Sunday Exclusive
By Rathin Das*
As another 23rd January approaches, political leaders of all hues would engage in an annual ritual to claim the legacy of Netaji, a well-earned sobriquet that needs no introduction in the sub-continent and beyond.
The fact that this year marks the 125th year of Netaji’s birth would probably be no deterrence for politicians to engage in their usual mud-slinging about various controversies surrounding his August 1945 death in the air crash at Taihoku in Taiwan or that incident being a concocted one.
Suspecting or believing that the 1945 air crash did not happen leads to several theories ranging from one Gumnaami Baba near Gorakhpur to Netaji being a prisoner in Russia or even an old man ‘seen’ repeatedly beside the dead bodies of Jawaharlal Nehru and Lal Bahadur Shastri.
With the countdown to assembly elections in West Bengal to begin soon, there may be a competition among politicians around this 23rd January to honour Netaji by announcing a plan to erect a large statue – if not the tallest — or a museum or whatever.
An announcement of a befitting tribute with Bengal polls in mind would itself be a dis-service to Netaji as he belonged to greater India, not just the state host to his mother tongue. To confine Netaji to Bengal and trying to use his legacy for electoral gains would be an insult to the brave-heart who took along all sorts of Indians in his long march to independence.
Popular sentiments in Bengal have backed the theory of the Taihoku crash being a sham and Congress leaders from Gandhi to Nehru having conspired to keep Netaji side-tracked, during his life-time as well as in the seven decades since his ‘disappearance’.
Congress undermining the legacy of Netaji has in recent times come in handy for the right-wing forces to train its guns on the grand old party infamous for its dynastic politics.
But politicians of all hues must keep in mind that even believing that a brave person like Netaji would spend his life in disguise to escape trial by the British as war criminal or any harm by the Indian government led by Nehru would be a monumental insult to him.
Disregarding all controversies, it is high time that Indians pay heed to what the first Indian journalist who had visited Taiwan a year after Netaji’s death in the 1945 air crash had seen and heard.
Leaders interested in bringing an end to the seven-decade-old controversy about the ‘mysterious disappearance’ of Netaji should have paid heed to the experience of a Gujarat-origin journalist who visited Taihoku (now Taipei) in 1946.
Harin Shah, then 26, was the first correspondent of an Indian newspaper to be posted in China in 1940’s. He was part of a 52-member team of Peking (now Beijing)-based foreign correspondents taken from China to then Formosa after its liberation from Japan in 1946.
During this visit to just liberated Formosa (now Taiwan) in 1946, Harin Shah had interviewed the surgeon who had treated Netaji a year earlier, the nurse who attended to him and the medical internees of Formosa Medical College who had donated blood.
Harin Shah was the youngest and the only Asian among the foreign correspondents posted in China at the peak of the World War II and was chosen as the Honorary Secretary of the Foreign Correspondents Association of China.
During the six-day sponsored trip to Formosa, then young Harin Shah had managed to visit the places and people connected with Netaji’s death a year earlier in Taihoku (now Taipei).
Based on his interviews in Taihoku in 1946, Shah had rubbished the claims of the Justice Mukherjee Commission in 2006 that the plane crash never took place.
Refuting the claims of Justice Mukherjee Commission that the plane crash report was fake, then 86-year-old veteran journalist (in 2006) had told this writer that he had a chance meeting with the surgeon and also the nurse who had attended to Netaji during his last few hours at the Taihoku Military Hospital in August 1945.
During his short visit to Taihoku in 1946, Shah had seen the cremation permit of Netaji, talked to the surgeon, the nurse and the medical internees, the veteran journalist had narrated in 2006 while reacting to the findings of Justice Mukherjee Commission.
The 86-year-old (in 2006) had said that the Mukherjee Commission was an ‘exercise in futility’ as there were no doubts about the plane crash that killed Netaji.
Shah, who was then spending his retired life in Ahmedabad, had said that the surgeon, nurse and the blood donors (in Taihoku) should not be suspected to have told lies about the death of such a great leader.
The surgeon had told Shah that Netaji was semi-conscious and was almost fully wrapped in bandages as he had received third degree burns in the crash.
The girl who had served Netaji his last lunch at the Taihoku Railway Hotel had told Shah that she had prepared Indian style curry for the Indian leader “Chan La Bose”, as Netaji was known in the south-east Asian languages.
Due to the difficulty Chinese and other south-east Asian people have in pronouncing ‘ra’, they replace it with ‘la’, thus turning Netaji into “Chan La Bose”.
Following the same logic, Harin Shah was known as Sha Lin among his Chinese friends during his tenure there.
If alive, Harin Shah would have been 100 now. The only Indian journalist who had seen the incontrovertible evidence like Netaji’s cremation permit passed away few years back.
*The writer, an Ahmedabad-based senior journalist, had interviewed late Harin Shah on more than one occasion.
