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रविवार, 19 अप्रैल 2015

Netaji's probable escape in 1945 and Gumnami Baba legend.

          Someone questioned me , how can Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose's probable escape to Russia In 1945 ( In case the Taihoku air crash did not take place as concluded by the Mukherjee Commission) can be reconciled with Gumnami Baba legend. I've made an effort as given below.There are missing links which I've made efforts to create on the basis of probabilities and available evidences.

          There is an article ' Prisoner of Yakutsk' by Yatish Yadav available at newindianexpress.com. The article discusses Netaji being in Russia under imprisonement after 1945. The article quotes evidences presented by Shri Satya Narayan Sinha an M.P. before the Khosla Commission  in support of the argument. Shri Satya Narayan Sinha served in various capacities- as a secretary to Pt. Nehru, as a secret agent of the Indian Govt., for two years he was a meber of  Indian foreign Service. Shri Sinha said that a Russian secret agent Kozovo informed him about Subhash Chandra Bose being imprisoned at Yakutsk in U.S.S.R.

         If it is correct as mentioned in the article that Netaji was imprisoned at Yakutsk then most probably he came back to India after 1956. What is the reason of my assumption I am discussing below. The article by Yatish Yadav mentions Khrushchev's visit to India in 1956 . At that time Shri Satya Narayan Sinha who was acting as an interpreter for Khrushchev requested him to make Netaji return to India so that Indo-Russian friendship improved further. Shri Satya Narayan Sinha also mentioned that one Chinese source told him that only Nehru could get Subhash Chandra Bose repatriated to India. It also indicated that some talk related to Netaji's return was going on between India and Russia, otherwise Satya Narayan Sinha in his capacity of an interpreter had no rhyme or reason to speak about this to Khrushchev.  This trashes the theory of Netaji's execution by Stalin ( as said by Shri Subramanyam Swami)  who himself died in March 1953. Prior to Khrushchev's visit, Nehruji had visited Russia in 1955 and most probably he would have had some discussion about Netaji also  in the light of a letter of Netaji to Nehru mentioning that he was in Russia and wanted to escape to India ( It is mentioned in a secret report of British Secret Agent Major Hugh Toys. Major Hugh also indicated that this fact was known to Gandhiji and Netaji's elder brother Sharat Bose. He also mentioned that Russian Ambassador to Kabul/Tehran had informed the Governor of Afghan province of Khost that Subhash Chandra Bose was in Moscow as a refugee). Involvement of Indian Govt. in all this is indicated by Netaji researcher Anuj Dhar when he tells about a source with direct access to the PMO telling him "We were in touch with him(Netaji) till 1985."  Here it is notable that Gumnami Baba expired on 16 of September,1985. After Gumnami Baba expired the district authorities took his body in their possession and ensured his cremation without any fun fare within the ambit of darkness in presence of a few persons who were in touch with Gumnami Baba.This also indicated that the Govt. ensured that Netaji resided without any problem ,safely and in isolation. It seems  that Netaji would have been repatriated to India after some sort of tripartite agreement/understanding between Nehru Govt.,the U.S.S.R. Govt. and Netaji. An important feature of this agreement must have been Netaji's promise/desire of living away from the public eye in isolation.In his youth also at some point Netaji wanted to become an ascetic.

          Among the articles of Gumnami Baba a map has been found which detailed the return route to India from Russia via China,Tibbet and Nepal. Since Russia and China cover a major portion of this route , it is improbable that return of Netaji was possible without knowledge of these countries. Since India had good relations with Russia as well as China in 1956, it would have been possible at that time.

          Here it is notable that the above source Anuj Dhar mentioned, told him that the Govt. was keeping facts under wraps for fear of triggering a political earthquake at home, apart from complications on the foreign front. The source told Anuj that the Govt. held precise records about what became of Netaji and the PMO had a file with key to unravel the mystery. The source clearly told Anuj that Netaji had gone to Russia.

          As reported by Mukherjee Commission , Gumnami Baba had English and Bengali handwritings similar to those of Netaji and it was confirmed by an expert B. Lal although a few other experts did not agree. A few family members of Netaji, some I N A members and a few other Bengali people visited him(as deposed before Mukherji Commission) . From one of the Kolkatans once Gumnami Baba enquired about Bahadur, a personal guard at Netaji's home in Kolkata and once about a picture of Kaliji that was in Netaji's home. At least one Kolkatan Shri Sunil Kumar Gupta testified before the Mukherjee Commission that Gumnami Baba whom he had met, was indeed Netaji. When questioned by the Commission why he did not testify the same before the Khosla Commission he replied that at that time he was under oath to not disclose the information. Mukherji Commission went for the DNA test of five No. of teeth found in the room of Gumnami Baba and the DNA test didn't match with the DNA of the family members of Netaji. Probably due to this Mukherjee Commission was deterred from making any declaration regarding Gumnami Baba. However it is not necessary that found teeth were of Gumnami Baba. As a last resort ashes of Gumnami Baba should be exhumed from his SAMADHI and a DNA test should be conducted and at the same time DNA test of the ashes being told of Netaji in Rencoji temple (which according to Mukherjee Commission are of some Japani Soldier)  should also be conducted to solve the mystery.

