Netaji did not die at Taihoku but surrendered to Soviet troops in Manchuria, and was headed for Omsk in the Soviet Union.
Netaji was a victim of a ‘great game’ between British and Soviet intelligence agencies with the British spreading rumours that he was a MI6 agent.
Netaji was probably released from a Soviet Gulag, made his way to India and was none other than Gumanmi Baba who lived in Faizabad till his death in September 1985.
Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose gave himself up to Soviet troops in Manchuria in the last fortnight of 1945 after feigning an air crash. Carrying two trunks of valuables, Netaji wanted to set up a Provisional Government of Azad Hind in Omsk in Soviet Union and this was the reason for his surrender. Netaji had hoped that with the conclusion of the Second World War, the Soviet Union would no longer collaborate with Great Britain and USA and would assist him in the struggle for freedom of India. These are the findings of the book Netaji: Living Dangerously by Kingshuk Nag.
The English and Bengali editions of the book had been simultaneously launched at the Tolly Club, Kolkata, on Tuesday 17 November. The chief guest, Derek O’Brien, Vice-President, All India Trinamool Congress and Member of the Rajya Sabha inaugurated the book launch. It was followed by a discussion on the book and Netaji with Professor Chitra Ghosh, daughter of the late Sarat Chandra Bose and niece of Netaji, Dr Purabi Roy, Professor (retired), International Relations, Jadavpur University and member, Indian Council of Historical Research, Dr Hari Vasudevan, Professor of History, University of Calcutta and former Director, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies, besides the author himself.
According to the book, unknown to Netaji, the British had begun a dirty game to discredit him with the Soviets. This game had begun in early 1941 shortly after the patriot escaped from house arrest in Calcutta and made way to Germany. British intelligence communicated to the Soviets that Bose had escaped to Germany with their knowledge and that he was their plant in the camp of Hitler! This was, of course, wrong. Bose had escaped from the British throwing dust in their eyes but the admission of this fact hurt their ego. Moreover the British were apprehensive that Bose would want help from the Soviets: so they wanted to discredit Bose in the eyes of the Soviets by sowing the seeds of suspicion.
The knowledge about India in general and Netaji in particular was very minimal in the upper echelons of Soviet administration. Stalin also had a very dismal view of the Congress party and the independence movement. This lack of knowledge about India coupled with the misinformation campaign actually resulted in suspicions about Netaji when he surrendered to the Soviets, the book says. The Soviets put him in an internal security prison before they could deliberate and take a view on what to do with him, the book says.
After Netaji escaped from British custody in January 1941, His Majesty’s Government had issued instructions to its Special Operations Executive (SOE) an irregular force raised for clandestine activities and subversion to assassinate Subhas Chandra Bose. The SOE however could not zero in on Netaji, the book says. But in 1945/46 when the British learnt that Netaji was in Soviet custody they did not press for his trial as a war criminal or even seek his custody. This was because the British realised that Netaji was enormously popular in India and this fact was brought home by the fervour displayed in India when INA soldiers where brought to trial at Red Fort by the British. Any attempt to punish Netaji would throw India into turmoil, the British realised.
The British now begun to plot their exit from India, fearing that otherwise a second war of Independence after 1857 would break out and they would be thown out of the country. They also feared that the loyalty of the Indians in the army could not be presumed any more. They had all been charged up by the exploits of Netaji’s INA. Lord Mountbatten was appointed Viceroy of India with the express understanding that the British withdrawal from India should be smooth (from the British point of view) and not compromise British colonial interests. Mountbatten convinced the Indian leaders to agree to a partition of India – although the Partition that accompanied the freedom brought in its wake untold miseries and loss of millions of life and displacement of millions of others. Mountbatten also advanced the date of freedom by many months – to 15 August 1947. He chose 15 August because that was his lucky day: on that day in 1945 World War II had ended with the Japanese surrender. Mountbatten was the supreme commander of the Allied Forces in South-east Asia that time. But on 15 August 1945, India was not ready for Partition and freedom: people in many parts of the country on that fateful date did not know whether they were in India or Pakistan!
The freedom of India unfortunately pushed the great patriot in an abyss. Now the Soviets did not know what to do with Netaji. So, in a system where the value for life was very minimal, Subhas Bose was condemned to a Siberian Gulag, the book says. It was unfortunate that when India woke to freedom, the patriot whose efforts led to earlier than expected freedom, was compromised.
So did Netaji survive the harsh Gulags where prisoners were made to work in subhuman conditions? The book says that there is a thin chance that he did and traces the story of Gumnami Baba a holy man who lived in Faizabad till his death in September 1985. The book speculates that Netaji was released from the Gulag after his term was over and he trudged back home. His world view had changed and Netaji had transformed as a Man. He had become spiritual.
In the meanwhile the Indian government whose moral responsibility it was to search for the patriot started spreading the fiction that Netaji had died in the air crash that never happened and even set up committees/commissions with biased mindsets, the book says. At the same time the government unleashed its sleuths to keep track on Netaji’s relatives and their correspondence fearing that they would stumble on the truth on their own.
In 2005 the Justice Mukherjee Commission found that on the fateful day of 18 August 1945 no air crash took place in Taihoku. Thus by implication Netaji could not have died in the air crash. But the UPA government rejected the findings.
Two months ago in September 2015 while declassifying files with the West Bengal government, the chief minister, Mamata Banerjee announced that a reading of the files would indicate that Netaji had lived beyond 1945. Thus she became the first Indian political leader to say so openly.
Now after the West Bengal initiative, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been prompted to start the process of declassifying files on Netaji that the Government of India has with it beginning 23 January 2016. He has also agreed to move foreign governments who have their own records on Netaji. So in the end there could be a ray of hope that the entire truth about Netaji will be unravelled.