'How many selfless sons of the Mother are prepared, in this selfish age,' the fifteen-year old Subhas asked his mother in 1912, 'to completely give up their personal interests and take the plunge for the Mother? Mother, is this son of yours yet ready?' as he stood on the verge of taking the plunge by resigning from the Indian Civil Service, he wrote to his elder brother Sarat on April 6, 1921: ' I know what this sacrifice means. It means poverty, suffering, hard work and possibly other hardships to which I need not expressly refer but which you can very well understand. But the sacrifice has got to be made- consciously and deliberately. Father says that most of the so-called leaders are not really unselfish. But is that any reason why he should prevent me from being unselfish?' an over-powering sense of mission impelled the young Subhas Chandra Bose to set an early example of leadership as he dedicated himself to a life of selfless service.

Subhas joined the freedom struggle as a lieutenant of Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das when the non-cooperation movement of 1921 was at its height. After sixteen years of tireless work, several prison terms and long periods of exile he was chosen by Mahatma Gandhi to be the President of the Indian national Congress for 1938. Gandhi's choice became known at the time of the Calcutta meeting of the all India Congress Committee in October 1937. With the Mahatma's blessings Subhas decided to go on a trip to Europe before taking up his duties as Congress President. He spent more than a month from late November 1937 to early January 1938 with Emilie Schenkl at his favourite health resort Badgastein in Austria. There in the course of ten days in December 1937 he wrote ten chapters of his unfinished autobiography.

The handwritten manuscript is now preserved in the archives of the Netaji Research Bureau. This narrative of the first twenty-four years of Bose's life ends with his resignation from the I. C. S. in April 1921. It is not often that remembrances written later in life can be read together with primary source materials, including letters and notes, of the earlier, formative phase. This book is designed to provide the reader with that rare, double first-person perspective. The unfinished autobiography published as Part1 is complemented in part 2 with a fascinating collection of seventy letters of his childhood, adolescence and youth. This volume thus supplies the material with which to commence the study of the socio-cultural environment in which Subhas Chandra Bose grew up and the lineaments of his mental and intellectual development. The reader will gain a real insight into the influences - religious, cultural, moral, intellectual and political- that moulded the character and personality of India's foremost radical nationalist. Both the autobiography and the letters are marked by a lucidity and directness which make the basic currents of the author's unorthodox and rebellious life easier to comprehend. Moreover, the letters, which constitute the contemporary material, show an uninhibited play of opinions, emotions and ideas lending greater depth to the conclusions and inferences drawn in the autobiography..

Edited by: Sisir K. Bose
                 Sugata Bose

Published by: Netaji Research Bureau, Calcutta
                       Oxford University Press, Delhi
                       1997