The reality of the so called Iron Man of India and the man with the Silver spoon…

(excerpts taken from Freedom at Midnight, possibly one of the best books to have a detailed account of the event of dominion status being granted to India)

Soon after Independence, Louis Mountbatten had slipped discreetly out of Delhi to that Olympiad paradise of the now dead Raj, Shimla when suddenly the telephone rand in his library in the old vice regal lodge at 10 pm on Thursday 4 September 1947. His caller was V.P.Menon. There was no one in India for whose advice Mountbatten had more respect.

‘Your Excellency,’ Menon said, ‘you must return to Delhi.’

‘But, V.P.,’ Mountbatten protested, ‘I’ve just come away. If my cabinet wishes me to countersign something just send it up here and I’ll countersign it.’

That was not it at all, Menon said. ‘The situation has got very bad since Your Excellency left. Trouble has broken out here in Delhi. We just don’t know how far it’s going to go. The Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister are both very worried. They think it’s essential for Your Excellency to come back.’

‘Why?’ Mountbatten asked.

‘They need more than your advice now,’ Menon said. ‘They need your help.’

‘V.P.,’ Mountbatten said, ‘I don’t think that’s what they want at all. They’ve just got their Independence. The last thing they want is the constitutional chief of the state coming back and putting his fingers in the pie. I’m not coming. Tell them.’

‘Very well,’ replied Menon, ‘I will. But there’s no sense in changing your mind later. If your Excellency doesn’t come down in twenty-four hours, don’t bother to come at all. It will be too late. We’ll have lost India.’

There was a long stunned silence at the other end of the phone. Then Mountbatten said, very calmly: ‘All right, V.P., you old swine, you win. I’ll come down.

For the next quarter of a century the results of the meeting beginning in Louis Mountbatten’s study on the morning of Saturday,6 September 1947 would be the most closely guarded secret of the last Viceroy’s life. Had the decisions taken at it became known, the knowledge could have destroyed the career of the charismatic Indian statesman who would emerge in the years to come as one of the world’s major figures.

Three people were present: Mountbatten, Nehru and Patel. The two Indian leaders were somber, visibly depressed men; they looked to the Governor General ‘like a pair of chastened schoolboys.’ The situation in the Punjab was out of control. The migration was exceeding their worst fears. Now violence in Delhi threatened to bring down the capital itself.

‘We don’t know how to hold it,’ Nehru admitted.

‘You have to grip it,’ Mountbatten told him.

‘How can we grip it?’ Nehru replied. ‘We have no experience. We have spent the best of our lives in your British Jails. Our experience is in the art of agitation and not administration. We can barely manage to run a well organized government in normal circumstances. We are not just up to facing an absolute collapse of law and order.’

Nehru then made an almost unbelievable request. ‘While you were exercising the highest command in war, we were in a British prison,’ he said. ‘You are a professional, high-level administrator. You have commanded millions of men. You have the experience and knowledge colonialism had denied us. You English can’t just turn this country over to us after being here all our lives and simply walk away. We’re in an emergency and we need your help. Will you run the country?’

‘Yes,’ seconded Patel, the rough realist at Nehru’s side, ‘he’s right. You’ve got to take over.’
Mountbatten was aghast. ‘My God’, he said, ‘I’ve just got through giving you the country and here you two are asking me to take it back!’

‘You must understand,’ Nehru said. “You’ve got to take it. We’ll pledge ourselves to do whatever you say.’

‘But this is terrible,’ Mountbatten said. ‘If anyone ever finds out you have turned the country back to my hands, you will be finished politically. The Indian’s keep the British Viceroy and then put him back in change? Out of the question.’

‘Well,’ said Nehru, ‘we will have to find a way to disguise it, but if you don’t do it we can’t manage.’
Mount batten thought a moment. He loved a challenge and this was a formidable one. His personal esteem for Nehru, his affection for India, his sense of responsibility, left him no way of escape.
‘All right,’ he said, the admiral is back on his bridge, ‘I’ll do it, and I can pull the thing together because I do know how to do it. But, we must agree that no body finds out about this. Nobody must know that you have made this request. You two will ask me to set up an Emergency Committee of the Cabinet and I will agree. Will you do that?’

