Perhaps the least known aspect of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's many-sided personality was his love for Emilie Schenkl, his Austrian wife.
Bose met Emilie Schenkl in June 1934 in Vienna, developed a close relationship during his forced European exile, secretly married her in December 1937, and had a daughter, Anita, in November 1942.
This volume of Netaji's Collected Works illuminates the human and emotional aspects of his many-splendoured life. One hundred and sixty-two of his letters, written between 1934 and 1942, are published in this volume, along with eighteen of Emilie Schenkl's letters that have survived. Two additional letters appear in this edition-Subhas's 'love letter' for Emilie (March 1936), written from Badgastein to Vienna, as he prepared to leave for India after three years of European exile; and the letter of 9 February 1943, written at dawn just before Netaji set off on his epic submarine voyage from Europe to Asia.
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. 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. He authored and edited biographies, memoirs, monographs and research papers on Netaj's life and times. One of India's best pediatricians, he was Director and later President of the Institute of Child Health, Calcutta.
Sugata Bose is the Gardiner Professor of History at Harvard University. He is the author of several books on the economic, social and political history of modern South Asia including His Majesty's Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India's Struggle against Empire (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 10th anniversary edition 2022).
"The bundle of letters,' my mother Krishna Bose writes in her book Emilie and Subhas, 'carefully tied with a ribbon and treasured by her more than her life could now be shared with the world'.' My grandaunt Emilie had just announced solemnly towards the end of a family dinner at Augsburg in June 1993 that she was giving permission to my father Sisir Kumar Bose to publish the letters that Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose had written to her. She had been concerned about my father's health and wished that these private letters should be brought before the public eye by him. My father and I set to work on what was to be a very special Volume 7 of Netaji's Collected Works. In June 1994 on the 60th anniversary of the first meeting between Subhas and Emilie, we were able to present to her the published volume.
'When she held the book in her hands,' Krishna records, 'her face lit up with a radiant happiness.' We had a celebratory roast turkey dinner. adorned Emilie with a beautiful scarf, and presented her a card with a picture of a tigress (Subhas affectionately called her 'Baghini') and inscribed in it 'Keep roaring'. She had a surprise in store for us, which is best narrated in Krishna's words:
The next morning Auntie gave me a piece of folded paper and said, "This is for you, Krishna, something from me.' Surprised, I looked at the rather worn- looking piece of paper and asked, 'What is it?' Auntie replied, 'It is a love letter." It was, indeed, a beautiful love letter. I was deeply moved as I read it. It was undated but the envelope was postmarked 5th March 1936.2
True to form, my grandaunt Emilie had held back the most precious three-page handwritten letter written to her by Subhas from Badgastein to Vienna as he prepared to leave for India after three years of European exile. As editors, my father and I had missed the opportunity of printing.
The ritual of 'Bleigiessen' performed in Vienna on New Year's Eve of 1936 had foretold with uncanny accuracy the future of a young Austrian woman whose destiny seemed inextricably linked with the fate of a country she would never see. 'India is my first love and my only love, that is what he told me,' Emilie Schenkl reminisced to Krishna Bose in the course of a conversation in her Vienna home in 1971. Subhas Chandra Bose, according to his close friend and political associate A.C.N. Nambiar, was 'a one-idea man... singly for the independence of India'. But he went on to add, 'I think the only departure, if one might use the word departure, was his love for Miss Schenkl, otherwise he was completely absorbed... He was deeply in love with her, you see. In fact, it was an enormous, intense love for her that he had."
Subhas Chandra Bose and Emilie Schenkl met for the first time in Vienna in June 1934. In the preface dated 29 November 1934 to his book The Indian Struggle she was the only person he men- tioned by name. 'In conclusion,' he wrote, 'I have to express my thanks to Fraulein E. Schenkl who assisted me in writing this book and to all those friends who have been of help to me in many ways." 12 That was also when their correspondence began as Subhas Chandra Bose, then exiled in Europe, travelled to India on being informed of the critical illness of his father. In his first letter from Rome on 30 November 1934 Bose wrote, 'I am always a bad correspondent- but not a bad man I hope.' This 'bad correspondent' nevertheless managed to write with unerring frequency to Emilie Schenkl whether he was in prison or hospital, home interned or in the midst of whirlwind political tours. One hundred and sixty-two of his letters written between 1934 and 1942 are being published for the first time in this volume. It is clear that Emilie Schenkl wrote with diligent regularity too, but only eighteen of her letters appear to have survived. They turned up in an old cigar box in 1980, carefully preserved along with the 1921 correspondence between the brothers Sarat and Subhas Chandra Bose concerning the latter's decision to resign from the Indian Civil Service. Subhas Chandra Bose was not 'bad' when it came to writing letters; he was only 'bad' about losing most of the ones he received.
Book's Contents and Sample Pages
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