Are those Netaji's remains in Renkoji? Tell us, Modi

The family of Subhas Chandra Bose which met Narendra Modi earlier this month has revealed that the prime minister, going by his statements to them, does not believe that the remains enshrined in the Renkoji Temple in Tokyo are of the freedom fighter.

That's the reason why the prime minister ignored an invitation from the Renkoji Temple, even though he met a Japanese aide of Netaji in Tokyo - something that was one of the major highlights of his Japan visit in September last year.

Now, why is it that the Bose family members and researchers like me do not accept that the ashes kept in the Renkoji Temple aren't those of Netaji? Have we been guided by mere wishful thinking or is there something on record which makes us take this stand?

All information on record - from Indian, Japanese, British and Taiwanese sources - is unambiguous that the man who died in the Nanmon military hospital in Taihoku (Taipei) in August, 1945 was a Japanese soldier named Ichiro Okura.

Secret Japanese government dossiers supplied to the government of India names him. Okura's name appears in the official records accessed by various authorities, with Justice MK Mukherjee, head of the last inquiry into Netaji's disappearance, doing so in the early 2000s.

In fact, the former Supreme Court judge provided the following telltale details in his report:

"The very fact that the Japanese Buddhist custom, viz, preservation of the dead body for three days before cremation which fits in the [case of] Ichiro Okura's death on the 19th [August, 1945] and his cremation three days thereafter, ie, on the 22nd [August, 1945], and picking up of bones from every portion of the body after the cremation and keeping the same with the ashes was adhered to, is another circumstance which indicates that the body cremated and the mortal remains taken there were of Ichiro Okura and not Netaji."

With that being the true state of affairs, where do we stand regarding the DNA test of the Renkoji remains?

Every now and then, someone pops up to pontificate that the Subhas Chandra Bose mystery could be "easily" cracked if the ashes assumed to be his are subjected to a DNA test! Well, people trying to resolve the mystery aren't living in cloud cuckoo land!

Come to think of it, our government first toyed with the idea of a "mitochondrial DNA analysis of the ashes presumed to be of Netaji" way back in 1996, when most Indians hadn't even heard of DNA testing. I know of this because there is a secret note dated September 19, 1996 from S Prakash, joint secretary, ministry of home affairs (MHA) to the prime mminister's office (PMO) regarding it.

The contents of this note are not known. But one does know that no such test was ever attempted, even though the then foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee (now our honourable President) was reportedly keen on it at one point of time. For reasons best known to him, he wanted to prove that Bose had died following an air crash which, we now know, thanks to what the Taiwanese government first informed me in 2003, never took place.

On his part, Justice Mukherjee did his best to get a DNA test done. Experts from the United Kingdom, the US, Japan and India, including Sir Alec Jeffreys, who originally developed the techniques for DNA fingerprinting and DNA profiling, opined that such a test did not appear feasible given the badly charred condition of the assumed remains now enshrined in Tokyo's Renkoji Temple.

The container holding the remains was opened and the remains photographed by the Indian embassy officials in Japan at Justice Mukherjee's directive.

All the same, the American expert offered to give it a shot but only after a "thorough anthropological evaluation of the remains" was done first. Such an evaluation might have determined whether or not the pieces of skull and jaw bones in Renkoji Temple did actually belong to an east Indian man who was around 48 when he was cremated in 1945.

At that point, our government developed cold feet and no test could be carried out.

If you raise your political antennae a little higher, you will understand why.