His Majesty\'s Opponent. Subhas Chandra Bose and India\'s Struggle Against Empire

xii Preface

that I must really overcome my inhibitions and write what she thought

should be the definitive biography of Subhas Chandra Bose. Joyce Selt-

zer, editor extraordinaire at Harvard University Press, with whom I had

worked on A Hundred Horizons, liked my book proposal concerning

the man I described as “His Majesty’s Opponent.” And so, to borrow a

phrase used by Netaji in July 1943, I “began work.” Ranjana Sengupta,

editor at Penguin India, was as keen about the book as Nandini had

been and entered into an agreement with Harvard University Press to

publish the book in South Asia. Writing for a diverse worldwide read-

ership was a daunting task, but seemed like a challenge worth taking.

The timing of my decision to take the plunge had something to do

with my sense that I had achieved enough critical distance from the

subject to offer my interpretation of a historical fig ure who was attract-

ing interest among the youn ger generation in South Asia and beyond.

More salient, however, was my own deepening interest in connective

interregional and global his tory. The life of Subhas Chandra Bose

seemed to me a prism through which all the contradictory forces of

world his tory during the first half of the twentieth century had been

refracted. Only after I had acquired a grasp of key elements of Euro-

pean, East and Southeast Asian, and Indian Ocean his tory did I feel

capable of doing justice to the global odyssey of Subhas Chandra Bose.

I have subtly tried to expand the boundaries of historiography in the

mode of biography—an endeavor that I hope will not be lost on stu-

dents of his tory who read this book.

Though I composed the text in Calcutta, I was deeply in flu enced by the
interdisciplinary scholarly milieu in the Boston area. I bene fited much
from the stimulating company and friendship of Homi Bhabha, Leila
Fawaz, Emma Rothschild, and Amartya Sen. My former and current
graduate students at Harvard—Kris Manjapra, Manjari Miller, Faisal
Chaudhry, Sana Aiyar, Antara Datta, Sandy Polu, Nico Slate, Aliya Iqbal,
Tariq Ali, Johan Mathew, Gitanjali Surendran, Julia Stephens, Dinyar
Patel, and Benjamin Siegel—kept me intellectually alert. Across the At-
lantic, Chris Bayly’s support was invaluable. In Vienna, Ranajit Guha