Files with foreign govts will be out: Ramchandra Guha

NEW DELHI: Historian Ramchandra Guha on Saturday termed a so-called letter written by Jawaharlal Nehru terming Subhash Chandra Bose a “war criminal” fake, but the note fanned Congress-BJP hostilities. Congress’s Anand Sharma took a sharp dig at BJP’s alleged bid to “appropriate” Bose, saying “BJP can’t claim any leader who was at the forefront of the freedom struggle”.
The BJP spokesperson responded, saying Congress had always privileged one family. “BJP condemns petty politics done by Congress and hails Modi government’s efforts to give back the respect deserved by great freedom fighters,” he said.
Unfazed by Congress’s outrage over BJP trying to “appropriate” national icons, PM Narendra Modi has been meeting members of the Bose family and proceeded to declassify the papers and had promised to get foreign governments like Russia, Taiwan, China and Japan to release documents in their possession. Though the letter, which has been doing the rounds of social media and websites, has not been authenticated, BJP pounced on the controversy to allege that the letter to then British PM Clement Attlee has come out “in which Nehru has termed the great freedom fighter Subhas Bose as a “war criminal”. This is an example of Congress tarring the image of leaders with a different viewpoint, BJP national secretary and spokesperson Shrikant Sharma said.
Left leaders also waded into the controversy, with CPM’s Sitaram Yechury saying, “There are many rules under law due to that files from archive could not be made public.Some other reasons were there. We are saying to PM make all files public at the same time so that truth can come out. PM has some strategy in doing this. He should clarify.”
The veteran leader of Forward Block Ashok Ghosh raised questions on the files too. “PM is speaking a lot on Netaji. As a member of Netaji’s party, I can say that a mystery over Netaji has been created by the government as a conspiracy,” he said.