Bose was born in Philadelphia, PA, to a Bengali Hindu Father, Noni Gopal Bose and an American mother of English and German ancestry, Charlotte. His Father was an Indian freedom revolutionary who, having been imprisoned for his political activities, fled Bengal in the 1920s in order to avoid further persecution by the British colonial police. His mother, Charlotte, is described as an American schoolteacher of French and German ancestry, but Bose described her as "more Bengali than me. She was a vegetarian and deeply interested in Vedanta and Hindu philosophy".