‘Yes,’ replied Nehru and Patel.

‘All right,’ said Mountbatten. ‘You have asked me. Now, will you invite me to take the chair?’

‘Yes,’ replied the two Indians, already dazed by the pace at which Mountbatten was moving, ‘we invite you’.

‘The Emergency Committee,’ Mountbatten continued, ‘must consist of the people I nominate.’

‘Oh,’ protested Nehru, ‘you can have the whole cabinet.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Mountbatten, ‘that would be a disaster. I want the key people, the people who really do things, the Director of Civil Aviation, The Director of Railways, and the Head of the Indian Medical Services. My wife will take on the volunteer organizations and the Red Cross. The committee’s secretary will be General Erskine-Crum, my conference secretary. The minutes will be typed in relay by British typists so they’ll be ready when the meeting is over. You invite me to do all this?’

‘Yes,’ replied Nehru and Patel, ‘we invite you.’

‘At the meetings,’ Mountbatten continued, ‘the Prime Minister will sit on my right and the Deputy Prime Minister on my left. I’ll always go through the motions of consulting you, but what ever I say you’re not to argue with me. We haven’t got time. I’ll say: “I’m sure you’d wish me to do this,” and you’ll say: “Yes, please do.” That’s all I want, I don’t want you to say any thing else.’

‘Well can’t we…’ Patel began to protest.

‘Not if it’s going to delay things,’ Mountbatten said. ‘Do you want me to run the country or not?’

‘Ah, all right,’ growled the old politician, ‘you run the county.’

In the next fifteen minutes the two men put together the list of members of the Emergency Committee.
‘Gentlemen,’ Mountbatten said, ‘we will hold our first meeting at five o’clock this afternoon.’

After three decades of struggle, after years of strikes, mass movements, after all the bonfires of British cloths; above all after barely three weeks of Independence, India was once again for one last moment being run by an Englishman.

Screening Of Black Box Of History

Recently on 14th Feb 2010 ‘ Sunday, Documentary Film The Black Box Of History directed by Amlan Kusum Ghosh on Netaji Subhas Chnadra Bose was screened at Bashirhut Town Hall (Bashirhut) from 6:00 PM. People from different fields of life came & watched this film & appreciated the work of the director Amlan Kusum Ghosh, a person who himself belongs to a revolutionary family. The program was organised by Human Rights Association of Bashirhut town.

The Hall was full pact with audience & all were very excited to watch the film & equally became excited after it ended. There were lots of queries from their side, which the director himself gave answer.

In the end there was a general discussion session in one of the member’s house, where lots of topics on Netaji’s Disappearance Mystery was discussed mainly focusing on Bhagwanji or Gumnami Baba.

The whole show was big successful presided by Sridhar Ghosh (a revolutionary & close aid of Leela Roy). There were some special delegates too naming Bijoy Nag (nephew of Leela Roy & a key visitor to Bhagwanji), Dr. Madhusudhan Pal (one of the deponent in Mukherjee Commission), Prof Nandalal Chakroborty (deponent in Mukherjee Commission), Surajit Sengupta(deponent in Mukherjee Commission) & Prof. Pabitra Kumar Gupta.

Another show has been fixed on 6th March 2010 ‘ Saturday, at Bashirhut College. Hope it becomes another success.

We urge people from different parts of India, specially from West Bengal, please try to arrange the screening of this Documentary so that people get to know an unknown part of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s Life after the so called death on 18th August 1945, which has been totally denied by the Taiwan authority & it is mentioned in the JMCI report.

Hope the truth will be revealed soon…

my mail id: koushikzworld@gmail.com

Jai Hind

Resemblance & Reality – Netaji And The Godman Of Faizabad

By Chandrachur Ghose
IN a recent documentary film on Subhas Chandra Bose, Justice Manoj Kumar Mukherjee, who for six years investigated Netaji’s mysterious disappearance, has been shown to make an admission “off the record”. He is absolu

