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Gumnaami trailer: Srijit Mukherji’s film raises questions about the disappearance of Subhash Chandra Bose

The trailer of National Award-winning director Srijit Mukherji’s upcoming film Gumnaami was released on Sunday. The film is based on the legend of ‘Gumnami Baba’, an ascetic spotted in Uttar Pradesh in the 1970s whom many believed was freedom fighter Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose in disguise. The film stars Bengali actor Prosenjit Chatterjee in the titular role.

The trailer opens with the Mukherjee commission in session who claimed that Bose did not die in an airplane crash near Taiwan in 1945. The prosecutor in trailer hints that Bose might have lived as an ascetic in his later years and has the evidence to prove his claims. However, the jury laughs it off and counters him saying that he should be a screenwriter. The clip suggests that Gumnaami runs in two timelines: one examining the immediate events after Bose’s death and the other set during the Mukherjee Commission hearings.

Furthermore, the clip is attached to the soundtrack of Bose’s regimental quick march ‘Qadam Qadam Badaye Ja’ as things start to heat up for the Mukherjee commission. The jury begins to question their political inclinations, to which the prosecutor politely refutes and claims to be a member of Bose’s Azad Hind Fauj armed force.

Chandra Kumar Bose, kin of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, on 29 August, claimed that there is no connection between the legendary freedom fighter and filmmaker Srijit’s forthcoming flick.

Srijit rejected Chandra Kumar’s claim and said, “A lot of Bose family does not believe in the plane crash theory. But they are united that ‘Gumnabi baba’ theory is rubbish… There are various opinions about how Netaji died. It has been 74 years and people of India deserve to know. My film Gumnami opens up discussions and debate on that. The film is not based on any particular book.”

The director, who received acclaim for his National Award-winning Bengali outing Ek Je Chilo Raja, told Press Trust of India that he had been toying with the idea ever since he read a newspaper article on the ascetic in 2016.

The Indian government constituted as many as three probe commissions to ferret out the truth behind Netaji’s disappearance. In 1999, the Mukherjee Commission, led by retired Supreme Court judge MK Mukherjee, initiated an exhaustive six-year-long probe into the “alleged disappearance”. Though Mukherjee, in the report, nixed the air crash theory, he did not conclude that the ‘sanyasi’ was Bose due to the “absence” of any clear evidence.

According to News18, the Narendra Modi-led central government has also made public a series of files revealing many sensational facts about the revolutionary. In June 2016, the Uttar Pradesh government set up a judicial commission to probe the identity of Gumnami Baba, reigniting the debate on whether the ascetic who lived till 1985 was Netaji.

Gumnaami is scheduled to release on 2 October.