Idol curiosity

It is now 62 years since Subhash Chandra Bose, also known as Netaji (the Leader), disappeared in mysterious circumstances. Bose was a towering figure in pre-independence politics and possibly the biggest thorn in the side of the government of British India.

His popularity rivalled that of Mahatma Gandhi and Gandhi's closest political disciple, Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India. But more than half a century after he went missing, controversy still surrounds his name as India's right-to-information activists lock horns with the federal government over his disappearance.

Battle lines were drawn between the two sides in January after India's Research and Analysis Wing (Raw), the nation's premier intelligence agency, snubbed queries about Bose under the recently enacted Right to Information Act. At the time, Raw told Mission Netaji, a New Delhi-based institution promoting research on Bose's life and times, that it had no information at all about the independence hero.

The mission was outraged and rejected Raw's reply as an outright lie. A similar attempt that month to find information about Bose from the all-powerful Prime Minister's Office also failed. But the office at least said files on the subject were 'under review'.

'The government's temerity shocks me,' said Bose's nephew and member of parliament Subrata Bose. 'It is wilfully withholding information about a mass leader whose slogan 'Give me blood and I will give you freedom' still echoes in the hearts and minds of all patriotic Indians.'

Activists say the elusive files are a test case in an information-hungry nation where secrecy-obsessed officials are pitted against citizens empowered by a pioneering liberal law.

The ball is now in the court of the Right to Information Act's watchdog, the Central Information Commission, which is expected to have its next hearing on the issue later this month.