the birth place of the great Nethaji Subash Chandra Bose ~ greatest leader of all.

The history of freedom movement in India, often is  summarized in one pithy sentence: "Mahatma Gandhi gave us freedom through non-violence." For sure freedom was not that easy and there were so many sacrifices of persons with varied thought processes. The best and the bravest men and women of an enslaved nation hastened the demise of the mighty British empire by resisting them tooth and nail in the trenches of every part of the Nation.  They were brutally crushed by the Imperialist regime and have been relegated, not getting their due share in history.   

Give Me Blood! I Promise You Freedom!!   The British are engaged in a worldwide struggle and in the course of this struggle they have suffered defeat after defeat on so many fronts. The enemy having been thus considerably weakened, our fight for liberty has become very much easier than it was five years ago. Such a rare and God-given opportunity comes once in a century. That is why we have sworn to fully utilise this opportunity for liberating our motherland from the British yoke.  The first phase of our campaign is over. Our victorious troops, fighting side by side with Nipponese troops, have pushed back the enemy and are now fighting bravely on the sacred soil of our dear motherland.

~ excerpts of speech addressed at a rally of Indians in Burma, July 4, 1944 – the very famous words of one of the greatest sons of this soil - Subhas Chandra Bose,  very popularly known as Nethaji (lit. "Respected Leader").  From history books, we read that the great person Nethaji was born on 23^rd Jan 1897 and lived till  18^th Aug 1945 [this will remain disputed as the Nation yearns to know of the reality, the mystery shrouding his disappearance !] :  do you where was he born ? – it was not West Bengal, for sure. **

 “Subhash Chandra Bose: The Mystery”, a new TV documentary attempts to unravel the mystery behind the disappearance of freedom fighter Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. The one-hour special, to be aired on Discovery Channel on July 18, will follow Siddhartha Satbhai, an enterprising NRI, who commissioned Neil Millar, a former veteran of the Royal Signals Regiment of the British Army, to conduct an image analysis on video and photographic material supplied to him by internet group Anonymous, read a statement. The footage pertains to an individual referred to as ‘The Tashkent Man’, who was present during the India-Pakistan Tashkent Declaration of January 10, 1966. Through modern scientific and facial analysis, the investigation points to the possibility that the man could be Bose. The investigation report also infers that if Bose was present at the Tashkent Declaration in 1966, he could not have died in the plane crash on August 18, 1945, as officially reported. The documentary will feature a series of interviews with experts including Purabi Roy, author and visiting professor at Moscow State University, and Alexandr Kolesnikov, retired Major General of the Warsaw Pact forces, who draw upon critical information from Russian archives regarding Bose’s presence in post-World War II Russia.

History records that Bose was elected president of the Indian National Congress for two consecutive terms but resigned from the post following ideological conflicts with Mahatma Gandhi. Bose believed that Mahatma Gandhi's tactics of non-violence would never be sufficient to secure India's independence, and advocated violent resistance. He established a separate political party, the All India Forward Bloc and continued to call for the full and immediate independence of India from British rule. He was imprisoned by the British authorities eleven times.  His stance did not change with the outbreak of the second world war, which he saw as an opportunity to take advantage of British weakness. At the outset of the war, he fled India and travelled to the Soviet Union, Germany and Japan seeking an alliance with the aim of attacking the British in India. With Japanese assistance he re-organised and later led the Indian National Army, formed from Indian prisoners-of-war and plantation workers from Malaya, Singapore and other parts of Southeast Asia, against British forces. With Japanese monetary, political, diplomatic and military assistance, he formed the Azad Hind Government in exile, regrouped and led the Indian National Army to battle against the allies in Imphal & Burma during the World War II

Interestingly, do you know that he was conferred with Bharat Ratna but the award was subsequently withdrawn. The award was established by the first President of India, Rajendra Prasad, on January 2, 1954. The original statutes did not make allowance for posthumous awards but later added in 1955 statute. Subsequently, there have been ten posthumous awards, including the award to Subhash Chandra Bose in 1992, which was later withdrawn due to a legal technicality, the only case of an award being withdrawn. It was withdrawn in response to a Supreme Court of India directive following a Public Interest Litigation filed in the Court against the “posthumous” nature of the award. The Award Committee could not give conclusive evidence of Bose’s death and thus it invalidated the “posthumous” award.

Recently Indian Express reported that - Was Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose living incognito as K K Bhandari in 1963 in Shalumari Ashram in north Bengal? A reading of one of the files on Netaji, declassified on May 27, would seem to suggest that the topmost levels of the government was discussing this man in 1963. While one of the declassified files refers repeatedly to the contents of this Netaji-as-Bhandari file, the latter file itself is not there.  According to that report, it all began with a letter sent to the Prime Minister (Jawaharlal Nehru) by Ramani Ranjan Das, secretary of the Shalumari Ashram "in connection with Subhas Chandra Bose" in 1963.

There is little connection of this Great Person to Chennai and in particular Triplicane, associated with many freedom fighters including SubrahmanyaBharathi, Sathyamurthi and more.  Long ago, the famous road – Pycrofts Road was renamed BarathiyarSalai, winding  from Presidency College / Marina Ground to the present EA Mall.  There is this landmark house, where  Nethaji  stayed in Sept 3,4,5 of 1939 and again 2 days in Jan 1940 : when Nethaji visited

Now to the Q at the first page – on his birth place :  it is the city of Cuttack, centred on a spit of land between the Kathajodi River and the Mahanadi River, bounded on the southeast by Old Jagannath Road.  It is less than 30 km from the State capital of Odisha, Bhubaneswar.  It was here our hero, Nethaji Subash Chandra Bose was born.  Bose was born on 23^rd Jan 1897 at Oriya bazaar to Janaki Nath Bose, a famous lawyer and Prabhavati Devi.   The place known as Janakinath Bhawan, is now a museum and showcases the original letters written by Netaji along with other important materials used by Netaji.

Jai Hind.

With regards – S. Sampathkumar

17^th July 2016.