official white Ambassador car. A large crowd had gathered to watch the boxes being opened. They included the Hindustan Times journalist Anuj Dhar who described to me what happened: out came a pair of German binoculars, a Corona typewriter, a pipe (taken away for DNA but without result), a Rolex watch – ‘Netaji’s watch,’ gasped a spectator in awe – a box of five teeth (also taken away but found not to belong to Bose) and a pair of silver, round-rimmed spectacles. Clearly, Gumnami Baba had been an extraordinary man. It was his collection of books that was most thought-provoking. Bear in mind that Bose had received an English education (finishing at Cambridge University) and, in the eyes of the British, had committed war crimes against them possibly escaping to the Soviet Union; then appreciate, for example, Gulliver’s Travels, P.G. Wodehouse’s The Inimitable Jeeves, the scarcely available International Military Tribunal for the Far East, The History of the Freedom Movement in India, The Last Days of the Raj, Moscow’s Shadow Over West Bengal and Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. This could not be the bedtime reading of a typical sadhu. Either he had been an obsessive collector of Bose memorabilia, or someone had added to his possessions posthumously as a hoax, or he really was Bose. Some of the books had writing in the margins that Anuj Dhar submitted to an expert. He issued a certificate that the handwriting belonged to Bose, but the Indian government promptly appointed an expert of its own who disagreed.
In his inquiry report, completed in 2006, Justice Mukherjee was categoric. He concluded: ‘Netaji Bose is dead [a safe bet as he would have been 109]. He did not die in the plane crash as alleged and the ashes in the Japanese temple in Tokyo [maintained by the Indian government since 1945] are not of Netaji.’ He was more narrowly legalistic about the Faizabad connection:
In the absence of any clinching evidence to prove that Bhagwanji/Gumnami Baba was Netaji the question whether he died in Faizabad on September 16th,1985, as testified by some of the witnesses, need not be answered.
Nevertheless, caught off guard in a TV interview in January 2010, Mukherjee can clearly be heard saying that he thinks Bhagwanji and Bose may well be the same person. This probably did not impress the Indian government which had already dismissed the Mukherjee Report as unreliable. Why have these rumours persisted for so long? Why do they continue to divide well-educated Indians, including Bose’s own extended family? And why for many less educated Bengalis has Bose assumed the semi-divine status of a sadhu? There are several reasons.
In the first place, Bengal needs Netaji now more than ever. Bose, twice Mayor of Calcutta (Kolkata) in the 1930s, was the one great Bengali national and international politician of the last 75 years. A recent opinion poll of Indian students ranked him second only to Gandhi and above Nehru as the greatest Indian statesman of the 20th century. He has become a legendary figure. Taxi drivers in Kolkata discussing the appalling roads or flooded pavements of their town will say, ‘If only Netaji was still alive!’ A play staged there last year was based on the premise that Bose returned to India after Independence. Forward Bloc, the political party he founded in 1939 after he was forced to resign the presidency of the Indian National Congress for advocating violent revolution, still exists under his name, campaigning for a form of national socialism. Associations with Bose distract from the diminished status of Kolkata today: no longer the political or economic capital of India but the centre of a partitioned state.
The afterlife notion also persists because Netaji’s real life encourages conspiracy theorists. When the story of Bose’s death in 1945 reached Viceroy Wavell he said: ‘I suspect it very much. It is just what should be given out if he meant to go “underground”.’ In 1946 Gandhi claimed that ‘inner voices’ were telling him ‘Subhas is still alive and biding his time somewhere’. Bose certainly had form as an escaper. He spent his life moving easily, sometimes secretly, from country to country. In 1941 he escaped from British house arrest in Calcutta and reached Afghanistan from where, aided by the Italian ambassador and disguised as an Italian businessman ‘Orlando Mazzota’, he travelled up through central Asia to Moscow and from there to Berlin. Soon Britons and Indians could hear his propaganda broadcasts stirring up revolt against the British Empire and boasting about his Indian Legion, a body of soldiers trained by and intended to fight alongside the German Wehrmacht. In 1943, discouraged by Hitler’s lacklustre support for Indian independence and aware that the theatre of war where he needed to pit his troops was now the Far East, he travelled half-way round the world under water by first German and then Japanese submarine to Japan. Admired there, he received official support and set up his 50,000-strong Azad Hind Fauj or Indian National Army (INA), recruited largely from Indian soldiers of the British Empire Army who had been captured by the Japanese in their successful offensive of 1942.
If Netaji became a mystic in his afterlife then this too had a precedent in his former life. Always ascetic and distant from personal relationships (although in 1937 he probably married his Austrian secretary with whom he had a child, Anita, in 1942), he was a student of Ramakrishna, the 19th-century Bengali mystic whose followers believe was an incarnation of God. As a student Bose left home in search of the religious life. In his unfinished autobiography Indian Pilgrim he wrote of this time: ‘The desire to find a guru grew stronger and stronger within me ... We looked up as many sadhus as we could and I returned home a wiser man.’
