Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Memorial Lectures Series: A Compilation (Volume I)

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It is a matter of great pleasure that the School of Social Sciences (SOSS) of Netaji Subhas Open University (NSOU) has taken initiative to publish the Netaji Subbas Chandra Bose Memorial Lectures Series A Compilation (Volume 1). This volume is a collection of the texts of the Netap Subhas Chandra Bose Memorial Lectures. It would not be irrelevant here to mention that SoSS, NSOU has not only been organizing this prestigious annual lecture since 2010, the members of the School are also engaged in publishing the lectures regularly at due tume. The university has already published five such lectures in printed form between 2010 and 2015. In this perspective, the School has decided to assemble these lectures in a single volume with an Introduction and a critical review, entitled A Curtain Raiser, by Professor Radharaman Chakrabarti an eminent social scientist and the first Vice Chancellor of NSOU. We feel that this venture would add a new dimension in the academic activities of NSOU for several reasons. First, it is a collection of sophisticated and well documented research papers contributed by eminent historians and social scientists with international repute like Professor Sobhanlal Datta Gupta, Professor Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Professor Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Professor Bidyut Chakrabarty and Professor Jayanta Sengupta. The contributors do not require any introduction. Secondly, the themes focus on wide range of issues like democracy and empowerment, decolonization and the crisis of Hindu nationalism, the end-game of the raj and the Subhas Bose's political strategy, Subhas Chandra Bose and the role of workers and peasants in India's freedom struggle, and identity politics in India etc. Thus, a wide range of complex issues related to history, politics and culture of modern South Asia have been explained and analyzed in these texts by the leading social scientists. Thind, Professor Radharaman Chakrabarty, has made a critical review of this work and his contribution has undoubtedly augmented the quality of the volume.

Netaji Subhas Open University (NSOU), the premier institution for open and distance learning in the eastern region of the country, was established in the birth centenary year of Subhas Chandra Bose, one of the most illustrious fighter for national independence of India and who is known as "Netaji" not only in every nook and corner of the country but even beyond. Immediately after the initial struggle to consolidate itself as an institution of higher learning through open and distance mode, in 2010, the University authority has decided to organise Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Memorial Lecture every year to pay its homage to the great soul dedicated for the emancipation of the motherland from the colonial yoke, and entrusted it's largest academic wing at that time, the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, with the responsibility to conduct it in a befitting manner. Subsequently, however, the School was ramified and three Schools of Studies, viz School of Humanities, School of Social Sciences, and School of Professional Studies were formed in 2015. As such, the newly constituted School of Social Sciences, emanating from the erstwhile School of Humanities & Social Sciences, is now entrusted to organise the annual Netaji Subbas Chandra Bose Memorial Leture on behalf of the University. Thus, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Memorial Lecture has been instituted at NSOU as mark of respect to the indomitable spirit of "Netaji ", the great patriotic soul and an unquestionable symbol of struggle against social odds. Over the years, it has become one of the most prestigious annual event in the NSOU.

Accordingly, the first Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Memorial Lecture was organised in March, 2010 and the speaker was Professor Sobhanlal Datta Gupta, a very well-known political scientist and formerly Surendranath Banerjee Professor of Political Science, University of Calcutta. In the consecutive years, the lecture was organised with much vigour and enthusiasm and the speakers were renowned historians like Professor Sugata Bose, Professor Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Professor Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Professor Jayanta Sengupta and political scientist like Professor Bidyut Chakraborty.