MIHIR  BOSE

*********************************************************************

                                  

The Indian Spy: The True Story of the Most Remarkable Secret Agent of World War II by Mihir Bose; Published by  Aleph Book Company ;  Pages 350 ; Price  Rs.599/-

                           *****************************

 Mihir Bose is a London based journalist who wrote an impressive biography of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose entitled “The Last Hero”.His latest book is “The Indian Spy” which was originally published as “ Silver: The Spy Who Fooled the Nazis.”

 Subhas Chandra Bose continues to be a mysterious character who dominated the Indian political stage by his colourful personality and impressive achievements. Seventy years after his demise in an “alleged plane crash” Bose continues to hold a high place in the India pantheon.

The book under review piles on yet another mystery in the form of Bhagat Ram Talwar. He was the man who was with Bose when he escaped to Kabul in 1941.  Talwar was christened  “Silver” by the British intelligence. The Communist Party of India has published a book on him.He wrote “The Talwars of Pathan Land"  eulogising his role in Netaji’s escape from India.

Talwar was a  Hindu Pathan, born in Ghalla Dher village not far from Nowshera .Silver was a member of Naujawan Bharat Sabha (Young Indian Association) founded by Bhagat Singh.

Mihir reconstructs very carefully the real Talwar  basing his study on  original documents from a number of  archives . He proves that Talwar   spied for the Italians, Germans, Japanese, Soviets and the British, cheated Subhas Bose and made a pile of money .

He was awarded one of the highest military decorations by Nazi Germany, and was handsomely paid by all the powers that benefited from his information and treachery. According  to the author , Silver actually deceived the Nazis on behalf of the British and Soviet Union. British intelligence employed Peter Fleming brother of Ian Fleming ( creator of James Bond) to handle Silver. Silver fed false information directly to Berlin, where Netaji was among those who were fooled . He made a dozen trips during the war period between Peshawar and Kabul travelling on foot and masquerading as a Muslim. He escorted Netaji to Kabul through the dangerous badlands, west of the Indus and convinced the Italian Ambassador into issuing a passport that enabled Netaji to flee to Germany via USSR.

On the afternoon of 22 February 1941, a small, clean-shaven, nondescript man, walked down an alleyway in Kabul and knocked on the back door of the Italian Embassy. Afghanistan was a neutral country, the war far away from its borders.

The Afghan employees of the Embassy who were gathered round the back entrance having a smoke thought the visitor was  a local. He wore the Karakuli Afghan cap, a long shirt that came down below his knees, and flowing, loose-fitting trousers. The man’s mission aim was to meet the Italian ambassador. He told the guards he was a cook who had been sent to work for him. The guards showed him into a room where the Ambassador was sitting behind a large desk framed by the Italian flag and a huge picture of  Mussolini.

The Ambassador was not  sure whether the man was a spy. The man told him he had been sent by Herr Thomas, the German who ran Siemens’ Kabul office.  ‘I  have just been asked to see you.’ said the visitor.

 The Ambassador  rang  Herr Thomas and  listened  to what the German was saying. A few minutes later the  Ambassador closed the door behind them, offered a seat to his visitor and, speaking slowly in English, said, ‘My name is Pietro Quaroni and I am the Ambassador of the Italian Legation in Kabul.’

The man then told Quaroni his name was Rahmat Khan. He  told the Italian that he was not an Afghan but an Indian who had arrived from India on 27 January, having made the near-200-mile journey from Peshawar to Kabul on foot, through tribal territory that separated Afghanistan from British India. Khan explained that he had  acted as guide and escort to the charismatic Indian revolutionary, Subhas Bose, who had escaped from India and now wanted to go to Berlin to seek German help to free India from British rule. Khan and Bose had established contact with the German Embassy in Kabul some weeks earlier, which is how they had been put in touch with Herr Thomas. Khan’s call on Quaroni was the last throw of the dice to make sure Bose secured travel documents which would help him cross the Afghan–Russian border and then, via the Soviet Union, make his way to Hitler’s Germany.

Unlike the Germans, Quaroni proved very willing. In three weeks  Bose was given the passport of an Italian diplomat and was escorted over the Afghan border and put on a train to Moscow, from where he took the overnight sleeper to Berlin. There met Hitler, and eventually travelled to Japan to raise an army to fight the British.

Within days of Bose’s take-off , Khan the escort was became  Khan the spy for the Italians. A few months later Khan was taken over by Italy’s Axis partner, Germany. But while Khan took money from both the Italians and the Germans he was from the beginning  deceiving both countries. Khan worked with the Russians and  fooled the Nazis. Later still he worked for the British, who gave him the name Silver.

The Germans  awarded him the Iron Cross, Germany’s highest military decoration, for his services to the Reich, and gave him a transmitter which he used to broadcast directly to the headquarters of Abwehr, Hitler’s secret service, in Berlin. He also swindled the Axis of £2.5 million in today’s money. The Germans never  suspected these broadcasts. They  were  military information concocted by the British in the garden of Delhi’s Viceregal Palace. Before the war had ended he also deceived the Japanese, making him a quintuple agent, the only one of the Second World War. 

 Silver was a Matriculate and  spoke broken English, and  knew no other European tongue. He was not even impressive. But  everything in his life was astounding beginning  with his  unusual upbringing.

 The book has unexpected turns — how Talwar double crossed Netaji and facilitated the arrest of most of his lieutenants and how his guru was left to die in the USSR by comrade Achar Singh Cheena.

After vanishing in 1945, Silver arrived in India in 1948 and nothing is known of what he did between 1948 and 1973.In 1973, an International Netaji Seminar was held in Calcutta and Silver resurfaced, creating a myth about what he had done during World War II and also publishing his memoir in 1976.It is not known where and how he passed away in 1983. Mihir’s book  is an absorbing account and replete with  supporting anecdotes and evidence. 

P.P.Ramachandran.

03 / 09 / 2017