Kin of Subhas Bose expressed anger over Nehru’s betray to Shah Nawaz Committee in 1956.
Mysteries regarding the sudden death or disappearance of the Indian freedom fighter and popular leader Subhas Chandra Bose, fondly called Netaji, refuse to die.
When India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, released a set of documents on the occasion of Bose’s death anniversary a couple of years ago, it revealed how skeptical his kin were about Nehru’s intentions to keep Subhas Bose safe.
“My contention is that Sri Nehru is suppressing the fact of Netaji being alive to the Indian public for his personal ends. He had always been an enemy of Netaji,” Subhas’s nephew told the Shah Nawaz Committee on June 9, 1956, DailyO reported.
As per official version, which was backed by Nehru, too, Bose died in Taiwan in 1945. It says that the airplane that carried Subhas got crashed, and the Indian leader died due to third degree burns. The report claims that the Indian government of the time exposed people to very selected information from Shah Nawaz Committee’s report. However, there were corroborating evidence that Nehru switched sides to ensure that Bose stays out of India, it claimed.
“He had betrayed Netaji after having promised to help him after Netaji had resigned from the Congress Presidentship in 1939. In 1942, in a public meeting Sri Nehru had publicly said that he would be the first Indian to take up his sword to fight Netaji unto death if he entered India,” testified Dwijendra Nath Bose, before the committee. Dwijendra was the son of Subhas’s elder brother Sudhir.
Dwijendra did not stop there. He went on to give supporting evidence to bolster his claims.
In a letter dated July 5, 1956, Dwijendra wrote to the committee, “On the 21st February 1942, at a public meeting at Shradhanand Park, Calcutta, Shri J L Nehru uttered the following against Netaji which was reported in Anandbazar Patrika and Hindustan Standard and some other newpapers of the 22nd February 1942:- ‘Let him not commit the error that they had fallen into the past by thinking that they could ask for the aid of any power outside. Therein lay dangers; therein lay peril; and if any of them thought in those terms, it was not any kind of courage, it was a sign of cowardice.'”
Dwijendra enumerated several instances before the committee to show Nehru’s hostility toward Subhas. Another incident that he brought to the fore was: “On the 2nd July 1945 the following report of Shri Nehru’s press conference in Simla held on the 1st July 1945 appeared in many newspapers:- “Asked what his attitude towards Subhas Bose today was, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru recalled that the statement which he made in reply to a similar question early in 1942 at Calcutta. He had then said that he fight against Subhas Bose if he were to come to India under the auspices of the Japanese Government because his coming to India then would have proved dangerous for the future of India. But after the Japanese war, if Subhas Bose were to come to India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru said it would be wrong to adopt any vindictive policy towards him. It was however a different matter as to under what conditions he (Subhas Bose) would be allowed to return to India.””
The plethora of documents have further thickened the secrets surrounding Subhas’s death.