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An Outsider in Politics The book can be called a memoir of an academician-turned-politician, who was married into the family of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. Bose had her first experience of communal riots during her childhood before the country’s independence when while standing in the balcony of her Rashbehari Avenue residence in south Calcutta, she heard a bloodcurdling roar and found a tide of raging humanity surging down the road from the direction of the Ballygunge lake for taking on a Muslim boy who had been given shelter by an old Hindu woman in the building in front of her home. She could hear the pleas of the old woman, “My sons, he has taken refuge in the house, spare his life”. Sights like this had become very common in the riot-torn Calcutta, Delhi, Punjab and other places prior to the eventful day of August 15, 1947, when young Bose was in Delhi and was being virtually crushed by a crowd and almost got trampled by horses at one point — “when someone caught my hand and pulled me to safety — was it someone in Lord Mountbatten’s horse-driven carriage or the mounted police who knows?” Bose narrates. The book is also an historical document, which has unfolded many of “the anecdotes and untold stories of the post-independence period” with which Bose herself was associated. The writer says in the acknowledgements that the book has been an “expression of the varied events of her life”. But in reality, the book, written lucidly in simple language has turned out to be a “historical novel”, which can be read at one go. But at some places, the writing becomes a reportage, which only an eminent journalist can write. Bose is the daughter of the illustrious Charu C. Chaudhuri and niece of versatile Nirad C. Chaudhuri and after becoming a member of the Bose family at 38/2 Elgin Road, she was placed in an advantageous position that helped her in her political career. Though she would have us believe that she was an outsider in politics, it is not absolutely true as she was very much an “insider” since her husband Dr Sisir Bose was also in politics. The late Dr Bose was instrumental in Netaji’s historic “mahanishkraman” on the night of January 16-17, 1941, as he had driven the family car carrying his Rangakaka (as uncle Subhas Bose was called in the family) incognito from 38/2 Elgin Road to Gomo on way to Lahore. Dr Bose was also active in Congress politics in Bengal and had been an MLA in the state Assembly. Apart from being a devoted wife and mother, Bose has primarily been an academician who had spent most of her life teaching English in a women’s college in south Calcutta. Bose remained a MP for three consequent terms since 1996 when she was nominated first by the Congress at the insistence of Mamata Banerjee as their candidate to contest the Jadavpore Lok Sabha seat against the CPI (M) in the Marxist bastion. But certainly, her entry into active politics had given her an opportunity to see the country’s political bosses from close quarters. She saw how the infighting groups in the state Congress had ruined the party in Bengal and helping the CPM for remaining in the citadel of power so long. The Congress in Bengal, at one point of time, had turned into a party with “a stamp and pad” only. As Lok Sabha member, Bose had the opportunity of meeting those in the echelons of power and politics and in religion, cultural world, science and technology and various other fields worldwide, which gave her a new experience. The book still is not Krishna Bose’s political diary. Quite a large part of the book covers details about her family life at Basundhara on Sarat Bose Road where Sisir and Krishna had to be shifted from their one Woodburn Park residence, about her trips abroad, Dr Bose’s Institute of Child and about her children which could have been avoided. In comparison there has been less talk about Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress — which gave her an identity in the national politics. There has also been no explanation as to how and why she has become an outsider in politics.
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Autobiography of a great man is always worthy of reading. But truly speaking, Krishna Bose does not fall in the category of “great men (women)” and her An Outsider in Politics is also not strictly an autobiography. Still the book is interesting to read, though some anecdotes relate the author’s nightmarish experiences of the post-Partition days.