Both books are about historic journeys; the first concerns the last fateful journey of Indian nationalist Subhas Chandra Bose; and the second, the last of the traditional caravans from Leh in Ladakh to Lhasa in Tibet, carrying gifts and tributes to the Dalai Lama.

The author of Laid to Rest is Ashis Ray, the longest serving Indian foreign correspondent, who was the successful head of the CNN in South Asia and a well-known cricket analyst. He is now resident in London where he has developed and published his research on his maternal uncle, Subhas Bose, on the website www.bosefiles.com.

My own connection with the subject of Ray’s book is at arm’s length. Lakshmi Swaminathan was my uncle’s sister-in-law, and my wife’s great grandfather Chittaranjan Das was Subhas’ political mentor. My mother-in-law is the last person outside the immediate Bose family to see Subhas before he left Calcutta forever, and owns what is the last communication written by Subhas before his great escape.

I was the foreign secretary when the question of raising the Indian contribution to the Renkoji temple in Tokyo came up for its periodic review. This led to the wider discussion of bringing the mortal remains back to India and coincided with Ashis Ray’s contacts with Prime Minister Narasimha Rao that are described in this book.

We have the benefit of books on Bose by Sugata Bose and Rudrangshu Mukherjee, and those by British writers Leonard Gordon and Hugh Toye, and Ray provides the clear rationale for his book, “I would not have embarked on putting pen to paper but for the tsunami of falsehood … between 2006 and 2015… A staggering 11 inquiries official and unofficial have been undertaken … each and every one arriving at the same conclusion…from 1956 there is no valid reason for a mystery. In other words, it is a man-made rumpus… The facts connected with Bose’s passing were in the possession of the British authorities within 28 days of it occurring. Well over seven decades have passed since. Yet his remains continue to rest in a temple in Tokyo instead of being brought to India for fitting disposition”.

Having set out his stall, Ashis Ray’s book is a comprehensive, credible and detailed forensic document which seeks to, and does, prove conclusively that Subhas Bose died in the plane crash in Taipeh on 18 August 1945, and his ashes are at the Renkoji temple in Tokyo.

Why are there dissenters to this view? Subhas’ elder brother Sarat Bose seemed agnostic on this issue, and Nehru and Patel did not apparently inform him of the Japanese and British accounts of the crash. Another brother Suresh dissented from the Shah Nawaz Khan 1956 report, which provided the details of death. Then again, only Subhas died in the crash whereas Habibur Rahman who went through almost identical circumstances, lived to tell the tale, which was considered suspicious.

Various post-mortem sightings were alleged, such as in Russia and in UP, and there had been previous false alarms and mis-information, dating back as early as 1942. The Mukherjee Report of 2005 stated no plane crash took place at the time and date of the disaster; and the ashes at Renkoji are not Bose’s. This report was repudiated by the Indian government. Finally, the death certificate and register of cremations was in the name of Ichiro Okura.

Ashis Ray takes each of these arguments and demolishes them with hard evidence. And he cites the testimony of Habibur Rahman who was with Bose when he died, and who told his story many times to many different persons, including the Shah Nawaz commission. And in the 2015 book In Search of Freedom by Sagari Chhabra, one of the Tokyo cadets called Gandhi Nathan provides an account of Habibur Rahman bringing the urn with Netaji’s ashes to Tokyo as another authentic record of a first-hand account of the death of Netaji. Rahman informed Nathan that six persons, including himself, were at Netaji’s side when he died in Taipei.

Ray makes trenchant criticism of the dissenters; “innumerable cock-and-bull theories… pedaled by a gulliable group of fraudsters” who “have no leg to stand on for they don’t have a shred of proof.” Bose’s daughter Anita Pfaff’s wishes are that the ashes be brought to India and her desire should be respected. The Japanese authorities will certainly comply with the wishes of the next of kin and supported by the Indian government.

It is curious that Ray usually refers to Bose’s wife Emilie Schenkl and Anita Pfaff only by their surnames, and that he criticises Prime Minister Modi for “encouraging the mendacity”, whereas he later writes about Modi’s “welcome openness” in releasing all the records in the government’s possession into the public domain.

Will this book Laid to Rest in fact be “The Last Word” on the subject? It probably will. And it deserves to be.

As regards the second book, Radhu died aged 93 in 2011. In his time, he saw the World War at long distance, the first ripples of the national movement that shook the entire subcontinent; the end of the British Raj, the Partition of India into two separate States, and the Chinese takeover of Tibet. Branches of the Radhu family had opened businesses in Leh and Lhasa, beyond the Karakoram, in Kashgar, Yarkand and Eastern Turkestan.

In 1942 the young Radhu, aged 20, travelled with the last caravan that carried tribute from Leh to the Dalai Lamas in Lhasa every three years. The journey took four months. Educated at Aligarh, he was present in Lhasa when the Chinese invaded the Roof of the World, supposedly “to liberate” the Himalayan nation from imperialist influence.

