New Delhi
23 August 2005
The Indian embassy in Japan on Tuesday said no
invitation was received for the memorial service held on August 18 in
Tokyo to commemmorate the death anniversary of Netaji Subhas Chandra
Bose and dismissed any suggestion of a faux pas in India going
unrepresented at the ceremony.
When contacted in Tokyo, an official of the Indian embassy told this
newspaper that no invitation was received in the name of the
ambassador, Mr ML Tripathi, or any other official of the mission.
"We did not receive any invitation [to the August 18 memorial service],"
the official said over the telephone. "We do not know of any such
function," he added although he said he knew of "a Japanese who
organises a function" at the Renkoji Temple in Tokyo.
He would also not comment on whether the ambassador or any other
official attended the memorial service held in previous years. The
Ministry of External Affairs, on its part, said efforts were on to gather
information and declined to offer any comment.
The avoidable incident occurred even as the Justice Manoj Kumar
Mukherjee Commission, which has visited Tokyo in the past, plans to
visit Russia next month to explore Bose's Russia connection. The
Ministry of External Affairs is understood to have cleared the Mukherjee
Commission's proposed visit to Russia in September-end.
For the last 60 years now, the death anniversary of Netaji Subhas
Chandra Bose is observed on August 18 every year. Netaji is believed to
have died in a plane crash on that day in 1945. A memorial service is
organised at the Renkoji Temple in Tokyo where an urn of ashes,
believed to be those of Netaji, is enshrined.
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