Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose is beyond doubt, one of the most enigmatic figures of India History. More than his life time and contributions to the Indian Freedom movement, his death (or disappearance) has been the subject of much interest, public debate and speculations.
Naturally when I picked up this book, I hoped to get some answers to the mystery surrounding Netaji's sudden disappearance and claimed death. Especially at a time when the debate has been re-opened by the declassification of certain files on him and the most recent re-acknowledgement of his death in a plane crash by the government.
Its funny to think that he might have the distinction of having been pronounced dead most number of times in the world, among all the leaders of the world, past or present, and having died different kinds of death as well. But believe me, its not at all funny when you are subjected to this juvenile drama playing out on TV, senseless arguments and baseless speculations every now and then by the so called self proclaimed intellectuals on this subject.
So like everyone else, I wanted to seek the truth about Netaji and hoped to find it in the pages of this book. Unfortunately, I was disappointed right at the start as I finished the preface of the book because one thing stood out immediately to me, that is, if one side is trying to obscure the true facts about Netaji's death, the other side is no better. All one could read through the pages, is the personal impressions and interpretations of the facts (or fiction) about Netaji's death from the author. It all comes down to the most fundamental thing - that is, to separate out the facts from the fiction. Sadly for me, the author fails miserably at that. Instead, he seems extremely biased and hell bent on dismissing everything that doesn't conform to the end he has in mind. I have not spent hours and hours researching and digging through the evidences but sifting through the pages, gave me an impression that right from the first page the end has already been decided.
The book is as fragmented in presenting the evidence and arguments as any other report. It also goes back and forth in time, preventing the reader from being able to form any semblance of a timeline or to chronicle of the series of events with reasonable accuracy. As a result, one ends up reading a lot of theories, facts and speculations but with no real possibility of connecting them into an overall narrative. This in my view is again due to the impatient urge to skip to the conclusion, than trying to put the research and arguments together in an intelligent fashion, and take the readers along on a journey of discovery and investigation.
A disappointing first book on this subject for me. But, this is not the end of my inquiry into Netaji's life and times as I shall continue to read more material.
Note to all - if you want a book that basically compiles all the theories into one collection so that you don't have to hunt through years of news articles, then this possibly could be a good book to have with you.
Naturally when I picked up this book, I hoped to get some answers to the mystery surrounding Netaji's sudden disappearance and claimed death. Especially at a time when the debate has been re-opened by the declassification of certain files on him and the most recent re-acknowledgement of his death in a plane crash by the government.
Its funny to think that he might have the distinction of having been pronounced dead most number of times in the world, among all the leaders of the world, past or present, and having died different kinds of death as well. But believe me, its not at all funny when you are subjected to this juvenile drama playing out on TV, senseless arguments and baseless speculations every now and then by the so called self proclaimed intellectuals on this subject.
So like everyone else, I wanted to seek the truth about Netaji and hoped to find it in the pages of this book. Unfortunately, I was disappointed right at the start as I finished the preface of the book because one thing stood out immediately to me, that is, if one side is trying to obscure the true facts about Netaji's death, the other side is no better. All one could read through the pages, is the personal impressions and interpretations of the facts (or fiction) about Netaji's death from the author. It all comes down to the most fundamental thing - that is, to separate out the facts from the fiction. Sadly for me, the author fails miserably at that. Instead, he seems extremely biased and hell bent on dismissing everything that doesn't conform to the end he has in mind. I have not spent hours and hours researching and digging through the evidences but sifting through the pages, gave me an impression that right from the first page the end has already been decided.
The book is as fragmented in presenting the evidence and arguments as any other report. It also goes back and forth in time, preventing the reader from being able to form any semblance of a timeline or to chronicle of the series of events with reasonable accuracy. As a result, one ends up reading a lot of theories, facts and speculations but with no real possibility of connecting them into an overall narrative. This in my view is again due to the impatient urge to skip to the conclusion, than trying to put the research and arguments together in an intelligent fashion, and take the readers along on a journey of discovery and investigation.
A disappointing first book on this subject for me. But, this is not the end of my inquiry into Netaji's life and times as I shall continue to read more material.
Note to all - if you want a book that basically compiles all the theories into one collection so that you don't have to hunt through years of news articles, then this possibly could be a good book to have with you.
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