God’s Beloved Land 25attitude” toward Muslims was in flu enced by his early contacts, and re-
ported that “friction or con flict between Hindus and Muslims was un-
known” in his formative years. The diverse and liberal social setting
was a boon, but did not preclude the tortuous individual trials of com-
ing of age in an era of incipient nationalism. Reflecting back, he had
little doubt that he “must have appeared to others as wayward, eccen-
tric, and obstinate.”^25 His parents were worried that he was neglecting
his studies. In March 1913, Subhas took his school- leaving matricula-
tion examinations and was ranked second in the entire university. A
very wide range of institutions throughout the province was affili-
ated with Calcutta University, and so this was an outstanding result.
Subhas’s parents were relieved, and decided to send him to college in
Calcutta.
Calcutta“This great city had intrigued me, bewildered me beyond mea sure,”
Subhas Chandra Bose wrote of the city of Calcutta.^26 He had visited
this great metropolis before, but it was in the spring of 1913 that he
came to live there. Calcutta had been the cap ital of British India since
the late eigh teenth century, but in 1911 the colonial masters had de-
cided to move their headquarters from troublesome Bengal to the old
Mughal center of Delhi. Subhas came to stay in the three- story house at
38/2 Elgin Road that his father had built in 1909–1910. In a letter to his
mother in March 1913, he wrote that he did not want to study at Presi-
dency College.^27 But it was at this premier educational institution of
Western learning that he did enroll, to read for honors in philosophy.
He had already made up his mind that he was “not going to follow the
beaten track” but instead “lead a life conducive to [my] spiritual wel-
fare and the uplift of humanity.” Convinced that “life had a meaning
and a purpose” that had to be fulfilled by resolute training of the body
and the mind, he wished to make “a profound study of philosophy”
and “emulate Ramakrishna and Vivekananda.”^28
The Indian students of Presidency College were divided into various
groups. There were the earnest studious types and the rich dilettantes,
those attracted to secret revolutionary activities and those steering clear