IS IT CIVILIZED TO SNOOP ON INDIA’S PREMIER FREEDOM-FIGHTING FAMILY?

Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s family was snooped on for 20 long years (1948-1968) by the Government of India and the West Bengal Government. Recent declassification of 64 Netaji Files by the West Bengal Government has confirmed this dastardly act, first brought to light by the earlier declassification of two of the Netaji Files by the Union Government. The question arises as to why this was done. What was the paranoid that prompted the Nehru Government to initiate this surveillance process and, thereafter, to persist with it for over two decades when the innocuous members of the Bose family were neither anti-nationals nor potential political threats to the ruling Congress Party either at the Centre or at the State? Why were the Intelligence Agencies tapping their telephone calls, opening their letters, following them wherever they went and constantly watching their activities? Were the Boses deemed dangerous on account of their kinship to Netaji? But, then, Netaji was dead since 18 August, 1945 according to the official Government version! Or, was he not? Should we then surmise that the Government of India was sceptical of its own propagated line that Netaji had died in a plane crash at Taihoku Airport in erstwhile Formosa and was apprehensive of his possible return to India on account of which it was consistently snooping on the Bose family round-the-clock for 20 years or so in the hope that the hero might contact his kith and kin someday which would offer the Government clue as to his whereabouts? If so, this was the most heinous offence against a family whose seminal contribution to the freedom struggle has few parallels for the brothers Bose had literally rocked up the foundation of the British Empire.

If snooping carried on till 1968, it meant that the Government of India entertained the idea that Netaji was alive till then for Sarat Chandra Bose was no more and, in absence, surely, posed no political threat to the Congress Party in any way that would require such an elaborate intelligence machinery to monitor his family’s movements. It was Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose then that the Government was evidently trying to track down but, perhaps, unsuccessfully. Finally, what was it that caused this surveillance to stop abruptly in 1968? Had the Government finally given up or was there some other sinister motivation behind it which may be revealed only when all Secret Files on Netaji are eventually declassified under enormous public pressure for it does not seem that the Government will of its own volition do it in national interest as it keeps on citing bogus reasons related to national security whenever it has to defend its otherwise indefensible position regarding the Classified Netaji Files?

The moot point remains, however. Was it in keeping with democratic propriety when the Government headed by Jawaharlal Nehru proceeded to surreptitiously monitor the movements of India’s premier freedom-fighting family? Was this the price this leonine lineage of patriots had to pay for the transfer of their political bondage? For what else was this sort of surveillance tantamount to if not subservience to the other great family of India’s freedom struggle, the Nehrus? If this was not breach of trust, pray, what else was? Is this what they deserved at the hands of comrades-in-arms once in the freedom struggle when the freedom had been won? A perfidy more pernicious than this has scarce visited this land of purest dreams whose brightest star had been blighted by the powers that be from the devious days of the Mahatma and his machinations at Tripuri. Nehru is gone and gone is Gandhi. Indira Gandhi is gone as well, the one that had subjected a nation to the ignominy of her version of ‘self-rule’ and not what Tilak had vouched for. Now who will answer for these terrible indiscretions on the part of successive Congress Governments at the Centre and at the State? Who may be held culpable for the offence that befits not a civilized society to indulge in and, that too, from its premier Prime Minister whose ungentlemanly actions hardly justify the appellation of the ‘gentle colossus’ ascribed him by a biographer (refer: ‘The Gentle Colossus’ by Prof. Hiren Mukerjee)? Will the present-day Congress Party rise above its sycophantic adulation of its leadership, past and present, and for once show political maturity to rescue the Party from being a personality cult, and, in so doing, pronounce its judgement on the misdemeanours of its tallest figures, thereby, resurrecting the Party from its age-old familial line? Or, is the personality cult so deeply embedded in its functioning that it is well-nigh a settled fact that history will avenge its manifold wrongs at the hands of this political organization by the obliteration of its very existence? For no Party in a democracy may substantially subsist if it is devoid of the collective will and the individual runs it autocratically thrusting his/her will on the collection comprising it which in abject servitude bows down to the will of the Chosen One. Now is the time for the Congress to make amends for past misdeeds of its leaders and show a semblance of real love for the nation and veneration for the family its governments have successively snooped on in such an unceremonious manner that patriotism takes a beating at the hands of blatant self-interest masquerading as national necessity.

What transpires in the coming days may shape history as popular sovereignty stamps its authority on this largest democracy of the world. Netaji’s family has been fouled and Netaji virtually obliterated by the diabolic designs of a single political party which has ruled and misruled our Motherland for over five decades. The citizens of this country demand not only declassification of the Netaji Files but also an answer to the holding ransom of a billion destinies at the scaffold of familial farce. Netaji and his family have been denied justice and the vengeance of history is on. And now, do not plead on behalf of a ludicrous minority within the family that has chosen to desert reason and good sense for whatever motivations impel them. The people are on the rise and the ghosts of the copper tablets buried beneath the ground during Mrs. Gandhi reign seek fulfilment at a deferred date for the touch of the hero’s march through the terrible terrain of the Burmese jungles enroute to the battlefields of Imphal. History will be rewritten soon and all the forces that have gone to wipe out Netaji and his valiant INA will be resolved to nought. Snoopgate will remain a blotch on the Nehru family as fresh data on Netaji continually surfacing in the public domain resurrects the Bose family’s enormous contribution towards the cause of the freedom of this land. They presented the nation Netaji and Netaji brought us freedom. Salutations to all that have suffered at the altar of freedom and prostration before the mothers that gave birth to these children of light but for whom the darkness in our lives would never have gone! Jai Hind!