Nehru and Bose: Parallel Lives

by Rudrangshu Mukherjee

‘I felt all along that you were far too keen on re-election. Politically there was nothing wrong in it and you were perfectly entitled to desire re-election and to work for it. But it did distress me for I felt that you had a big enough position to be above this kind of thing.’78 Jawaharlal perhaps felt that Subhas was spoiling for a fight and needlessly precipitating a confrontation with the established Congress leadership. With an international crisis looming because of an impending war in Europe, the Congress could ill afford to get bogged down in an internal feud. He believed that the party and the country needed at that juncture a credible and non-partisan leadership and only Gandhi could provide this. He felt helpless and feared that Subhas was falling prey to provincial forces and aspirations. To Krishna Menon he wrote in early April, ‘[F]or the moment Subhas has become a kind of symbol of Bengal and it is quite impossible to argue with or about symbols. I feel very helpless.’79

Nehru on subas attitude