Kolkata: An attempt to confer the Bharat Ratna — the highest civilian honour — on Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, alongside former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Hindu nationalist leader Madan Mohan Malviya, fell through because of his family’s refusal of it.
Sources said a fresh move to bestow the honour on the legendary leader was made, with those in favour approaching functionaries of the Narendra Modi government, which was positively inclined to accept the request. However, the proponents were told about the issues involved in awarding the recognition to the freedom movement stalwart because of the continuing mystery about his “disappearance” in August 1945 on a flight from Formosa, current day Taiwan, when he was planning to take on the British in alliance with Japan.
Bose’s family had also rejected the suggestion to confer the posthumous Bharat Ratna in 1992. His family believes that he is alive and hence won’t accept the posthumous honour.
In August, Bose’s grandnephew Sugata Bose put an end to speculations about honouring the freedom fighter with the highest honour saying his stature was above the Bharat Ratna.
It has been almost 70 years since Bose’s sudden disappearance, but several organisations including a host of Bose’s descendants have been running a countrywide campaign calling for declassification of ‘secret files’ on the nationalist leader, claimed to be in the possession of the central government.
“The government of the day should clearly tell the nation the truth. Political parties when in opposition demand the same, but the moment they enter office, they do an about turn. It is more important that conferring him any award,” Sugata, who is also a Member of Parliament of the Trinamool Congress, said.
“As a party we demand that the government disclose us the truth. We have been demanding this since years, and we should know what happened. Just the pretext that foreign relations will be affected is a non-issue,” Bose added.
Bose’s daughter Anita Bose Pfaff also feels that the inquiry commissions set up to investigate his whereabouts following his disappearance in 1945 were handicapped for want of enough government support.
“I don’t know how much support the inquiry commissions had received, but I think in some ways it (government) was supportive and in other ways they (commissions) also had their handicaps,” Anita had said in an interview earlier.