The enduring mystery of the death of Bose arises above all from the circumstances of his disappearance. The facts are these. In May 1945 Slim’s 14th Army pushed the Japanese 33rd Army, supported by the INA, out of Burma. For the INA (referred to dismissively by the British as ‘JIFS’ – Japanese Infiltrated Soldiers) it was an ignominious rout, exposing Bose’s hopeless idealism as a war leader. On August 10th a Russian army began its offensive through Manchuria. From the seas and skies the American navy and air force pounded Japan, culminating with the atomic bombs on August 6th and 9th. On August 14th Japan surrendered.
Bose, whose political acumen was a lot sharper than his military knowledge, realised that the Cold War was the new world war and that Russia could be India’s one remaining ally in its fight for freedom. He had already made contact with the Soviet embassy in Tokyo (in November 1944) and on August 16th at a meeting in Bangkok, Major General Isoda Saburo, head of the Hikari Kikan, or Japanese liaison with the INA, agreed to try to get Bose into Manchuria as the first step to reaching Moscow. The last photo of Netaji alive or dead shows him at Saigon airport on August 17th, 1945. Five days later, on August 23rd, the Japanese News Agency announced the death of Bose:
He was seriously injured when his plane crashed at Taihoku airfield [Taipei, then in Formosa, now in Taiwan] at 14.00 hours on August 18th. He was given treatment in a hospital in Japan [sic] where he died at midnight.
On September 7th Colonel Habibur Rahman, Bose’s sole INA travelling companion who said he had survived the plane crash and described how Netaji had died, arrived in Tokyo carrying an urn of ashes. They were placed in Renkoji temple and an announcement was made: ‘Netaji chale gaye’ (Netaji has gone). But in the absence of a body the controversy began. It intensified the following year when an Indian journalist, Harin Shah, visited Taipei and obtained, so he thought, the medical and police reports on the death of Netaji and the certificate issued permitting cremation. When these were translated into English all these documents referred to one Okara Ichiro who had died of heart failure on August 19th and had been cremated. When Harin Shah pointed this out, according to the Mukherjee report:
The Formosan clerks ... said the Japanese officer accompanying the dead body, under whose instruction they acted, told them that for state reasons, the particulars of the person had to be kept confidential.
Was the death of Netaji faked so that he could escape possible execution by the British as a traitor and take his fight for Indian independence unimpeded to Russia? There was a precedent. Subhas’ nephew Pradip Bose, a well-known writer in Delhi, recalls meeting Dr Ba Maw, President of Burma, in Rangoon in 1962: ‘He told me that the Japanese had announced his “death” in an air crash [in early 1945], while he was actually hiding in Japan [to escape the British].’
It was to resolve the question of a possible hoax and to quell rumours of reported sightings of Bose in India and elsewhere that the first two inquiries were launched in 1956 and 1970. What is convincing about their conclusions is that the several Japanese eye-witnesses of the air crash and death of Bose who gave evidence at both inquiries agreed about what they saw and stuck to their version of events over nearly 20 years. As Justice Khosla said in his summing up:
I am not prepared to accept the contention that the entire military organisation of Japan had entered into a conspiracy to put forward a false story in order to cover up Bose’s escape, still less 11 [and now 25] years later when the trial of war criminals was over, when nothing could be gained by telling lies. Such a hypothesis just does not make sense.
Conspicuous among the eyewitnesses was Dr Taneyoshi Yoshimi, first interviewed in Stanley Gaol, in Hong Kong in 1946 by British Intelligence (the document is in the British Library), who claimed that he treated Bose and signed his death certificate, giving the cause of death as ‘burns of the third degree’. However the death certificate, if it ever existed, has disappeared. That is the trouble with long-held conspiracies; one fact begets a counter fact. Justice Mukherjee reports that he was shown a death certificate for Chandra Bose signed by Dr Yoshimi, but it was dated 1988, clearly a photocopy, and the aged Dr Yoshimi said he did not have a good memory of it.
What is equally convincing about Justice Mukherjee’s report is that, taking a rigorous approach that approves of primary documents and abhors circumstantial evidence, he finds that there is absolutely nothing to go on. There is no pictorial or written evidence of the crash in the Taipei airfield log, or in the local newspapers or held by the Taiwan government; there are no death certificates or cremation certificates for Bose and several others who are supposed to have died with him. Attempts by Mukherjee’s team to remove some of the ashes from Renkoji temple for DNA testing were unsuccessful, though it is doubtful whether such tests would have worked anyway. Mukherjee concluded:
a) There is no satisfactory evidence of the plane crash; on the contrary, the story given out in that respect is rather improbable.
In the absence of any contemporaneous record in the hospital, the Bureau and/or the crematorium, the oral account of the witnesses of Netaji’s death and cremation cannot be relied on to arrive at a definitive finding; and
c) A secret plan was contrived to ensure Netaji’s safe passage, to which Japanese military authority and Habibur Rahman were parties.
When the Congress Party has been in power it has always refused requests to return the ashes to India. In fact Bose’s admirers believe the Congress Party will never allow the truth about their hero to be known because it is the party of the Nehru family and Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) and Subhas Bose were bitter rivals. Some go further and believe that Prime Minister Nehru conspired with the Russians to prevent Bose returning to India after Independence because he felt threatened by him; hence the cover-up.

