Netaji’s daughter urges Modi to declassify files

Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s daughter Anita Bose Pfaff has appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to declassify the files on Netaji that are with the Centre so that the mystery surrounding his disappearance since August 1945 is unravelled.

On the recent release of 64 secret files on Netaji by the West Bengal government, 72-year-old Anita Bose Pfaff said she was yet to receive copies of the documents. “I am, therefore, not aware of their content, especially not of any information about his death.”

Netaji’s family (about 50 odd members) is tentatively scheduled to meet the PM in New Delhi in October. Pfaff’s name is on that list. “As a scholar, I certainly believe that all the old files which have been kept closed beyond thirty years should be declassified. As a daughter, I certainly also demand that those on my father be declassified,” Anita said in an interview with a news agency, joining the chorus for release of the Netaji files held by central government departments.

Members of the Bose family, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and many others have been demanding declassification of the Netaji files by the Centre. In <g data-gr-id="36">fact</g> the West Bengal Government recently declassified 64 files on Netaji in its custody.

Asked whether Pfaff would appeal to the British, Russian and Japan governments to declassify the files they have on Netaji, Anita said, “It would be <g data-gr-id="39">helpful,</g> if the Indian government appealed to those other governments to make files available for study. Some countries have a “right to information”. However, as long as the Indian Government has not declassified their files, they are in a poor position to ask others.”

Anita, a noted economist based in Germany, also demanded that DNA test of the ashes — believed to be that of Netaji — kept at Japan’s Renkoji temple be carried out in order to settle the mystery surrounding his death in an air crash. Convinced that her father died in the air crash in Taihoku airport in Taiwan in August in 1945 “until proved otherwise”, she said the ashes hold <g data-gr-id="48">key</g> to unravelling the mystery. “I certainly would like the ‘mystery’ settled. An agreement between Indian and Japanese governments to a DNA-test of the remains at Renkoji temple would certainly be helpful,” she said.

Interestingly, Netaji’s family feels that Netaji did not die in the Taihoku <g data-gr-id="45">aircrash</g> and that he lived beyond 1945. “If you believe in any theory including the air crash, you don’t need to spend public money and declassify the GOI files or investigate the archives in foreign countries,” Netaji’s <g data-gr-id="47">grand nephew</g> <g data-gr-id="46">Chandar</g> Kumar Bose told Millennium Post.

Netaji’s daughter, who is expected to visit India for meeting Narendra Modi, also said that successive Congress governments have neglected the contributions made by Bose and the Indian National Army (INA). “I wish the Indian public would concern themselves more with his life and his achievements from which there is much to be learned than with his death,” she added.