New Delhi: The US had declined to delve deeply into historical records for information related to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose as it would require an “extensive search” in archives of several US agencies, the government informed the Rajya Sabha on Thursday.Trinamool Congress MP and former bureaucrat Jawhar Sircar had asked a question on the reasons provided by the US, UK, Russia, Japan and China for “not giving more focused attention to obtain files and records” related to Bose.While Bose was reported to have died from injuries from a 1945 crash of a Japanese bomber jet from Tokyo to Taipei, there has been long-standing theories that he survived and lived an anonymous life in India. Out of the three inquiries set up over the years, two had asserted that the revolutionary leader did die in the air crash, and his ashes were preserved in Renkō-ji temple in Tokyo.However, Justice Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry concluded in its 2005 report that Netaji did not “die in the plane crash as alleged”.In a written answer, minister of state for external affairs V. Muraleedharan said that the US government responded saying that they did not hold historical records of over 30 years. Further, the US National Archives and Records Administration informed “that their archival records of that period were not digitized”.“Therefore, locating these documents would require extensive research of the records of different US government agencies and they will not be able to do so,” he said.Also read: Despite Appropriating Netaji, the BJP Continues to Disregard His Secular, Pluralist Worldview Earlier, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had declassified several files under the 50-year-old limit, which referred to Bose’s activities. These were part of CIA’s predecessor agency, Office of Strategic Services’ analysis of German and Japanese intelligence networks in South Asia, as well as the activities of Left groups in India.The UK government had stated that it had already posted 62 files on Bose on the websites of the National Archives and the British Library, as per the minister.China has not yet responded on this matter, he added.The minister reiterated that the Russian government had conveyed that they could not find any documents in their archives related to Netaji “even after additional investigations made based on request from the Indian side”. This was the same answer given by the government in 2019 when asked about Moscow’s response on Netaji.The Japanese government told India that the two declassified files had already been put in the public domain. After the Indian government’s additional request, these files were transferred to the National Archives in Delhi. “The Government of Japan has also conveyed that if there are any additional documents relevant to the matter, these would be declassified as per their policies after a prescribed time period and based on an internal review mechanism,” the MEA junior minister said.Sircar had also asked for the “reasons for not conducting the DNA test of the ashes at Tokyo’s Renkō-ji temple to clarify the matter once and for all”.The government replied that one of the terms of reference of the Justice Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry was “whether ashes in the Japanese temple are ashes of Netaji”.The inquiry had concluded that “the ashes in the Japanese temple are not of Netaji”.In the report, Justice Mukherjee had stated that DNA testing was not done due to alleged reluctance from temple authorities.Fifteen years after the Commission’s report was released, Netaji’s grandniece and grandnephew commissioned a full translation of the letter written by chief priest of the temple Nichiko Mochizu to Justice Mukherjee.In a 2020 article for The Wire, Madhuri Bose and Surya Kumar Bose wrote that the English translation of the letter included in the report had missing paragraphs which actually gave a green light for DNA testing from the Renkō-ji temple authorities.
