The Government of India in 1999 appointed a new Commission of Inquiry to reinvestigate the death of Subhas Chandra Bose.

Those who think that this effort was unnecessary ought to recall that the US is still making probes to find out more about the assassination of President John Kennedy.

John Kennedy and his alleged assassin were killed in front of television and still cameras. The sequences have been recorded comprehensively and with great skill. Still the Americans, not the US government, are trying to discover if there is more to the assassination than what the official probes have established.

Contrast these efforts with the cynical silence we have kept on Subhas Bose's death. Decades elapsed before incompetent and partisan inquiries were held. It looked as though enough time had to be provided for the obliteration of the trail of Subhas Bose.

But Netaji had functioned on a trans-national stage. He had interacted with great many officials and leaders of foreign lands, and he had been an international statesman functioning against the wider backdrop of a world crisis and a world war. He had led Indians to battle for Indian independence. It can not be easy, therefore, to obliterate the trail of Subhas and to turn him into a non-person.

The probe, Hindustan Times has initiated has no predisposition or pre-determined aim, except the search of the truth. The sole objective is to find out what happened to him and what happened at that crucial juncture to seal India's fate. No new myth should supplant old lies.

Tomorrow, we begin another phase in this interactive effort.