Keeping the faith

Netaji has even today a legion of loyal fans who swear by his charisma and bravura, writes Vijaya Sharma.

He is a hero from the historic day's of India's Independence struggle. Even today he has a legion of of loyal fans and followers who swear by his charisma and bravura, and never-say-die spirit. He was the alternate idol for a generation of freedom fighters who believed in his more strident method of gaining independence - Subhas Chandra Bose.

For a man who remained an icon when he was alive, his legend has persisted and grown even after his death. Mystery shrouds his death. Where and how did he die? In the concentration camps in Siberia? In the 1945 air crash over Taihoku, Taiwan? Or did he in more recent times, in the 1980's in Faizabad where he lived as a sadhu called Bhagwanji - a linguist who could speak German fluently - whose real identity was known only to select few?

HindustanTimes.com's reporter Anuj Dhar passionately believes (and it's not empty belief, it is based on the strength of facts he has collected over years) that Bose did not die in the 1945 air crash.

And the recent report from the Taiwan Govt almost gives credence to his unshaken faith. Taiwan government has informed Justice Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry that the air crash at Taipei on August 18, 1945, till date believed to have killed the freedom fighter, had never taken place.

Justice MK Mukherjee, heading the one-man commission of inquiry into Netaji's disappearance, told newsmen in Kolkata on Thursday that the Taiwanese authorities confirmed to him during his recent visit to that country that there was no record of any air crash at Taihoku, the old name of Taipei, between August 14 and September 20, 1945.

A fresh twist to this enduring mystery and a fillip to Dhar's faith. We shall await the documentary evidence from the Taiwanese government.

Project PoW: A campaign to bring back India 'missing' soldiers of the 1971 war
HindustanTimes.com's Project PoW venture has also got fresh impetus with a recent admission by Pakistan that it has 182 Indian prisoners in its jails, who have been there since their role in the 1971 Indo-Pak war.

In 2001, HindustanTimes.com started a campaign to raise awareness about the fate of 54 Indian soldiers from the 1971 Indo-Pak war who were still languishing in Pakistani jails, forgotten by the nation. Were they still sane after having spent years in the sunless cells and being subjected to unspeakable torture? Had the frustration of knowing that their country had forgotten their sacrifices bred in them an irredeemable hopelessness?

Three decades on these men would be in their sixties and seventies now. Perhaps of no use to the nation, and so forgotten. But there is a stoic wife in New Delhi who is still awaiting her husband's return and cries out in anguish: "Bring him back, thirty-four years are enough". There is a son waiting in Agra, unborn when his father went missing, but who now awaits his return and tries to establish a connection with his father by matching his tastes with his father's: "You know I picked the same pair of goggles from the market as my father once had."

But all throughout these three years and a nationwide on-ground campaign, where people joined us only to betray the cause when we left, we believed and held on to our faith that these soldiers were still there, somewhere, in Pakistan.

Now, after all these years of denying that Pakistan has Indian prisoners of war, the Pakistan government, in an official report released a couple of days back, for the first time has admitted that it has 182 Indian prisoners who have been in its jails since the 1971 war.

It validates our belief and gives us more strength to pursue the cause of India's 'missing' heroes.