The West Bengal government will release 64 files on Netaji which were classified
While all eyes are on what 64 files on Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose will reveal when they are made public by the West Bengal government today, there are scores that are already declassified, many in the National Archives in Delhi.
One such intelligence file declassified in 1997 reports that eight months after Netaji purportedly died in an air crash at Taihoku on 18 August, 1945, Mahatma Gandhi had publicly said he believed Netaji was alive.
Four months after he made the statement at a prayer meeting in Bengal, Gandhiji wrote an article, saying, "no reliance can be placed on such unsupported feeling".
The intelligence file - dated 8 April, 1946 - noted that Gandhiji ascribed the feeling to "an inner voice" but Congressmen believed it was based on secret information he got.
The file adds: "There is a secret report which says Nehru received a letter from Bose, saying he was in Russia and that he wanted to escape to India... It is probable that the letter from Bose arrived about the time that Gandhi made his public statement."
Netaji's grand-nephew Chandra Bose says Mahatma Gandhi knew something. "Gandhi insisted that the Bose family should not perform the
shraddh because there is a question mark regarding Subhas Bose's death," he said.
Ms Krishna Bose, head of Netaji Research Bureau and wife of Netaji's nephew, Dr Shishir Bose, said Gandhiji explained it all in the journal Harijan in April 1946.
"Some years ago, it was announced in the newspapers that Subhas Chandra Bose had died," Mahatma Gandhi wrote. "I believed the report. Later, the news was proved to have been incorrect. Since then I have had a feeling that Netaji could not leave us until his dream of
swaraj had been fulfilled. To lend strength to this feeling was the knowledge of Netaji's great ability to hoodwink his enemies... These were the only reasons for my belief that he was alive."
"Therefore, I had nothing but my instinct to tell me that Netaji was alive. No reliance can be placed on such unsupported feeling," Gandhiji wrote. "In the face of these proofs I appeal to everyone to forget what I have said and... reconcile themselves to the fact that Netaji has left us."
"I personally believe in the air crash. But if something else comes, we will have to change our mind about it," said Ms Krishna Bose.
Author of a book on Netaji, India's Biggest Cover up, Anuj Dhar, however, is not convinced.
"I will put my money on the report of the intelligence department that Gandhiji had information," he said, adding that Gandhi probably had information from Alfred Wegg, Chicago Tribune journalist who visited Taiwan.