Leon Prouchandy, a forgotten name? How many of you have heard of him and his sacrifices for our freedom? He paid the ultimate price for patriotism. Savagely tortured by French intelligence, Leon was rendered unto a vegetative existence. His crime? Supporting Netaji.
On 17 Aug, 1945, Netaji spent the night at Leon Prouchandy's house at Saigon, stayed the next day there, then vanished into thin air.
If Netaji was at the Prouchandy house in Saigon on 18 Aug, 1945, how could he die in the alleged air-crash at Taihoku on the same day, especially, when Taihoku is hundreds of miles away from Saigon and flight speed was pretty slow in those days?
Prouchandy was carried off in a vegetative state from his Saigon prison cell to Pondicherry where he lived and died decades later.
The Saigon house of Prouchandy is in dire need of repair. It was the General Secretariat of the Indian Independence League in Saigon. The Government of India must take cognisance of this state of affairs and in conjunction with the Vietnamese authorities take up the work of restoration of this heritage building of India's independence struggle.
Leon Prouchandy was one of the principal financiers of Netaji in his bid for armed liberation of India. Prouchandy contributed to the tune of millions to Netaji's War Fund in the form of gold, jewellery and cash.
In Sep, 1945, Leon was arrested by the French, incarcerated and tortured inhumanly for three months to extract information about Netaji and the INA Treasure Chest. Three months later he was released, a man devoid of sensory reactions, paralysed, speechless, having no memory of his past, a vegetative being barely alive. He was taken to Pondicherry where he lived out the remaining 23 years of his biological life in this debilitated state, a man reduced to a shadow of a human being with neither recollection nor response to the environment. He lived a forgotten man and died a death in oblivion.
Leon Prouchandy fought for our liberation, financed our revolutionary war effort against the British and we do not even know who he was. Are we a nation yet? Are we men?
Netaji went from Leon Prouchandy's house to an unknown destination on 18 Aug, 1945. Where? With whom? Did Leon know about his possible destination? Had Netaji confided in him? After all, the last meeting of Netaji with his own personnel and with those of Field Marshall Terauchi was in the Prouchandy house where the General Secretariat of the Indian Independence League in Saigon was quartered. Was Leon thus tortured into silence after being brutalised into giving up vital information about Netaji and his Treasure Chest. Was he silenced to eliminate witness and obliterate evidence about Netaji's surviving the War? Who can tell? Leon Prouchandy never spoke again nor could he recall anything of the past. His memory had been wiped out by systematic torture carried out to medical precision.
Written by Sugata Bose
Photo : Netaji with Leon Prouchandy at his Saigon house, the Indian Independence League Headquarters there, on 17 August, 1945, a day before the great departure/disappearance.
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