How Gandhi, Nehru, and the rest of the world reacted to the news that Subhash Chandra Bose had died

Of all the matters the British military intelligence had taken up with him, this one was rather peculiar for Howard Donovan, the US Consul General in Mumbai. At the end of the Second World War, Subhas Chandra Bose was not of particular interest to the Americans, particularly because the story doing the rounds was that he was dead. Donovan looked intently at the uneasy-looking Lt Col DM Hennessey, struggling to grasp the alternative possibility that was oddly emerging months after Bose’s reported death in a plane crash in Taiwan. In an aerogramme to the Secretary of State in Washington, DC, on 23 June 1946, Donovan reported that according to Lt Col Hennessey “the hold which Bose had over the Indian imagination was tremendous and that if he should return to this country, trouble would result which in his judgment would be extremely difficult to quell”. How could Bose return if he was dead? That was the question which puzzled Donovan.

It wasn’t just the British who were anxious about the return of “dead” Bose. But return from where? Two months after the Hennessey-Donovan meeting, the Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist Louis Fischer confabulated with MK Gandhi in Panchgani, Maharashtra. On 22 July that year, an explanatory letter was forwarded to Fischer at Gandhi’s behest. The letter eventually surfaced when the Louis Fischer Papers at Princeton University became accessible in the mid-1990s. Written in hand by Gandhi’s secretary Khurshedben Naoroji, granddaughter of Dadabhai Naoroji, the letter contained this shocker: “At heart, the Indian Army is sympathetic to the Indian National Army. If Bose comes with the help of Russia, neither Gandhiji nor the Congress will be able to reason with the country.”

The political climate in the country was marked by tumultuous upheavals triggered by the trial of the INA soldiers, followed by uprisings in the Royal Indian Air Force and the Royal Indian Navy, by the deep discontent among the workers in railways and the postal department. There was deep uncertainty about the Cabinet Mission plan of an interim government and the Constituent Assembly. Written against this background, Naoroji’s letter expressed the apprehension that the Indian nationalist movement as well as the Indian Army might come under the influence of Bose, who might return with Russia’s help if the British failed to deliver on their promises.

These bewildering insights were in the realm of the unknown for decades after the news of Bose’s death, quoting a Japanese news agency announcement, was splashed all over the world on 23 August 1945. In India, the devastating news which appeared in newspapers over the next two days had a numbing effect. Impromptu condolence meetings were held on the streets in Kolkata. Up north, all major markets did not open in Amritsar and a shutdown was observed in Ahmedabad on the 25th.

From Pune, Gandhi wrote to Amrit Kaur (who would be India’s first health minister), “Subhas Bose has died well. He was undoubtedly a patriot though misguided.” Looking grave as he emerged for his regular evening prayer, he told Congress volunteers to bring the Congress flag down and said nothing. Far away in Abbottabad, the shattering news was delivered to Nehru by reporters. “While the news of the death of Subhas Bose has shocked me, it has given me relief that in the struggle for the cause of India’s independence, he has given his life and has escaped all those troubles which brave soldiers like him have to face in the end,” Nehru told a public meeting. Bose’s elder brother Sarat, then imprisoned in Coonoor, saw the Indian Express and The Hindu for the day and his heart burst. “Divine mother, how many sacrifices have we to offer at your altar! Terrible mother, your blows are too hard to bear! Your last blow was the heaviest and cruellest of all.”

The Japanese announcement, issued four days after the crash on 18 August and reproduced worldwide, said that the plane carrying Bose to Tokyo for talks with the Japanese government crashed at the Taihoku (now Taipei) airfield at 2 pm. Bose was “given treatment in a hospital in Japan, where he died at midnight”. Lt Gen Tsunamasa Shidei was killed instantly, while Bose’s adjutant Habibur Rahman and four other Japanese officers were injured.

Nothing more was known to the Indian people until the INA soldiers and other Indians associated with Bose’s Provisional Government of Free India (PGFI) returning to India from Southeast Asia started giving out their versions of what happened. The story was largely believed by Indians, even by Bose’s family, except Gandhi. On 27 August, he sent a telegram to Amiya Nath informing him that he was suspicious of the news and that if the Bose family too shared his suspicion, they shouldn’t perform the customary funeral ceremony. The delay in relaying of the news and its timing, however, aroused suspicions in the British quarters. Bose’s British foes seemed to believe that “death” had somehow saved him from being handed over to them just when they were about to lay their hands on him. The first instinct of the man at the top of Raisina Hill told him not to believe the Japanese announcement. Viceroy Field Marshal Archibald Wavell noted on 23 August in his diary (which was declassified in the 1970s) that “it is just what should be given out if he [Bose] meant to go underground”. Wavell’s instant reaction was to seek an inquiry to find out the truth.

Something strange happened at a press conference of Jawaharlal Nehru on 29 August. An American journalist who had been moving around with the US forces in East Asia stood up and challenged the news that Bose was dead. Representing the Chicago Tribune, Alfred Wag insisted that he had seen Bose in Saigon days after the alleged plane crash and wanted to know why Bose should not be tried as a war criminal. Reporting the claim two days later, the Sunday Observer of London added that the story of Bose’s death was not believed in British and American military circles.

Another sensation took place on 2 September at the Nature Cure Clinic in Pune, where Gandhi was staying. The Amrita Bazar Patrika reported: The volunteers at the gate thought they saw Bose coming in. The news spread like wildfire and in no time, cops surrounded the Gandhi hut. “After about half an hour the gentleman came out with a smiling face from the hut and everyone present there looked at him with great curiosity.” It was Sailesh, Bose’s younger brother and his lookalike.

