There is a need for concerted effort on our part to rise in resistance to everything that commercialises the country's core concerns under the pretext of demystifying the disappearance of Netaji and bringing sanity to the discourse. Arbitrary claims and consequent commerce through the levelling of charges and casting calumny against the reclusive figure of Bhagavanji, who many believe was/is Netaji in the ascetic's garb, is reprehensible and needs repudiation in the severest terms if proven false.
That Netaji sells well is anybody's guess and this cashing in at somebody's expense must not be allowed to proliferate. Else, the respectability of activists will take a severe beating as seems to be the destiny of the current lot of self-styled activists claiming exclusive knowledge of Bhagavanji's unstable mental state post supposed torture during Soviet incarceration. That he was suffering from psychological imbalance on account of Post Trauma Stress Disorder (PTSD) which 'manifested in occasional false memories and delusions (paranoid and grandiose)' needs to be established by the book writers on the firm foundation of facts and not mere self-styled preferred inferences that lack rational rigour and cannot be deemed conclusive. It is up to the authors who claim such corrosive conclusions to prove that they are in the right. Should they fail, their credibility, already much corroded in many a corridor, will be lost for good and the Baba will stand vindicated thus in his absolute sanity and the recoil of karma will have had its fitting fruition.
I shall post further on this contentious issue as I get to study in depth --- provided there is depth to it --- the contents of this book and arrive at my own conclusions.
Written by Sugata Bose
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