Excerpts India's Biggest Cover-up

228 Copyrighted Material

Copyrighted Material

For any government in a mature democratic polity such a public damnation over a national icon would have sprung the head of the government to issue clarification. But it was not for nothing that Narasimha Rao was likened to the Sphinx.

A feeble counteroffensive was launched in December 1996. Researcher Joychandra Singh told media there was nothing more to the Bose mystery other than the Taipei crash. He claimed that Russia too upheld this theory. This he attributed to a response he had received from the Russian defence ministry archives in Moscow.

Quite remarkable that a private citizen like Singh should have been able to elicit a direct response from the Russians, who hardly ever entertained such requests. But Singh had strong credentials. He had the tacit support of the Government. He had earlier been able to procure a counterfeit death certificate for Bose issued by Dr Yoshimi in 1988. The MEA records show that a Russian defence ministry note verbale dated 28 October 1996 was received by the Indian embassy from the Russian foreign ministry enclosing a letter from head of the archives in response to Singh’s letter. “There are no records with the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation about the catastrophe in August 1945 and death of...Bose.”

Joychandra Singh put his own spin on this to give journalists the impression that Russia upheld the Indian government-approved theory. He harped on his “12-year-old research”45 on the issue, which had been inspired by a communication from the Indira Gandhi government urging him to propagate the Taipei death story.

Singh ran out of steam soon after, while Dr Purabi Roy continued to take the Government to task alone. “If they are confident that Netaji was actually killed in a plane crash in 1945, why have they always tried to scuttle any fresh investigation? If they are clean, let them provide us access to the two archives and see what’s there?”46 In 1996, she chanced to reach out to the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation. Viktor Chernomyrdin mooted the idea of an Indo-Russian commission to investigate the missing Indian nationals within the territory of the erstwhile USSR.

But was anyone interested in India? RL Narayan, the Joint Secretary in charge of Europe East Division of the External Affairs Ministry—JS (EE)—made an assessment of the situation in 1996. In the note of 12 January 1996, Narayan, who had had two stints in Moscow, admitted that “from time to time various articles have appeared in the Soviet/Russia press insinuating, though without any actual proof that Netaji in fact stayed/was incarcerated in the Soviet Union after 1945”.

The note then set out to tackle the Asiatic Society’s poser that “unless the Ministry of External Affairs of our Government prevails upon the Russian authorities to allow our scholars access to KGB archives it is absolutely impossible for the scholars to pursue the matter further either of this country or of scholars of Russia”.

229Copyrighted Material


Explaining the backdrop, Narayan mentioned that

there are broadly three kinds of archives which may be of relevance. Papers relating to the Stalinist period (KGB archives) are kept separately and have so far not been accessed by foreign and even Russian scholars, with the exception perhaps of very limited and selected scholars like the late historian Volkogonov, who has published biographies of Lenin and Stalin on this basis. Papers relating to the post-Stalin period fall into two categories—governmental and Central Committee/Politburo (these are again kept separately). The Russian foreign ministry’s note verbale suggests that their disclaimer about Netaji may be based essentially on perusal of these latter archives.

With this setting in mind, he opined:

It would be unrealistic for us to expect the Russian authorities to allow our schol-ars to access to KGB archives. What we can do is to request the Russian authorities to conduct a search into these archives, and let us know if there is any evidence of Netaji’s stay in the Soviet Union. It is recommended that we may request our Ambassador in Moscow to make a suitable démarche to the Russian authorities on the above lines.

Document obtained in public interest

Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee saw this note and scrawled at the end that FS [Foreign Secretary Salman Haidar] should discuss the issue with the JS (EE) “urgently”.

The details of that meeting between Haidar and Narayan are not known. Haidar goes off on TV these days talking at great length about all sort of happening in remote corners of the world, never saying a word about Bose. Document obtained in public interest



But the outcome of the meeting was evident in the actions that followed. No démarche was ever issued, as was recommended by Narayan. On the contrary, he started taking a hard line against the Asiatic Society scholars. Narayan was confronted with the problem yet again after Subhas’s nephew Pradip, son of Suresh Bose, wrote to Prime Minister drawing his attention to the information said to be available in Russia.

The Joint Secretary now articulated in his note dated 7 March 1996 that the scholars had “unearthed no hard evidence of Netaji’s stay in Soviet Union” and yet requested the Government to make a formal request to the Russians. Pradip Bose, he noted, “has gone a step further and has requested [the] Government of India to seek access to these files for the scholars”. Narayan opposed it tooth and nail, saying that “no country in the world would permit access by foreign governments, let alone scholars from foreign countries, to its intelligence files”.

