New Delhi: Two new books take a look on Subhas Chandra Bose’s life and times with one of them dubbed by his daughter as a “lively history of a person like Netaji”.
Mahanayak by Vishwas Patil traces Netaji’s steps from India to Germany, Italy, Singapore, Japan and Burma. Replete with details drawn from the Indian revolution, this is a historical novel that reads like a fast-paced thriller.
Mahanayak was first published in 1998 in Marathi by Rajhans Prakashan. Now it has been brought out in English by Eka, an imprint of Westland and endorsed by Netaji’s daughter Anita Bose-Pfaff.
The book has been translated into English by Keerti Ramachandra. “By choosing to present a lively history of a person like Netaji who has certainly led a life which did not lack drama, suspense and romanticism you certainly pay him a true homage.
Your treatment of history is in favourable contrast to some so-called factual ‘analyses’ of authors who pedal outrageous non-sense about Netaji’s life after death,” says Bose-Pfaff.
‘A novel conveys to the readers a more life-like image of the persons involved. This is bound to touch the readers at an emotional level, thereby bringing to life or keeping alive a history which most have not experienced personally,” she adds.
In the book, Patil recreates the life of a man who was twice elected president of the Congress, and quit to follow his own vision, forming the Indian National Army. His defiant nationalism provoked anger and distrust.
“When I visited Japan 23 years ago, Netaji’s many companions and comrades like Negishi were alive. For this project, I spent seven years of my life on research and visited all the concerned countries and places wherever Netaji went,” the author says. “I am delighted with such a fine endorsement to my novel by Anita Pfaff,” he adds.
According to Eka Publisher Minakshi Thakur, “Vishwas Patil’s novel is a well-informed and nuanced portrayal of the life and times of Subhas Chandra Bose. It reads like a novel, a movie script, a book of popular history – there’s something in it for every kind of reader.”
The other book coming up coinciding with Netaji’s 74th death anniversary on August 18 is Shreyas Bhave’s Prisoner Of Yakutsk.
After his alleged death in a plane crash on August 18, 1945 and investigation of three commissions to find the truth, numerous stories have been published on the case, over the years.
Prisoner Of Yakutsk takes from the conclusion of the 2005 Mukherjee Commission report which concluded that the initial documents were destroyed in a routine coarse by the government and there was a secret plan to ensure Bose’s safe passage to the USSR with the knowledge of the Japanese authorities.
Coupled with a statement by a then Member of Parliament reaffirming that as confirmed to him by a Russian agent, Bose, who had survived the crash, was then captured by the Soviet and imprisoned in Cell no 45 of the Yakutsk prison, the book claims.
Prisoner Of Yakutsk is written as a mystery-thriller with the disappearance of Subhash Chandra Bose at its core.
On Bose’s death anniversary, Ashis Ray, the London-based author of Laid to Rest: The Controversy over Subhas Chandra Bose’s Death published last year, took strong exception to reports that Netaji became Gumnami Baba.
‘The so-called Gumnami Baba was a suspected murderer. To even remotely suggest he was Subhas Bose is the greatest insult to one of the leading lights of the Indian freedom movement, who sacrificed his life for the independence of his country,” he says.
‘This slander must stop. Indian authorities need to take action against peddlers of such character assassination who make money from spreading calumny and misleading innocent people,” he adds.
In a chapter entitled Cock-and-Bull Stories in “Laid to Rest”, Ray writes that Krishna Dutt Upadhyay (the Baba’s real name) ‘allegedly murdered a colleague called Brahmadev Shastri in 1958 and then vanished from the scene”. Ray’s book, published by Roli, provides a definitive account of Bose’s death. It has a foreword by Bose-Pfaff. (PTI)
