“We have been born in this world to fulfill a purpose – to preach a message”, reads the opening sentence of Subhas Chandra Bose’s 1923 essay The Dreams of Youth (Taruner Swapna). “One hundred and fifty years ago,” he wrote in The Call of the Motherland (Desher Dak) in December 1925, “it was the Bengalees who showed the foreigners the way to penetrate India. Now it is incumbent on the Bengalees of the twentieth century to expiate that sin.”

This volume brings together Subhas Chandra Bose’s prison essays and notes, speeches and articles between 1923 and 1928 as well as his early 1929 monograph Boycott of British Goods.

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 Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire and His Majesty’s Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle Against Empire.