Flowers For His Fiery, Rebel Son

Their paths diverged in 1939, but Gandhi and Subhas Chandra Bose shared mutual admiration and the same vision of equality of all Indians

- Sugata Bose

The arrival in February 1938 of a revolutionary leader from Bengal to preside over the 51st session of the Indian National Congress in Gujarat, the home province of the apostle of non-violence, carried powerful symbolic meaning. It represented the meeting of two generations and the merging of two strands of the anti-colonial movement that had often been at odds with each other. The spectacle of Subhas Chandra Bose being taken in a chariot pulled by 51 white bulls to the Congress venue in the rural setting of Haripura connected agrarian and urban India and evoked an idyllic past beckoning a dynamic future. Gandhi and Bose in earnest conversation on the dais at the plenary session of the Congress warmed the hearts of millions of Indians looking forward to a united nationalist stand against the British Raj. The saint’s holiness had to be complemented by the warrior’s sword, as Aurobindo Ghose had argued three decades ago, in the pursuit of justice and righteousness.

The differences of perspective between Bose and Gandhi were not limited to what each considered legitimate methods of anti-colonial struggle. Bose’s dream of a modern industrial future for free India was at variance with Gandhi’s utopia of a Ramrajya, a kingdom of Ram on earth based on self-governing and largely self-sufficient village communities. Yet it was quite possible that their commonalities in the anti-imperialist effort and a sense of mutual respect and affection would enable them to work together in relative accord.