The number of commissions that have investigated in to Netaji’s disappearance has trivialized the whole issue. The blame lies as much with the member’s of Netaji’s Party – The Forward Bloc ( a Left Front constituent in West Bengal) as well as with successive Central Governments. Having set up the Mukherjee Commission at a point of time when most of the key witnesses are dead is nothing but a farce. It was equally stupid of the Forward Bloc not to have accepted the findings of the Shahnawaz commission in which Netaji’s close companion and associate and a traveler in the plane which crashed at Taipei, Habibur Rehman had testified. Habibur stayed alive for decades after his testimony and unlike the witnesses of today, who retracted their statements at the drop of a hat, he never changed or retracted his statement.
After claiming for years , that Netaji was alive ( in jail in Russia , in U.P. living as a baba and what not!), when his followers realized that if alive , he would be 109 today, they found consolation in the statement that Netaji lived as Gumnami Baba in U.P and died there in 1986. it is actually an insult to his memory to say that a man whose life could rival James Bond’s in its sheer adventure – escape from his house in disguise and making his way to Afghanistan – from there to Germany – discussions with Hitler, then by submarine to Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and set up the Indian National Army with POWs held by the Japanese, should be anonymously living out close to 40 years disguised as a dummy baba. Surely his followers are not insinuating that he feared for his own life to such an extent that he had to lead an anonymous life of a coward, all these years! Its so sad that one of India’s truest sons is being treated so bad. The way INA (Indian National Army) was treated by the Congress Party is very public knowledge. The fact that the Mukherjee Commission thought of conducting a DNA test on Gumnami Baba’s remains is surely a terrible farce!
The Congress and most of the other older parties should learn to just give the issue a decent burial if they cannot bow their heads with reverence and respect for these brave soldiers. Let these brave soldiers rest in peace, stop revising the history and worse yet stop tainting their struggle and heroic journeys to freedom with dirty politics that’s a way of being in India today