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Mr Mihir Bose is an unusual polymath, publishing books on cricket and
football and the world of business, as well as biographies. In that
connection he has described the life of his namesake (to whom he is not
related) Subhas Chandra Bose, who went to Germany (and later Japan)
during the war to further Indian independence, and in the process
founded the Indian National Army. Mihir Bose's researches of course
covered the episode where Subhas Bose crossed India and Afghanistan
to make his way to Germany. His guide was a young man called Bhagat
Ram Talwar. The present book is the life and career of that young man,
also known as a spy under the name of Silver. And a very remarkable
story it is too.
Silver was an unusual Indian in that he was a Hindu born and brought
up in the North West Frontier Province speaking Pashtu. This fluency
in the local language was a major reason why this unknown young man
came to be shepherding Bose across the unhospitable landscape. Silver
had another qualification for his future career in addition to his quick
wits and his ability through his knowledge of Pashtu to make himself
inconspicuous in Afghanistan and the adjacent tribal territories. He was
a member of a Communist cell called Kirti, mostly confined to the
Punjab. This accounted for his strongly anti-British feeling. Bose as an
affluent Bengali found the journey tough going and he also lacked the
streetwise guile of his guide. But Silver went first to the Germans, who
were not very helpful, and then to the Italians who were. As a result
Silver got Bose safely on his way to the border with the Soviet Union
(at this time still bound to Nazi Germany by the Non-Aggression Pact).
From there Bose went onto Berlin, met Hitler and eventually went to
Japan where he was killed in a plane crash.
This meeting with the Italians landed Silver the job of spying for them.
This entailed gathering information about India, about any signs of
disaffection or mutiny in the army, the strength of military units in
India, etc. The Axis powers seem to have been astonishingly ill informed
about India and Silver stepped into the breach to supply the
information they needed. All this came naturally enough for a young
Communist while the Non-Aggression pact was in force. But when
Hitler invaded Russia and the Pact was at an end Silver through his Communist contacts was 'turned' to spy for the Soviet Union. This
meant continuing his good relations with Italy and Germany but
feeding them duff information in return for whatever he could get out
of them to pass to his new friends in Russia.
An unexpected result of the end of the Pact was that whereas before
Russia might have been expected to wish to foster Indian
independence, after the end of the Pact, Russia and Britain were allies
trying to defeat the Germans. So Silver also found himself spying for
the British. In the latter stages of the war, his German contacts passed
him on to Japan. So Silver ended up spying for Germany, Italy, Japan,
Russia and Britain - for the last two as a double-agent. This must surely
be an all-time record. It also gives an interesting and decidedly oblique
view of some aspects of the progress to Indian independence. The
volte-face by the Indian Communist party is a good example. The tissue
of lies created by Silver is quite amazing and there are moments of rich
humour. The story is well researched, well written and well
constructed. The story goes with a swing. However there are two
black marks for the publisher. The map on page 6 which shows the
route taken on his various journeys into and out of Afghanistan is quite
useless, even with a powerful magnifying glass. More serious is that a
book with full scholarly apparatus and bibliography lacks an index.
Apart from these blemishes, the book must be very strongly
recommended.
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