An Indian Pilgrim: An Unfinished Autobiography

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

Subhas Chandra Bose's 'discovery of India, unlike Jawaharlal Nehru's, occurred very early in life, when he was barely in his teens How many selfless sons of the Mother are prepared, in this selfish age, the fifteen year old Subhas asked his mother in 1912. to completely give up their personal interests and take the plunge for the Mother? Mother. is this son of yours yet ready? As he stood on the verge of taking the plunge by resigning from the Indian Civil Service in 1921, he wrote to his elder brother Sarat Only on the soil of sacrifice and suffering can we raise our national edifice.

In December 1937 Bose wrote ten chapters of his autobiography, providing a narrative of his life until 1921 and a reflective chapter entitled My Faith Philosophical' The autobiography is complemented with a fascinating collection of seventy letters of Bose's childhood, adolescence and youth. It is not often that remembrances written later in life can be read together with primary source materials of the earlier, formative phases.

This volume thus supplies the material with which to study the influences-religious, cultural, moral, intellectual and political that moulded the character and personality of the revolutionary leader of India's freedom struggle.'

SISIR KUMAR BOSE (1920-2000) founded the Netaji Research Bureau in 1957 and was its guiding spirit until his death in 2000. A participant in the Indian freedom struggle, he was imprisoned by the British in the Lahore Fort, Red Fort and Lyallpur Jail. A renowned paediatrician in the post-independence period, he played a key role in preserving the best traditions of the anti-colonial movement and making possible the writing of its history.

SUGATA BOSE is the Gardiner Professor of History at Harvard University. His books include A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire and His Majesty's Opponent Subhas Chandra Bose and India's Struggle against Empire.

My father Dr. Sisir Kumar Bose was busy seeing patients one day in 1980 when the son of a colonial-era police officer, who had recently died, arrived at our home with a large cigar box that had belonged to Sarat Chandra Bose. In it my father found eighteen letters written by Emilie Schenkl to Subhas Chandra Bose in the 1930s and the letters exchanged between Subhas and Sarat in 1920-1921 as Subhas deliberated on his decision to resign from the Indian Civil Service. Subhas had taken the 1920-1921 correspondence with him to Badgastein in late 1937 and quoted from the letters in chapter 9 of the manuscript An Indian Pilgrim. He wrote the ten chapters of the book by hand in pencil in three exercise books, which are preserved in the archives of the Netaji Research Bureau. It seems clear that an intelligence operative had pilfered the cigar box in which Subhas Chandra Bose had carefully kept the precious letters but that a descendant was good enough to return them through my father to Netaji Research Bureau.

It was Sisir Kumar Bose's idea to put together Netaji's unfinished autobiography ending in 1921 with letters. composed by the young Subhas between 1912 to 1921. That editorial move provided the rare double first-person perspective that won the praise of readers and reviewers when the book appeared in 1965. By the time the book reappeared in 1980 as Volume 1 of Netaji's Collected Works, it was possible to include the full versions of the letters from Subhas to Sarat written in 1921. My father and I jointly wrote the editors' introduction to the 1997 centenary edition of An Indian Pilgrim, which is being reprinted in this new edition being on the occasion of Netaji's 125th birth anniversary year and the 75th anniversary of Indian independence. There is little to add to the comprehensive 1997 introduction except in one respect.

In January 2002 the renowned historian Ranajit Guha delivered the Netaji Oration at the Netaji Research Bureau, Netaji Bhawan, titled "Nationalism and the Trials of Becoming", offering the most sophisticated interpretation of Netaji's unfinished autobiography (The Oracle, 24, 2, August 2002, available in print and at www.netaji.org). "In paying our homage this evening to a historic instance of life's triumph," Guha said in January 2002, "let us invoke the spirit of the new by reading, once again, the story of that life as told by Netaji himself in his autobiography. In my own reading of that text I am deeply indebted to its first editor, the late Dr. Sisir Kumar Bose. Much of what I know of Netaji's life and times owes largely to Sisir Kumar's work as a historian and archivist."

Ranajit Guha rescued the history of nationalism from its being "hostage to statist interpretation". In a beautifully crafted, eloquent and erudite Netaji Oration, he put ethics back into the study of nationalism and the individual or self, as he put it, back into the study of nationalism. Through a careful reading of An Indian Pilgrim, he showed how a process of individuation was inherent in the phenomenon called mass nationalism. The autobiography reveals the young Subhas's search for "a central principle" which he could use as "a peg to hang my whole life on". He found it in Vivekananda's teachings encapsulated in the Sanskrit maxim, atmano mokshaartham jagaddhitaya [ca]. "For your own salvation and for the service of humanity-that was to be life's goal," Subhas wrote.

How many selfless sons of the Mother are prepared, in this selfish age,' the fifteen-year-old Subhas asked his mother in 1912, 'to completely give up their personal interests and take the plunge for the Mother? Mother, is this son of yours yet ready?' As he stood on the verge of taking the plunge by resigning from the Indian Civil Service, he wrote to his elder brother Sarat on 6 April 1921: 'I know what this sacrifice means. It means poverty, suffering, hard work and possibly other hardships to which I need not expressly refer but which you can very well understand. But the sacrifice has got to be made-consciously and deliberately. Father says that most of the so-called leaders are not really unselfish. But is that any reason why he should prevent me from being unselfish?' An overpowering sense of mission impelled the young Subhas Chandra Bose to set an early example of leadership as he dedicated himself to a life of selfless service.

Subhas joined the freedom struggle as a lieutenant of Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das when the non-cooperation movement of 1921 was at its height. After sixteen years of tireless work, several prison terms and long periods of exile he was chosen by Mahatma Gandhi to be the President of the Indian National Congress for 1938. Gandhi's choice became known at the time of the Calcutta meeting of the All India Congress Committee in October 1937. With the Mahatma's blessings Subhas decided to go on a trip to Europe before taking up his duties as Congress President. He spent more than a month from late November 1937 to early January 1938 with Emilie Schenkl at his favourite health resort Badgastein in Austria. There in the course of ten days in December 1937 he wrote ten chapters of his unfinished autobiography.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages