In this definitive and critically acclaimed biography of one of the most controversial of Indian freedom fighters, Professor Sugata Bose analyzes Subhas Chandra Bose's life and legacy, tracing the intellectual impact of his years in Calcutta and Cambridge, the ideas and relationships that influenced him during his time in exile and his ascent to the peak of nationalist politics. Using previously unpublished family archives, this account not only documents Subhas Bose's thoughts during his imprisonment and travels, but also illuminates the profundity of his struggle to unite the diversities of India, religious, economic, linguistic, into a single independent nation.

Sugata Bose is the Gardiner Professor of history at Harvard University. He was educated at Presidency College, Calcutta and the University of Cambridge where he obtained his PhD and was later a fellow of St Catharine’s College. Before taking up the Gardiner Chair at Harvard in 2001, he was professor of history and diplomacy at Tufts University. Bose was a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1997 and gave the G.M. Trevelyan Lecture at the University of Cambridge.

Bose, who is Netaji’s brother Sarat Chandra Bose’s grandson, is the author of many books, including Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital and the much-acclaimed A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire. He has also made documentary films on South Asian history and politics and published recordings of his translations of Tagore.