The problem in the propagation of the idea Netaji is that it is now in the hands of either intellectuals well-funded in knowledge and resources but who are complicit in the act of suppressing the true facts of his life or it is being conducted by incompetent men steeped in superstition, mystery-mongering and myth-making who are devoid of adequate intellectual training and the capacity for articulate enunciation of facts with credible evidence to back up their claims. The rational discourse is tainted thus between contrary claims about this leader extraordinaire from camps that are as opposed to each other as adversaries in war and, yet, having a common flaw in point of the fact that they keep pressing their tales on the basis of no evidence, flawed arguments and fantastic inferences with glaring loopholes in the attempted narrative about the mode of the leader's death/disappearance, his subsequent whereabouts post disappearance and his alleged marriage and off-spring thereof while in Nazi Germany.
Now, this is a national predicament that we confuse superstition with science, emotion with the entitlement to spread endless myths and half-baked understanding of issues with a pompous presumption that we know it all. And this is no way to arrive at the truth of any enduring mystery, much less the most complex one concerning Netaji. But then, who will take the lead in solving this puzzle when all that people care for are cushy portfolios in the government, posts in political parties and commercial gains from selling superstition in the market that thrives on sensationalist stuff? Where are the rational researchers who have the intellectual ability to grapple with this enduring mystery of a million shades, one that has global political imperatives governing the suppression of its solution?
It is not the case for amateur investigators to solve but calls for trained personnel groomed in the science of historical investigation, armed in adequate knowledge of world history and entirely devoted to fact-finding instead of myth-making for sensory satisfaction. So long as such professional men do not get into the act, the entire episode of Netaji's disappearance will remain a perpetual mystery.
Clamour and claim cannot establish a truth, rational discourse eventually can. So, may the students of Netaji's disappearance, marriage et al, temper their arguments in the fire of reason and come to real conclusions and not probable ones that suit fancy! May good sense prevail wherever Netaji is being studied and may it induce in the scholars a bit of Netaji's attributes, most importantly, his rational rigour!
Written by Sugata Bose
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