The patriot who will never die
Skip to main content
  • Home
  • Economy
  • Stocks
  • Analysis
  • World+Biz
  • Sports
  • Splash
  • Features
  • Videos
  • Long Read
  • Games
  • Epaper
  • More
    • COVID-19
    • Bangladesh
    • Infograph
    • Interviews
    • Offbeat
    • Thoughts
    • Podcast
    • Quiz
    • Tech
    • Subscribe
    • Archive
    • Trial By Trivia
    • Magazine
    • Supplement
  • বাংলা
The Business Standard
WEDNESDAY, MAY 18, 2022
WEDNESDAY, MAY 18, 2022
  • Home
  • Economy
  • Stocks
  • Analysis
  • World+Biz
  • Sports
  • Splash
  • Features
  • Videos
  • Long Read
  • Games
  • Epaper
  • More
    • COVID-19
    • Bangladesh
    • Infograph
    • Interviews
    • Offbeat
    • Thoughts
    • Podcast
    • Quiz
    • Tech
    • Subscribe
    • Archive
    • Trial By Trivia
    • Magazine
    • Supplement
  • বাংলা
The patriot who will never die

South Asia

Ronojoy Sen, Hindustan Times
23 January, 2021, 07:00 pm
Last modified: 23 January, 2021, 08:19 pm

Related News

  • Australian cricket legend Rod Marsh dies after heart attack
  • Chicago blues drummer Sam Lay dies at 86
  • Another worker dies in GPH Ispat gas cylinder blast
  • At least 7 Bangladeshi migrants on boat to Lampedusa die of hypothermia
  • Music legend Meat Loaf passes away at 74

The patriot who will never die

As West Bengal heads to elections this year, Netaji’s legacy is once again up for grabs

Ronojoy Sen, Hindustan Times
23 January, 2021, 07:00 pm
Last modified: 23 January, 2021, 08:19 pm
Part of the continuing fascination with Bose is the attraction of the rebel. His dramatic escape from house arrest in Calcutta in 1941 and arrival in Berlin is the stuff of myth.(Photo: HT Archives)
Part of the continuing fascination with Bose is the attraction of the rebel. His dramatic escape from house arrest in Calcutta in 1941 and arrival in Berlin is the stuff of myth.(Photo: HT Archives)

There are few Indian icons around whom there is such a vivid mythology and "life-after-life" as one biographer put it, as Netaji Subhas Bose. Leonard Gordon, who has written one of the standard biographies of Bose, noted in 1990 that Netaji's story had "begun to resemble that of an Indian deity". Not much has changed in 2021, the 125th birth anniversary of Bose.

As West Bengal heads to elections this year, Netaji's legacy is once again up for grabs. The central government has announced that Netaji's birth anniversary will be celebrated as Parakram Diwas. It has also set up a committee to plan year-long anniversary programmes. The Trinamool Congress has countered this by saying that the day should be remembered as Desh Prem Diwas. It has also pointed out that West Bengal celebrates Bose's birthday every year as Subhas Diwas and that their plea that his birthday be declared a national holiday has found no takers.

Thus, Netaji is well and truly alive in Bengal politics and the people's minds. While the current claims and counter claims over Bose is geared toward electoral gains, his memory endures because of the many what-ifs associated with him. That is why Gopalkrishna Gandhi suggests that Bose continues to be popular since he serves as an "alter ego to the nation's power structure".

Part of the continuing fascination with Bose is the attraction of the rebel. His dramatic escape from house arrest in Calcutta in 1941 and arrival in Berlin is the stuff of myth. Bose's subsequent setting up of the Indian National Army and his alliance with the Japanese is also well known. What is less known is that Netaji was a maverick since his early days. He was not only expelled from the elite Presidency College, he also spurned, in 1921, the dream job of any self-respecting Bengali — a chance to become part of the Indian Civil Service. This non-conformism would surface at different phases of Netaji's tumultuous political career.

A strong reason for Bose's appeal is that, as historian Sugata Bose puts it, Netaji's legend "cuts across religious, linguistic, and national boundaries." Yet another cause for Bose's popularity is the belief he was a strongman, who could have steered the nationalist movement and independent India in a different direction from Jawaharlal Nehru.

Netaji's mysterious death in an air crash in Taiwan in August 1945 and the clutch of conspiracy theories around it have also fuelled the myths around Bose. Everybody loves a good conspiracy, especially those surrounding a sudden or violent death. In the case of Netaji, his antagonism to mainstream nationalist politics and his links with fascists made him a particularly apposite candidate for conspiracy theories.

Sugata Bose, who is also a grandnephew of Netaji, notes that an overwhelming majority of Netaji's closest associates believed that he had died in the crash. However, since 1946, there began ''sightings'' of Netaji in different locations. Perhaps the first such ''sighting'' was recorded in 1946 when a certain KSM Swamy claimed to have met Netaji in a third-class compartment of the Bombay Express. Since then Netaji spotting became a cottage industry. One of the better known of these theories was the discovery that Netaji had resurfaced as a Hindu ascetic — Gumnami Baba — in Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh. Indeed, there were several Hindu sadhus who had been linked to Netaji at various times.

An organisation called the Subhasbadi Janata kept these stories in circulation through pamphlets, newspapers and weekly meetings. At the same time, there were rumours of Netaji having shown up in Russia or China. The Netaji sightings peaked in the 1960s when there was a general disillusionment with politics of the day.

These rumours might have died down had not the Indian State stepped in and set up a commission to investigate the death of Bose. This had the effect of legitimising, in a sense, the conspiracy theories. The first was the Netaji Inquiry Committee, set up in 1956, consisting of a former comrade of Netaji, Shah Nawaz Khan, an elder brother of Netaji, Suresh Bose, and a government officer. The committee went through the evidence, including interviewing the Japanese doctor who treated Netaji after the crash, and found that Netaji had died in 1945. Its findings were, however, undermined by the dissent of Suresh Bose who stated that Netaji was still alive.

In 1970, another inquiry commission headed by Justice G.D. Khosla was instituted. There was some remarkable testimony before the panel: A bank official from Sholapur claimed that he received direct messages from Netaji by tuning his body like a radio. The Khosla report, like the earlier commission, concluded that Netaji had indeed died in the crash.

A one-man commission, headed by a retired high court judge, Manoj Mukherjee, was the third such body to look into the Netaji mystery. After six years of hearings, Mukherjee concluded in 2006 that the air crash that killed Bose had not happened. It did so on the flimsy basis that the government of Taiwan did not have records of the crash. Sugata Bose has a simple explanation for this, pointing out that Taiwan had then been under Japanese occupation. He adds that the Mukherjee Commission "made no distinction between the highly probable and the utterly impossible." However, the Mukherjee Commission, as well another one headed by Justice Vishnu Sahay, found no credible evidence that Gumnami Baba was Bose.

But this too has not stopped the conspiracy theories. In 2019, a Bengali feature film titled, Gumnaami, directed by Srijit Mukherjee lent credence to the theory that Gumnami Baba might indeed have been Netaji in disguise. The same year, a book titled Conundrum peddled the same theory. While several descendants of Bose publicly voiced their disapproval of the film, Mukherjee stated he was merely putting before the pubic different theories about Netaji's "disappearance" in 1945.

Top News / World+Biz

Patriot / never / die

Comments

While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderation decisions are subjective. Published comments are readers’ own views and The Business Standard does not endorse any of the readers’ comments.

