August 18 this year will mark 79 years since Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, one of the leading lights of the Indian freedom movement, died in Taiwan. His cremated remains were taken to Tokyo in September 1945, where they are languishing till date.
In the complex and insurmountable global circumstances in the immediate aftermath of the World War II – with defeated Japan under Allied occupation and India yet to be delivered from British colonialism, a transfer of the remains was impractical and consequently postponed by officials of the Indian Independence League in East Asia, of which Bose was president, to a more propitious moment.
After sovereignty was restored to Japan in 1952 – by which stage India was up and running as an emancipated republic – full diplomatic relations were inaugurated between the two countries. Thereafter, responding to sentiments in parliament, India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru initiated steps to bring Bose’s remains to India. He instituted an inquiry in 1956 headed by Shah Nawaz Khan, a celebrated officer in Bose’s Indian National Army (INA). This established his death as a result of a plane crash and the authenticity of the remains being held at Tokyo’s Buddhist Renkoji temple.
But motivated elements belong to a section of Bose’s extended family, the anti-Nehru far right and the Forward Bloc (founded by Bose in 1939 as a group within the Indian National Congress umbrella, but now a political party) thwarted the prime minister’s well-meaning bid to bring the remains of his former Congress colleague – with whom he was ideologically on the same page on economic and social issues – to India. Just as much as they prevented Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao from doing the same in 1995.
Arm-twisted by the Forward Bloc and socialist MPs like Samar Guha – who were then providing parliamentary support to the Congress – Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was forced to have the matter of Bose’s death re-examined by a commission under G.D. Khosla, a respected former chief justice of the Punjab high court, whose report ratified the 1956 findings.
BJP’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee as prime minister visited Renkoji in 2001 to pay his respects to Bose’s remains. Yet, a year earlier, he had caved in to pressure from his party’s coalition partners in the central government by announcing another inquiry.
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The end product of that exercise by Justice Manoj Mukherjee, a man with a self-confessed premeditated bias, produced a slew of infirmities. Unlike the Khan inquest and the Khosla commission, none of the several survivors of the air crash was alive to depose before him; no evidence was sought in Taipei; and, despite going to Tokyo on ostensibly a fact-finding mission, he did not visit Renkoji and instead admitted a mistranslated letter from the head priest of the temple as proof of his non-cooperation. Its report was unsurprisingly rejected by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s cabinet.
However, in 2016, at Narendra Modi’s instructions, the Government of India declassified all files pertaining to Bose in its possession. These confirmed the findings of the Khan and Khosla investigations. On May 31, 2017, the Indian home ministry in a reply to a public query under the RTI Act underlined: ‘After considering the reports of Shah Nawaz Committee, Justice G.D. Khosla Comission and the Justice Mukherjee Commission of Enquiry, the Government has come to the conclusion that Netaji has died in plane crash in 1945.’
There has, though, been no logical follow up in terms of bringing the remains to India. Bose’s only daughter, Professor Anita Bose Pfaff, now 81, has sought to discuss her plea with Modi more than once, especially after the declassification process – which she welcomed. These have been met with a complete silence.
Of course, at the Indian government’s request, the remains have respectfully been preserved by a succession of head priests at Renkoji since 1951. It is perhaps not so well known that India through its diplomatic mission in Tokyo has unwritten the cost and continues to do so. Hardeep Puri and Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, ministers in the present Indian government, have first-hand knowledge of this, since both served as career diplomats at the Indian embassy in Tokyo.
In the absence of a will, which is unambiguously the case here, what happens to a person’s cremated remains follows ‘a priority of intestacy’. In other words, ‘a surviving spouse or civil partner is first in line’ to decide what to do with the remains, and if there is no surviving spouse or partner, then ‘next in line will be the deceased person’s children’.
Bose’s Austrian wife Emilie Schenkl departed in 1996, leaving Pfaff as the couple’s sole heir. It has long been the latter’s desire – specifically expressed to Pranab Mukherjee, who as external affairs minister met her and her mother at Augsburg in Germany as far back as October 21, 1995 – to bring the remains at Renkoji to India for a final disposal. This has clearly been ignored by Indian authorities.
The understanding between the governments of India and Japan is that if the former asks for the remains to be handed over the latter will comply. In effect, under this pact, Japan is diplomatically handicapped to extend direct possession of the remains to Professor Pfaff. In this situation, the Indian government has neither requested the Japanese government to transfer the remains to it, nor has it authorised it to do so to Pfaff.
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After Indian independence, Pfaff’s birth was recorded as Bose’s daughter at the Indian consulate in Vienna, where she resided with her mother. By virtue of being Bose’s daughter, she enjoys the Indian government’s officially approved status of ‘overseas citizen of India’. In other words, she is legally recognised by the Government of India as Subhas Bose’s child.
The fact that the Indian government has paid for the upkeep of the remains at Renkoji does not grant it ownership rights over them. This has been undertaken voluntarily and not at Schenkl or Pfaff’s insistence or request. Pfaff has doubtless reason to be grateful to the Indian government for its care and generosity – which she openly is – but has no obligation under law towards it, including not being subject to its whims and fancies regarding what it wants to do about the remains.
Speaking from her home in Germany, Pfaff stated: ‘This August 18, we mourn the 79th death anniversary of one of the foremost architects of India’s independence, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose…he left us forever, following a plane crash in Taipei – without being able to return to his beloved country. For 79 years, Japan, especially three generations of head priests of Renkoji Temple in Tokyo, have provided a home for his mortal remains – in exile. Thankfully after all these years many of his countrymen and countrywomen remember him even today, not only with gratitude, but even affectionately. It is time that the remains of one of India’s greatest heroes of the freedom struggle can be welcomed home by them.’
The Government of India needs to appreciate that if Pfaff has been requesting it to facilitate the transfer of the remains to India, she has been doing so out of politeness not compulsion. It has under the priority of intestacy rule no locus standi to decide on the fate of the remains; and persisting under this impression is tantamount to unlawful obstruction.
The Indian government must no longer pose a barrier to Pfaff fulfilling her desire to bring her father’s remains to India to touch Indian soil and be immersed in the River Ganga; and advise the Japanese government accordingly.
Ashis Ray is the author of Laid to Rest: The Controversy over Subhas Chandra Bose’s Death published by Roli Books; a book described by former Indian foreign secretary Krishnan Srinivasan as the ‘last word’ on the subject. Ray can be followed @ashiscray on X.