318 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
unambiguous sentences: “The Committee has come to the conclusion
that Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose met his death in an air crash and the
ashes now at Renko- ji temple, Tokyo, are his ashes.... It is time that his
ashes were brought to India with due honor, and a memorial erected
over them at a suitable place.... If Netaji’s mortal remains are hon-
ored, and his ideals kept alive, then one could truly ask, ‘Where is
death’s sting, where, grave, thy victory?’”^30
Nehru’s government failed to implement this clear recommendation,
even though it agreed with the majority view rather than the dissent.
With the matter unsettled, rumors that Netaji was still alive increased
in the 1960s. Reports of the unlikeliest sightings were disseminated:
people claimed to have spotted him as an ascetic in India, a prisoner in
Russia. Some rumormongers hinted darkly at foul play by Nehru him-
self. In 1970, Indira Gandhi decided to appoint an eminent jurist, G. D.
Khosla, as a one- man commission of in quiry to investigate the matter
all over again. With the passage of time, fewer direct witnesses were
available, and the commission heard testimony from almost anyone
with theories to propound. Nevertheless, four of the Japanese survivors
of the air crash—Sakai, Nonogaki, Kono, and Takahashi—repeated
their testimony before the Khosla commission. Justice Khosla’s essen-
tial find ings, presented in 1974, were the same as that of Shah Nawaz
Khan and S. N. Maitra. He concluded that Netaji had been gravely
wounded in the air crash and had “succumbed to his injuries” on the
night of August 18, 1945. Khosla engaged in a bit of special pleading
for Nehru, emphasizing the friendly personal relations between Nehru
and Bose, Bose’s respect for Nehru, and Nehru’s affection for Bose. He
was scathing about those who had come to his commission’s hearings
with improbable tales to tell. “The numerous stories about encounters
with Bose at various times and various places after 1945,” Khosla wrote,
“are completely false and unacceptable. They are the result either of
hallucination helped by wishful thinking or have been invented by per-
sons who wanted to draw attention to themselves and advertise them-
selves as public- spirited men.”^31
The Khosla report, issued in 1974, fell victim to po lit i cal partisan-
ship in India. Indira Gandhi’s government, which had instituted the