Why Releasing Secret Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Files Should Matter To Us All

The transfer of 33 files from the Prime Minister¡¯s Office (PMO) to the National Archives, followed by the Prime Minister¡¯s personal assurance that all files related to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose will be declassified, has given a reason to cheer to those who have been relentlessly campaigning for their declassification over the past decade. Mr Modi has announced that the Home and the External Affairs ministries are also working on releasing the files, which had been tucked away in secret vaults for decades.

This development should trigger a much more public debate than it has till now, primarily for two reasons.

Firstly, it is a happy deviation from the culture of secrecy that has been institutionally promoted since independence, and cannot be treated as a unique event. This presents a golden opportunity to everyone with an interest in understanding how an independent India has evolved and what exactly have been the roles played by political leaders and the different governments. We need a system which oversees and ensures declassification of official documents at regular intervals. Here¡¯s why this is important.

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An understanding of the existing system of declassification

In 2009 I tried to understand how the existing system of declassification worked ¨C whether there was a system of periodic review of the classified records, whether a body of experts were entrusted with scrutinising the documents and how frequently these were released to the public domain. The responses told a story of a system that is completely apathetic to the need for releasing information.

The PMO informed that it held 28,685 classified files at that time, of which 65 files spanning from 1947 to 1980 were declassified in the previous five years, but not sent to the Archives. The performance of the External Affairs Ministry was a shade better. In 2009 they had declassified 121 files belonging to 1950s and 1960s. However, no files were declassified in the preceding five years. The History Division of the Defence Ministry would not divulge the number of classified records it held, but was kind enough to inform that no records were declassified in the past five years. The Cabinet Secretariat claimed it would compromise national security to divulge the number of classified records held by it.

No less interesting was the information provided on the system followed for declassification. What came out clearly was that no uniform practice was followed institutionally. While most departments follow the Manual of Departmental Security Instructions issued by the Home Ministry, others had their own departmental conventions. Declassification of records in the History Division of the MoD, for instance, is overseen by committees set up by the services headquarters ¡°as and when the need for declassification arises.¡± On the point of when such a need arises, your guess is as good as mine. In the Foreign Ministry, files are referred to the Heads of different territorial divisions and are declassified on their recommendation. The icing on the cake is that Manual of Departmental Security Instructions itself is a classified document. In other words, the rules on public disclosure of old secret records are themselves a secret.

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Therefore, when viewed in this context, the PM¡¯s declaration that all files related to Netaji will be declassified, assumes great importance. The Modi Government should be rightfully credited for taking this bold step, which should set an example. If, however, it does not lead to a change in the bureaucratic mindset or the institutional procedure, it would remain as an exception to the rule of the culture of secrecy.

The decision to declassify these files has the potential to resolve India¡¯s longest-running mystery

The decision to declassify these files has the potential to resolve India¡¯s longest-running mystery. And that is the second reason for a greater public discourse. More so because this change in the government¡¯s attitude towards Netaji-related files, too, has not come easily. Demands for resolving the mystery behind Netaji¡¯s disappearance are as old as the incident. Different people at different times have raised the issue with the government and the judiciary, resulting in three inquiries. The government¡¯s position, however, has remained unchanged from 1946. Despite mounting evidence and a commission of inquiry¡¯s rejection of the official story of his death by a plane crash in 1945, the official line has not changed. In the meantime, several alternative hypotheses have gained ground backed by anecdotal, circumstantial and in some cases material evidence. The result is that the issue has become so complex, that it is extremely difficult to disentangle fact from fiction unless someone has the interest and the ability to wade through tonnes of material. The only problem here is that most of the crucial material is locked away in government vaults.

It was in these circumstances, that Mission Netaji (MN), a group comprised of a handful of young professionals decided to do what it takes to bring this matter to a closure. The group was formed in 2005 and started its work the next year, when the government rejected the finding of the Justice Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry (JMCI) that the story of Netaji¡¯s death by a plane crash in 1945 was a smokescreen and that the ashes preserved at the Renkoji temple of Japan are not his. Another inquiry at that point of time was out of question. Therefore the only option open to MN was to try and get the secret documents in the public domain so that people could reach their own conclusion.

From 2006 until now, MN utilised the Right to Information Act (RTI Act) to ask questions to the PMO, Home Ministry and the Foreign Ministry, as well as the intelligence agencies. Without exception, the first response from all the authorities was that documents related to Netaji cannot be declassified as that would result in law and order disturbances in the country, and damage India¡¯s foreign relations.

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The successes of the declassification campaign

Yet, the campaign did achieve some major success. The first success came in 2007 when a full bench of the Central Information Commission (CIC) asked the Home Ministry to provide MN with over 100 documents related to the first two inquiries on Bose¡¯s disappearance, overruling the Home Secretary¡¯s contention that if those files were made public, there would be serious law and order problems in the country, especially Bengal. The government, however, refused to part with around 20 files that they considered too sensitive. Again, in 2009, after three years of struggle, the CIC asked the Home Ministry to handover all the files marked as ¡°exhibits¡± by the Justice Mukherjee Commission to me. These led to the two biggest cases of declassification in recent times enabling historians to access material which were out of bounds for them until now. The discovery that Netaji¡¯s family was being tailed by the central and the West Bengal governments until the 1960s came out.

The other success in the declassification campaign has come in West Bengal, when the state government released 64 secret files in the public domain. MN has been campaigning for declassification of these files since 2011.

The most sensitive files are still locked away in the PMO and the External Affairs Ministry, while the IB and R&AW, which are most likely to hold the records that can settle the mystery, are outside the ambit of the RTI Act. In fact, the government has at different times come up with different numbers on the number of files that are held by the various ministries on Netaji. In October this year, MN handed over a petition signed by over 11,000 Indians across the world, to the Prime Minister requesting him to declassify every piece of paper on Netaji, to obtain all relevant records from foreign archives and to set up a special investigation team to settle the mystery.

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By all available indications, solving the mystery is going to be politically difficult. Hence, Mr Modi¡¯s announcement and the follow-up action until now is a welcome change. Yet, it remains to be seen if his initiative goes the whole way irrespective of political inconvenience, or whether political convenience trumps the need for transparency. Two issues are at stake here ¨C the institutionalisation of transparency and the truth about our own modern history.

The author is a founder member of the Mission Netaji Movement, which has been lobbying for declassification of Netaji files.