http://www.tribuneindia.com/2008/20080203/spectrum/main2.htm
Netaji: The mystery deepens
What happened to Subhas Chandra Bose in 1945? Maj Gen Himmat Singh
Gill (retd) says many questions remain unanswered if we buy the story
that he died in the plane crash at Taipei
An organisation called Mission Netaji, invoking the RTI Act, has
succeeded in forcing the government to make public the secret and
controversial documents relating to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's
reported death in a plane crash at Taipei on August 18, 1945. This
would be welcomed by every nationalist Indian, for many of whom
Netaji was as towering an icon as Mahatma Gandhi. Questions which
have remained unanswered to date and troubled this writer are:
whether there was such a plane crash and was Netaji on board? Did he
die in the crash as announced by the Japanese.
What is known is that Netaji had first journeyed to Moscow en route
Germany, and from there after a prolonged stay he had been
transported to Tokyo by sea in German and Japanese submarines in May
1943, to take over the reins of the INA, which was then waging a war
against the Allied Forces operating in the Far-Eastern Theatre. The
Great Escape to Germany from Calcutta via the Khyber Pass, Kabul and
Moscow in 1941, and later in 1945 when as believed by many Netaji
took the final flight out of Saigon to Manchuria from where he is
understood to have crossed over into the Soviet Union and obscurity,
will continue to be studied by political analysts and historians
alike who have never bought the official finding that Netaji perished
in the Taipei air crash. Though the Shah Nawaz Khan Committee set up
during Jawaharlal Nehru's time and, later on, the Justice G.D.Khosla
Commission in 1970 had both ruled that Netaji had died in the Taipei
crash, the Justice M.K.Mukherjee Commission in its 2005 report has
totally debunked this conclusion of Netaji's purported death.
Inquiries made in Saigon and later in Kabul in our embassies and with
many of the old-timers in both the places, have revealed that no one
had ever heard anything about the plane crash at Taipei. Though the
1941 Kabul-Moscow journey was a well-recognised fact, there were no
signs of any kind that indicated a return journey by Netaji in 1945
through present-day Kyrgtistan, Tajikstan ( both then part of USSR
and the shortest route home) or Moscow for that matter into
Afghanistan presumably en route India, after his reported crossing
over into Russian territory from Dairen. Where did Netaji suddenly
vanish after his entry into Russia in 1945? This is a question that
needs to be answered.
To understand what possibly happened to Bose on his last flight to
Dairen in Manchuria, it is necessary to retrace his successful
outward journey through Afghanistan in 1941. As Pradip Bose records
in his book Subhas Bose and India Today, Netaji braved a trek over
the Khyber Pass and across the Kabul river gorge and the icy Sairobi
plains in an overcrowded bus and made his way to Kabul on January 27,
1941. It could have only been a person with a tough mind like that of
Netaji who could have made such a hazardous and dangerous journey in
such inclement weather and on a highway where even during daytime
there are good chances of being waylaid and looted.
Sadly, when Netaji arrived in Kabul he found that the Russian
Ambassador there was not very keen on giving him a visa to travel to
Moscow, since they anticipated that if Germany attacked Russia as was
expected then the Russians would become the allies of the British and
it would not do to be seen to be assisting an enemy of the Empire.
When Japan attacked Pearl Harbour, Bose decided to travel to Japan in
1943 to influence the operations on the Burma-India border with the
assistance of his new hosts.
By mid-August 1945, when Japan was on the run, Netaji found himself
at Singapore heading a bedraggled INA most of which had already been
taken into detention by the Allied Forces and who were now being held
in concentration camps awaiting deportation and trial after the war
ended. Netaji's initial plan to stick on with the INA in Malaya and
Singapore underwent a change at this stage and he made plans to move
closer to the neighbourhood in Burma to carry on the freedom struggle
for India. By then the Burmese army had switched its loyalties to the
winning Allied Command. It was not possible to set up INA resistance
bases in the region, and neither was a route through Burma found
practical for Netaji's return to India because of lack of any local
assistance so crucial in such operations.
