In contrast to Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose's "discovery of India" took place while he was only a teenager, very early in his life. The fifteen-year-old Subhas questioned his mother in 1912, "How many selfless sons of the Mother are prepared, in this selfish age, to entirely give up their personal interests and take the leap for the Mother?" Do you think your son is yet ready, mom? In a letter to his older brother Sarat in 1921, when he was about to resign from the Indian Civil Service, he stated that "Only on the soil of sacrifice and sorrow can we erect our national superstructure." 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.