Nehru and Bose: Parallel Lives by Mukherjee Rudrangshu

Author:Mukherjee, Rudrangshu [Mukherjee, Rudrangshu]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789351188490
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2014-10-14T18:30:00+00:00

6

The End of the Friendship

When Jawaharlal had asked for a second term as president at the end of 1936, he had told Gandhi that one term was too short a time for him to revitalize the party.1 Subhas must have harboured similar thoughts when he decided he needed a second term as the leader of the Congress. Yet he was worried about his own popularity within the organization. To his wife, he wrote, ‘[I]t is doubtful if I shall be re-elected President for the coming year. Many people are jealous of me.’2 Jealousy may not have been the sole or even the most important reason for the objections that were raised regarding Subhas’s candidature for the presidentship the second time round. One person who was seriously unhappy was Vallabhbhai Patel.

The relationship between Subhas and Patel had been somewhat fraught since the will left behind by the latter’s brother, Vithalbhai. Vithalbhai had died in Vienna in 1933 and had been devotedly nursed by Subhas during his illness. In his will Vithalbhai had endowed more than three-fourths of his estate to Subhas, to be spent by him ‘for the political uplift of India and preferably for publicity work on behalf of India’s cause in other countries’. Vallabhbhai refused to accept the will as genuine. In the spirit of bonhomie that prevailed at Haripura, Subhas agreed to Patel’s suggestion that the money should go to a special committee of the Congress. But they failed to agree on the composition of the committee. The matter was dragged to the law courts and Subhas lost the case in the Bombay High Court and subsequently on appeal as well. With the money, Vallabhbhai set up the Vithalbhai Memorial Trust having first obtained a commitment from all the legal heirs of his brother that none of them would accept or claim a penny from the estate.3

It is not clear if this cause célèbre influenced Patel’s assessment of Subhas as Congress president but he did write in July 1938 to Rajendra Prasad who had been taken ill: ‘Jawahar has gone abroad for at least four months. You go out for six months and we have to deal with a President who does not know his own job.’4 This harsh judgement may have had something to do with the fact that while Subhas undertook whistle-stop tours across the country, he had very little time to speak to the Working Committee. The official history of the Congress praised his indomitable energy but noted, ‘Subhas Babu was one of the silent Presidents of the Congress. The occasions on which he spoke at a meeting of the Working Committee during a whole year of his first Presidentship could be counted on one’s fingers.’5

Gandhi’s first choice as president for the next session at Tripuri was Abul Kalam Azad as Gandhi felt that a Muslim as the head of the Congress could ease the communal situation. Azad’s candidature was, in fact, announced at a Working Committee meeting held at Bardoli. Azad had not voiced his objections there but he later withdrew his name.

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