Bhagwanji


Bhagwanji, also known as Gumnami Baba, was an ascetic who lived approximately the last thirty years of his life in various parts of Uttar Pradesh, India. He is best known for being the object of rumors that asserted his real identity as being Subhas Chandra Bose. These claims have repeatedly been found to be unsubstantiated by numerous investigations. Bose presumed to have died in a plane crash on 18 August 1945, but legends and rumors of his purported survival have circulated ever since.
Bhagwanji died on 16 September 1985, in Ayodhya.

Items recovered from Bhagwanji's belongings

Several items were recovered from Bhagwanji's belongings which were sent to district treasury in 26 wooden boxes. Details of those items were reported in many newspapers. Items contained huge collection of books in English, Hindi and Bengali, numerous Indian and foreign magazines and newspapers, many foreign made items, letters from some very important political and national leaders, maps, photographs of Bose's family members and some Indian National Army memorabilia.
Among people who had met Bhagwanji were some of the notable names of politics in independent India.
  • Atul Sen, a professor and an ex-MLA from Dacca, Bangladesh. He knew Netaji beforehand as it was on Netaji's insistence he ran for office and won the election in the 1930s. He had a chance meeting with Bhagwanji sometime in the early 1960s at Neemsar. Upon being convinced he wrote a letter to prime minister Nehru, stating "I take the liberty of addressing these few lines to you in the matter of the widely prevalent belief that Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose is not dead. Mine is not mere belief but actual knowledge that Netaji is alive and is engaged in spiritual practice somewhere in India. Not the sadhu of Shoulmari, Cooch Behar, in West Bengal about whom some Calcutta politicians are making a fuss. I deliberately make the location a little vague because from the talks I had with him for months together not very long ago, I could understand that he is yet regarded as Enemy No. 1 of the Allied Powers, and that there is a secret protocol that binds the government of India to deliver him to Allied 'justice' if found alive. ". To that Nehru replied stating the India is not bound to any such clause in any agreement. Because of Sen's overzealousness, Bhagwanji asked him not to meet him again. Sen however informed Pabitra Mohan Roy in Kolkata about Bhagwanji.
  • Pabitra Mohan Roy, a physician by profession who was also an intelligence officer in Indian National Army, carried this information to Leela Roy. Mr Roy met Bhagwanji in March 1962 at Neemsar and maintained contact with him till Sept, 1985. Numerous letters written by Mr. Roy were recovered from Bhagwanji's belongings and likewise many letters from Bhagwanji were recovered at Roy's place at Dum Dum, Kolkata. On his subsequent visits to Bhagwanji during the aforementioned period, he started taking written notes, delivered by Bhagwanji himself, and transcribed it in form of secret diaries, that were unpublished till 2019, which was later on published as a book named "Mahakal Kathan".
  • Leela Roy, someone who knew Netaji for almost two decades, was the most renowned of all who had met Bhagwanji. She along with Mr. Roy met Bhagwanji in 1963. Leela Roy met Bhagwanji, accompanied by Kaviraj Kamalakanta Ghosh, Shaila Sen, Prof Samar Guha, & Anil Das of INA Secret Service. Leela Roy with her team stayed there for 10/12 days. Bhagwanji presented a Tea cup with plate wrapped in saffron cloth, later he presented his self used Scheaffer Pen to Lee as a token of remembrance. It is said that Bhagwanji addressed Leela Roy as 'Lee', as Netaji used to do in the days of their working together.
  • * Leela Roy in a letter to Dilipkumar Roy, a close friend of Netaji, mentioned that your friend is still alive and is living as a mystic in India and she isn't entitled to say anything more of it.
  • * She started providing for Bhagwanji and used to send items as requested by Bhagwanji till her death in 1970.
  • Samar Guha, an ardent Netaji follower, revolutionist, elected three consecutive times as a Member of Parliament, professor at Jadavpur University and writer of famous books on chemistry, visited Bhagwanji along with Leela Roy. Several of his letters were found at Bhagwanji's place. He kept in touch with Bhagwanji till 1985 and visited almost every year.
  • Sunil Krishna Gupta, brother of famous revolutionist Dinesh Chandra Gupta, first visited Bhagwanji in 1963, after requested by Suresh Chandra Bose, Netaji's elder brother. Later his nephews Surajit Dasgupta and Jagatjit Dasgupta also used to accompany him, along with Tarun Kumar Mukhopadhyay. They deposed in front of Mukherjee commission and testified that Bhagwanji was Netaji only.
  • Apart from these, Sunil Das, Santosh Bhattacharya, Dulal Nandy and Bijoy Nag used to visit Bhagwanji, who were associated with Jayashree publications, started by Leela Roy. Bijoy Nag later testified in front of Mukherjee Commission, that Bhagwanji was Netaji.
  • Unconfirmed reports of visits from famous people viz. Dr. Sampurnanand, Anandamayi Ma, Pranab Mukherjee and Charan Singh also exist. Letters from Dr Sampurnanand and Ghani Khan Choudhury has been recovered from Bhagwanji's belongings.

    Search for his true identity

The life story of Bhagwanji was first published by a group of journalists; Ashok Tandon, Ram Tirth Vikal and Chandresh Kumar Srivastav, in a daily called Naye Log in Faizabad few weeks after Bhagwanji's death. Mr. Tandon went on to write a book called Gumnami Subhash in 1986. At the same time another magazine "Northern India Patrika" started publishing a series on Bhagwanji or Gumnami baba relating him with Netaji.
As there were no claimants on Gumnami baba's belongings, district administration decided to auction the items. The attempt was stopped by local people and to quote Ashok Tandon -
"After the reports emerged that the state administration is likely to auction the belongings of Gumnami Baba, Kauser Hussain of Northern India Patrika along with Vishwa Bandhav Tiwari and Mohd Haleem approached the court to stop the auctioning. The court ordered the administration to make the inventory of all the things that were found at Baba's place and submit it to the treasury. One of the letters found at Gumnami Baba's place was written by Basanti Devi, wife of Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das, who considered Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose as her own son."
In early 1986, Lalita Bose a niece of Subhash Chandra Bose, arrived at Faizabad and upon going through the items, came to the conclusion that those belonged to her great-uncle only. She identified her mother's handwriting on a copy of the dissentient report submitted by Suresh Chandra as part of Shah Nawaz Committee, where she had addressed her brother in law as "Param kalyaneeya devar chiranjiveshu – Pranadhik sneh ashirvad".
She filed a writ petition in Allahabad High Court, along with M Haleem and V Tiwari, demanding an immediate stop to auctioning the items, preparing an inventory of items and after due enquiry if it's ascertained that Gumnami baba was Netaji, hand over the items to her as she has right to inherit.
As per interim order passed by the court, an inventory was prepared of all the items recovered from Ram Bhawan. 25 wooden trunks full of clothes, literature, letters and other artefacts were recovered. The state government had filed a counter affidavit to the petition, where they did mention that all the items recovered surprisingly relate to Netaji. They also observed that on every 23 January, the birthday of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, a closed door ceremony used to take place in Bhagwanji's room where people from Calcutta used to be present.