Preface xiDuring my research and writing of this book Kartik Chakrabarti,
Sukhamoy Chowdhury, and Manohar Mondal cheerfully responded to
my endless demands for source materials of ev ery kind from the NRB
archives. This is the first book I have written in Calcutta. I wrote during
the day at 38/2 Elgin Road and during the night at 90 Sarat Bose
Road.
Though I par tic i pated in the NRB’s academic programs and activi-
ties beginning in my student days, my role as joint editor of Netaji’s
Collected Works was a matter of necessity rather than choice. Sisir Ku-
mar Bose had already published the first five volumes by 1992, when
his health suddenly declined. I therefore joined him as editor of the
next seven volumes of the twelve- volume set. This task gave me a close
familiarity not just with Netaji’s own writings, but with the whole
range of documentary material associated with him. Of special sig nifi-
cance was the work I did during 1993–1994 in connection with the
seventh volume, en ti tled Letters to Emilie Schenkl, 1934–1942. I had of-
ten visited my great- aunt Emilie in Vienna and Augsburg when I was a
student and then a Fellow at Cambridge. She was a relative, and not a
historical public fig ure like her husband, Netaji. I admired her in de-
pen dence of spirit and her refusal to take any help from the Indian
state during the dif fi cult days when she was bringing up their daughter
Anita by herself. She had a dig ni fied bearing and was a storehouse of
knowledge about India, a country she never saw. She was loving, affec-
tionate, and kind to me, and we shared a fondness for good wine. In
1993–1994, once she had given the NRB permission to publish the
Subhas- Emilie correspondence, I had to put on my historian’s hat and
ask her some searching questions. She answered with her characteristic
grace and candor. The most enjoyable of my field trips to places associ-
ated with Netaji was the one I took in the company of my aunt Anita,
my uncle Martin, my mother Krishna, and my brother Sumantra to
Badgastein, Subhas and Emilie’s favorite hill resort in Austria. Had I
not visited Badgastein, I would never have understood why my subject
was so enchanted by that place.
For a very long time, I was hesitant about writing this book. But I
knew that I would have to write it one day. A few years ago, Nandini
Mehta, then commissioning editor at Penguin India, persuaded me