NEW DELHI (TIP): The process to declassify files relating to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose will begin on his birth anniversary, January 23, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Wednesday, October 14, after meeting 35 members of Netaji’s extended family at his 7, Race Course Road residence. While making the announcement, the PM also said that he sees no reason to “strangle history”.

Modi said this in a series of tweets after meeting members of Bose’s extended family at his residence here. The prime minister said the government would also request foreign governments to declassify their files on Bose, whose reported death in a plane crash in 1945 in present-day Taiwan is widely disputed.

Modi said he will begin the process involving other countries with Russia in December when he visits Moscow. Bose, a leading light of India‘s freedom movement, was said to be fleeing to Russia when his plane reportedly crashed and caught fire.

This version has been challenged for decades by innumerable Bose followers who have held varying versions of what happened to him after 1945. Bose’s family members met Modi on Wednesday in the light of the West Bengal government’s declassification of official files related to the last days of Bose, founder of the Indian National Army.

“It was a privilege to welcome family members of Subhas Babu to 7RCR. We had a remarkable and extensive interaction,” Modi said.

The PM said that those nations who forget history also lose the power to create it. “Consider me a part of your family,” the PM said to the family members of Netaji. Union Ministers Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj, and Minister of State Babul Supriyo were present on the occasion

Modi said: “There is no need to strangle history. Nations that forget their history lack the power to create it.”

The prime minister had said in September that he would meet over 50 members of Bose’s extended family living in India and abroad.