How Netaji's kin are fuelling mystery around his disappearance

A website being run from London by a Congress-backing grand-nephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose continues to muddy the waters about the freedom fighter's fate with its selective releases.

The latest from Netaji's grand-nephew, Ashis Ray, is that he has been informed by a certain "diplomatic source" that "India should approach Japan for a DNA test on Subhas Bose's remains" said to be kept at Tokyo's Renkoji temple.

"A DNA test," says Ray, "could end the controversy over Bose's death once and for all."

To buttress the demand, Ray, a former journalist, quotes Netaji's daughter Prof Anita Pfaff as having told an Indian daily that a DNA test should be attempted.

Not that I have any opposition to a DNA test on the Renkoji remains, but things aren't always what they seem to be.

For a start, Ray is not telling us that Anita, in a recent interview, to India Today made an inexplicable statement that if a DNA test proved that the Renkoji remains were not Netaji's, as she had asserted for years, it would still "not prove that the plane crash did not occur".

Incredibly enough, in the same interview, Anita claimed that "you can present any amount of proof but certain people will not believe" that Bose died in an air crash in Taiwan.

In other words, come what may, Anita would stick to her stand that Netaji did die in Taiwan - something that her mother, and Netaji's wife, Emilie Schenkl bitterly opposed till her death in 1996.

Anita's attitude towards her father's fate appears to have been influenced by president Pranab Mukherjee, who, among other things, distorted the views of Bose's wife about his fate in a top secret record.

Also read: Did Pranab Mukherjee falsify Netaji's wife on how Bose died?

Ray says that in September 1995, he suggested a DNA test on "Bose's remains" in a letter to the then prime minister PV Narasimha Rao. He has posted on his site the following letter he wrote subsequently to Mukherjee, then India's external affairs minister. Ray sources the letter to a file declassified by the Narendra Modi government.

While in this letter Ray has referred to the Renkoji remains as those "said to belong to Netaji", in another letter he wrote to the defence secretary on March 8, 1996 he stated that he was "trying very hard to pave the way for the remains of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, lying at Tokyo's Renkoji temple, to be brought to India". He added that he was "indebted to the government of India" (then led by the Congress) for the "cooperation and support that has been extended to me".

The problem with Ray is that he presents facts as he sees them, not as they are. His line on the possibility of a DNA test on the Renkoji remains is devoid of any adverse remark against the Congress-led government he was lobbying with.

Otherwise, how can a seasoned journalist like him fail to take a note of the subsequent development as recorded in the released files that Ray has evidently scoured through?

A declassified note refers to a still secret file (No 1/12014/27/93-IS. DIII). It is mentioned in this file that the demand for a DNA test was raised by Ray as well as his aunt Chitra Ghosh.

A niece of Netaji, Chitra was the leader of the delegation (including the members of pressure group "Mission Netaji" this writer represents) which met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on October 14 last year. It was at this meeting that the prime minister announced that the process of the declassification of the Netaji files would commence from January 23, 2016. Neither Prof Pfaff nor Ray played any role in the movement seeking declassification of the Netaji files.

Ray's response to Modi's historic announcement to declassify files was derisive and loaded with political overtones.

All the same, the note in the secret file records that the Congress government of the 1990s, which Ray was beholden to, decided not to subject the Renkoji remains to a DNA test "as it is likely to generate unnecessary controversy". Ray has chosen to skip this aspect. Is it because stating so would reflect negatively on the party he supports?

Not that the BJP fared any better in this regard. The fear that hounded the Narasimha Rao government also subdued the AB Vajpayee-led government in 2003 as it faced repeated demands from the Justice Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry to enable it to carry out such the DNA test.

The Vajpayee-led government could not summon the courage to carry out the test and, therefore, deserves more censure than its predecessor government led by the Congress. A 2003 file noting summed up the dilemma. "If the result is in positive then the entire issue will be resolved. In case the result comes in negative as to the DNA result does not tally with the biological samples connected with relatives, one can imagine the reaction of the nation."

The point to ponder over is this: of the 100 files declassified by the Modi government last month, more than two dozen deal specifically with Netaji's so-called remains in Renkoji temple. Starting from the Nehruvian era down to the Manmohan years, none of the governments (except the Morarji Desai government) seem to have had an iota of doubt that the remains are of Netaji. Throughout these years bureaucrats and politicians dithered over the course of action regarding the ashes, even as they tried every possible means to overcome the resistance from the people of the country to bring them back to India.

In view of their conviction, the easiest route to bring a closure to the remains controversy would have been to subject them to a forensic examination. Why, then, did they not do it? Why were they not convinced of their own apparent conviction? Why were they even considering the fallout of a negative result of such a forensic test? This could mean only one thing. In spite of their bravado, the establishment never accepted wholeheartedly that the Renkoji remains were of Netaji.

Going forward, what is the way out now?

Of course the Renkoji remains must be subjected to scientific tests, including a DNA test.

In a previous article, I suggested that this DNA test could be carried out by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Also read: What's stopping Modi sarkar from doing a DNA test on Netaji's 'ashes'?

If the FBI's expertise could be sought in resolving the death mysteries of Bhanwari Devi and Sunanda Pushkar, what prevents India from approaching the American agency over the Subhas Chandra Bose case?

However, there is one little irritant which would need to be sorted out before this test is undertaken. It concerns one Bose kin with a link to the Congress and his top secret mission to Japan with the blessings of Anita. I will detail that with supporting documents in a future article.