AN UNFINISHED AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND COLLECTED LETTERS 1897-1921 S SUBHAS CHANDRA BOSE Subhas Chandra Bose is increasingly becoming a subject of study and research in academic and political circles in India and abroad. It has been felt, however, that although much is now known of the later and the more spectacular events of his life, materials relating to the preparatory period of his boyhood and youth have been ra¬ ther inadequate. This is a book that fills this lacuna in considerable mea- , sure. The Netaji Research Bureau has combined in this work the authori¬ tative version of Bose’s unfinished autobiography with a most fascinating collection of letters of his boyhood, adolescence and youth. This, therefore, is certainly the book with which to begin a study of the socio-cultura' environment of Netaji’s origin and th background of his early mental and in¬ tellectual development. What is more, this work will contribute in no small measure to an understanding of the social milieu at the turn of the nine¬ teenth century which produced a gal¬ axy of outstanding men in the Netaji Bose wrote the early part of his life during a short vacation in. Europe in 1937 immediately prior to his election as President of the Indian National Congress. Although incom¬ plete and covering only the first twenty- five years of his life, it is a most valuable piece of writing for a number of rea¬ sons. It provides a real insight into the influences—religious, cultural j intellectual and political—that shaped, and moulded the personality andj character of the man who now defiant- (continued on 2nd flap. 30* Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Public.Resource.Org https://archive.org/details/indianpilgrimunfOOsubh AN INDIAN PILGRIM 1897-1921 AN INDIAN PILGRIM AN UNFINISHED AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND COLLECTED LETTERS 1897-1921 SUBHASCHANDRA BOSE ASIA PUBLISHING HOUSE LONDON © 1965 NETAJI RESEARCH BUREAU Edited for Netaji Research Bureau by Sisir Kumar Bose Translations from the Bengali by Sisir Kumar Bose MANCHESTER PUBLIC L.SRARIES ’65 2 88 5 PRINTED IN INDIA BY BINAM PRINTERS PRIVATE LTD., 38, STRAND ROAD, CALCUTTA-1, AND PUBLISHED BY P. S. JAYASINGHE, ASIA PUBLISHING HOUSE, 447 STRAND, LONDON W. C. 2 Preface It is not often that an autobiographical work can be studied together with source material explaining and justifying the retros¬ pective narrative of the author. Here is a book that makes this possible. To those interested in studying Netaji’s formative years, its usefulness therefore is self-evident. This work combines Netaji’s autobiography up to his Cambridge days in 1921 and a collection of letters of his boyhood, adolescence and youth ending with the one he wrote on the day he resigned from the Indian Civil Service. Netaji wrote the first nine chapters of his autobiography in the course of ten days at Badgastein, Austria, in December 1937. It was not possible for him to complete the work owing to the storm and stress of a hectic political life that began with his election as President of the Congress in January 1938. That he intended to write a complete autobiography is shown by the notes he made on the first page of the original manuscript on which this book is based. The notes are as follows : 1. Birth — parentage — family history 2. School Education (a) PE School (b) R. C. School 3. College 1913-16. —1916-17 -1917-19 Scottish College 1919 — Experimental Psychology 4. 1919-21 —Cambridge 5. 1921-1923 6. 1923-1924 7. 1924-1927 Burma etc. 8. 1927-1929 9. 1929-1931 10. 1932-1933 — February 11. 1933-1936 — March — interlude in India 12. 1936-1937 March 13. 1937 March — December As he was writing the early part of his life in Badgastein Netaji expressed his intention to write three chapters on his faith, namely, VI PREFACE — ‘My faith — philosophical’, ‘My faith — political’ and ‘My faith — economic’. These were to form the three concluding chapters of his complete autobiography. He was however able to write only one of these and which forms Chapter X of this book. The second part of the book consists of nearly sixty letters written by him during the period he covered in An Indian Pilgrim. These letters of his younger days are marked by a free and uninhibited play of emotions and ideas. The contribution they therefore make to a fuller understanding of his autobiography and of his intellec¬ tual and ideological evolution will be obvious. The collection begins with the earliest available letters to his mother and brother of 1912-13 and ends with those written to Chittaranjan Das and others when he spurned the British Civil Service to join the national struggle in 1921. Almost all the