What a stupendous personality Netaji had, especially, in his climactic years as INA supremo ! Impossible to believe that he married and had a daughter. Such weakness would have shown on his face, for sure, and in his movements and behaviour with women. I am convinced beyond all reasonable doubt that Netaji was perfectly a celibate, a brahmachari in the Indian sense of the term, a 'warrior monk' as some have dubbed him. And I have come to this conclusion after studying for years his photographs and videos, especially, those post his association with his Austrian secretary who was secretary and no more. I have compared them with his earlier photographs from his youth before his first visit to Vienna. These photographs have revealed to my observation an utter innocence which I have only noticed in many of Swami Vivekananda's photographs and in the earliest photograph of Bagha Jatin when he had met Swamiji much before his subsequent marriage.
How Netaji moved, how he talked, the tenor of his voice, the words he used in his speeches, his father-like care of the Ranis of the Jhansi Regiment of the INA and his escorting them to safety in person after the decision to quit the open confrontation against the Allies post the fall of Japan, all these have added substance to my scepticism about his supposed romantic and marital alliance and to my belief that Netaji was a celibate right through. Love letters galore have recently surfaced and have been published in book form but the very language of these letters is so un-Netaji-like that I have been persuaded to reject them as inauthentic. These letters need to undergo forensic testing for the establishment of their validity. Even Netaji's alleged letter to Sarat Bose which is on display at the Netaji Research Bureau, I hear, has not been so authenticated and, hence, I personally cannot accept it as valid evidence for his alleged marriage and progeny.
Netaji himself had never in his lifetime even once publicly affirmed that he was a married man. His passport documented him as a single person. The argument that he was informally 'married' in Germany but not officially so because of Nazi race reasons does not hold much ground either as it would mean that Netaji, of such impeccable character otherwise, had sunk to carnal levels and could not control his impulses enough to delay his so-called marriage by any length of time which most ordinary human beings are so often used to doing. Also, it would mean that he was a rather irresponsible individual.
IRRESPONSIBLE INDIVIDUAL?
Netaji's 'marriage' would prove him to be an irresponsible individual on the following counts :
First, if Netaji were to die in the World War, his 'widow' would have to do all the explaining of a lifetime about her unwed motherhood in those days of far greater conservatism in Germany and even greater conservatism in India, and so would the child have to do throughout its life.
Secondly, the chances of survival in the war being so narrow, it, at any rate, would be highly irresponsible of a person to entangle another in his storm-tossed life when his own future hung in the balance.
Thirdly, to 'wed' someone in those days of extreme espionage would tantamount to inadvertently compromising the freedom struggle of India if a single misstep on the part of the leader were to take place in terms of strategic information shared with his 'wife' or picked up somehow from his papers or talks by the latter and passed on to his enemies.
Fourthly, the 'marriage' would provide a weak link in his armoury for his enemies to exploit as his wife's arrest and questioning could reveal important links about him however careful he may have been about playing the game, so-to-say, absolutely safe. Also, would he like his 'wife' to endure torture at the hands of his enemies and that, too, with an infant to look after and with none to fend for it?
Fifthly, Netaji had hardly breathing time in Europe as he went about organising an entire armed revolution against the British and that, too, at the height of the tumultuous Second World War. Would he have the opportunity then or entertain the desire to delve into personal desire and romance and procreate? It may be stated that Hitler had made him wait in Berlin for over a year and this gave Netaji ample opportunity to enter into a romantic relationship whose seeds had been sown in the 1930s in his earlier visit to Vienna but the very fact that he ever had romantic relations with his secretary is an assumption in the first place based on a single unverified letter and later a whole cache of like love letters discovered decades after his disappearance all of a sudden. All this seems a stupendous proposition for sure, based on one assumption after another. Would Netaji compromise the interests of 380 millions of his motherland for his petty self-interest? Going by his past record it does not seem remotely likely.
Sixthly, Netaji was a great devotee of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda. Would he beget progeny out of wedlock thus and compromise the whole spiritual-social tradition of his motherland? It is absurd even in contemplation, much less in actual deed.
Seventhly, Netaji had always maintained publicly that he was a single man and unmarried and whenever he was questioned as to when he intended to marry, he would say that he had no time to consider such personal things so long as India was not liberated. Would such a man marry in secret or live in out of wedlock with a woman and beget a child and so remain culpable to being remembered by 380 millions of his countrymen as a liar, a licentious man, a cheat and a hypocrite? I leave you to contemplate and to come to conclusions.
Written by Sugata Bose
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