
The patriot who will never die
By Ronojoy Sen
There are few Indian icons around whom there is such a vivid mythology and “life-after-life” as one biographer put it, as Netaji Subhas Bose. Leonard Gordon, who has written one of the standard biographies of Bose, noted in 1990 that Netaji’s story had “begun to resemble that of an Indian deity”. Not much has changed in 2021, the 125th birth anniversary of Bose.
As West Bengal heads to elections this year, Netaji’s legacy is once again up for grabs. The central government has announced that Netaji’s birth anniversary will be celebrated as Parakram Diwas. It has also set up a committee to plan year-long anniversary programmes. The Trinamool Congress has countered this by saying that the day should be remembered as Desh Prem Diwas. It has also pointed out that West Bengal celebrates Bose’s birthday every year as Subhas Diwas and that their plea that his birthday be declared a national holiday has found no takers.
Thus, Netaji is well and truly alive in Bengal politics and the people’s minds. While the current claims and counter claims over Bose is geared toward electoral gains, his memory endures because of the many what-ifs associated with him. That is why Gopalkrishna Gandhi suggests that Bose continues to be popular since he serves as an “alter ego to the nation’s power structure”.
Part of the continuing fascination with Bose is the attraction of the rebel. His dramatic escape from house arrest in Calcutta in 1941 and arrival in Berlin is the stuff of myth. Bose’s subsequent setting up of the Indian National Army and his alliance with the Japanese is also well known. What is less known is that Netaji was a maverick since his early days. He was not only expelled from the elite Presidency College, he also spurned, in 1921, the dream job of any self-respecting Bengali — a chance to become part of the Indian Civil Service. This non-conformism would surface at different phases of Netaji’s tumultuous political career.
A strong reason for Bose’s appeal is that, as historian Sugata Bose puts it, Netaji’s legend “cuts across religious, linguistic, and national boundaries.” Yet another cause for Bose’s popularity is the belief he was a strongman, who could have steered the nationalist movement and independent India in a different direction from Jawaharlal Nehru.
Netaji’s mysterious death in an air crash in Taiwan in August 1945 and the clutch of conspiracy theories around it have also fuelled the myths around Bose. Everybody loves a good conspiracy, especially those surrounding a sudden or violent death. In the case of Netaji, his antagonism to mainstream nationalist politics and his links with fascists made him a particularly apposite candidate for conspiracy theories.
Sugata Bose, who is also a grandnephew of Netaji, notes that an overwhelming majority of Netaji’s closest associates believed that he had died in the crash. However, since 1946, there began ‘’sightings’’ of Netaji in different locations. Perhaps the first such ‘’sighting’’ was recorded in 1946 when a certain KSM Swamy claimed to have met Netaji in a third-class compartment of the Bombay Express. Since then Netaji spotting became a cottage industry. One of the better known of these theories was the discovery that Netaji had resurfaced as a Hindu ascetic — Gumnami Baba — in Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh. Indeed, there were several Hindu sadhus who had been linked to Netaji at various times.
An organisation called the Subhasbadi Janata kept these stories in circulation through pamphlets, newspapers and weekly meetings. At the same time, there were rumours of Netaji having shown up in Russia or China. The Netaji sightings peaked in the 1960s when there was a general disillusionment with politics of the day.
These rumours might have died down had not the Indian State stepped in and set up a commission to investigate the death of Bose. This had the effect of legitimising, in a sense, the conspiracy theories. The first was the Netaji Inquiry Committee, set up in 1956, consisting of a former comrade of Netaji, Shah Nawaz Khan, an elder brother of Netaji, Suresh Bose, and a government officer. The committee went through the evidence, including interviewing the Japanese doctor who treated Netaji after the crash, and found that Netaji had died in 1945. Its findings were, however, undermined by the dissent of Suresh Bose who stated that Netaji was still alive.
In 1970, another inquiry commission headed by Justice G.D. Khosla was instituted. There was some remarkable testimony before the panel: A bank official from Sholapur claimed that he received direct messages from Netaji by tuning his body like a radio. The Khosla report, like the earlier commission, concluded that Netaji had indeed died in the crash.
A one-man commission, headed by a retired high court judge, Manoj Mukherjee, was the third such body to look into the Netaji mystery. After six years of hearings, Mukherjee concluded in 2006 that the air crash that killed Bose had not happened. It did so on the flimsy basis that the government of Taiwan did not have records of the crash. Sugata Bose has a simple explanation for this, pointing out that Taiwan had then been under Japanese occupation. He adds that the Mukherjee Commission “made no distinction between the highly probable and the utterly impossible.” However, the Mukherjee Commission, as well another one headed by Justice Vishnu Sahay, found no credible evidence that Gumnami Baba was Bose.
But this too has not stopped the conspiracy theories. In 2019, a Bengali feature film titled, Gumnaami, directed by Srijit Mukherjee lent credence to the theory that Gumnami Baba might indeed have been Netaji in disguise. The same year, a book titled Conundrum peddled the same theory. While several descendants of Bose publicly voiced their disapproval of the film, Mukherjee stated he was merely putting before the pubic different theories about Netaji’s “disappearance” in 1945.
Ronojoy Sen is Senior Research Fellow, ISAS & SASP, National University of Singapore. The views expressed are personal