One thing is certain – if Bose did die in the air crash then he succeeded posthumously in his fight for India’s independence. Immediately after the war the British put on trial for treason in the Red Fort of Delhi three leaders of the INA, symbolically a Hindu, a Muslim and a Sikh. This caused uproar, not least among soldiers of the British Indian Army who only a short time before had been fighting their fellow Indians in the Burmese jungle. The war was over; it was India’s time for freedom now. Netaji was hailed as a martyr. To avoid further martyrs the British virtually acquitted the defendants, letting them off with the lightest sentences, and concluded that the time had come for the British to quit India too. On August 15th, 1947, almost two years after Bose’s reported death, India and Pakistan became free nations.
Over the next few years rumours were rife that Bose had reached Russia. An India Office document marked ‘Secret’ of May 2nd, 1946 includes this report from a Miss Hanchet:
The D.I.B. [Director of Intelligence Bureau in India] mentioned the receipt from various places in India of information that Subhas Bose was alive in Russia. In some cases circumstantial details have been added. Consequently he is not more than 90 per cent sure that Subhas is dead.
A stenographer, Sham Lal Jain, deposed before the Khosla Commission that ‘Pandit Nehru asked him to make typed copies of a hand-written note that said Bose had reached Russia via Dairen [Manchuria]’. He also alleged that Nehru asked him to type a letter to British Prime Minister Attlee that ‘Bose, your war criminal, has been allowed to enter Russian territory by Stalin’. According to the Hindustan Times of March 4th, 2001, Justice Mukherjee asked for this correspondence (when on a visit to London) but was told that the British Government will declassify Bose documents ‘only after 2021 if the Indian Government so desires’.
Netaji watchers report further circumstantial evidence that Bose was sent to the Gulag. In 2000, an Indian engineer, Ardhendu Sarkar, said he had worked in the Ukraine in the 1960s for a German engineer, Zerovin, who had known Bose in Berlin and had come across him again in 1948 after being sent to a camp in Siberia ‘for indoctrination’. Sarkar reported the meeting between Zerovin and Bose to the Indian Embassy in Moscow, after which he was suddenly recalled to India. Others reported to the Khosla Commission that the Indian ambassador to the USSR in the early 1950s, Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, had seen Bose in Siberia.
The most persistent voice of the ‘Bose in Russia’ group belongs to a Professor of International Affairs at Kolkata’s Jadhavpur University, Dr Purabi Roy who specialises in Indo-Russian relations. She is convinced that Bose arrived in Russia and possibly died there because she dismisses any sadhu–in–Faizabad connection. She also related to me word-of-mouth ‘evidence’, the most plausible of which came from her colleague in the Russian Institute of Oriental Studies, former USSR General Alexander Kolesnikov. He told her that he had seen a file that noted the minutes of a Politburo meeting of August 1946 when Voroshilov, Mikoyan, Molotov and others discussed whether Bose should be allowed to stay in the Soviet Union. Dr Roy’s attempts to see this file ended in failure, however. At her urging, the Mukherjee Commission went to the Russian Federation, visited six archives and interviewed four witnesses though not Kolesnikov who was ordered abroad on the eve of his appearance. The archives drew a blank and the witnesses refuted what Dr Roy claimed they had told her. Not surprisingly, Justice Mukherjee concluded that ‘the assertion of Dr Roy regarding Netaji’s presence in Russia cannot be acted upon’. However, she claims a book to be published this winter, will vindicate her position.
During the 1950s and 60s other stories about Netaji contended that he never left India but remained in hiding disguised as a peripatetic sadhu. We are in a position to judge the truth of these not only because of the evidence of the first inquiries but also because of the research of Bose’s biographer Leonard Gordon. He traced the supposed wanderings of Bose round India between 1948 and 1959 through the publications of the Subhasbadi Janata, a propaganda organisation under Major Satya Gupta, a former political ally of Netaji. According to this, Netaji attended Gandhi’s cremation in 1948 after which he roamed India three times doing tapasa, or penance, to save mankind. Gordon has exposed some of this account as fraudulent and believes the rest is myth. He is convinced Bose died on August 18th, 1945. He has no time for the Mukherjee report, though his biography was written some time before it came out, and he also believes that Professor Roy should put up her evidence or shut up.
The mystery of what happened to Netaji Bose will remain until the Indian Government opens some 100 classified files on the subject; and allows files in Russia and Britain to be opened also. Anuj Dhar and the Hindustan Times, convinced of a government cover-up, have been campaigning for this through their website www. MissionNetaji.org. The response of the Indian Government is revealing:
The disclosure of the nature and contents of these documents would hurt the sentiments of the people at large and may evoke widespread reactions. Diplomatic relations with friendly countries may also be adversely affected if the said documents are disclosed.
Justice Mukherjee complained at length in his Report (itself hard to obtain) about the lack of government disclosure and the many obstructions of officials he encountered when he was conducting his inquiry. Pradip Bose agrees that the only way to solve the Bose mystery is for the government censorship to end and the files to be opened. He asks why, if his uncle did die in the air crash, the government does not allow his ashes to be brought back from Japan ‘with the great national honour that he fully deserves’?
Meanwhile, in Bengal a cult called the Santan Dal is still waiting for Netaji ‘to appear again’. Its members rioted outside a cinema in Kolkata in 2005 when a biopic of Netaji The Forgotten Hero showed, accurately, that Bose had a sexual relationship with a western woman. There is no doubt that to many Bengalis, at least, Bose has assumed a semi-divine persona. One of many letters discovered in the Faizabad trunks said:
Crores [many millions] of Indians have put their eyes upon you. One day the Lord will himself salvage the sorrow of the people, the evil will be destroyed and God will prevail. You are our God in human form.
Bose saw his struggle as a moral crusade. The British Empire was evil and he was fighting for the good, in epic terms that Indians love –‘Give me your blood and I will give you freedom,’ was his cry. In a country where the lines between mortality, sainthood and the divine are finely drawn, why not bring back the epic hero, Netaji, as a symbolic figure to achieve a Divine Age on earth?

