'Netaji's memory and deeds deserve closure'

KOLKATA: Kolkata is in the midst of Netaji week. Each year, Subhas Chandra Bose's birthday on January 23 is a holiday and a solemn commemoration in a city and a state, West Bengal, still proud of their most glorious son. This year is special. We have just marked the 75th anniversary of Netaji's "Great Escape" - his driving out of his home in south Kolkata, under the nose of watching policemen who were keeping him under house arrest.
As is well-known, but fascinating to hear each time one is told or reads about it, Netaji left his house in the back seat of a car, disguised as an elderly Muslim gentleman, an insurance agent as he described himself on the train he boarded. Netaji boarded the train after driving from Kolkata to Gomoh (near Dhanbad, now in Jharkhand). At the wheel was his 20-year-old nephew, Sisir, later a doctor and public figure of repute in his own right. The uncle was fairly young too, only 43. He was never to return home.
The "Great Escape" began Netaji's great voyage across the world, in his quest to free India from the Raj. From Dhanbad he made it to the Northwest Frontier and crossed over to Afghanistan.
Disguised as an Italian, he travelled to Europe, before finally returning to Asia and Japan, where he took charge of the Indian National Army and gave it the energy and passion that led its soldiers to attempt to liberate India.
His public career ended in only his forties, but Netaji's achievements were spectacular. He was a popular and beloved leader far beyond Bengal, from Punjab to the South, from Pathans to Telugus, among Hindus and Muslims alike.
A few weeks ago, along with my friend and parliamentary colleague, the historian Sugata Bose - Sisir Bose's son, and a grand-nephew and biographer of Netaji - I travelled to Cuttack. It was an emotional visit for both of us.
I went to my grandfather's grave, paying my respects there for the first time in 20 years. My father's father is buried in Cuttack, a city he lived and died in and loved dearly, retiring as head of the Department of English at Ravenshaw College (now University). Sugata then took me to the Bose family's home in Cuttack, where Netaji was born in 1897. It has been maintained as a museum, and the Odisha government has done a wonderful job of looking after the building and the green areas surrounding it. Along with the Bose family homes in Kolkata, one of which is a museum to the Netaji saga, and the Kolkata-Gomoh "Great Escape" route, a little Netaji pilgrimage circuit is forming.
It is unfortunate that Netaji's death and the mystery and circumstances surrounding it have become such an obsession. Sometimes I feel they come in the way of us focusing on his great life. It is sad that even 70 years after the event, we don't have a final assessment of the air crash in Taipei in August 1945 that is supposed to have killed him.
Of course, there is no unanimity on that event. Even the Bose family, a large and illustrious clan now spread across the world, is divided on the subject. Some of its members believe Netaji died in that crash or immediately afterwards in hospital.Others are convinced he hoodwinked his adversaries, as he had earlier, and escaped.
Stories of where he may have gone, largely Russia, have been with us for decades. We don't know what happened to Netaji. What we do know is he was spied upon and the Bose family and its homes were the subject of surveillance not only by the British authorities but by Indian governments for years after Independence.
Obviously, some people were worried about the political threat from Netaji and did not want him back, if indeed he were alive. It is this cynical attitude for one of our national heroes that has given rise to the sentiment that he was treated unfairly and was a victim of a conspiracy.
In 2015, Mamata Banerjee did what she could as chief minister of West Bengal and declassified whatever Netaji-related papers were in the possession of the state government. Following this, the prime minister promised that on January 23, 2016, the Central government would start the process of declassifying its papers, including intelligence and surveillance documents, on Netaji, particularly on how governments in New Delhi, led by political opponents who feared Netaji, spied on him and his family well after 1947.
It has been 119 years Netaji's birth. Even if he survived the air crash of 1945, he is certainly dead by now. His political life is over. But his memory and his deeds deserve the dignity of closure. I do hope that by next year, by January 23, 2017, Netaji's 120th birthday, the declassified documents and any external inquiries we need to make - with the archives of the Russian or British governments for instance - can help us piece together Netaji's final destiny. He deserves it. Bengal deserves it. India deserves it.
As Mamata Banerjee so eloquently puts it, if Mahatma Gandhi is the Father of the Nation, Netaji deserves to be immortalised as the Leader of the Nation.