Netaji's Soviet mystery? Bose was in Stalin's Siberian labour camp, 'died' as Gumnami Baba

"Netaji: Living Dangerously" being released in Ahmedabad

By Rajiv Shah
Senior journalist Kingshuk Nag’s "investigation" into the mystery around Subash Chandra Bose’s death in his book “Netaji: Living Dangerously” – whose second edition was released in Ahmedabad on Monday – has revealed that “in all probability Bose was held in a gulag, the massive system of forced labour camps found in Siberia during the time of Stalin.”
Rejecting the theory that Netaji had died in the air crash at Taihoku on August 18, 1945, Nag, who is ex-resident editor of The Times of India, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad, says, Bose was “probably kept alive because the Soviets wanted to use him for furthering Soviet interests in India if required.” The first edition of his book was released last year.
Answering a question during the book release ceremony, Nag admitted that Bose took the help of the fascists -- Germany, Japan and Italy -- "in order to free India". He disagreed with those who consider Bose a fascist agent, saying, "He was an Indian agent."
Nag told the audience at the Ahmedabad Management  Association that there was a need to "recognize" Bose's pivotal role in India's freedom movement, which Congress has long claimed its contribution. "India became free after the Indian soldiers, inspired by Bose, rebelled against the British", he said, adding, "After the 1857 rebellion this was the biggest such rebellion."
The book was released by former Cabinet minister of Gujarat government Jay Narayan Vyas, who blamed Jawaharlal Nehru for "snooping" on Bose's family seeking to find the truth about Bose's death. 
Nag writes in the book that on being “freed” from gulag after his term was over, there seems much truth in the “the tale” that he was the sannyasi (monk), Gumnami Baba, the Indian leader in disguise, who lived in the Uttar Pradesh town of Faizabad, may have been Bose.

The Baba, says Nag, was “equally at ease speaking in English, Hindi and Bangla”, but was “secretive, limited his interaction with a chosen few, and remained confined behind a curtain.” When he died in September 1985, things found in his quarters “included photographs of Netaji's parents that hung on the wall behind Gumnami Baba's bed, a copy of the Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn and numerous books on contemporary Indian politics.”
While a DNA test of “old teeth in a match box in Baba's possession... did not match with samples taken from some of Subhas Bose's relatives”, Nag claims,“This anomaly apart, the match between Gumnami Baba and Subhas Bose seems to be close and thus the possibility of the holy man being the patriot in disguise cannot be ruled out.”

According to Nag, Subhas Bose held “great hopes” from the Soviet Union, yet what may have made him suffer in gulag was a British machination. The British, he says, "planted doubts in the minds of the Soviets that Bose was a British agent."

Admitting that "the Soviets were not foolish enough to fall for this bait", Nag, however, says, "Yet, this attempt was a subtle one, enough to create apprehensions in the minds of the Soviets.”.
Nag says, this happened after the British intelligence figured out that Bose would contact the Joseph Stalin regime via the Soviet ambassador in Tokyo, Yakov Alexandrovich Malik  -- who was known as Jacob Malik in the non-Soviet World. All this may have happened, suspects Nag, after Bose possibly moved to Omsk in Siberia, where, during World War II, a large part of the Soviet administration was stationed to be far away from the Germans. “It is here that Netaji despatched his representative to establish a consulate of the Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind (Provisional Government of Free India)”, he adds,
According to Nag, “On August 18, 1945, when Bose took off from Saigon supposedly en route to Tokyo, he was actually headed for Omsk”, though “his immediate destination was Dairen (Dalian) in Manchuria”, which had been “captured by the Soviets after the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”