What happens
This Pacific Story episode follows Subas Chandra Bose, from his student days at Calcutta University, where he is expelled after a student strike, through his years in Indian politics. Bose becomes a close follower of Gandhi, rises through the Indian National Congress, and is repeatedly jailed for his activities against British rule. His views grow more radical as his influence expands, and he drifts toward the fascist powers in Europe. The broadcast traces his path toward collaboration with Japan, and it sets up his later role at the head of a Japanese-sponsored Indian government in Singapore. This is a dramatized account drawn from the episode's first part, presented as a portrait of a man whose ambitions and methods increasingly set him against the British and against Gandhi.
Calcutta, India, with later scenes in Cambridge, London, Vienna, Rome, Berlin and Singapore, spanning the 1910s to the early 1940s
Characters: Subas Chandra Bose, C.R. Das, Gandhi, Patel, Calcutta University master
Listen for: Bose's growing ambition and his shifting alliances with Patel, Mussolini, Hitler and Japan
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.