Sarat Chandra Bose was a front- ranking national leader and one of the 'Big Five' Congress Leaders of Bengal. He was jailed on different occasions for his role in our national liberation. During his last long detention, he wrote these letters to his young daughter. It is commendable on her part to preserve these letters and include them in this book "The Glory of Bondage". Chesterfield also remarked. "A letter shows the man it is written to as well as the man it is written by." This remark aptly applies to these letters which reveal a doting father and a loving daughter. They present the writer's admirable personal traits as a voracious reader with broad intellectual curiosity; and as an affectionate person with deep personal concern for his friends and the members of his family. They also show the spiritual bent of the writer's mind. He was deeply devoted to the Mother Goddess and with calm resignation bore the buffets of his troubled life. This is an unknown but inspiring mental attitude for a national leader who had been generally known an uncompromising political fighter.
However, these letters have some obvious limitations which were imposed by the situation in which they were written. Sent from the prison they had to pass through censorship. The writer could not express his views freely and frankly on current political situations. One can notice the destructive hands of the censor in some of these letters. We are told how some letters written to the writer's wife were heavily censored.
The writer's quip on the imperialist Government's ban on some books is sarcastic. Perhaps they thought that these banned books would corrupt the mind of the fifty-six year old prisoner, as he acidly commented.
The writer pectoris’s a good family life. He himself was its shining example. His devotion to his mother whose funerals he was not allowed to attend; his anxiety for his ailing wife from whose bedside he was forced to stay away and his concern for his imprisoned son, Saris, from whom be received no message provide elements of tragedy.
But the most poignant part of the letter is the experience of the shock he had received upon the news of the disappearance of his dear brother, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, a friend, philosopher and guide. His words are full of deep pathos and moving emotion.
These letters at times climb the sublime height of good literature which enthralls and elevates its readers. They are abiding human documents, not at all usual political tracts, and as such deserve careful perusal for entertainment and education.
Book's Contents and Sample Pages
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