Desecration of sacred memory of Netaji

Historians whether of the Left or of the Right may colour their political perspectives and sit in judgement on the struggle for supremacy among leaders in the Congress party but any deliberate attempt to denigrate leaders on mere assumptions is unjust and uncalled for

Whether Netaji who waged a valiant war against the British yoke died in or survived the 1945 air crash near Taipei or returned alive to India in the guise of a Sadhu and spent the later part of his life in spiritual pursuits on the banks of the Yamuna without any concern for the trials and tribulations of millions of Indians in the post-independence period, should now be a stuff for a pot-boiler and not a fodder for rumour-mongering self-seeking politicians who are bent on perpetuating the mystery of his sudden disappearance from the mainstream politics of India after 1945.

A common man on the streets of India would tell us that that the tallest patriot of India such as Netaji would not live like a recluse on the heights of Himalayas, and go on chanting mantras for his redemption by closing his eyes to the bleeding voices after the fateful partition of India.

Was he such an Indian as to bury all his revolutionary fire and patriotic commitment deep down the banks of the Yamuna, watch the unfolding political scenario of Nehru-Gandhi leadership passively and detach himself in word, deed and thought from the task of building up a nascent independent India?

Couldn’t he have thought of how conspiracy theorists and clutches of doubters would treat his self-imposed absence from the mainstream of politics and exploit his iconic image among millions of his admirers to suit their political ends? Back in India and that too alive in the supposedly garb of a Sadhu, could such a noble soul be imagined biding his time to settle scores with no less noble national icons like Gandhiji, Nehru, Patel et al and take on them all of a sudden?

Whether the declassified files further deepen the mystique surrounding Netaji or unravel him once and for all, the martyred revolutionary and noblest son of India is now haplessly put on the centre-stage of nefarious politics of unconscionable political parties each claiming him as their legal heir and reading between the lines of the already declassified files for maximum misinterpretation.

A shrewd politician like Mamata Banerjee has lagged behind none and pre-empted the Centre’s move to declassify 64 files, not because she has suddenly found in Netaji “the only national leader of India” but because elections are round the corner in her West Bengal.

The effete Congress party which was scared of even broaching the subject of the disappearance of Netaji is now relieved that the declassified files have so far not cast aspersions on the role of the architect of modern India Nehruji although the National Archives is yet to release 25 files every month ahead.

The Congress party has already said that the periodic release of the files is “selective” and smacks of ‘political motivation’ of the ruling BJP party. There are also rumours in circulation of “forged letters’’ with the sole objective of denigrating the first Prime Minister of India and his role in the disappearance of Netaji.

Historians whether of the Left or of the Right may colour their political perspectives and sit in judgement on the struggle for supremacy among leaders in the Congress party but any deliberate attempt to denigrate leaders on mere assumptions is unjust and uncalled for.

Political analysts have recently come across a letter ‘ purportedly written by Jawaharlal Nehru to the British PM at ’10 Down Street’ and termed it as ‘as a forged one and a fake.

Professor Gordon of the Taraknath Foundation, South Asia Institute, Columbia, and author of ‘Brothers Against the Raj; A Biography of Indian Nationalist Leaders Sarat and Subhas Chandra Bose’ rubbished the contents of this letter purportedly written by the Prime Minister Nehru to British Prime Minister Clement Atlee in which he supposedly referred to Netaji “as your war time criminal” as definitely “phony” and “a fabrication.. full of mistakes and misspellings.”

He further added that “Nehru was a meticulous user of English…We don’t know when it (the letter) was put in the cache of declassified documents. Nehru would not write such a thing” and he called the classification “a case of undue official secrecy.”

True, nationalists of those turbulent times who debunked Bose’s determination to join hands with Germans and Japanese against the British yoke realised later that Nehru was all praise for the intrepid commitment of Bose to the redemption of India from the British yoke and hailed the supreme sacrifices of the soldiers of the Indian National Army despite his aversion to the tactics adopted by it..

The greatest leader must have shuffled off his mortal coil somewhere in Taipei or Russia or China. The fact of his death is indeed irrefutable. It also matters little once we realise that the flame of his sacred memory always burns bright as ever in the hearts of millions of patriotic Indians inspiring them to dedicate themselves to the service of the nation. Let us not desecrate his memory for sheer political gains.