The article by Yatish Yadav quoted in the beginning is as given below.Some portion is not there. For complete article one can visit the source.

-The prisoner of Yakutsk-
(Quoted from newindianexpress.com with thanks, an article by Yatish Yadav)

         When he was alive, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was an enigma. His death in an alleged plane crash on August 18, 1945, in Taiwan remains a mystery wrapped in enigma. Sixty-nine years later, declassified files on the inquiries into Bose’s death indicate that he died alone in a Soviet prison in Siberia where over 516,841 perished under Joseph Stalin’s rule. The evidence, presented by a whistle-blower and now deceased Congress MP and diplomat Dr Satyanarayan Sinha in 1952, throws up too many uncomfortable questions, which could upset the established notion that Bose died in that crash and it is his ashes that rest in Renkoji Temple in Japan. Two inquiry reports by Shah Nawaz Committee and one-man GD Khosla Commission, set up in 1956 and 1970 by the Congress governments led by Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter Indira Gandhi respectively, concluded that Bose died in a plane crash at Taihoku airport.

          The declassified documents and exhibits in the National Archives raise serious doubts about the veracity of these reports. However, the third and last report of the Mukherjee Commission established in 1999 had trashed the probe findings, though it doesn’t explain what exactly happened to Netaji. But the NDA government too did not disclose the new findings which were disowned by the UPA government, which chose to accept the findings of two previous reports. Sinha’s deposition before the Khosla Commission disclosed that Netaji was imprisoned in cell number 45 of Yakutsk Prison in Siberia, where over half a million slave labourers perished; Yakutsk is the coldest city on earth. But mysteriously, the committee decided not to probe Sinha’s testimony. Very few prisoners in Yakutsk survived the brutal conditions, but a former NKVD agent, Kozlov, who was rehabilitated later by the Soviet government, told Sinha about meeting Bose in Siberia. Sinha had an adventurous career, serving in the Russian Army in 1932 as an interpreter; he even fought in the battle of 1935-36 on the side of the Italians in Ethiopia before he became an aide to Nehru.

          On October 17, 1970, Sinha, then in his 60s, was summoned before the Khosla Commission constituted by Indira. The files running into hundreds of pages reveal that Sinha had a trove of information regarding Netaji. He told the commission that Netaji did not die in the plane crash and was imprisoned by the Soviets in Siberia. This was Sinha’s first appearance before the commission and under oath, he testified that in 1954, he met Kozlov in Moscow, who told him that Netaji was lodged in Yakutsk Prison. It appears from the proceedings that the commission had received overwhelming evidence from Sinha but ultimately decided to ignore them.

Excerpts from the proceedings regarding the meeting between Kuzlov and Subhas Chandra Bose:

Khosla Commission: I want you to be more specific about this information which you received. Who gave you the information and what were the exact words used by him as far as you can remember?

Sinha: Kuzlov was the name of the man who was connected with the training of Indians till 1934. The same man was later treated by Stalin as a Trotskyist and sent to Yakutsk prison. From there, after the war, he had come back. I met him in Moscow. He said that he had seen Bose in Cell No. 45 in Yakutsk.

Commission: Did he name Bose or did he say some important Indian?

Sinha: He knew Bose. He had been a Soviet agent in India in 30s. He had met Bose in Calcutta and he knew his residence.

          British India was crawling with spies of all nationalities, notably the Russians and Germans. ‘The Great Game’—a term coined by the English spy and cavalry officer Arthur Conolly—was raging as a conflict between the British and the Russian empires for supremacy in Central Asia. Afghanistan was the buffer state both wanted to control. The British believed that the Russians, both before and after the revolution, wanted to annex India. Stalin had even sent two British Communists to India to lead the disorganised Indian Communists to revolt against British rule, and create a red India. Their efforts failed and both were captured. Naturally, many Indian freedom fighters believed that Russia would help them overthrow the British. In 1940, Bose who disagreed with Mahatma Gandhi’s peaceful protest principle escaped house arrest and fled to Russia through Peshawar, with the help of German Intelligence agents operating in India. Since the USSR, on the surface, maintained diplomatic relations with the UK, Stalin was reluctant to give asylum to a man the British considered a traitor and a subversive. However, he helped Bose escape to Germany from where he reached Japan. The transfer of Bose in African waters from a German submarine to a Japanese sub is the only submarine-to-submarine transfer of any person during World War II.

DID NEHRU KNOW BOSE WAS ALIVE?

          Sinha, who was elected to the first Lok Sabha in 1952 from Bihar, made scathing observations in Parliament indicating a cover-up in the Netaji probe at the top levels in the Indian government. Born in 1910 in Bihar, Sinha had been tasked by Nehru to report on the political situation in Europe in 1947. Sinha told the commission that he got the funds from Nehru’s personal account in The National Herald and it was through Nehru confidant Rafi Ahmed Kidwai that he received money for his travel and investigations. In this capacity as an informal secret agent, he travelled to Germany, Italy, France and Yugoslavia before joining the Indian Foreign Service in 1950 and served as First Secretary in the Indian legation in Berne, Switzerland. Sinha told the Khosla Commission that he had gathered further evidence from Russian spies that Bose was living in captivity in Russia, which he had already informed Nehru in 1950. Sinha began probing into Netaji’s disappearance in 1949. In 1950 in Leipzig, Germany, he had met Karl Leonhard, a former Abwehr spy who had served time in Siberia, after Germany lost the war in USSR. Leonhard reportedly told Sinha: “I have come to know that your leader Bose is also a prisoner.”

          Sinha deposed that in a meeting with Nehru on April 13, 1950, he had given the prime minister the new information, but Nehru was disinterested. Though initially relations between USSR and India were cool after 1947, Stalin, who had refused to meet the Indian Ambassador to Moscow Vijayalakshmi Pandit, gave an audience to Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, who was then the Indian envoy. Stalin also offered a treaty of friendship between both countries. The USSR then supported India on the Kashmir issue. Nehru visited Soviet Union in 1955 and in return Premier Nikita Khrushchev and Defence Minister Nikolai Bulganin visited India in 1956. Meanwhile, Indo-US relations had cooled and the USSR stepped in with technological and economical aid. On the 1962 India-China war, the USSR blamed China as responsible for the war. India started buying Soviet arms in 1963 on a large scale when Nehru was PM.

Khosla Commission: Did you meet him (Nehru) in Delhi or elsewhere?

Sinha: In Delhi.

Commission: You went to see him and told him that a Russian had given you this information?

Sinha: Yes, that is on 13th April, 1950.

Commission: What did Pandit Nehru say to that?

Sinha: He said that he would check up the matter. But he said, “I think, this is American propaganda.”

Commission: After that, did you take any further steps to enquire into the matter?

Sinha: I did. Another talk on this subject which I had with Pandit Nehru was on 16th January 1951 in Paris where there was the ambassadors’ meeting.

          Sinha also claimed that he had raised the issue with Radhakrishnan, who warned him that any further probe in the matter may harm his (Sinha’s) career. Sinha had worked as interpreter to Radhakrishnan while the latter was serving in Geneva. They had met on the sidelines of the ambassadors’ conference in 1951 in Paris. “He (Radhakrishnan) warned me that I should not meddle in these things. I asked him why. Then he said ‘you will be spoiling your career, you will not be anywhere’.”

          Sinha told the Khosla Commission that he was making the charges “with full responsibility to prove them before the commission and before the wide world.” Sinha also said that he did not believe that the government wanted matters regarding Bose to come out in the public domain. He said, “Nehru was a very very strong man. When Khrushchev came, I was acting as an interpreter. I asked him ‘Will you in your next visit bring Netaji with you? Then Russia and India will become best of friends.’”

          Sinha had also told the commission that Chinese officials had told him that Nehru was the only person who could repatriate Netaji.

THE COVER-UP

       In 2006, the Justice Mukherjee Commission report concluded that Netaji did not die in the plane crash at Taihoku airport and the ashes in the Japanese temple are not his, and that in the absence of any clinching evidence a positive answer cannot be given. Former Minister of State for Home Mullappally Ramchandran in a written reply on May 7, 2013, told Parliament that “the Government of India did not agree with the finding of Justice Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry (JMCI) that Netaji did not die in the plane crash. The government of India based on the reports of Shah Nawaz Committee and Justice Khosla Commission constituted on the question of the alleged death/disappearance of Bose came to the conclusion that Netaji died in the plane crash on August 18, 1945.”

          However, Sinha had accessed classified Soviet documents from Berlin that concerned Netaji’s death but was stopped by the government. Later he asked the Khosla Commission whether he could quote at least three lines from the documents, but it appears from the proceedings that the commission was not interested in listening to what Soviet intelligence documents had to say about Netaji and the topic was changed. 

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