Nehru and Bose: Parallel Lives

by Rudrangshu Mukherjee

Jawaharlal’s intellectual trajectories had different orientations. He was not drawn easily, as he himself wrote in his autobiography, towards religion and spirituality. This was one factor in his intellectual distance from both Gandhi and, more agonizingly, from Kamala. He was less sure of his path, troubled as he always was by introspection. These features of his personality invariably made him appear torn and occasionally vacillating. Both Gandhi and Subhas believed that their politics derived a purpose from activism. As the latter reminded Jawaharlal in the harsh letter of 28 March 1939: ‘[T]he unity that we strive for or maintain must be the unity of action and not the unity of inaction.’77 Jawaharlal paused before he acted and this often irked those who, like Subhas, made a virtue of their own impatience.