'Don't Play with Emotions of Bengal and India': TMC Dislikes Congress's Netaji Death Anniversary Tweet

A tweet by the Congress on Wednesday, observing the death anniversary of iconic freedom fighter Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, faced objections from West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress.

Tagging the Congress post, TMC leader Kunal Ghosh wrote on the social media site that the date of Netaji’s death has not been established.

The Trinamool Congress has attempted to generate political capital from the distinguished revolutionary’s legacy, analysts say, and has been in several skirmishes with the Bharatiya Janata Party over this. But its spat with the Congress comes at a time when the top leaders of the two parties have been trying to cobble up an opposition coalition to take on the BJP in the 2024 general elections.

On January 16, 1941, Bose, who had been put under house arrest in Kolkata by the British following his release from prison in December 1940, escaped in the dead of night, ostensibly never to return. Three main theories have been debated by people over the years about Netaji’s disappearance: his death in a plane crash in Taiwan in 1945, his death in Russia, and the appearance of a hermit in Uttar Pradesh’s Faizabad in the 1970s called Gumnami Baba, who many believed was Bose in disguise.

The Government of India has commissioned three inquiries: the Shah Nawaz Committee of Inquiry of 1956, the Khosla Commission of 1974, and the Justice Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry (JMCI) of 2005. The first two concluded that Bose died in a military hospital in Taihoku, Taiwan on August 18, 1945, as a result of the crash on take-off of a Japanese military aircraft in which he was travelling. They also said that the mortal remains held at Renkoji Temple in Tokyo were his.

The Justice Mukherjee Commission concluded that Netaji “did not die in the plane crash as alleged” and “the ashes in the Japanese temple are not of Netaji”. It went on to say, however, that “Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose is dead”.

A classified 60-year-old Japanese government document on Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s death, made public in 2016, concluded that the legendary freedom fighter died in a plane crash in Taiwan on August 18, 1945, backing the official version. The seven-page report in Japanese and a 10-page translation in English reached the conclusion that Netaji met with an air crash on August 18, 1945, and died at a Taipei hospital the same evening.

“Immediately after taking off, the airplane in which he (Bose) rode fell to the ground, and he was wounded,” the report noted in its ‘Outline of the result of the investigation’. It further recorded that at “about 3.00 pm he entered the Nanmon Branch of Taipei Army Hospital”; and that at “about 7.00 pm he died”. The findings also stated that on “August 22, he was cremated (at the Taipei Municipal crematorium)”.

In a more detailed description of the incident, the report said, “After the plane had taken off and risen about 20 metres above the ground, one petal of the three-petaled propeller of the left wing was suddenly broken, and the engine fell off…The airplane, subsequently unbalanced, crashed into ballast piles, beside the strip of the airport” and “was wrapped in flames in a moment…Mr Bose, wrapped up in flames, got off the plane; Adjutant Rahmin (Colonel Habibur Rehman) and other passengers exerted themselves to take his clothes off… his whole body was seriously wounded by burns.”

The central government had declassified several files related to Bose in 2016, and it had, in a Right to Information (RTI) response in 2017, confirmed that he had died in the crash.

In 2019, the Press Information Bureau had declared August 18 as the date of Netaji’s death but that too was contested. The PIB tweet had to be withdrawn following protests.

While one section of the Bose family believes he died in the plane crash on August 18, 1945, another does not accept this and has demanded further inquiries.

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