tely sure that Dasnami Sanyasi, popularly known as Bhagwanji or Gumnami Baba, who is last known to have lived at Ram Bhawan in Faizabad of Uttar Pradesh in 1985, was none other than Bose.
This dichotomy of private belief and public verdict has been taken up by many people as a stick to beat his findings with. They find it difficult to accept his view. This is, however, an issue that must be addressed rationally instead of being held hostage to cherished beliefs.
Justice Mukherjee’s assertion might not have any legal implications, but it certainly raises a number of critical questions. Why did he not write in his report what he believed to be the truth? What could have prevented him? Going by his report, the reason for his rejecting the possibility of the Sanyasi being Bose was the “absence of any clinching evidence.” Then how does one justify his certainty?
The answer could lie in the evidence that was produced to him and also in the way the evidence was treated by him. To be able to make sense of his conviction, it is important to understand the nature of the evidence that was produced and the way he treated it.

Handwriting & DNA
THE two major categories of evidence presented to the commission were individual witness accounts and the personal belongings of the Sanyasi. This included numerous books, letters and Bose’s family photographs. The Justice Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry (JMCI) scrutinised over 2,600 such items. Among the belongings were also found a few teeth kept in a match box, which were assumed by the commission to be that of the Sanyasi. The letters were sent for handwriting analysis and the teeth  for DNA test. This line of investigation ~ that is, to see whether forensic evidence corroborates witness accounts ~ can hardly be flawed. Yet another factor was the level of people who wrote to the Sanyasi. There were letters from Prafulla Ghosh, MS Golwalkar, Leela Roy, Pabitra Mohan Roy, Samar Guha and many others.
Justice Mukherjee’s observation on this part of the evidence is revealing. Apparently, there is no reason for not acting or relying upon the evidence of the last two categories of witnesses particularly of the group which had seen Netaji before 1945 and also met Bhagwanji/Gunmami Baba on a number of occasions. More so when their evidence regarding the frequent visits of some freedom-fighters, eminent politicians and former members of the INA on 23 January and during the Durga Puja is supported by the fact that letters written by Prof Samar Guha, Dr Pabitra Mohan Roy and Ms Leela Roy, were found at Ram Bhawan. But there are other formidable facts and circumstances on record which stand in the way of this commission in arriving at a conclusive finding that Bhagwanji / Gumnami Baba was none other than Netaji.
These “other formidable facts and circumstances” were reports of the handwriting analysis and the DNA test. While B Lal, former examiner of questioned documents of the Government of India, and one of the foremost experts in this field demonstrated in his report that the handwritings matched, the Office of the Government Examiner of Questioned Documents and Forensic Science Laboratory, Government of West Bengal, Kolkata, gave the contrary opinion, but without providing any reasoned analysis. The result of the DNA analysis was also negative.
Thus, the issue was not rejected summarily by Justice Mukherjee, but he could not accept the hypothesis as majority evidence from the forensic examination did not support it.
But now that his personal view is known, it raises doubts on the veracity of the forensic evidence presented to him. Would it be surprising, in view of the muddle created in cases as recent as that of Arushi Talwar and the twin deaths at Shopian? This is a serious issue which should not be allowed to be swept under the carpet, especially when Justice Mukherjee himself highlighted in his report the series of obstacles created to impede the smooth functioning of the commission. Notably, the non-cooperative attitude of the government ~ not providing crucial documents, destruction of files, not seeking assistance from the Russian and the US governments at the highest level. These are serious lapses by any criterion.
What makes these allegations serious is the shoddy argument provided by the then Home Minister in rejecting the commission’s report, and the obstinate refusal of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to disclose the records on the basis of which the commission reached its conclusions. When the Central Information Commission (CIC), in 2007, directed the MHA to disclose 220 records of the GD Khosla Comission, the ministry released only 91. It is yet to act on the CIC’s direction of 20 October 2009 to disclose all documents, listed in the JMCI report as ‘exhibits’, within twenty working days.
Justice Mukherjee’s opinion, albeit private, should be given due importance as it is not the belief of a lay person, but of an eminent criminal law expert who investigated the issue minutely.

