Subhas Chandra Bose: Renunciation and Realization (Correspondence 1926-1932) Netaji Collected Works, Volume 4

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Subhas Chandra Bose came to regard tyaga and amrita (renunciation and realization) as "two faces of the same medal" during his long stay in Mandalay Jail. "To attain hundred per cent and to sacrifice hundred per cent", he proclaimed, had become a passion with him.

This volume opens with Bose's prison letters written during the last year he spent in Burmese prisons in 1926- 1927 (plus twenty earlier unpublished letters of 1925). Between 1928 and 1931 Subhas was in and out of prison, even as he emerged as the leader of students, youth and labour across India.

The volume closes with another set of his prison letters written from many different jails during the second phase of the civil disobedience movement in 1932.

SISIR KUMAR BOSE (1920-2000) founded the Netaji Research Bureau in 1957 and was its guiding spirit. A participant in the Indian freedom struggle, he was imprisoned by the British. After Independence he authored and edited biographies, memoirs, monographs, and research papers on Netaji's life and times.

SUGATA BOSE is Gardiner Professor of History at Harvard University. He is the author of several books on economic, social, and political history, including A Hundred Horizons: The of Global Empire and His Majesty's Opponent: Subhas Indian Ocean in the Age Chandra Bose and India's Struggle Against Empire.

The fourth volume of Netaji's Collected Works being released on the 112th birth anniversary of Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das is a continuation of the fascinating collection of Netaji's correspondence of the period 1923 to 1932, the first part of which has been published in the third volume. Taken together these two volumes provide a most valuable and varied collection of material relating to the first phase of Subhas Chandra Bose's public life of which two and half years were spent in prison in far away Burma.

The collection is of diverse character. The letters are written mostly by Netaji and his brother and life-long com- rade Sarat Chandra and the rest by his other relations, including his parents and sister-in-law Bivabati, by his fellow workers in social welfare organisations in South Calcutta and in the Calcutta Corporation and by his political comrades. There are also some provocative ones written by Netaji to jail authorities and the Government.

The subjects dealt with in the correspondence cover a wide field, viz., currents and cross-currents in Bengal politics of the twenties and early thirties; the North Calcutta election to the Bengal Legislative Council in which Subhas Chandra himself was the Congress candidate in absentia, Hindu-Muslim unity and separate electorates, problems of social work under voluntary auspices, role of the Anglo- Indian press in public affairs, municipal questions, the Statesman case in which Bose himself was a litigant, management of the Swarajist daily Forward, personal and family problems, the woes of a political prisoner under British rule, etc., etc.

Some indication is available from this correspondence of the great variety and nature of the books that Bose was reading at the time, particularly during the time that he was in prison. Moreover, they show how a person with a deeply philosophical mental constitution was simultaneously deeply involved in family matters, viz., studies and train ing of his many nephews and nieces, their marriage and future career and so on. They also show how doggedly he was fighting the unjust prison conditions. Some of his letters to his elder Sarat are so deeply emotional, idealistic and philosophical. Once again there is an opportunity to study the relationship of the two brothers whom, as we saw later, nothing but death could part. The crisis in Subhas Chandra's life that resulted from his refusal to accept conditional release in 1927 even at the risk of death comes out as the most moving episode of this period of his life.

A number of interesting letters, some of them very personal to Basanti Devi and others, written from Shillong where he was convalescing after his release, are a valuable addition to this volume.

There is not much available in the way of correspondence between 1928 and 1931 because in the case of Subhas Chandra Bose letters proliferated only when he was in prison or ill. This was the time when he emerged on the Indian national scene as the Leader of Youth and together with Jawaharlal Nehru as the protagonist of a new left wave in Indian politics. His writings and speeches of this period, of great historical importance, will follow in the fifth volume now in preparation.

His arrest and imprisonment in the beginning of 1932 brought forth a fresh bunch of letters again of varied nature ending with the one to his sister-in-law Bivabati of October 1932 from Madras Penitentiary. He was subsequently and finally transferred to Jabalpur Central Jail where he spent some time with his brother Sarat before leaving for Europe in the beginning of 1933.

When this volume was in press, twenty letters writ- ten between 1925 and 1927 were passed by the Research Division to the Publishing Department of the Bureau. As the letters belong very much to the period and subjects covered in the third and fourth volumes and are very relevant and pertinent to them, we decided to include them as Addenda in this volume. This meant disturbing the chronology which the reader may please overlook.

SUBHAS CHANDRA BOSE came to regard tyaga and amrita (renunciation and realization) as "two faces of the same medal" during his long stay in Mandalay Jail. "To attain hundred per cent and to sacrifice hundred per cent," he proclaimed, had become a passion with him.' This volume opens with Bose's prison letters written during the last year he spent in Burmese prisons in 1926-7 (plus twenty additional letters of 1925 that could not be included in volume 3, published here as addenda). Between 1928 and 1931 Subhas was in and out of prison even as he emerged as the leader of students, youth, and labour across India. The volume closes with another set of his prison letters written from many different jails during the second phase of the civil disobedience movement in 1932.

The correspondence between the Bose brothers, Sarat and Subhas, continues to provide fascinating insights into the mental make-up of the younger brother. New elections to the Bengal legislative council were due late in 1926. Deprived of any legal remedy to free Subhas, who had been held without trial since October 1924, Sarat resorted to the Sinn Fein tactic of nominating political prisoners for election based on the principle "Vote him in, to get him out". At first Subhas rejected the suggestion to stand for election as he was getting disgusted with members of the councils who were not doing any good work for the country. He thought that the time had come for the pendulum to swing back in the old Gandhian anti-council direction. Sarat got him to realize, however, that there was "good reason" behind his advice. Subhas agreed to be put up in the north Calcutta constituency against Jatindra Nath Basu, a stalwart of the Liberal Party who had beaten the Swarajist candidate in 1923. "God willing, we shall give him a damned hollow defeat," wrote Sarat, who was confident of his younger brother's prospects. Subhas could not even release his manifesto on account of political prisoners not being permitted to issue appeals to the public. Sarat managed Subhas election campaign as well as his own with consummate skill from the University constituency throughout the autumn of 1926. Both were rewarded in the winter with thumping victories. The supporters of the Bose brothers celebrated with fireworks, and "Victory to Subhas Chandra" in glittering Bengali letters illuminated the Calcutta sky. The colonial authorities in India, however, proved more obdurate than their counterparts in Ireland. Winning the vote was not sufficient to get Subhas out of jail.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages