Subhas Chandra Bose was born on January 23, 1897 in Cuttack, Orissa. His father Janaki Nath Bose was a famous lawyer and his mother Prabhavati Devi was a pious and religious lady. Subhas Chandra Bose was the ninth child among fourteen siblings. Subhas Chandra Bose was a brilliant student right from the childhood. He topped the matriculation examination of Calcutta province and graduated with a First class in Philosophy from the Scottish Churches College in Calcutta. He was strongly influenced by Swami Vivekananda's teachings and was known for his patriotic zeal as a student. To fulfill his parents wishes he went to England in 1919 to compete for Indian Civil Services. In England he appeared for the Indian Civil Service competitive examination in 1920, and came out fourth in order of merit. However, Subhas Chandra Bose was deeply disturbed by the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre, and left his Civil Services apprenticeship midway to return to India in 1921
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After returning to India Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose came under the influence of Mahatma Gandhi and joined the Indian National Congress. On Gandhiji's instructions, he started working under Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das, whom he later acknowledged his political guru. Soon he showed his leadership mettle and gained his way up in the Congress' hierarchy. In 1928 the Motilal Nehru Committee appointed by the Congress declared in favour of Domination Status, but Subhas Chandra Bose along with Jawaharlal Nehru opposed it, and both asserted that they would be satisfied with nothing short of complete independence for India. Subhas also announced the formation of the Independence League. Subhas Chandra Bose was jailed during Civil Disobedience movement in 1930. He was released in 1931 after Gandhi-Irwin pact was signed. He protested against the Gandhi-Irwin pact and opposed the suspension of Civil Disobedience movement specially when Bhagat Singh and his associates were hanged.
Subash Chandra Bose was soon arrested again under the infamous Bengal Regulation. After a year he was released on medical grounds and was banished from India to Europe. He took steps to establish centres in different European capitals with a view to promoting politico-cultural contacts between India and Europe. Defying the ban on his entry to India, Subash Chandra Bose returned to India and was again arrested and jailed for a year. After the General Elections of 1937, Congress came to power in seven states and Subash Chandra Bose was released. Shortly afterwards he was elected President of the Haripura Congress Session in 1938. During his term as Congress President, he talked of planning in concrete terms, and set up a National planning Committee in October that year. At the end of his first term, the presidential election to the Tripuri Congress session took place early 1939. Subhas Chandra Bose was re-elected, defeating Dr. Pattabhi Sitaramayya who had been backed by Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress Working Committee. Clouds of World War II were on the horizon and he brought a resolution to give the British six months to hand India over to the Indians, failing which there would be a revolt. There was much opposition to his rigid stand, and he resigned from the post of president and formed a progressive group known as the Forward Block.
Subhas Chandra Bose now started a mass movement against utilizing Indian resources and men for the great war. There was a tremendous response to his call and he was put under house arrest in Calcutta. In January 1941, Subhas Chandra Bose disappeared from his home in Calcutta and reached Germany via Afghanistan. Working on the maxim that "an enemy's enemy is a friend", he sought cooperation of Germany and Japan against British Empire. In January 1942, he began his regular broadcasts from Radio Berlin, which aroused tremendous enthusiasm in India. In July 1943, he arrived in Singapore from Germany. In Singapore he took over the reins of the Indian Independence Movement in East Asia from Rash Behari Bose and organised the Azad Hind Fauj (Indian National Army) comprising mainly of Indian prisoners of war. He was hailed as Netaji by the Army as well as by the Indian civilian population in East Asia. Azad Hind Fauj proceeded towards India to liberate it from British rule. Enroute it lliberated Andeman and Nicobar Islands. The I.N.A. Head quarters was shifted to Rangoon in January 1944. Azad Hind Fauj crossed the Burma Border, and stood on Indian soil on March 18 ,1944.
However, defeat of Japan and Germany in the Second World War forced INA to retreat and it could not achieve its objective. Subhas Chandra Bose was reportedly killed in an air crash over Taipeh, Taiwan (Formosa) on August 18, 1945. Though it is widely believed that he was still alive after the air crash not much information could be found about him.
