Pilgrims and Their Cosmopolitan Itineraries: The Many Worlds of Subhas Chandra Bose, Dilip Kumar Roy, and Yogi Krishnaprem

This chapter tells the story of two Indians and the rather unconventional case of one Englishman. Subhas Chandra Bose (1897–1945), one of the tallest leaders of the Indian National Congress, and Dilip Kumar Roy (1897–1980), a disciple of Sri Aurobindo (born Aurobindo Ghose, 1872–1950), were friends since their years at Presidency College in Calcutta. They travelled to Europe for their higher studies almost together and later returned to India. This chapter explores one particular aspect of their friendship: their interactions revolving around the questions of religion, spirituality, and wider socio-political issues. Our English protagonist, Ronald Henry Nixon (1898–1965), a Cambridge graduate and pilot who served in the Great War, arrived in India as an academic but before long left his university position for a Vaiṣṇava spiritual life, adopted the name (Yogi) Sri Krishnaprem, and retired to the Himalayas. He was one of Roy’s closest friends. For all the shared interests these are nevertheless instances of three temperamentally different figures. Much of their conversations essay their own inner quests vis-à-vis the contemporaneous socio-political developments of the time, in India and elsewhere in the world. This chapter examines some of the nodal points of their shared interests as well as the distinct nature of each of their ‘pilgrimages’, to borrow an oft-used expression.