Sanyasi’s identity
GIVEN the astounding material recovered from the Sanyasi’s residence and other available accounts, it is critically important to find out who this person was. If he was really an impersonator, then how did he emerge? Any comparison with the well-known case of the Shoulmari Sadhu ought to consider the fact that it became a public issue while the sadhu was alive and moving about. But the narratives on Bhagwanji did not emerge until the late eighties, well after he was said to have died.  It is equally important to investigate what really happened after 18 August 1945. That mystery cannot be unveiled without the active involvement of the government and a thorough investigation by a multi-disciplinary panel. There is a lesson to be learnt from the way the Swedish Government has pursued the mysterious disappearance of its diplomat Raoul Wallenberg in January 1945.
In 1999, the West Bengal Assembly had passed a unanimous resolution requesting the Central Government to institute an inquiry into Bose’s mysterious disappearance. But with the winds of change blowing across the state, Bengal seems to have forsaken its erstwhile idol. Hence the deafening silence from all political parties. The sheer magnitude of the implications of Justice Mukherjee’s statement has dumbfounded many people. This is perhaps the right time to come out of the stupor and raise certain inconvenient questions.

The writer is with Mission Netaji, New Delhi.

Source: The Statesman

Probe Faizabad angle of Netaji mystery, RTI activists to UP government

New Delhi, 2 February, 2010: Calling former Supreme Court judge M K Mukherjee’s on camera admission as “eye-opener”, three Delhi-based RTI activists have called for an inquiry by the UP government into the Faizabad angle to the Netaji mystery.

In an upcoming documentary on Subhas Chandra Bose, Justice Manoj Kumar Mukherjee has been shown to make “strictly off the record” assertion that he “strongly believes” that Bhagwanji of Faizabad was Subhas Bose in disguise. In saying so, the judge, who did not know that a camera was rolling next to him, has differed from his official report which had in 2005 opined that there was no “clinching evidence” to prove that the mysterious monk who lived in separate parts of Uttar Pradesh from 1955 to 1985 was the legendary freedom fighter in disguise.

Chandrachur Ghose, Anuj Dhar and Sayantan Dasgupta, who have access many Bose related records through RTI, have appealed to UP Chief Minister Ms Mayawati to set up a high-level panel to scan over 2000 documents and objects currently lying in the custody of District Magistrate of Faizabad. Those items are bristling with evidence which must be weighed against the accounts of Bhaganji’s living followers in UP and Kolkata, they claim. They also say they fear for the objects’ safety now that “Justice Mukherjee has spilled the beans”.

“Since the UPA government has already rejected the Mukherjee Commission’s basic finding that Netaji did not die in the so-called plane crash, we do not trust it to approach this issue with an open mind. Ms Mayawati has nothing against Netaji, so we trust that she will help the nation to get to the truth,” says Chandrachur Ghose, who is waiting to receive copies of Bhagwanji-related documents under RTI following a favourable ruling by former Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah.

“After the reported death of Bhagwanji, an eyewash of a police inquiry was undertaken by then Congress-led government,” says Anuj Dhar, credited with obtaining information from Taiwan government that no air crash involving Bose had ever took place in that country. The revelation turned the official air crash theory on its head. Dhar later highlighted similarities in Bhagwanji and Bose in his book Back from Dead: Inside the Subhas Bose Mystery [Mrityu Se Vapsi: Netaji ka Rahahsya in Hindi]
“It is my information that even in 1985, the local police found Bhagwanji’s handwriting similar to Netaji’s and yet they filed a report which was just a sham. Lucknow asked them to not to go ahead with further inquiry,” he says, adding “Mayawati government can expose the cover up”.
India’s leading handwriting expert B Lal Kapoor submitted an extensive report with Mukherjee Commission proving that authorship of Bose and Bhagwanji’s English and Bangla writings was common.

“We have little trust in Central government,” says Sayantan Dasgupta, charging that the government destroyed evidence on the issue and did not help Mukherjee’s inquiry properly so “any new inquiry must not be held under the aegis of Central government, specially the one headed by Congress party”.

“We quite understand that on the face of it, Bhagwanji angle appears quite unbelievable, but when a handwriting expert and former Supreme Court judge make such conclusions, the least that we can do it is to dig deeper,” Ghose remarks.

“There have been claims that Bhagwanji was an impostor, so we would like to know the facts. An inquiry will get us to the truth and bring a closure to the mystery,” says Dhar.

Source: Mission Netaji

MN’s letter to Ms Mayawati

Read FAQ on Bose mystery