On 18 August 1945 news reports came in suggesting that Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose had died from injuries suffered in a plane crash. The freedom fighter who founded the Azad Hind Fauj (Indian National Army) is believed to have been travelling across Japanese Taiwan when his plane crashed.
Having assumed leadership of the INA in 1943, the Bengali leader had made his way to Singapore via Berlin after escaping from a Calcutta prison. He seemed to believe in the adage that the enemy of his enemy was also his ally, and was willing to accept help from the enemies of the British.
"The INA had fought alongside the Japanese in their great campaign to invade India during the spring and summer of 1944. When that thrust was defeated, Bose's force had pulled back into Burma and finally retreated into Thailand and Malaya," wrote Alan Bayly and Timothy Norman Harper in their book 'Forgotten Wars: Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia'.
Leonard A. Gordon suggests in 'Brothers Against the Raj: A Biography of Indian Nationalists Sarat and Subhas Chandra Bose' that while Bose was not immediately killed in the plane crash, he had suffered injuries and burns and later succumbed to his injuries.
The Shah Nawaz Committee and Khosla Commission had held the report of Bose's death following a plane crash to be true.
Clipping from Japanese newspaper, published on 23 August 1945, reporting the death of Bose and General Tsunamasa Shidei of the Japanese Kwantung Army | Photo: Wikipedia
The death of Bose in a distant land was not something everyone was willing to accept. As as many dismissed the news, there arose many controversies and conspiracy theories. And while it continues to remain unclear when or where Bose passed away, many claim that Bose had become a sadhu. Here too, there did not seem to be a clear consensus, and multiple stories along the same theme have emerged over the decades.
While some believe that he is Gumnami Baba - a reclusive saint who lived in Ayodhya in the 1970s, others claim that he was really heading an ashram in North Bengal.
Who is Gumnami Baba?
Gumnami Baba was a sadhu who was found to be living in Ayodhya in the 1970s. . Many claimed that he was the famed freedom fighter living under an assumed identity and he had continued making news headlines even after his death in 1985. In 2013, the Allahabad High Court had asked the Uttar Pradesh government to preserve his belongings in a museum of sorts. For many, this has lent credence to the theory. The HC had also ordered that a commission be set up to look into the same.
In 2017, the Justice (retired) Vishnu Sahai Commission had concluded that Bose and the sadhu were not the same person, even as it noted that the two had some similarities. Rather, it opines that the Baba was a follower of Bose.
More recently, in 2020, the Gumnami Baba mystery saw a new curve with the Central Forensic Science Laboratory in Kolkata saying that they did not have the electropherogram of the reclusive sadhu's teeth. An incidentally is a data record produced by produced by an automated DNA sequencing machine and is used for deriving results from genealogical DNA testing. The CFSL had been replying to an RTI query by Sayak Sen.
This becomes of note because the Vishnu Sahai Commission had cited a report of the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CSFL), Kolkata, to claim that Gumnami Baba was not Bose. Sen claimed Justice Sahai merely cited Justice Mukhejee Commission''s 2005 report in his own report, rather than order a fresh test as demanded by many.
(With inputs from agencies)
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