| Khosla had a closed
mind. He did not even pretend to have had an open and questioning
mind on Netaji's death. He did not like Subhas anyway. From
the time when Khosla was attempting to get into the ICS and
Subhas had already succeeded at the first attempt, taking the
fourth position among the successful candidates for the haven-born
service, he had been envious of Bose. Khosla disliked Subhas
at Cambridge where the latter towered above the peer group,
both physically and scholastically.
Decades later, writing of his time at Cambridge and in London
when young Subhas made a stir by being the first Indian to
reject the ICS when Khosla was preparing another try at the
tough examination, he could not quite conceal his resentment
of Subhas.
The latter had been too impressive - physically and intellectually.
Khosla did not like one bit that everybody in the peer group
at Cambridge knew that Subhas could have topped the successful
entrants' list of the year 1920 had the India office in London
not contrived to manipulate the marks for viva to reduce his
rank to the fourth position.
In his golden years, savouring the rewards of a loyal mandarin
of British India and also of Nehru's India, Khosla recalled
Subhas' Cambridge successes with unconcealed envy in his auto-biographical
writing.
But he did not quite waste his time writing a report only
of reproaches aimed at all who doubted what he knew to be
an incontrovertible fact that Netaji had perished in the accident
at Taipei on August 18, 1945. Khosla came close to calling
Netaji a Japanese "puppet". Not even his former
British employers were using this term for Subhas Bose in
the 1970s.
For the rest, he wrote of Nehru's generosity and total freedom
from rancour towards Bose. Unsolicited explanations of the
statements of Mahatma Gandhi, Viceroys Wavell and Mountbatten
and even of Dr S Radhakrishnan on Subhas took up a lot of
space in the Khosla report.
He also seemed to be saying that some deponents were deficient
in English. This was illustrated by verbatim extracts of unedited
English answers given by one or two witnesses in a state of
emotional disturbance brought on by cross-examination.
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