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. This volume is indispensable for all those interested in modern South Asian history and politics as well as nationalism and international relations in the twentieth century.

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.