No response from China on India’s request for documents related to Netaji

The Chinese government has not responded to India’s requests to provide files and records related to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, while governments of the UK and Japan have declassified a number of files on the leader.

According to information provided by minister of state external affairs V Muraleedharan in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha on Thursday, no response was received from the Chinese government to efforts made by the Indian side to obtain files and records related to Bose.

The UK government informed the Indian side that 62 files on Bose were already available on the websites of the National Archives and the British Library.

The Japanese government declassified two files on Bose that are now part of that country’s archives and available in the public domain. Based on the Indian government’s request, Japan transferred these files to India and they are currently in the National Archives of India.

The Japanese government also said that if there are any additional documents relevant to the matter, these will be declassified according to Tokyo’s policies “after a prescribed time period and based on an internal review mechanism”.

The US government informed India that it does “not hold any historical records of over 30 years”. The US National Archives and Records Administration informed the Indian side that their archival records of that period were not digitised.

“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,” Muraleedharan said.

The Russian government said it was “unable to find any documents in the Russian archives pertaining to Netaji even after additional investigations made based on request from the Indian side”.

The Justice Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry was constituted by the government to inquire into all facts and circumstances related to the “disappearance” of Bose in 1945 and subsequent developments. One of the terms of reference of the commission was “whether ashes in the Japanese temple are ashes of Netaji”.

The commission’s report and its connected documents have been declassified and sent to the National Archives of India for permanent retention and they are available at www.netajipapers.gov.in.