 "Nehru govt spied on Netaji Subhas Bose's family for 20 years: report")
The Jawaharlal Nehru-led Congress government continued to spy on missing freedom fighter Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s family for almost 20 years after India gained Independence from the British, the India Today magazine reported Friday.
The report said the information was contained in recently declassified Intelligence Bureau files, which have now been moved to the National Archives.
The IB reportedly conducted surveillance of Bose's family members, living at two Bose family homes in Calcutta, between 1948 and 1968. Nehru was the prime minister for 16 of the 20 years and the IB reported directly to him.
The surveillance included intercepting and copying letters written by Bose's family members, as well as shadowing on their domestic and foreign travels. The agency seemed keen to know who Bose’s family members met and what they discussed.
The latest disclosures have drawn sharp reactions from Netaji’s family members.
Netaji's only child Anita Bose-Pfaff, a Germany-based economist, says she is startled. Bose was married to Emily Schenkl, who his nephews frequently corresponded with.
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"My uncle (Sarat Chandra) was politically active until the 1950s and disagreed with the Congress leadership. But what surprises me is that my cousins could have been under surveillance; they had no security implications at all," she says.
"The documents show the intensity of the bias against Netaji and his family," says former Supreme Court judge Asok Kumar Ganguly, adding: "More shockingly, the bias is by a government of independent India against a man who sacrificed everything for the country."
"Surveillance is conducted on those who have committed a crime or have terror links. Subhas babu and his family fought for India's freedom; why should be they placed under surveillance?" his grand-nephew Chandra Kumar Bose, a Kolkata-based businessman, is reported as saying.
Bose, a charismatic leader in India’s independence movement, was a former president of the Indian National Congress who later broke with the Congress over disagreement over the non-violent path advocated by Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru.
Intead, he favoured a militaristic movement, and later joined hands with the Japanese and Germans during the World War II to start his own militia, the Indian National Army (INA) that was made up of volunteers and Indian prisoners of war in Japanese captivity.
However, the INA’s advance across Burma into India was halted by British troops; Bose disappeared from public view, and was reported killed in an aircrash while attempting to leave Taiwan in 1945, days after Japan surrendered. However, his disappearance and death have been disputed for decades, with a number of conspiracy theories and so-called Netaji sightings springing up around the issue.
Adding to the mystery is the fact that successive Indian governments, irrespective of which party is in power, have refused to make public files relating to Netaji’s disappearance. As recently as December 2014, the BJP government, which has when in the Opposition often called for declassification of the Netaji files – particularly the Henderson-Brooks report – said to do so would impact India’s relations with friendly nations.
The latest revelations suggest that the Indian government continued to be invested in his whereabouts; the IB reportedly focused on Bose’s nephews Sisir Kumar Bose and Amiya Nath Bose, who were considered closest to him during his two decades as a Congress activist.