We have no evidence that such files exist; on the contrary, the Russian govern-ment has categorically told us that they have no evidence in their archives that Netaji was in the USSR after 1945. ...In the circumstances, it is felt that it would not be appropriate for Government of India to request to the Russian government to open the KGB/Presidential Archives to the Asiatic Society scholars. This would amount to our disbelieving the Russian government’s categorical and official statement on the subject.

This note was seen by Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, who issued the following instruction through his secretary:

PM would like our Ambassador in Mos-cow to make discreet enquiries at a high level to ascertain, if possible, the existence of such information in Russia; and the possible reac-tion of the Russian side if we were to request ac-cess. Foreign Secretary may kindly see.

S o , t h e P M was well aware of the importance of a “high leve l” contact . But whatever the ambassador


231Copyrighted Material


did in Moscow did not change anything. In his November 1996 note, Narayan charged the Asiatic Society scholars with wanting to access to Russian archives “essentially in order to go on a fishing expedition in search of material on Netaji” which they “have convinced themselves, exists in these archives”.

Therefore,

our seeking to obtain access to these classified archives on behalf of the Asiatic Society, after the Russian government has repeatedly and formally told us that they have no evidence of Netaji having been in the Soviet Union after 1945 can therefore be easily misunderstood by the Russian side. From the present perspective of Indo-Russian relations, such a request would serve no positive purpose, but could well have a negative impact.

Narayan—a would-be ambassador—also tried to reason why India could not seek access to security and intelligence-related archives in Russia like the Presidential Archive, the archives of the Foreign Security Service and the Archives of the Army General Staff.


Was the task as uphill as it appeared from Raisina Hill? “Access” is not to be understood in its general meaning. If the R&AW were to give some British expert probing terrorist outfits threatening both nations an access to its records, it wouldn’t simply invite the expert to visit its ultra secret record room and let him roam free and pick out anything he wants. The “access” will be a controlled release of information sought by the expert, but vetted and cleared by the Indian officials. This was precisely what then Intelligence Bureau chief Atma Jayaram meant when GD Khosla asked him if the IB had “presented whatever material you had to the Shah Nawaz Committee”.

We do not present any material as an organisation but we have given them access to our material. 47



Around the time the Indian government refused assistance to the Asiatic Society scholars in accessing security and intelligence-related archives in Russia, the members of Russian-Swedish Working Group on Wallenberg were being given an access to such archives. It is axiomatic that where there is a will, there is a way. The very idea of the formation of this group had been suggested at a meeting Swedish ambassador had with the Soviet foreign ministry and the KGB officials in 1991. Most significantly, “Kryuchkov, then head of the KGB, received Örjan Berner, the Swedish Ambassador, and undertook to release all KGB employees with some knowledge of the matter from their pledge of secrecy”.48

Will the Russians ever do the same for Subhas? Can we expect our IB and R&AW chiefs to make similar announcement?

Accessing intelligence archives in Russia was not that sort of an issue that our government made it out. Given the friendly vibes between the Russians and us, they would be much more open to us than they were to the Swedes—who were openly hostile towards them. Furthermore, it was preposterous to speculate what we would do if the Russians asked us for access to our archives. Because, one, we had no skeletons to hide and, two, it was fairly common for two friendly nations to exchange current, operational intelligence, leave aside records from a bygone era. A classic illustration was recently provided by Prof Christopher Andrew, world’s most respected intelligence scholar and writer of the authorised history of the MI5. He told the DNA of Mumbai in an interview that during the Nehru years the Intelligence Bureau had actually invited the MI5 “to come over and have a look at the records that the IB has collected on the Moscow subsidies to the Communist Party of India”.49

The point to ponder is that can a government which itself is sitting on loads of classified records on a man have the face to ask a foreign government to release records about him? We Indians should first make a clean breast of whatever we know about Netaji and then approach the foreigners. Charity should always begin at home.

Speaking of foreigners, there are great many things—more about compassion than investigation—that we need to learn from the Swedes. In 2000 the Russian–Swedish group presented its findings on Raoul Wallenberg. The Swedish report concluded that “Wallenberg’s death could only be accepted if it were confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt” and that it had “not happened, partly for the want of a credible death certificate, and partly because the testimony about Raoul Wallenberg being alive after 1947 cannot be dismissed”.50 That is, the Swedes refused to treat the Smoltsov memorandum as evidence of Wallenberg’s death even though it mentioned his name. And here we are in India, willing to accept the Japanese foreign ministry’s assertion that the records pertaining to soldier Ichiro Okura were for Bose somehow.

India’s Biggest Cover-up by Anuj Dhar. Vitasta Publishing, New Delhi, 2012.

Documents

Excerpts India's Biggest Cover-up