Opportunity to know more about India’s Subhas Chandra Bose
THE data on Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose that has been de-classified by the West Bengal government ought to be assessed with far greater seriousness of purpose than has been evident since last Friday. More fundamentally, the Netaji papers are not merely of viewers’ interest in the Kolkata Police Museum and they lend no scope for trivialisation of history. They relate to a sensitive phase of India’s past (1939-45), and ought to have enriched the collection of the West Bengal State Archives, if not the National Archives in Delhi. There is no scope for another Centre-State ego clash on this score and the Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is justified in appealing to the Centre to open up the files. The edification of the tourist is of lesser moment in the overall construct. At stake is The Idea of History, as RG Collingwood once wrote so famously.