Subhas Chandra Bose not died untill 1985:
The book is the result of a decade-long, focused research into the question of Netaji’s fate — something that has haunted generations of Indians all over the world. It takes an objective look at all the plausible scenarios and offers the reader clear conclusions and insights based on sound reasoning and unimpeachable source material. In brief, I have deduced that there are only but three possible explanations of what happened to Bose. One, as the official version goes, he was killed following an air crash in Taipei three days after his benefactor Japan decided to surrender to the Allies. Two, he did not die in Taipei because he was in the USSR after August 1945. Three, he was possibly in India in the guise of a holy man.
After going into all these theories with a fine tooth comb I have arrived at conclusions, some of which are even legally tenable. One, the air crash theory was just a smokescreen created by Bose and his Japanese friends, especially Field Marshal Count Hisaichi Terauchi, commander of the Japanese forces in South East Asia. Netaji knew that if he remained in Japan-controlled territory after the surrender, he would be arrested by the Anglo-Americans and tried as a war criminal. He was told by his aides that his capture would end the Independence movement as at that time only he was carrying out what we can call “struggle” for freedom. Two, all that has come on record makes it clear that Netaji was USSR-bound at the time his death was announced. With the available leads it would be fair to deduce that Bose was in Russia after August 1945. Three, the holy man angle is trickier than most people, especially the intelligentsia and historians, think. Beginning 1960s rumours, whispers and claims became rife in India that Netaji was alive in India as a holy man. The phenomenon was sought to be explained by some as nothing but government trickery to trivialize the issue and throw the public off the scent of Russian angle. But my findings are at variance. I have reasons to believe that the possibility of Bose being in India was indeed very real.
India’s Biggest Cover Up’ couldn’t have been written by any of the celebrated historians for the simple fact that there’s hardly any source material available in public domain. The subject matter of Netaji mystery falls into the domain of government secrecy and, therefore, only a journalist could have overcome this hurdle to the extent possible. In my book I have reproduced over 200 images from rare documents. Of these some 90 are from still secret Government of India records. The readers see them and they know that the narrative is authentic. Access to a wide pool of information, including thousands of previously classified pages accessed under RTI Act, and the fact that I had no axe to grind gave me an edge over any historian. I verified all the leads and documents to the best of my ability, and I am sure of my ground
It is not my claim that I know everything about this case — I possibly can’t — and that I have answers to every conceivable question. I have accessed only a fraction of the official information. Not everything will become clear unless a public debate takes place and more people, especially former intelligence officers, join in with their insights. In any case, my focus is to see whether or not there is evidence that Netaji died in 1945 and if he did survive, what happened to him afterwards. In that respect I can say that when Netaji’s death was announced, multiple inquiries were launched by the then British Indian government to verify it. Over the years people have been fed with a distorted impression that the Netaji mystery somehow sprouted from Bengal and that Bose “sightings” began with some conspiracy theorists. The fact of the matter is that it was a British military/intelligence officer who coined the nomenclature “Bose mystery” and the first man who saw Netaji after his reported death was an American journalist.
The British inquiries were exhaustive and inconclusive and that’s clearly evident from the reports that have survived. They also stated, to quote from one declassified report that it was "clear" that Bose was "trying to make a getaway to Russia"; his men were concealing information and Russian diplomats in different countries were speaking about his presence in their country. "There is little reason for such persons to bring Bose into fabricated stories," it commented.
Strangely, overlooking all these reports, Prime Minister Nehru suddenly began to take the line that Netaji had died in Taipei. I don’t understand why Panditji did that and why would he not make further inquiry or ask the Russians about Bose as one would expect in normal circumstances. To make things worse, there’s evidence that the Nehru government obstructed justice by concealing information that went against the air crash theory. But once this stance of the government/Nehru was asserted, for the Congress party leaders it became an article of faith. Now you cannot expect a Congress party member to say something which would contravene what Panditji had asserted.
If Mr Mullik, who died in 1984, were alive today, he would be in serious trouble because all I have done is to match his statements on record obtained under the RTI Act with documents that are either declassified or still secret. I have demonstrated that when he supplied the first public probe into Netaji’s reported death — the Shah Nawaz Committee of 1955 — a dossier of British-era reports, the first report in it was doctored to remove the last passages which spoke of doubts in the Japanese version. Imagine the IB, the agency whose job is to protect the nation, doing that sort of thing. Since Mullick, the father figure of Indian intelligence, had no personal issues with Bose, one can well imagine that this was done at the behest of his political bosses.
Today, IB and R&AW chief remain in saddle for two-three years but Mullick practically headed the entire Indian intelligence apparatus from 1948 to 1968. In 1970 he was summoned before the Khosla Commission to give evidence. The record of his oral evidence obtained under the RTI Act clearly shows that he misled the commission and even committed perjury. He was repeatedly asked whether or not the IB had snooped on Shaulmari Baba, a hermit alternatively described as Netaji in disguise and a “plant” by the Intelligence Bureau. Each time Mullik replied that the Government never asked the IB to track Shaulmari Baba and nor did the agency do that on its own, as the issue “did not concern national security”. But in my book I have shown images of formerly Top Secret records establishing that as IB chief Mullick personally supplied information to Prime Minister Nehru on Shaulmari Baba.
As I have stated, I don’t think and nor will any unprejudiced person that the evidence for Netaji’s dying in Taipei is not believable and it seems more likely, as confirmed by the Mukherjee Commission report, that he flew towards Russia as the Japanese circulated the news of his death in an air crash that never was. I personally believe that Netaji was in Russia and our government knew about it. But I have not come across anything to lend credence to the conspiracy theory that each of us have heard: Netaji was killed in the USSR. Subhas sought asylum from the Russians and it was given to him as per my thinking.
On the other hand, and very surprisingly, there’s this interesting tale of a mysterious holy man called Bhagwanji who secretly lived in several places in UP, lastly in Faizabad from 1983 to 85. In 1985, when Rajiv Gandhi was Prime Minister, Subhas Chandra Bose would have been 88 years old. Bhagwanji, or the so-called Gumnami Baba, was the same age and those who saw him identified him to be Netaji. On the face of it, this proposition appears utterly preposterous and I for a start was totally hostile towards the very idea that Netaji could have been alive and living amidst us as a holy man all the while he was presumed dead. It was against his DNA to remain in hiding, I thought. But as I dug deeper, my views began to change. I’d request everyone interested in the matter to go through the available details and then take an informed stand. Right now people are dismissing the issue out of hand without even trying to understand what’s all this about. It is not my claim that Bhagwanji of Faizabad was Netaji; all I am saying is that I probed the matter as a journalist and have found reasons that the possibility cannot be ruled out. For example, the handwritings of this man in English and Bangla matched with Netaji’s and that constitutes — like it or not — a direct evidence of Bose’s remaining alive decades after his reported death. If the counter argument is that the Faizabad holy man’s DNA test was negative, I have explained in the book that the same cannot be relied on as the test was conducted in a lab controlled by the Government whose agenda from the day one was to cover-up the matter.
After returning to India Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose came under the influence of Mahatma Gandhi and joined the Indian National Congress. On Gandhiji's instructions, he started working under Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das, whom he later acknowledged his political guru. Soon he showed his leadership mettle and gained his way up in the Congress' hierarchy. In 1928 the Motilal Nehru Committee appointed by the Congress declared in favour of Domination Status, but Subhas Chandra Bose along with Jawaharlal Nehru opposed it, and both asserted that they would be satisfied with nothing short of complete independence for India. Subhas also announced the formation of the Independence League. Subhas Chandra Bose was jailed during Civil Disobedience movement in 1930. He was released in 1931 after Gandhi-Irwin pact was signed. He protested against the Gandhi-Irwin pact and opposed the suspension of Civil Disobedience movement specially when Bhagat Singh and his associates were hanged.
