With different scholars having different takes on whether Netaji Subhas Bose died in an air crash in Taiwan in 1945, the controversy over his disappearance is unlikely to die soon.
One key source dealing at length with the Bose disappearance is a well-documented 2011 book by his grandnephew and scholar Sugata Bose.
In a chapter of the book, titled His Majesty’s Opponent , Mr. Bose deals at length with accounts of the events of 1945 and afterwards and comes to the considered view that Netaji did die in hospital in Taiwan after the plane crash. While he sees accounts that Netaji lived long after the crash as either rumours or wilful fabrications, ICHR member Purabi Roy says her research suggests Netaji was alive in the early 1950s and the crash may never have occurred.
Sugata Bose makes it clear Netaji’s close Indian National Army confidant Habibur Rahman – who accompanied Bose on the flight and survived the crash -- broke the sad news to other INA colleagues.
Two inquiries the British instituted pre-Independence corroborated this, Bose adds. The first, in 1945 itself, quizzed the chief medical officer at the Taipei hospital and Japanese military officers. The British instituted the second inquiry in 1946. Both concluded that Netaji had died, Bose’s book recalls.
Interestingly, a statement by Mahatma Gandhi in early 1946 that he felt Bose hadn’t died was read both by the government and people as hidden information he had. Gandhi clarified in the Harijan months later that strong evidence suggested Netaji was no more.
The Nehru government instituted an inquiry, headed by INA veteran Shah Nawaz Khan and having Bose’s eldest surviving brother as a member. This three-member inquiry committee quizzed Habibur Rahman, four Japanese survivors, doctors who had attended to Bose and even the Japanese interpreter who had met Bose in hospital and several times before. The committee concluded that Netaji had indeed died but his brother wrote a dissenting note as a member.
While an enquiry under the Indira government in 1970 also concluded the same, the Justice Manoj Mukherjee Commission set up by Atal Bihari Vajpayee said the plane crash never took place, as Taiwan had no records pertaining to it. Sugata Bose disagrees, arguing that since Taiwan was under Japanese military occupation in 1945, the later Chiang Kai-shek administration could not be expected to have the records.
ICHR member Purabi Roy, who has researched Bose’s disappearance, holds a view very different from Sugata Bose, however.
“In 1952, some CPI leaders like SA Dange met Stalin and discussed about Netaji. Dange’s daughter had recorded the conversation. This revealed that Netaji was alive at that time,” she told The Hindu over the phone. She added that even Gandhiji doubted that Netaji had died in the air crash.
