Upcoming Releases from Orient BlackSwan include

The Essential Writings of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, The Indian Struggle 1920–1942, An Indian Pilgrim: An Unfinished Autobiography
by Sisir K. Bose and Sugata Bose

The Volume Editors

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.

About the Books

The Essential Writings of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose:

The popular perception of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose is that of a warrior-hero and revolutionary leader who led a life of suffering and sacrifice and who during the Second World War waged a great armed struggle for the freedom of India. What is often forgotten is that the warrior paused between battles to reflect on and write about the fundamental political, economic and social issues facing India and the world during his lifetime. Despite being immersed in the tumult of the anti-colonial struggle, Bose in his writings delved back into India’s long and complex history and looked forward to the socio-economic reconstruction of India once political independence was won. The ideas he put forward were the products of a philosophical mind applied to careful analyses of specific historical situations and informed by direct and continuous revolutionary experiences in different parts of the world, of a kind unknown to any other leader of contemporary India. Distilled out of a twelve-volume set of Netaji’s Collected Works, this new edition of his Essential Writings is designed to provide a single-volume introduction to the thought of this revolutionary leader of India’s freedom struggle on the 75th anniversary of India’s independence and Netaji’s 125th birth anniversary.

The Indian Struggle 1920–1942

The Indian Struggle 1920–1942 is Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s major political study of the movement for independence in which he himself was a leading participant. The book provides a lucid, analytical narrative of the freedom struggle, from the gathering clouds of the Non-Co-operation and Khilafat movements to the unleashing of the mighty storm of the Quit India and Azad Hind movements. The story of the political upheavals of the inter-war period is enriched by Netaji’s reflections on the key themes in Indian history and a finely etched assessment of Mahatma Gandhi’s role in it. Bose wrote the first part of his narrative, 1920–1934, as an exile in Europe and the second part, 1935–1942, also in Europe eight years later. When the first part was published in 1935 its entry into India was banned by the British government. The book was, however, warmly welcomed in literary and political circles in Europe. The Manchester Guardian described it as ‘perhaps the most interesting book which has yet been written by an Indian politician on Indian politics.’ Romain Rolland hailed it as an ‘indispensable work for the history of the Indian movement.’

An Indian Pilgrim: An Unfinished Autobiography

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.