The Veiled Reality

Nearly sixty years ago Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose supposedly died in an air crash. Nation mourned on the death of a titan and the government followed up with an investigation. Three commissions of enquiries have been set up but to this day the contents of the investigation report have not been conclusive. Also various documents related to Netaji’s death have been classified and kept away from public purview under the guise of variable nomenclature (like ‘Top Secret’, ‘Secret’, ‘Classified’ and ‘Unclassified’). But we as a nation deserves to know what happened to one of our most dynamic leader and vastly loved freedom crusader who is a source of inspiration and patriotism even so long after his death.

BJP during its election campaign had promised to release classified files about Netaji's death but now it seems like the matter has been conveniently forgotten.

Sixty years on and the truth is still hidden behind closed doors in the name of secrecy and protecting international relations, but a fundamental question arises, “Are international relations more important to our government than the truth about Netaji?” Everyone deserves a closure and so do Indian people. Last year during election campaign BJP leaders had talked about disclosing  these documents, but in December 2014 the same BJP after coming to power disclosed only two of  41 documents related to Netaji, while the remaining 39 are stilled hidden behind the governmental veils in the name of protecting international relations.

The present government boast of an excellent rapport with foreign governments then why fear? They are our friends and they would understand that our people deserve to know the truth about our leader. In absence of proper facts, from time to time, rumours and conspiracy theories pop up questioning the credibility and motives of various other leaders of that era. You often hear conspiracy theorist say, ‘Jawaharlal Nehru got Netaji killed because he was his main competition, and since Gandhi family still has a steel grip on Indian politics they have managed to cover up everything so long.’ Sadly even Mahatma Gandhi’s name is dragged into these conspiracy theories. Such rumour mongering does not only instil a sense of uneasiness into people making them think that our politicians are some sort of ruthless beasts drenched in the overt sense of personal ambitions and such allegations often shadow the great achievements of these men.

Moving from national scene to the international one, we have to understand that whatever happened, happened six decades back and most of the leaders that are in power today weren’t even possibly born. Thus they don’t have anything personal against the facts going public so the international relations logics seems a total farce to me. Even if they did participate in some ‘conspiracy or evil plan’, how does it affect our ties today? America dropped the dirty bomb and annihilated millions of Japanese citizen in twin cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Today japan and America are one the most important partners on the global scene.

Forget Japan, look at India-America. During the cold war era America constantly sided with Pakistan and was about to attack Indian forces in the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War with its seventh fleet. And today just four decades later we are talking about this partnership being the one of natural allies, with the American President being the Chief Guest at our Republic Day and our Prime Minister getting a rock star reception in New York. We even have a rocky but yet working relations with Pakistan despite the three wars that it has wages and the numerous schemes it tries to plot from time to time.

So the underlying fact is that International diplomacy works on practicality and ground realities of the international scenarios rather than past grudges about an incident that happened or may not have happened seven decades back. If Indian government releases these documents today, it might ruffle some feathers and make a few people uneasy for some time but it will lift the burden off an entire nation. Moreover our partners around the world would surely understand this need of our people to know the truth.

If indeed some of our national heroes and leaders were involved in a plot then why not expose them. If someone did something unwanted while being at the helm of power then it makes it more imperative to disclose their names and deed.

All around the world democratic countries have kept up the tradition of transparency and an important component of it has been the declassification of government records and facts after a fixed amount of time. This allows a nation to analyse the mistakes it committed in the past, as public scrutiny is the best form of counter measure for checking efficiency.

The United States of America periodically declassifies documents related to CIA operations and various departments and reports. The public love and wrath in response of these disclosure prove to be a source of encouragement as well as vigil on the future activities of these organizations.

For long have we been manipulated in the name of national and foreign interest and ‘maintaining peace in the country’. Isn’t it the time that our governments stop measuring our maturity by giving selective disclosure on various issues and rather provide us with all the facts and let us form our own opinions. After all we are a democracy and we deserve to know and it is by knowing facts properly that we will be able to make more informed and sound decisions leading to a better democracy.