All You Need to Know About New Set of Declassified Netaji Files

Here’s all you need to know about the second set of documents declassified by the government of India.

Documents of Netaji Bose’s ashes in Tokyo, Japan are missing. (Photo: Lijumol Joseph/The Quint)

The government uploaded a series of documents on Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose on Tuesday, 29 March. The second set of documents in the declassification of the Netaji files include:

• 10 files from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO)
  
• 10 files from the ministry of home affairs
  
• 30 files from the ministry of external affairs
  

The first batch of 100 files was put in the public domain by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 23 January – Netaji Bose’s 119th birth anniversary.

Read the Netaji Files Declassified by PM Modi on 23 January

The documents are being made public after their preliminary conservation, treatment and digitisation. All the papers can be found on the online government portal dedicated to Netaji files.

Missing Documents: According to a communication from the Prime Minister’s Office dated 19 September 2000, certain documents and a file have been destroyed during the Congress regime in 1972. The Trinamool Congress, on Wednesday, sought a probe into the matter.

One file 12(226)/56-PM has been destroyed on 6 March 1972. Certain documents of file 23(156)/51-PM have been destroyed.

PMO Communication

Also read: Will BJP’s Gambit Pay Off by Fielding Netaji Kin Against Mamata?

Documents related to the Justice Mukherjee commission of inquiry, belonging to the PMO, mention that documents, including a proposal to keep Bose’s ashes from Tokyo in a memorial at Delhi’s Red Fort, were either not “readily traceable” or “destroyed”, reports The Times of India.

This disclosure could become a political hot potato in the upcoming West Bengal polls.

<i>TOI Report</i>

Delhi - Singapore Power Struggle: Referring to his time in Singapore, the files have called him a “collaborator” of Japan, says an official correspondence from 2012. Due to his presence, the then Indian High Commissioner TCA Raghavan recalled, how India had to tread cautiously on domestic demands from the 1960s to 1980s, according to The Hindu.

Raghavan wrote to the then Secretary (East) of Minister of External Affairs, Sanjay Singh:

There has always been an undercurrent of strong reservation from many in Singapore with reference to the memory and legacy of Subhas Chandra Bose and the INA. A scrutiny of the old files reveals that these sentiments were strong in the 1960s, 1970s and the 1980s.

Also read: Indira Gandhi Didn’t Order Fresh Probe Into Netaji’s Death: Files

India Had Approached Japan for Documents: India has approached several countries, including Japan, Russia and the UK, for handing over documents relating to Bose. Minister of State for Home Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary said earlier in March that the issue of handing over documents relating to Netaji had been taken up with governments of Austria, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Read the report on The Quint.