[swadesh]

[b][u]Timeline[/u][/b]
[b]1923[/b] : Appointed editor of [i]Forward.[/i]
[b]1938[/b] : He was elected President of the Indian Congress Party and presided over the Haripura Sessions. He was re-elected the next year and presided over the Tripuri Session. He resigned from the presidency on 28 April 1939.
[b]2 Nov 1941[/b] : Opened the Free India Centre in Berlin.
[b]4 Jul 1943[/b] : Became leader of the Indian Independence League at a formal ceremony in Singapore.
[b]5 Jul 1943[/b] : Renamed the Indian National Army as [i]Azad Hind Fauj[/i] or the "Free India Army".

[swadesh]

“You give me your blood and I will give you Independence!”

[swadesh]

As soldiers, you will always have to cherish and live up to the three ideals of faithfulness, duty and sacrifice. Soldiers who always remain faithful to their nation, who are always prepared to sacrifice their lives, are invincible. If you, too, want to be invincible, engrave these three ideals in the innermost core of your hearts.

[swadesh]

Nationalism is inspired by the highest ideals of the human race, satyam [the truth], shivam [the God], sundaram [the beautiful].

[swadesh]

Nationalism in India has … roused the creative faculties which for centuries had been lying dormant in our people.

[caysie]

salute to the legend

[swadesh]

Gird up your loins for the task that now lies ahead. I had asked you for men, money and materials. I have got them in generous measure. Now I demand more of you. Men, money and materials cannot by themselves bring victory or freedom. We must have the motive-power that will inspire us to brave deeds and heroic exploits.

[swadesh]

Remember that the greatest crime is to compromise with injustice and wrong.

[swadesh]

A true soldier needs both military and spiritual training.

[swadesh]

No real change in history has ever been achieved by discussions.

[chelsea]