3

‘INEFFECTUAL ANGEL’,

1927–39

The way out of the impasse that was Indian politics in the mid-1920s
seemed to be provided by socialism; and it was to socialism that Jawaharlal
now turned to make sense of the world. Once again, Jawaharlal’s political
education was to be continued outside India. In March 1926, he, his
wife and daughter set sail for Europe: Kamala was ill, with a variant of
tuberculosis, and a Swiss sanatorium beckoned. The family managed to
intersperse bouts of treatment for Kamala with skiing trips and tours
of the major cultural sites of Europe, while Jawaharlal read widely and
tried to teach himself French (although he had studied the language at
Harrow, he did not feel that that training had equipped him to use it).
In February 1927, Jawaharlal attended the International Congress
against Colonial Oppression and Imperialism at Brussels as the repre-
sentative of the Indian National Congress. Among the organisers of the
Brussels Congress were the Dutts, Rajani and Clemens, connections from
his Cambridge days; the main initiative for the Congress is said to have
come from the German communist Willi Münzenberg. The Brussels
Congress set up the League against Imperialism and for National Indepen-
dence, which was to be one of the front organisations of the international
communist movement, involving itself in coalitional politics in order
to build up power and influence. Others were also involved, notably the
Independent Labour Party (ILP), at this point a breakaway group of the
British Labour Party, with Fenner Brockway and James Maxton being its
dominant voices. Maxton and Brockway had committed Labour in 1926