Subhas Chandra Bose’s ‘discovery of India’, unlike Jawaharlal Nehru’s, occurred very early in life, when he was barely in his teens. ‘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 in 1921, he wrote to his elder brother Sarat: ‘Only on the soil of sacrifice and suffering can we raise our national edifice.’ In December 1937 Bose wrote ten chapters of his autobiography, providing a narrative of his life until 1921 and a reflective chapter entitled ‘My Faith-Philosophical’. The autobiography is complemented with a fascinating collection of seventy letters of Bose’s childhood, adolescence and youth. It is not often that remembrances written later in life can be read together with primary source materials of the earlier, formative phases. This volume thus supplies the material with which to study the influences – religious, cultural, moral, intellectual and political – that moulded the character and personality of the revolutionary leader of India’s freedom struggle. Contents: Acknowledgements Preface to the 2022 Edition of An Indian Pilgrim Editors’ Introduction Part I: An Indian Pilgrim Chapter I: Birth, Parentage and Early Environment Chapter II: Family History Chapter III: Before My Time Chapter IV: At School (1) Chapter V: At School (2) Chapter VI: Presidency College (1) Chapter VII: Presidency College (2) Chapter VIII: My Studies Resumed Chapter IX: At Cambridge Chapter X: My Faith (Philosophical) Part II: LETTERS 1912–1921 Letter(s) 1–9 to Prabhabati Bose 10–13 Sarat Chandra Bose 14–44 Hemanta Kumar Sarkar 45 Bholanath Roy 46 Hemanta Kumar Sarkar 47 Bholanath Roy 48 Hemanta Kumar Sarkar 49 Jogendra Narayan Mitra 50–51 Hemanta Kumar Sarkar 52 Jogendra Narayan Mitra 53–58 Hemanta Kumar Sarkar 59 Charu Chandra Ganguly 60 Sarat Chandra Bose 61–62 Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das 63–66 Sarat Chandra Bose 67 E. S. Montagu 68 Charu Chandra Ganguly 69–70 Sarat Chandra Bose Part III: APPENDICES Appendix 1: Genealogical Tree of the Boses of Mahinagar Appendix 2: Genealogical Tree of the Dutts of Hatkhola Appendix 3: Janaki Nath Bose: A Brief Life Sketch Appendix 4: Purandar Khan and Mahinagar Samaj Appendix 5: Discipline in Presidency College Appendix 6: The Presidency College Trouble: A True Version Appendix 7: Subhas Chandra Bose (A Poem by Oaten) Appendix 8: Scottish Church College Philosophical Society References and Glossary Index PLATES Frontispiece: Netaji in Badgastein, Austria, in 1937 when he wrote An Indian Pilgrim 1. Mother Prabhabati 2. Father Janakinath 3. Family photograph at Cuttack—Netaji then a schoolboy, standing on extreme right 4. A page from a letter to his mother (1912) 5. As a High School Student 6. A page from a letter to brother Sarat Chandra then in England (1913) 7. The University Unit of India Defence Force (1917), Netaji standing second from right 8. As a student in England (1920) 9. Letter of resignation from the Indian Civil Service About the Editor: Sisir Kumar Bose (1920–2000) founded the Netaji Research Bureau in 1957 and was its guiding spirit until his death in 2000. A participant in the Indian freedom struggle, he was imprisoned by the British in the Lahore Fort, Red Fort and Lyallpur Jail. A renowned paediatrician in the post-independence period, he played a key role in preserving the best traditions of the anti-colonial movement and making possible the writing of its history. Sugata Bose is the Gardiner Professor of History at Harvard University. His books include A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire and His Majesty’s Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle against Empire.