With the maritime routes blocked by the Allies and the confidence
gained in having made a similar land journey before through South and
Central Asia, the only feasible routing for Netaji from Singapore was
therefore through Saigon, Taiwan, Manchuria and thence into Russia,
for a return via Kabul to India. After the nuclear bombing of Japan,
it has been well documented that the Russians had launched deliberate
attacks from Russian Manchuria into Japanese controlled territory
southwards towards Harbin, Fushun and Dalian, and therefore Netaji
making for Darien and thence into Russian territory made perfect
sense.
The intriguing part, however, is that Netaji is supposed to have died
when his plane was taking off from Taipei, and therefore it is clear
that there had to be a destination for which he was heading. Surely
he could not have been heading for Japan which was by then tottering
to a meek fall,and neither could his bomber aircraft with the flying
range that such aircraft had in those days be heading right across
the vast Pacific Ocean to Hawai and American territory!
Anuj Dhar of Mission Netaji had been intimated by the Taiwanese
government in 2003 that no plane carrying Netaji had ever crashed in
their territory. Neither is it possible that having flown all the way
from Saigon, Taipei was Netaji's final destination and not just a
stopover for refuelling of the aircraft. What was Netaji going to do
in the middle of nowhere in Taiwan, when all around him the Axis
Powers were collapsing one after the other? It is logical to believe
that Netaji took off from Taipei safely and flew on to Dairen,
irrespective of Col Habib-ur-Rehman's (his fellow passenger on the
flight) report in the matter much after the purported crash. It is
also intriguing that whereas Netaji died of severe burns in the
purported crash, Habib-ur-Rahman only had some burnt skin and scars
to show for the good luck in his survival.
There is a linkage in this to what Shyam Lal Jain of Meerut, deposing
before the Khosla Commission (an account documented by Pradip Bose in
his book referred to earlier), had stated that he was asked by Nehru
in Delhi to type out a handwritten note which he (Nehru) had handed
over to him, and the contents of which Jain, reproducing from memory,
had stated to the Commission as follows, "Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose
proceeding by aeroplane from Saigon, arrived today August 23, 1945,
at Dairen (Manchuria) at 1.30 afternoon". Shyam Lal, in his recorded
statement, goes on to state that according to the said note, after a
short break Netaji and four others left in a jeep for Russian
territory. Access to classified documents of the period will throw
light on Bose's flight in 1945, and there is need to delve further
into the matter in the interest of recording truthful history. An
unconfirmed report had also appeared earlier that Netaji had died at
a ripe age in a Siberian prison, and Pradip Bose also mentions in his
book that in July 1946 there were reports that Khurshedben Naoroji, a
Secretary of Mahatma Gandhi, wrote to American author Louis Fischer
that if Netaji came back to India with the support of the Russians
then neither Gandhi nor the Congress would be able to do anything
about it. Who then or which power in India was interested in seeing
the last of Netaji and did not want his return to his homeland? Was
the story of the Taipei crash deliberate misinformation first put out
by Japan and later on confirmed by Indian high-ups, so that Netaji
never returned to India.
Americk Singh Gill, a former INA man in his book Indian National Army—
Secret Service also writes that, "I was thinking that Netaji had put
up a mighty camouflage and curtain with the story of the aircrash",
indicating that many of those who had been close to Netaji had found
it difficult to suddenly believe that he had died in the air crash at
Taipei.
There is certainly more than what meets the eye in the sudden
disappearance of Netaji in mid-1945, and if the Americans are still
investigating the assassination of President John Kennedy then there
is no reason why the Indian people, if not their government, cannot
move international agencies and the present governments of Russia,
Japan, UK, Vietnam, China, Mangolia, Afghanistan and America to
release from their archives any confidential material for scrutiny
which could reveal the final years of this great patriot.
The Shah Nawaz and Khosla Commissions did to my mind an incomplete
and rushed job by just buying the Taipei air crash theory. We often
entrust such enquiries to politicians and members of the judiciary.
Many of them have little idea of the peculiar terrain, topography and
distances of the Far East, all inter-related factors in Netaji's
journeys to that part of the world and his sudden disappearance. It
is time for a full-fledged Commission with the right people on it, to
find out how and when Netaji met his end.
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