Subash Chandra Bose was soon arrested again under the infamous Bengal Regulation. After a year he was released on medical grounds and was banished from India to Europe. He took steps to establish centres in different European capitals with a view to promoting politico-cultural contacts between India and Europe. Defying the ban on his entry to India, Subash Chandra Bose returned to India and was again arrested and jailed for a year. After the General Elections of 1937, Congress came to power in seven states and Subash Chandra Bose was released. Shortly afterwards he was elected President of the Haripura Congress Session in 1938. During his term as Congress President, he talked of planning in concrete terms, and set up a National planning Committee in October that year. At the end of his first term, the presidential election to the Tripuri Congress session took place early 1939. Subhas Chandra Bose was re-elected, defeating Dr. Pattabhi Sitaramayya who had been backed by Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress Working Committee. Clouds of World War II were on the horizon and he brought a resolution to give the British six months to hand India over to the Indians, failing which there would be a revolt. There was much opposition to his rigid stand, and he resigned from the post of president and formed a progressive group known as the Forward Block.
However, defeat of Japan and Germany in the Second World War forced INA to retreat and it could not achieve its objective. Subhas Chandra Bose was reportedly killed in an air crash over Taipeh, Taiwan (Formosa) on August 18, 1945. Though it is widely believed that he was still alive after the air crash not much information could be found about him.
Subhas Chandra Bose not died untill 1985:
The book is the result of a decade-long, focused research into the question of Netaji’s fate — something that has haunted generations of Indians all over the world. It takes an objective look at all the plausible scenarios and offers the reader clear conclusions and insights based on sound reasoning and unimpeachable source material. In brief, I have deduced that there are only but three possible explanations of what happened to Bose. One, as the official version goes, he was killed following an air crash in Taipei three days after his benefactor Japan decided to surrender to the Allies. Two, he did not die in Taipei because he was in the USSR after August 1945. Three, he was possibly in India in the guise of a holy man.
After going into all these theories with a fine tooth comb I have arrived at conclusions, some of which are even legally tenable. One, the air crash theory was just a smokescreen created by Bose and his Japanese friends, especially Field Marshal Count Hisaichi Terauchi, commander of the Japanese forces in South East Asia. Netaji knew that if he remained in Japan-controlled territory after the surrender, he would be arrested by the Anglo-Americans and tried as a war criminal. He was told by his aides that his capture would end the Independence movement as at that time only he was carrying out what we can call “struggle” for freedom. Two, all that has come on record makes it clear that Netaji was USSR-bound at the time his death was announced. With the available leads it would be fair to deduce that Bose was in Russia after August 1945. Three, the holy man angle is trickier than most people, especially the intelligentsia and historians, think. Beginning 1960s rumours, whispers and claims became rife in India that Netaji was alive in India as a holy man. The phenomenon was sought to be explained by some as nothing but government trickery to trivialize the issue and throw the public off the scent of Russian angle. But my findings are at variance. I have reasons to believe that the possibility of Bose being in India was indeed very real.
India’s Biggest Cover Up’ couldn’t have been written by any of the celebrated historians for the simple fact that there’s hardly any source material available in public domain. The subject matter of Netaji mystery falls into the domain of government secrecy and, therefore, only a journalist could have overcome this hurdle to the extent possible. In my book I have reproduced over 200 images from rare documents. Of these some 90 are from still secret Government of India records. The readers see them and they know that the narrative is authentic. Access to a wide pool of information, including thousands of previously classified pages accessed under RTI Act, and the fact that I had no axe to grind gave me an edge over any historian. I verified all the leads and documents to the best of my ability, and I am sure of my ground
It is not my claim that I know everything about this case — I possibly can’t — and that I have answers to every conceivable question. I have accessed only a fraction of the official information. Not everything will become clear unless a public debate takes place and more people, especially former intelligence officers, join in with their insights. In any case, my focus is to see whether or not there is evidence that Netaji died in 1945 and if he did survive, what happened to him afterwards. In that respect I can say that when Netaji’s death was announced, multiple inquiries were launched by the then British Indian government to verify it. Over the years people have been fed with a distorted impression that the Netaji mystery somehow sprouted from Bengal and that Bose “sightings” began with some conspiracy theorists. The fact of the matter is that it was a British military/intelligence officer who coined the nomenclature “Bose mystery” and the first man who saw Netaji after his reported death was an American journalist.