letters had to be translated from the Bengali. A list of references and a glossary of Bengali words and names which have been retained in the translations have been given at the end in the interest of the non-Bengali reader. Netaji is increasingly becoming a subject of study and research in academic and political circles both in India and abroad. It has been felt — and rightly — that much of the work done on him so far suffers from an inadequate assessment of religious, socio¬ cultural and political factors which influenced his early develop¬ ment. In many instances, this has resulted in incomplete and un¬ balanced judgment of his ultimate personality. It is unfortunate that Netaji never finished his autobiography. Nevertheless, this work has undoubtedly much to offer to the historian, the research worker, the future biographer and all others who are seeking a real insight into the making of this colossus of contemporary Indian history. Netaji Research Bureau is indebted to Mr. Amiya Nath Bose for making available to us Netaji's original handwritten manus¬ cript of An Indian Pilgrim and important information relating to it. It is fortunate that both Netaji’s mother and brother Sarat Chandra preserved his early- letters to them. They had been in the custody of Bivabati, Sarat Chandra’s wife, for nearly three decades. For permission to publish the letters to the Deshbandhu we are grateful to Mrs. C. R. Das. We are obliged to Mrs. Sudhira Sarkar for the most valuable collection of letters to her husband and to Mr. Charu Chandra Ganguly for permission to publish the letters to him. PREFACE YU I wish to acknowledge with deep appreciation the assistance that I have received from Dr. Jyotirmoy Chatterjee and Mr. Leo¬ nard Gordon in the very difficult and delicate task of translating the letters into English. Our sincere thanks are due to Mr. Benode C. Chowdhuri for his assistance and guidance in all stages of the publication, to Mr. Susil Kumar Roy and Mr. Subrata Bose for help in the pre¬ paration of the manuscript and to Mr. Sankar Nath Chatter jee and Miss Anjali Burrnan for typing them. It is a pleasure to record once again our thanks to the publishers for their cooperation. Jai Hind Netaji Research Bureau SlSIR KUMAR BOSE 38/2 Elgin Road Calcutta 20 9 December 1961 Contents Preface v 1. Birth, Parentage and Early Environment 1 2. Family History 5 3. Before My Time 12 4. At School (1) 19 5. At School (2) 26 6. Presidency College (1) 45 7. Presidency College (2) 64 8. My Studies Resumed 72 9. At Cambridge 85 10. My Faith (Philosophical) 104 Collected Letters 111 A ppendixes 1. Genealogical Tree o£ the Boses of Mahinagar 2. Genealogical Tree of the Dutts of Hatkhola 190 References and Glossary 193 Index 197 PLATES frontispiece At Badgastein, Austria, December 1937, when he wrote An Indian Pilgrim between pages 32 and 33 A page from An Indian Pilgrim (Chapter I, p. 2) A page from An Indian Pilgrim (Chapter IX, p. 103) between pages 144 and 145 A page from a letter, 1913 (pp. 13G-37) A page from a letter, 1915 (p. 147) viii CHAPTER I Birth, Parentage and Early Environment My father, Janakinath Bose, had migrated to Orissa in the eighties of the last century and had settled down at Cuttack as a lawyer. There I was born on Saturday, the 23rd January, 1897. My father was descended from the Boses of Mahinagar, while my mother, Prabhabati (or rather Prabhavati) belonged to the family of the Dutts of Hatkhola. I was the sixth son and the ninth child of my parents. In these days of rapid communication, a night’s journey by train southwards along the eastern coast takes one from Calcutta to Cuttack and on the way there is neither adventure nor romance. But things were not quite the same sixty years ago. One had to go either by cart and encounter thieves and robbers on the road, or by sea and brave the wrath of the winds and the waves. Since it was safer to trust in God than in brother man, it was more common to travel by boat. Sea-going vessels would carry passengers up to Chandbali where transhipment would take place and from Chandbali steamers would get to Cuttack through a number of rivers and canals. The description I used to hear from my mother since childhood of the rolling and pitching and the accompanying discomfort during the voyage would leave no desire in me to undergo such an experience. At a time when distances were long and journey by no means safe, my father must have had plenty of pluck to leave his village home and go far away in search of a career. Fortune favours the brave even in civil life and, by the time I was born, my father had already made a posi¬ tion for himself and was almost at the top of the legal profession in his new domicile.