Nehru and Bose: Parallel Lives

by Rudrangshu Mukherjee

there were aspects of Subhas’s attitude that were more akin to Gandhi’s than to Jawaharlal’s.75 With Gandhi he shared the sense of certainty about the path he had chosen. Neither of them had Jawaharlal’s persistent self-doubt and proneness to self-scrutiny. Possibly since the time he refused to join the ICS, Subhas had an idea of his own mission and destiny. This was imbricated with his own notions of sacrifice. Gandhi had his own commitment to the quest for truth from which he never separated his political activities. He was always sure of his inner voice.76 The temperaments of both Gandhi and Subhas were imbued with a sense of religiosity, not in any narrow and sectarian meaning of the term but in a more profound way that pertained to their understanding of what bestowed an inner significance to human lives and human history.