Radhu realised soon enough that Ladakh was declining as a business centre, and the traditional caravan traffic was in irreversible decline, but the transfer of business to Lhasa took several years. Communication between Lhasa and India via Kalimpong was faster and more profitable, and caravans did not attract young people.

Radhu offers excellent descriptions of Tibet and the Potala Palace ceremonies before the Chinese takeover, the intrigues of pro and anti-China factions, and the various methods by which the Chinese wrested control. For their part, the Tibetans did not shrink from spreading discord and divisions among themselves to advance their personal agendas or to take revenge for perceived slights. The Tibetan aristocracy held the Indian non-violent national movement and democracy with reserve, looked upon the British with respect, and accustomed to great finery, looked down on the Chinese communist simplicity and the Mao costumes.

On later business to Nanjing from 1948-50, Radhu is a de facto prisoner with the Kuomintang when it was on the verge of collapse. He meets both pro and anti-Tibet groups, and followers of the Panchen Lama who never failed to polarise Tibetan politics and were always a useful instrument for the Chinese. The KMT was as opposed to Tibetan autonomy as the Communists who were then on the point of taking over.

Indians minimised the Chinese invasion of Tibet 1950. Tibetan appeals to New Delhi and the UN got no response. The anti-Chinese pro-British regent stepped down and the Dalai Lama took power aged16, two years before the stipulated age. The Panchen Lama was then, in 1951, only 13 and was present when the agreement for the “peaceful liberation of Tibet” from “foreign imperialism” was signed in Beijing.

This was the time when Radhu made his last visit from Kalimpong to Lhasa. He was at Yatung when the Dalai Lama met the Chinese army commander. He returned to Lhasa in the procession of the Dalai Lama and the Chinese general and gives an account of the arrival of the Chinese army in Lhasa and the progressive subjugation of the Tibetans by the Chinese and their manoeuvres against the Dalai Lama. Those who stood for traditional values were outflanked and undermined. He mourns, “For me, alas, Tibet represents a totally completed past.”

At first, traders like the Radhus prospered since the Chinese consumed every import and paid promptly. Improvements were also made in health, hygiene, communications and agriculture, but the Chinese were fundamentally opposed to traditional Tibet and their moderation was transitory, while “real Tibetans could not be communists.” On the other hand, Tibetans never regarded Indians as foreigners.Radhu gives a damning account of Indian indifference over Tibet, starting with the Information Officer in Sikkim. Radhu’s cousin having joined the Pakistan Foreign Service led to suspicions from Indian intelligence.

Nehru yearned for India-China friendship and was opposed to a feudal Tibet. He opposed the Dalai Lama appealing to the UN in 1959, delayed meeting him after he fled to India, and Radhu, suspected of CIA links, was driven out of the Dalai Lama’s entourage. He had indeed met the Dalai Lama’s elder brother Gyalpo Tondup in Nanjing who was later associated with the CIA, and younger brother Lobsang in Lhasa, but Radhu convincingly states he never had connections with US intelligence.

Radhu held a poor opinion of many Tibetan nobles who arrived in India with their petty disputes and personal interests. His own family re-established business in Kashmir but this was “modern business” compared to the “Middle Ages” trade in Lhasa where connections were all that counted. The family business in Leh was eventually taken over by the government.

There are irritating breaks in narrative; the last caravan of 1942-43 is interspersed with scenes from Radhu’s early life, school and Aligarh. He first saw a cycle in Srinagar and a train in Rawalpindi. We are given philosophical reflections on religion and the “aggression of western thinking” which led to “servility of so many Orientals” and the passing of times and manners. Speaking of his grandfather, who died in 1937, the author writes, “With the passage of time, I have understood the entire meaning and greatness of this (Chisti Sufi) tradition.” Yet his own relatives were not short of arrogance and self-consciousness of rank and importance with which they imposed themselves on the Tibetans.

The lack of a map is a grave omission, as is the lack of a chronological table, and index. There are no less than 41 pages of otiose introduction. Since this is a reprint, these flaws should have been rectified by the publisher.

It is astonishing that Radhu travels from Ladakh to Lhasa, to China from Kalimpong, and from China to Xinjiang, Kashgar, Baltistan, Karachi, Bangladesh, and back to Kalimpong, in those years with the difficulties of communication, passports, visas and uncertain borders. Radhu’s memoir was suggested to the author by the 14th Dalai Lama, who has lived through the same period and is still happily alive.

This is a memorable book that carries the first-hand tale of a departed Central Asia and Tibet, a period of abrupt political, societal and civilisational transition from a traditional to a modern way of life, with all the trauma that the changes brought about.

The reviewer is India’s former Foreign Secretary