Instead of showing signs of settling down, the controversy surrounding Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s fate got reignited on his 119th birth anniversary on Saturday when Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in the presence of a section of the family members of India’s freedom struggle icon, set the process of declassification of 100 files in motion at the National Archives.
Prior to the special event that is being read as the precursor to the battle of West Bengal assembly elections due in April this year, PM Modi tweeted – “Today is a special day for all Indians. Declassification of Netaji files starts today. I will go to National Archives myself for the same.”
Netaji kin on Saturday said they have appealed Prime Minister Narendra Modi to set up a timeframe within which all files relating to Subhas Chandra Bose should be declassified.
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“We have requested him to set up a timeframe within which all the files should get declassified. We don’t want it to become a never ending process,” Netaji grand-nephew Chandra Bose told PTI.
Netaji File Revelation: Here’s why the govt did not bring back his ashes from Japan
The file from the 1970s reveals a correspondence between the Home Ministry, the Intelligence Bureau and the External Affairs Ministry about a proposal that Bose’s ashes be brought back to India. The government was ‘not included to favour’ bringing back the ashes ‘due to possible adverse reactions from members of Netaji’s family, as well as certain sections of the public, who refused to believe in his death in the plane crash in August, 1945’.
The suggestion about ‘adverse reactions’ was made by NN Jha, Joint Secretary in the External Affairs Ministry’s North and East Asia department in 1976. TV Tajeswar, Joint Director of the IB, also advised his colleagues that the ashes shouldn’t be brought back because they could create complications. Neither Netaji’s kin nor Netaji’s party the Forward Bloc, were willing to recognise the ashes and said that the government would be accused of ‘foisting a false story upon the people of West Bengal and India, taking advantage of Emergency, and this may well figure as an important plant of propaganda if and when the elections are announced’.
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Is this all about Political Gain?
Even after the entire lot of documents involving Netaji is placed in public domain there would still be scope for doubts and speculation. This part done, the question next would be about the missing papers in some files and documents lying abroad, most of which will be impossible to procure. His family members – there’s difference of positions here too – may be genuinely interested in knowing the truth about the leader, but for the rest the interest remains in prolonging the matter for motive other than getting to the truth. By the ‘rest’ we mean political players of all hues.
The political implications of the declassified letters are thus more interesting than the central issue. The visible loser in the whole declassification process is the Congress. It now loses the luxury of choosing an alliance partner in West Bengal, which goes to polls not too long away. The ‘war criminal’ letter and whatever remotely incriminating comes up later will make it difficult for it to bargain from a position of strength. A few days ago, it was mulling the option of going with Mamata’s Trinamul Congress or the Left. With the Netaji papers likely to be discussed heavily in the election, it will be a liability for its alliance partners.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who released 64 files earlier, will obviously seek to cash in on the fact that she was the first to declassify the Netaji files. Now she has upped the ante already demanding that Netaji be given the title of ‘Leader of the nation’in the manner in which Mahatma Gandhi was called the ‘Father of the nation’. Besides putting the Congress, which was beginning to look confident again after random electoral victories across the country, in a spot of bother, she has a stick to beat the other rivals on the block, the Left Front and the BJP.
The Left Front, the main rival of the Trinamul, again will be left with some answering to do in connection with the files. While it has been demanding of the centre that these be declassified, it never took the initiative to make public whatever documents the state had concerning Netaji. And it was in power for 34 long years. With Mamata already stealing a march on it and having claimed a moral high ground, it will be a tough task for it to catch up now.
Despite all the noise and fury the BJP is still not a major player in the state. While it would have loved to play the declassification card to impress voters in the state, the problem is Mamata has already pre-empted it. It would still go to town claiming it did what the Left and the Congress couldn’t in all these years, but the gains would be limited.
Thus if there’s a political gainer from the exercise in the state, it has to be Mamata and her party. But, of course, the equations change if there are new revelations showing the Congress in a better light.
So let us rest assured that the noise over the Netaji mystery will not die anytime soon. Truth is incidental to it, politics is the core.
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