Why govt didn't want to bring back his ashes

The Indian government was reluctant to bring back Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's ashes from a Buddhist temple in Tokyo because it feared a political backlash, says a “top secret” file from the late 1970s declassified on Saturday.

The home ministry document was among the 100 declassified files Prime Minister Narendra Modi released on the 119th birth anniversary of the iconic freedom fighter.

The file reveals correspondence between the home ministry, Intelligence Bureau and external affairs ministry on a “proposal” of the Indian embassy in Tokyo that Bose's ashes kept in the custody of the chief priest of the Renkoji Temple be brought back to India.

Bureaucrat after bureaucrat makes the same point in the over 200-page file over the years: The government of India was “not inclined to favour” bringing back the ashes “due to possible adverse reactions from members of Netaji's family, as well as certain sections of the public, who refused to believe in his death in the plane crash in August, 1945”.

The point about “adverse reactions” was made by NN Jha, the then joint secretary in the external affairs ministry's north and east Asia department, in July 1976, when the country was under Emergency.

Skip to August 1976, when TV Tajeswar, joint director in the Intelligence Bureau, advised his colleagues that the ashes should not be brought back because they would “create complications”.

Tajeswar noted that Bose's family and the Forward Bloc, a political party founded by the freedom fighter, do not “recognise the ashes”, reports the Hindustan Times. 

He warned that if the ashes are brought back, the government would be accused of “foisting a false story upon the people of West Bengal and India, taking advantage of Emergency, and this may well figure as an important plant of propaganda if and when the elections are announced”.

Netaji, one of the leading lights of the freedom struggle, set up the Indian National Army (INA) during World War II to take on the British Indian Army.

The bespectacled freedom fighter was born on January 23, 1897 in Cuttack.

A former Congress president and once a close associate of Mahatma Gandhi, Bose's reported death from injuries sustained in a plane crash in Formosa, now Taiwan, in 1945 has been shrouded in mystery.

According to Zee News online, a cabinet secretariat's note dated February 06, 1995 said the government had already accepted the position that Netaji had died in a plane crash in August 1945.

The note titled "Netaji ashes in Tokyo" mulled over a "proposal to bring the mortal remains of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose from Japan to India."

The note said that taking the initiative to bring back his ashes (which were lying at the Bose institute in Japan) "would not be advisable”.

As per the note, the home ministry took into consideration the view of the External Affairs Ministry and of the Intelligence Bureau.

(The) IB's views are to the effect that it would not be advisable to take any initiative to bring the ashes to India as there is no demand from any quarter for this. If the ashes are brought to India, the people of West Bengal are likely to construe it as an imposition on them of the official version of Netaji`s death."

"If no decision is taken by 1995, in which year the Bose Academy proposed to have the last memorial service, India may be asked by Renkoji temple to take charge of the urn containing the ashes whereby we may have no alternative but to store them in our Mission in Tokyo," the 1995 note prepared under the PV Narasimha Rao government said.

"The Government of India was paying for the upkeep of the mortal remains in Renkoji Temple and the management could be persuaded to continue with this arrangement if the upkeep charges were increased," the note said.