‘No teeth’: SC wants stricter OTT rules
- Giving two weeks to the government to come back with its response, the bench then formally recorded in its order that one of the issues that has caught its attention is “uncontrolled and unscreened viewing of films” on Amazon Prime Video and other OTT platforms.

Widen network, say experts as India aims to boost drive
- The roughly 20,000 centres being used for the vaccine drive at the moment are hospitals, private as well as public, while many primary and secondary health centres at present are kept out of the programme.

New Delhi rejects report as ‘misleading, misplaced’
- The external affairs ministry, which too rejected Freedom House’s report, also took exception to the depiction of Jammu and Kashmir in the map used in the document.

OCIs need nod for Tablighi, journalistic work: Centre
- A home ministry spokesperson said these rules prepared by the Foreigners’ Division were part of a brochure issued on November 15, 2019. The rules were consolidated and notified on Thursday.

K’taka ministers move court against airing of ‘defamatory content’
- After the allegations on Jarkiholi, there were unverified reports of several similar videos and other sex scandals against other cabinet ministers.

India set to achieve Paris pact targets before deadline: PM Modi
- India is a signatory to the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

CM in 1st list; DMK-Cong hit stalemate
- On the other hand, the DMK’s stalemate continued with its main and long standing ally, the Congress, on seat sharing.

EC orders removal of PM’s images from vaccine certificates: Officials
- The person said it was imperative that the photographs are removed from certificates distributed in the poll bound states, adding that the system can continue in other states.

PM to head committee, Sonia and Tendulkar among 259 members
- Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, former President Pratibha Patil, economist Amartya Sen, cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, spiritual leader Baba Ramdev, chief ministers of states and senior political leaders are among those included in the panel.

NIA probes Jamaat-e-Islami’s J&K chapter
- According to Indian agencies, the JeI has maintained that J&K is a disputed territory.

YSRC bags all 6 MLC seats unopposed; silent on abolition of legislative council
- Interestingly, the election of the six YSRC members comes at a time when a resolution adopted by the Jagan Mohan Reddy government in the state assembly in January 2020, seeking abolition of the legislative council, is still pending with the Union home ministry.

Andhra CM Jagan Reddy urges SC to restart Amravati land scam probe
- When the matter came up before a bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan and R Subhash Reddy on Friday, the bench adjourned it to April 7 as it had no time for a full fledged hearing.

6 new cases of UK’s Covid-19 strain found in Indore, warning issued
- Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan also held a review meeting on Friday to discuss with the divisional commissioners the steps being taken to contain the spread of the infection.

Container Corporation of India to push production, end dependency on China
- There is a cost difference of about 25-30 per cent in containers made in India and abroad.

India pushes China for disengagement at remaining friction points on LAC
- After an agreement last month on pulling back frontline troops along with armoured vehicles and artillery from strategic heights around Pangong Lake, the two sides have been unable to make progress on disengagement at other friction points such as Depsang, Hot Springs and Gogra.