On the night of 16-17 January 1941, Subhas Chandra Bose secretly left his Elgin Road home in Calcutta and was driven by his nephew, Sisir, in a car up to Gomoh railway junction in Bihar. Before his departure he wrote a few post-dated letters to be mailed on his return to Calcutta in order to give the British the false impression that he was still at home. Volume 11 of Netaji’s Collected Works opens with one such letter, written to his political colleague Hari Vishnu Kamath, who was then in prison. Two years later, on the eve of setting out on a perilous submarine journey from Europe to Asia on 8 February 1943, Subhas Chandra Bose wrote a touching letter in Bengali to his elder brother, Sarat Chandra Bose, which forms the last item in this volume: ‘today once again I am embarking on the path of danger. But this time towards home. I may not see the end of the road.’ Between these two journeys lies perhaps the most difficult, daring and controversial phase in the life of India’s foremost anti-colonial revolutionary. Netaji’s writings and broadcasts of this period cover a broad range of topics, including the nature and course of the Second World War, the need to distinguish between India’s internal and external policy in the context of the international war crisis, plans for a final armed assault against British rule in India, dismay at and criticism of Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, the hypocrisy of Anglo-American notions of freedom and democracy, the role of Japan in East and Southeast Asia, the reasons for rejecting the Cripps offer of 1942, support for Mahatma Gandhi and the Quit India movement later that year, and reflections on the future problems of reconstruction in free India. This volume is indispensable for all interested in modern South Asian history and politics, as well as nationalism and international relations in the twentieth century.
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