The British inquiries were exhaustive and inconclusive and that’s clearly evident from the reports that have survived. They also stated, to quote from one declassified report that it was "clear" that Bose was "trying to make a getaway to Russia"; his men were concealing information and Russian diplomats in different countries were speaking about his presence in their country. "There is little reason for such persons to bring Bose into fabricated stories," it commented.
Strangely, overlooking all these reports, Prime Minister Nehru suddenly began to take the line that Netaji had died in Taipei. I don’t understand why Panditji did that and why would he not make further inquiry or ask the Russians about Bose as one would expect in normal circumstances. To make things worse, there’s evidence that the Nehru government obstructed justice by concealing information that went against the air crash theory. But once this stance of the government/Nehru was asserted, for the Congress party leaders it became an article of faith. Now you cannot expect a Congress party member to say something which would contravene what Panditji had asserted.
If Mr Mullik, who died in 1984, were alive today, he would be in serious trouble because all I have done is to match his statements on record obtained under the RTI Act with documents that are either declassified or still secret. I have demonstrated that when he supplied the first public probe into Netaji’s reported death — the Shah Nawaz Committee of 1955 — a dossier of British-era reports, the first report in it was doctored to remove the last passages which spoke of doubts in the Japanese version. Imagine the IB, the agency whose job is to protect the nation, doing that sort of thing. Since Mullick, the father figure of Indian intelligence, had no personal issues with Bose, one can well imagine that this was done at the behest of his political bosses.
Today, IB and R&AW chief remain in saddle for two-three years but Mullick practically headed the entire Indian intelligence apparatus from 1948 to 1968. In 1970 he was summoned before the Khosla Commission to give evidence. The record of his oral evidence obtained under the RTI Act clearly shows that he misled the commission and even committed perjury. He was repeatedly asked whether or not the IB had snooped on Shaulmari Baba, a hermit alternatively described as Netaji in disguise and a “plant” by the Intelligence Bureau. Each time Mullik replied that the Government never asked the IB to track Shaulmari Baba and nor did the agency do that on its own, as the issue “did not concern national security”. But in my book I have shown images of formerly Top Secret records establishing that as IB chief Mullick personally supplied information to Prime Minister Nehru on Shaulmari Baba.
As I have stated, I don’t think and nor will any unprejudiced person that the evidence for Netaji’s dying in Taipei is not believable and it seems more likely, as confirmed by the Mukherjee Commission report, that he flew towards Russia as the Japanese circulated the news of his death in an air crash that never was. I personally believe that Netaji was in Russia and our government knew about it. But I have not come across anything to lend credence to the conspiracy theory that each of us have heard: Netaji was killed in the USSR. Subhas sought asylum from the Russians and it was given to him as per my thinking.
On the other hand, and very surprisingly, there’s this interesting tale of a mysterious holy man called Bhagwanji who secretly lived in several places in UP, lastly in Faizabad from 1983 to 85. In 1985, when Rajiv Gandhi was Prime Minister, Subhas Chandra Bose would have been 88 years old. Bhagwanji, or the so-called Gumnami Baba, was the same age and those who saw him identified him to be Netaji. On the face of it, this proposition appears utterly preposterous and I for a start was totally hostile towards the very idea that Netaji could have been alive and living amidst us as a holy man all the while he was presumed dead. It was against his DNA to remain in hiding, I thought. But as I dug deeper, my views began to change. I’d request everyone interested in the matter to go through the available details and then take an informed stand. Right now people are dismissing the issue out of hand without even trying to understand what’s all this about. It is not my claim that Bhagwanji of Faizabad was Netaji; all I am saying is that I probed the matter as a journalist and have found reasons that the possibility cannot be ruled out. For example, the handwritings of this man in English and Bangla matched with Netaji’s and that constitutes — like it or not — a direct evidence of Bose’s remaining alive decades after his reported death. If the counter argument is that the Faizabad holy man’s DNA test was negative, I have explained in the book that the same cannot be relied on as the test was conducted in a lab controlled by the Government whose agenda from the day one was to cover-up the matter.
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