Lt Gen Akdi Sena Narong, the deputy commander-in-chief of the Thai (then Siamese) Army and leader of the Thai military mission then in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), also told a press conference on 3 September that he did not believe the Japanese report of Bose’s death.

Lack of any credible information to confirm what was reported in the newspapers went on to strengthen the scepticism in the public mind about the truth of the announcement. On 5 September 1945, two condolence resolutions in the Allahabad Municipal Board were withdrawn. Addressing Congress workers in Jhansi on 12 September, Nehru too announced his disbelief. “Like many other people I also do not believe the story of the death of Subhas Bose,” he told the gathering. When the Congress secretary JB Kripalani moved a resolution condoling the demise of prominent leaders at the All-India Congress Committee (AICC), which met in Bombay on 21 September, a delegate stood up and asked why Bose’s name was missing from the list. The Congress president Maulana Abul Kalam Azad replied that the absence of Bose’s name was deliberate because the circumstances in which the news arrived and the sources responsible for its announcement did not make it certain that Bose was dead. In the meantime, Gandhi’s public statement in January 1946 that he did not believe in the story of Bose’s death raised more doubts. When elections were announced for the office of Congress president in March 1946, Bose was nominated as one of the candidates. His candidature, however, was rejected not because he was dead but because he was not a primary member of the party.

While the public reaction leaned towards refusal to believe the story of Bose’s death, the government quietly moved to ascertain the facts. That the government was at all making inquiries was revealed only by short answers given in the Central Legislative Assembly, but the details of the investigations and their conclusions were never revealed to the public. On 12 February 1946, home member (minister) in the viceroy’s executive councils John Thorne informed the Central Assembly that the government had asked for help from the headquarters of Louis Mountbatten (Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia) and Douglas MacArthur (Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers) in the investigation and that the Japanese government had confirmed the information about Bose’s death.

In a sudden turn of events that October, Nehru, then the de facto prime minister in the interim government, gave out a clear and categorical message to the press on 11 October that “I do not think there is the slightest justification” for the belief that Bose was still alive. In view of Habibur Rahman’s statements, “it seems to me absurd and completely wrong to circulate rumours about Netaji being alive.” Vallabhbhai Patel, the new home minister, to whom the IB reported, however, told the Central Assembly something very different on 30 October. Responding to a question on whether the interim government was going to keep a cabinet seat vacant for Bose, Patel did not claim that Bose was dead. “The question of finding a place for Mr Bose will arise only if he makes an appearance,” Patel told Ahmed EH Jaffer. Then he added that the government had “no information to place before the House” on Bose’s alleged death. The minister in charge of the IB claimed to have no information.

Gandhi, too, was not sure of Bose’s death despite changing his earlier public stand that he didn’t believe in Bose’s death, after meeting Col Rahman. “Anand, tell me frankly, is Bose really no more?” he queried Anand Mohan Sahay, a minister in Bose’s government, in July 1946. Long before he became an aide of Bose, Sahay was, and would forever remain, a Gandhi loyalist. The same month, Fischer met Gandhi. In November 1946, after having been given the cue by Khurshedben Naoroji, Fischer reached Moscow to seek answers. His papers at Princeton University contain a note of his meeting Italian ambassador Pietro Quaroni, a well-wisher of Bose since 1933. In Quaroni’s assessment, Bose was “alive”.

Q says that B might have been on his way to China and might have got there but did not want the British to look for him so the false rumor of his death was circulated. Q says Bose may be biding his time for a return to India.

Nehru repeated his claim in the Central Assembly in February 1947, adding some more information this time. “As for the proposal that the Government should make an enquiry, we have made some enquiries and the result of those enquiries have more or less convinced us of the fact that” Bose was dead. “No further enquiry is called for, nor is it possible to hold any further enquiry.” Nehru ridiculed the claims made by “some members of the public” that Bose was still alive but, strangely, wouldn’t divulge the details of the inquiries made by the government to stop those claims. Most significantly, Nehru claimed that any doubt about Bose’s reported death was erased by the witness accounts of the attending physician and the nurse. No one asked how the government got their accounts, and Nehru chose not to spend another word on it.

As the 1950s heralded, rather than dissipate, the questions about Bose’s fate increased in frequency in India. Leading the quest in Parliament was HV Kamath, Constituent Assembly member, former Forward Bloc general secretary and the second Indian after Bose to have quit the ICS to join the freedom struggle. On 19 April 1951, Kamath sought to know about “the various communications and reports the Government have received so far about Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s death or about his being alive”.

Deputy Minister for External Affairs BV Keskar replied that “after due inquiry and the collection of whatever evidence it was possible to gather, the Prime Minister made a statement on 12 October 1946 to the effect that there was little doubt that Shri Subhas Chandra Bose died on 18 August 1945”. The minister referred to INA general JK Bhonsle’s letter of March 1951 expressing his belief that Bose’s ashes were enshrined in Renkoji temple in Tokyo. “Government are unable to furnish the dates and sources of various communications they have received regarding this matter,” he added.

In time, the government toughened its posture. “I have no doubt in my mind – I did not have it then and I have no doubt today of the fact of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s death,” Prime Minister Nehru declared in March 1952. And yet again, the prime minister would not divulge the basis of his conclusions.

Excerpted with permission from The Bose Deception: Declassified, Anuj Dhar and Chandrachur Ghose, Penguin India.