Preface
Subhas Chandra Bose was an uncle of my father, Sisir Kumar Bose, and
a youn ger brother of my paternal grandfather, Sarat Chandra Bose. I
never met Subhas Chandra Bose, since he passed from the scene in
1945, a good eleven years before I was born. I never met Sarat Chandra
Bose either; he died in 1950. Growing up during the early de cades of
in de pen dent India, I knew them not as relatives but as historical public
fig ures. Like millions of other South Asians, I thought of Subhas Chan-
dra Bose as Netaji—“Revered Leader”—one of those who spearheaded
India’s freedom struggle. I was also aware of how controversial he was
in the West, because of his wartime alliances. According to my father,
Netaji believed that his family was coterminous with his country. I was
taught, from childhood, never to claim a special relationship with him
based on an accident of birth.
Though I belong to a generation that never knew Netaji in person, I
had the opportunity to meet the men and women who had worked
closely with him. They were frequent visitors and guests at my family’s
home in Calcutta, first at 1 Woodburn Park, and after 1974 at 90 Sarat
Bose Road (the house we called “Basundhara”). Sitting on the veran-
dah of Woodburn Park, I heard Abid Hasan recount the thrilling story