With the declassification of Netaji files so far failing to clear the mist over the mystery of his disapperance, a Bengali film is being made on Gumnami Baba of Faizabad who, many people believe, was Subhas Chandra Bose himself.
Till now no movie on Netaji's life had ventured beyond the so-called Taihoku air crash of August 10, 1945 which was said to have killed the freedom fighter.
Filmmaker Amlan Kusum Ghosh said that his film on Netaji "Sannyasi Deshonayak: Quest for Truth and Justice" would explore the possibility of Bose reappearing in the avatar of the ascetic monk in UP's Faizabad.
However, the director insisted that he was not drawing any conclusion on the enduring mystery of Bose's disappearance.
"Gumnami Baba is one of the possibilities. It's not a biopic, but a docu-fiction. We are not ruling out anything," Ghosh told PTI.
Gumnami Baba, the director said, was a fluent speaker of Urdu and Russian apart from Bengali, Hindi and English and enjoyed a wide following among the masses.
"It is my responsibility (as a Bengali) to work on the subject. The films made so far deal with his life up to 1945, but I wonder why no director, including Shyam Benegal in his The Forgotten Hero, has dwelt on the possibility of Netaji surviving the air crash!" Ghosh said.
He said that he had done 'extensive' research on the great man's life and gone through the accounts of several researchers and the report of the Mukherjee Commission which was tabled in Parliament on May 17, 2006.
Victor Banerjee is acting in the role of Gumnami Baba in the film, which also stars Saswata Chatterjee as a INA veteran.
Asked if his film would not invite controversy and touch off unfavourable reaction of the Bose family given the sensitive subject, Ghosh merely said, "I don't foresee any trouble."
He said that his unit would extensively shoot in UP's country side and of course Faizabad, where Gumnami Baba lived till his death in 1985, as well as Lucknow.
A renowned make-up artiste from Mumbai will do the prosthetic make-up of Victor's face to resemble Gumnami Baba and this will be the first time in Indian films that such a make-up is being attempted, the director says.
