Bose Subhas Chandra - His Majestys Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and Indias Struggle Against Empire

Subhas Chandra Bose was an uncle of my father, Sisir Kumar Bose, and a younger brother of my paternal grandfather, Sarat Chandra Bose. I never met Subhas Chandra Bose, since he passed from the scene in 1945, a good eleven years before I was born. I never met Sarat Chandra Bose either; he died in 1950. Growing up during the early decades of independent India, I knew them not as relatives but as historical public figures. Like millions of other South Asians, I thought of Subhas Chandra Bose as NetajiRevered Leaderone of those who spearheaded Indias freedom struggle. I was also aware of how controversial he was in the West, because of his wartime alliances. According to my father, Netaji believed that his family was coterminous with his country. I was taught, from childhood, never to claim a special relationship with him based on an accident of birth.

Though I belong to a generation that never knew Netaji in person, I had the opportunity to meet the men and women who had worked closely with him. They were frequent visitors and guests at my familys home in Calcutta, first at 1 Woodburn Park, and after 1974 at 90 Sarat Bose Road (the house we called Basundhara). Sitting on the verandah of Woodburn Park, I heard Abid Hasan recount the thrilling story of the hazardous submarine voyage he took with Netaji in 1943. S. A. Ayer told many vivid anecdotes about Netajis time in Singapore and Rangoon, including the process of writing the proclamation of the provisional government of free India. Another visitor, Lakshmi Sahgal, described the formation of the womens regiment of the Indian National Army in 1943. Janaki Thevar Athinahappan spoke of the regiments retreat with Netaji from Burma to Thailand in 1945. The battles fought in Imphal, Kohima, and Burma came alive in the words of Prem Kumar Sahgal, Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon, Abid Hasan, Mehboob Ahmed, and many others. Their voices became thick with emotion whenever they spoke about Netaji, and they wept for their lost leader decades after he was gone.

One afternoon in early December 1940, Netaji called my father to his side and inquired, Amaar ekta kaj korte parbe? The kaj (work) that my father was being asked to do was to help his uncle escape from British-ruled India. From that day on, my father never stopped doing Netajis work. Despite his busy professional life as one of Indias leading pediatricians, he was deeply committed to upholding the best traditions of Indias freedom struggle. In 1957, he established the Netaji Research Bureau (NRB)an institute devoted to history, politics, and international relationsin Netajis ancestral house at 38/2 Elgin Road. I grew up in tandem with that institution, to which he devoted far more time and attention than to his children.

I did not fully appreciate the scale of my fathers achievement until I turned to writing this book. Through half a century of dedicated effort, he had managed to collect a trove of documents, letters, manuscripts, relics, memoirs, photographs, voice recordings, and film footage connected to Netaji and the Indian independence movementmaterials gathered from all corners of Asia and Europe and beyond. Though I have made extensive use of archives in London, Delhi, and elsewhere, no truly substantive biography of Netaji would have been possible without the priceless resources available at the Netaji Research Bureau. I remember with much fondness its first archivist, Naga Sundaram, who as a young civilian recruit in the Indian National Army had fought at the Battle of Imphal, and Benode Chandra Chaudhuri, who in the NRBs early decades ran its publications division with unflagging zeal. During my research and writing of this book Kartik Chakrabarti, Sukhamoy Chowdhury, and Manohar Mondal cheerfully responded to my endless demands for source materials of every kind from the NRB archives. This is the first book I have written in Calcutta. I wrote during the day at 38/2 Elgin Road and during the night at 90 Sarat Bose Road.