A ‘Dream’ we want to see come True…

20 December 2012. New Delhi: The ghost of Subhas Chandra Bose returned to haunt the Central government on Monday with the BJP-led Opposition launching a pincer attack over gratuitous secrecy over the fate of the freedom fighter. In a series of press conferences across the nation during the day, Opposition leaders tore into the Government’s insistence to keep the records pertaining to the death of

Bose classified in “national security”. The conferences followed another day of massive outrage in public over the continuation of “Netaji mystery”.

NDA convener Sharad Yadav tore into the government’s stand calling it “an insult to the memory of Netaji”. Kya mazak bana rakha hai? (What is this joke?) Yadav said, elaborating that in mature democracies secret records were routinely declassified. “If he died in 1945 I don’t understand why is the Government afraid of releasing the files?” Along with Yadav, senior BJP leader LK Advani too was critical of the government approach. He regretted that the Netaji files were not declassified when the NDA was in power. “I feel sorry for that. We should have done that when the Mukherjee Commission was functioning”.

Advani castigated the Congress-led government for dismissing the commission report in 2004 without assigning any reason. “In my entire public life I never saw any government dealing with a commission of inquiry report in such an arbitrary and insulting manner”. Supporting the demand for comprehensive declassification of all Netaji related records made by the writer of a controversial book on Netaji’s fate, Advani said “this was the best way to bring about a closure to the issue”.

For the last few months Anuj Dhar’s book has been a rage and has caused unprecedented outpourings of outrage on social media and internet. The website of this paper received thousands of comments just last week calling for declassification.

In their statements released to media BSP leader Mayawati and Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav supported the demand for declassification. Mulayam also referred to mysterious holy man of Faizabad linked to Bose in Dhar’s book and demanded that records about him should also see the light of the day.

In Bhubaneswar, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik told mediapersons that he had written a letter to the Prime Minister for the release of records. “I even requested that these records must be stored at the museum in Cuttack, Netaji’s birth place”. Patnaik refused to answer question about former Prime Minister Nehru’s role in the matter. “That is for you people to deliberate,” he said.

But in Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi was in his elements targeting the Nehru-Gandhi’s for perpetrating “the mother of all cover-ups”, paraphrasing the title of Dhar’s book “India’s biggest cover-up”. “For the last 60 years the Congress leaders have left no stone unturned in implicating the Sangh Parivar in Gandijii’s assassination, making use of some remote connection the assassin had with one organization linked to the Sanga once upon a time. But now what I’ve learned about Netaji tells me that there is clear evidence of Nehru’s hand in covering up the truth about his fate.”

Modi took a pot shot at the media to task, daring them to run campaigns seeking justice for Subhas in the same way they had done in the cases involving regular people. “Someone loosing life over a life affair is tragedy but you go on to make mountains out of molehills. And in the Netaji case, all you do is only to report what someone else has to say. Why don’t you employ your investigative skills here? Why can’t you ask the Home Minister and the Prime Minister straight questions in front of camera?”

The mood was, however, completely subdued in Bengal, the home state of Bose, where Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee continued to keep mum. Several Bengali thinkers and historians said they had had enough of the mystery and did not want to discuss the issue. “This entire controversy is wastage of time and money,” said Prof Sugata Bose of Netaji Research Bureau.

Local Congress leaders too were forthcoming as they said the issue had no relevance in modern India and that country must look to the future and not past. “We must not waste any money for someone dead in any way when so many living people in India are starving,” said state Congress president Dr Tapan Bhattacharya. When a reporter curtly asked if the same approach could be applied to late Congress stalwarts like Rajiv Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, whose death anniversaries are marked with ads costing crores of rupees from public exchequer, Bhattacharya responded with an expletive.

Sources have informed that Mamata Banerjee’s “studied silence” was to be understood in the context of the financial package the Central government was considering at the moment.

— at the this point Mungerilal’s rosy dream came to an end.

by Anuj Dhar

Follow him @anujdhar and know more about the case

For a complete low-down on the case, covering events from 1945 to 2012, read “India’s biggest cover-up”, available both in paper and electronic formats.

The Books available at: Infy Beam  |  Vitasta |  Book Shop Of India

The Kindle edition of the book is available from Amazon