Exile in Europe 87
ments, as Europe rushed headlong toward an even more devastating
conflagration. Subject peoples in Europe’s colonies knew that their des-
tinies would unravel in conjunction with the global con flicts. Their
dreams of liberty became mired in the battles between totalitarianisms
of different ideological hues. Europe was a more challenging terrain
than ever for an individual from Asia fired with a missionary zeal to
free his country from bondage.
Delivering India’s Message
“One chapter of my life has ended,” Subhas wrote to a friend in April
- “I am trying to start a new one.” Even though he was living
far away in the city of Vienna, he had only one sadhana (“quest”)—
and that was to enable India, “this half- awake nation,” to attain self-
fulfillment and in de pen dence. He had to give up ev ery thing and be
alone, in order to achieve a rich and fully realized life. He felt like a
“lonely traveler” in an “endless desert of solitude,” singing “If nobody
hearkens to your call, march ahead alone.”^4 In a Viennese sanatorium,
Subhas was fortunate to find a kindred spirit and fellow convalescent
who was impressed by his single- minded dedication to his homeland.
This was Vithalbhai Patel, a leader of the Swaraj party founded by
Motilal Nehru and Bose’s late mentor, C. R. Das. A former president
of the central legislative assembly in Delhi, Patel had just returned
from a three- month tour of the United States. Subhas reported with
concern on this elder statesman’s health in his correspondence with an
American author, Reverend J. T. Sunderland, whose sympathetic book
India in Bondage had been banned by the British in India.^5 Vithalbhai’s
youn ger brother, Vallabhbhai Patel, was a loyal lieutenant of Gandhi in
Gujarat, but it was the rebellious spirit of the young man from Bengal
that captured Vithalbhai’s imagination. When Gandhi suspended the
civil disobedience movement in May 1933, the two were dismayed and
jointly issued a toughly worded statement, the Patel- Bose Manifesto,
calling for a new radical leadership of the in de pen dence movement.^6
Subhas Chandra Bose received an invitation to preside over the third
Indian po lit i cal conference in London, to be held on June 10, 1933.
The British government was very keen to keep Bose away from Lon-
