Sugata Bose is the Gardiner professor of history at Harvard University. He was educated at Presidency College, Calcutta, and the University of Cambridge where he obtained his PhD and was later a fellow of St Catharine's College. Before taking up the Gardiner Chair at Harvard in 2001, he was professor of history and diplomacy at Tufts University. Bose was a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship and gave the G.M. Trevelyan Lecture at the University of Cambridge.
Bose, who is Netaji's brother Sarat Chandra Bose's grandson, is the author of many books, including Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital and the much-acclaimed The Nation as Mother and Other Visions of Nationhood and A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire. He has also made documentary films on South Asian history and politics and published recordings of his translations of Tagore.
Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's life was more fascinating than the legend. As the supreme commander of the Indian National Army, he united Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians in the struggle for freedom based on his commitment to equal rights and respect for all. His patriotism, as Gandhi asserted, was second to none and he evoked matchless affection and loyalty as a selfless leader.
Sugata Bose deftly explores a charismatic personality whose public and private lives encapsulated the contradictions of global history in the first half of the twentieth century. Evocative, engaging and relevant, His Majesty's Opponent is the most definitive and critically acclaimed biography that illuminates the life, times and the making of Netaji.
A fine, nuanced book ... evokes in the reader just the right mix of emotion and regret that Bose's brilliant but truncated life deserves''...an achievement that will evoke the admiration and envy of any historian-biographer'
