Singaporean poet Elangovan's theatrical take on Netaji mystery

20 November 2007

What failed to tickle the fancy of any Indian playwright has fired up the imagination of Singapore's celebrated poet Elangovan. I, BOSE -- an English play written and directed by Elangovan and staged by Agni Kootthu (Theatre of Fire) -- is all set to project "the alternative truth" about Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose this December.

The play will be staged on 8 and 9 December 2007 at the Guinness Theatre, The Substation, 45 Armenian Street, Singapore. The cast comprises Ahamed Ali Khan, Hemang Yadav, Shaiful Risan & Yazid Jalil. "The play will expose all the manipulations of the Congress party and Nehru dynasty and their cover-up of Netaji's plane-crash, " S Thenmoli, President of Agni Kootthu, informed Mission Netaji.

According to the official Indian view, Subhas Bose died in an air crash in Taipei in 1945. Most Indian historians and intellectuals are either disinterested or hostile towards the version recently upheld by the findings of Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry. They are also not intrigued by the disclosure that the Government continues to maintain thousands of classfied records on Bose.

But in Singapore, where Bose set up his Provisional Government of Free India, the new-age admirers seems to have decided to let it all out. Educated in the UK and Australia, Elangovan is recipient of several awards and a pioneer of modern Tamil poetry. Known to be controversial, irreverent and provocative, his works explore the untouched realities. He believes that art should conscientise, confront and question accepted societal stereotypes of vision, perception, feeling and judgment to examine reality as a historical and social process.

In a never before theatrical representation I, BOSE will explore various theories of Netaji's disapperance, including the widely believed rumour that he was held in a gulag in the Soviet Russia, and that he eventually returned to India in the guise of a holy man called Bhagwanji.

According to Thenmoli, I, BOSE will be an unprecedented artistic endeavour in Singapore. Chinese-led Singapore establishment is not known to be very sympathetic towards Bose because the INA aligned with the Japanese, who killed many Singapore Chinese. However, recent years have seen the rekindling of some academic interest in Netaji. "But it is still politically inclined towards the picture created by Congress and the pseudo-intellectual clowns here," she adds. "They still believe that the ashes at Renkoji belong to Netaji".