84 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
tentiary regarding the treatment of “state prisoner” Subhas Chandra
Bose. These included minute details about the furniture, clothing, and
quantity of food that he would be permitted, as well as the conditions
under which family members could visit him, the scrutiny of letters
that he could receive and write, and the newspapers and books he
might be allowed to read.^77 With Sarat languishing in jail as well, it fell
upon Bivabati to express concerns to the authorities about her brother-
in- law’s illness in detention. Eventually, the government agreed to al-
low him to travel at his own expense to Europe for treatment. Subhas
usually depended on Sarat for fi nan cial support. Now family friends
came forward with loans to Sarat, to meet both his family’s needs in
Calcutta and Subhas’s expenses in Europe. These benefactors included
luminaries within Calcutta’s legal fraternity, including Nripendra Nath
Sircar, Provas Chandra Basu, and Nripendra Chandra Mitra, as well as
Debendra Lal Khan, a nationalist leader from Midnapur district. Sarat
would repay these loans once he returned to his practice in 1936.^78
It was out of the question that the British would set Subhas free on
Indian soil, or allow him to go to Bengal to see his parents before his
departure for Europe. He would not see his father again. The govern-
ment permitted him to spend some time with Sarat in Jubbulpore
Central Jail, where the brothers had a visit from Basanti Devi, Bivabati,
and her children.^79 On February 13, 1933, Subhas was carried in an
ambulance to the port in Bombay and released from detention only
after he was put on board the Ital ian ship S.S. Gange, sailing for Eu-
rope.
As the ship left the shores of India, Subhas wrote a parting message
for Bengalis. After more than a year of exile from Bengal, he was em-
barking on what would turn out to be more than three years of exile
from India. “One of the dreams that have inspired me and given a pur-
pose to my life,” he wrote, “is that of a great and undivided Bengal de-
voted to the ser vice of India and of humanity—a Bengal that is above
all sects and groups and is the home alike of the Muslim, the Hindu,
the Christian and the Buddhist. It is this Bengal—the Bengal of my
dreams—the Bengal of the future still in embryo—that I worship and
strive to serve in my daily life.”^80