NETAJI IN INCREASING OBSCURITY AS THEORIES ABOUND

NETAJI IN INCREASING OBSCURITY AS THEORIES ABOUND

It is important that when people claim Gumnami Baba to have been or to be Netaji they give as concrete an evidence in favour of it as they demand from detractors who reject the idea and say that Netaji was either killed in the 1945 air-crash or was later executed in captivity in Soviet Russia. Mere claims cannot settle the matter this way or that. A court of law must be furnished 'clinching evidence', to quote Justice Manoj Kumar Mukherjee, before it will give its verdict in favour of the case.

All that we hear in the public domain are so many incoherent narratives, ideas that will not stand the test of scientific scrutiny or legal grilling. Hence, detractors are having their field day in denouncing the possibility of Gumnami Baba as having been or being Netaji. This does not, however, rule out the possibility as such of the Baba's identity with Netaji but seriously questions the probability of it being so.

Those who are writing on this issue need to focus their attention on the rational rigour of their statements so that their arguments for or against the said identity may be logically tenable and, so, acceptable to the readers. But this sort of wild speculation that abounds in the public domain that Netaji will surface this year or that has been going on for a long time and there seems to be no end to human hope that he will appear even now at the ripe old age of 122. Then there are fantastic notions held that Netaji will reappear when the Third World War will begin which is a scary proposition at any rate and I, for one, would surely not be party to such a cataclysmic consequence even to get back Netaji.

All things said and done, I request all to be rational and orderly in their writings on Netaji's disappearance and fate so that the confusion that is already there about him in peoples' minds does not go out of all bounds. For my part I will start writing a series of articles on this subject to clarify conceptions and bring the house of incoherent ideas to a semblance of order.

Written by Sugata Bose