Top Stories

  • Social safety budget to stay same despite inflation rise
    Social safety budget to stay same despite inflation rise
  • RMG makers worried over move on power tariff hike
    RMG makers worried over move on power tariff hike
  • A packet of US five-dollar bills is inspected at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington March 26, 2015. REUTERS/Gary Cameron
    Dollar hits Tk100 mark in open market

MOST VIEWED

  • Sri Lanka's President Gotabaya Rajapaksa presents his national statement as a part of the World Leaders' Summit at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, Britain November 1, 2021. Andy Buchanan/Pool via REUTERS
    Sri Lanka parliament blocks move to condemn president, lawmakers arrested over violence
  • Photo: Pakistan Supreme Court(The Dawn)
    Pak SC decides defecting lawmakers’ votes will not be counted
  • Labourers wearing masks shift wheat crop from a trolley to remove dust from the crop at a wholesale grain market during an extended nationwide lockdown to slow the spreading of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Chandigarh, India April 17, 2020. REUTERS/Ajay Verma/Files
    US envoy urges India to ‘reconsider’ wheat export ban: ‘Will worsen...’
  • Photo :ANI via Hindustan Times
    India planning to launch 6G services by end of decade: Modi
  • File Photo: REUTERS/Altaf Hussain
    Indo-Nepal ties ‘unshakable like Himalayas’: Modi
  • Photo: AFP
    India's April wholesale price inflation accelerates to 15.08%

Related News

  • Australian cricket legend Rod Marsh dies after heart attack
  • Chicago blues drummer Sam Lay dies at 86
  • Another worker dies in GPH Ispat gas cylinder blast
  • At least 7 Bangladeshi migrants on boat to Lampedusa die of hypothermia
  • Music legend Meat Loaf passes away at 74

Features

Despite Bangladesh having about 24,000 km of waterways, only a few hundred kilometres are covered by commercial launch services. Photo: Saad Abdullah

Utilising waterways: When common home-goers show the way

20h | Panorama
Illustration: TBS

How Putin revived Nato

21h | Panorama
The reception is a volumetric box-shaped room that has two glass walls on both the front and back ends and the other two walls are adorned with interior plants, wood and aluminium screens. Photo: Noor-A-Alam

The United House: Living and working inside nature

21h | Habitat
Pcycle team members at a waste management orientation event. Photo: Courtesy

Pcycle: Turning waste from bins into beautiful crafts

23h | Panorama

More Videos from TBS

After six decades ,the Archies is back

After six decades ,the Archies is back

12h | Videos
Exporters in discomfort, expatriates preferring Hundi

Exporters in discomfort, expatriates preferring Hundi

12h | Videos
The first mosque in India was built Prophet Mohammad time

The first mosque in India was built Prophet Mohammad time

12h | Videos
Can your coworker be your closest friend?

Can your coworker be your closest friend?

22h | Videos

Most Read

1
Representative Photo: Pixabay.
Bangladesh

Microplastics found in 5 local sugar brands

2
Mushfiq Mobarak. Photo: Noor-A-Alam
Panorama

Meet the Yale professor who anchors his research in Bangladesh and scales up interventions globally

3
The story of Bangladesh becoming a major bicycle exporter
Industry

The story of Bangladesh becoming a major bicycle exporter

4
How Bangladesh can achieve edible oil self-sufficiency with local alternatives
Bazaar

How Bangladesh can achieve edible oil self-sufficiency with local alternatives

5
Govt tightens belt to relieve reserve
Economy

Govt tightens belt to relieve reserve

6
Impact of falling taka against US dollar
Banking

Taka losing more value as global currency market volatility persists

The Business Standard
Top
  • Home
  • Entertainment
  • Sports
  • About Us
  • Bangladesh
  • International
  • Privacy Policy
  • Comment Policy
  • Contact Us
  • Economy
  • Sitemap
  • RSS

Contact Us

The Business Standard

Main Office -4/A, Eskaton Garden, Dhaka- 1000

Phone: +8801847 416158 - 59

Send Opinion articles to - oped.tbs@gmail.com

For advertisement- sales@tbsnews.net

Copyright © 2022 THE BUSINESS STANDARD All rights reserved. Technical Partner: RSI Lab