310 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
afternoon of August 18 and of Bose’s death that night. The cable re-
ported that Bose’s body had been flown to Tokyo, and Colonel Tada
was summoned from Tokyo to Saigon to address this discrepancy. It
was due to the fact that the original intention had been to take Bose’s
body to Tokyo, but this plan could not be implemented. Finney’s re-
port reached the defi nite conclusion that Bose had indeed died as a re-
sult of the plane crash on August 18, 1945.^13
The tumultuous reception given by the Indian public to the INA
heroes from November 1945 to February 1946 unnerved the British
and made them wonder whether Bose had once again deceived them
and escaped. Prem Kumar Sahgal, Shah Nawaz Khan, and Gurbaksh
Singh Dhillon had become the symbols of the INA’s po lit i cal triumph
inside India, once the British commander- in- chief felt compelled to
release them after their trial at the Red Fort. Indian soldiers in Britain’s
Indian Army, as well as in the Royal Indian Air Force and the Royal
Indian Navy, had grown increasingly restive. The letter from the intel-
ligence operative in New Delhi to his counterpart in Singapore dated
February 19, 1946, revealing British anxiety as to whether Bose was “ac-
tually and permanently dead,” was written at the height of the mutiny
in the Royal Indian Navy. The British had been worried by Gandhi’s
assertion in early January 1946 of his belief that Netaji was alive and
would appear at the right moment. A week before the naval mutiny,
Gandhi insisted on speaking about Bose in the present tense. Congress-
men interpreted Gandhi’s inner voice to be secret information received
from Netaji. There were other rumors making the rounds. According to
one, Nehru was said to have received a letter from Bose saying that he
was in Russia and wanted to escape to India. He would arrive via Chi-
tral, where one of Sarat Bose’s sons would receive him. Gandhi and
Sarat Bose were alleged to be aware of these plans. The intelligence as-
sessment deemed this story “unlikely,” but “a growing belief in India
that Bose is alive” was a cause for concern.^14
On March 30, 1946, Gandhi clarified his views on the matter in his
journal Harijan. He referred to the 1942 report on Bose’s death, which
he had believed but which later turned out to be incorrect. Since then,
he had had “a feeling that Netaji could not leave us until his dreams of
swaraj had been fulfilled.” “To lend strength to this feeling,” he added,