Wednesday, March 15, 2006

The Bose Mystery: A Little-known Taiwan-India Connection

For those of you who like your conspiracy theories half-baked and not particularly well done, I offer this not very eerie tale of Subhash Chandra Bose, the Indian freedom fighter who led an army of Indians fighting on the side of the Japanese in WWII, and whom history records died in an airplane crash on The Beautiful Island:

One of the enduring mysteries in modern Indian history is the one surrounding the death of one of its greatest freedom fighters, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. Almost half a century after his alleged death in a plane crash, Zee News brings to light certain theories that disprove the official theory of his death/disappearance.

According to the official theory, the man who is held in the same esteem as the nation’s greatest freedom fighters, alongside Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, no less, died on August 18, 1945. His death is supposed to have occurred in a freak plane crash in Taiwan.

Certain facts came to light in the course of investigations into Bose’s death that are totally in contradiction to the plane crash theory. Even at the time of the incident, there were doubts among Indians as well as the Allies as to the authenticity of the crash. Britain at the time initiated a series of inquiries with the help of the United States but none of them were able to verify the fact that Bose did indeed perish in the plane crash.

This story reminds me of one of my favorite odd characters from WWII, the mad war criminal Masunobu Tsuji, who was alleged to have ended his days advising the Viet Cong how to fight the Yankee imperialists.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think Taiwan's Guo An Ju (Bureau of Homeland Security?) published a report on this last year. There was no evidence of the crash.

Speaking of fighter jets, China and Pakistan recently started a joint venture to develop and build a new fighter - designed to outperform the F-16s, Taiwan's F-16s, most likely....

Chaon said...

I thought Pakistan was always tight with China?

Anonymous said...

China already had plenty of Su-27/30s that can way outperform the F-16 and Mirage 2000s. This is most likely for the Pak AF.