Nehru snooped on Netaji's Bose's family? Bengal's favourite conspiracy theory goes national

Even rasogolla cannot trump the sweet triumph of being able to say “I told you so.” And that’s what you hear ringing out of West Bengal today as news breaks that the Nehru government was spying on Netaji Subhas Bose’s family for some twenty years. BJP national spokesperson MJ Akbar says there’s only one explanation possible. “The government was not sure whether Bose was dead, and thought that if he were alive he would be in some form of communication with his family in Calcutta.” We told you so. [caption id=“attachment_2192195” align=“alignleft” width=“380” class=" “]  Image courtesy: Sandip Roy[/caption] This is no longer just the crazy deluded Bengali version of Elvis Presley sightings. Netaji in Mao’s Red Army. Netaji in Soviet gulag. Netaji at Nehru’s funeral. Netaji in Shaulmari Ashram. Netaji in a Mongolian trade delegation. Just last December there was a “historic mass gathering” under Kolkata’s fabled Shahid Minar to demand that his birthday be declared a national holiday. A politician reassured the crowd that Netaji would come back. If Netaji had survived that 1945 plane crash he would have been 118 years old today. Many of the green chairs at this “mass gathering” organized by Mamata Banerjee’s brother’s NGO were empty. And the man selling Netaji posters and memorabilia was eating his lunch because business was slow. But while they might not show up for a rally for him, Bengal’s Netaji obsession soldiers on. When the BJP’s Amit Shah came to rally the troops in Kolkata, there were plenty of posters demanding Netaji’s birthday be declared a national holiday. Never mind that Mamata Banerjee also wants the same but the BJP leaders, anxious to give their party a more Bengali feel, clearly thought that Subhas Bose was still the way to Bengali hearts (and votes). In part it’s the human fascination with the unsolved mystery. The idea that there are these classified “top secret” files sitting with the PMO, that the home ministry has 70,000 pages about Netaji’s fate locked in its coffers, makes for irresistible conspiracy fodder. And Subhas Bose becomes part of our what-if pastime. What if Sardar Patel had lived longer? What if we had known Mohammad Ali Jinnah was dying? What if Subhas Bose had come back? The BJP, anxious to latch onto any national hero that can dent the Nehru-Gandhi hagiography, is keen to embrace Subhash Bose. “His bravery, courage & patriotic zeal inspire us. On his birth anniversary, I bow to proud son of India, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose,” tweeted PM Modi this January. The fact is an MIA Netaji is very useful to politicians than an opinionated living Netaji. By disappearing in that plane crash he became a figure whom all could claim and mould to their needs. If Netaji had really returned, he would have been a very inconvenient politician for most of those who paid fulsome tribute to his heroism. Historian Ramachandra Guha writes in The Telegraph that even if Bose initially rejoined the Congress “he was too proud and independent-minded to have conceded the top spot to Jawarharlal Nehru.” But if he had revived his own party it would probably not have been one that the BJP today would have been very excited about – it would have to the left of the Congress, likely a “Bose-led Socialist party” that would have been “more egalitarian than the Congress and more patriotic than the Soviet-inspired Communist Party of India.” Guha says that party could have given Nehru’s Congress a run for its money in 1957 and 1962 and that prospect will leave Nehru’s descendants red-faced about these latest revelations. It’s not that Prime Ministers before or after Nehru do not spy on friends and foes and frenemies but it’s still embarrassing that this had gone on for twenty years. Either Nehru was really paranoid or some babu forgot to tell the agency to wrap it up. All this latest revelation does however is just thicken the conspiracy soup around the disappeared Netaji. If Netaji was being held in Siberia, did the Russians not tell their good friends Nehru and Indira Gandhi? Or did Nehru think that Bose, a master of escape, had snuck out of gulag as well and the Russians had forgotten to let him know? BJP leader Subramanian Swamy contends Netaji was put to death at the orders of Stalin but if that was so, and Nehru knew and hid the fact, did he think Bose was coming back via an Ouija board? There’s a theory that Bose became a sadhu and even attended Gandhi’s cremation incognito but that would imply he had lost interest in politics in free India. Part of the allure of Netaji was his grand escape in 1940 from house arrest under the nose of the British. Even his own mother apparently did not know he was gone. His nephew Sisir Bose became as famous as the young man who supposedly drove his uncle on that getaway. And while Sisir Bose became well-known in his own right, every biographical note about him mentions that famous chauffeur act proving the enduring power of that Netaji connection. Sisir Bose’s son Sugata is now a Trinamool MP. For Bengalis the allure of Bose goes beyond his own particular achievements and has become a veritable cottage industry of sorts. He was the last great Bengali martial hero. Thousands listened in secret to his crackling “Aami Subhas bolchhi” (This is Subhas speaking) broadcasts from Tokyo. Leaders who came after him seemed just pen-pushing mild-mannered babus in comparison who worried that ink ran in their veins, not hot blood. But they could console themselves by wistfully saying “At least we have Netaji.” Bose had given the slogan “Dilli chalo” but he never reached and he remained the last great opportunity for Bengal to rule in Delhi. Even President Pranab Mukherjee is not quite compensation enough for that lost chance for the nostalgic Bengali Walter Mitty. The Mahesh Manjrekar film Aami Subhas Bolchhi taps right into that fantasy of the sleeping humiliated middle-class Bengali roused by a Netaji back from the dead (at least in dreams) with an invisible INA sword. The one thing this latest revelation has done is take this perennial Bengali daydream and give it a national fillip. The Bengali is thrilled but one wonders if Narendra Modi is as elated as well. While the BJP is happy to embarrass the Congress, it’s now its own sarkar in charge and the clamour for desclassification will land firmly in its court. And while it was easy to blame the UPA government for covering up Nehru’s misdeeds and resisting declassification, what excuse will the Modi government give? Subhas Bose, dead or alive, seems destined to give our politicians headaches instead of just resting on his laurels as the name of an airport.