88 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
don and its large congregation of Indian students. Subhas believed
that he needed special permission to visit Britain, but this was not
true: his passport was that of a British subject, and thus he could
not be legally prevented from entering the country. The British au-
thorities sent instructions to their embassies and consulates not to tell
Bose he was mistaken.^7 Since he thought he was denied permission to
visit the imperial metropolis, his presidential address, en ti tled “The
Anti- Imperialist Struggle and Samyavada,” was read in absentia to the
London gathering. It contained both an appreciation and a critique of
Gandhian satyagraha from 1920 to 1933.
Bose accepted that Gandhi had opted for the correct method of
struggle in 1920 and had roused the entire country. In his view, how-
ever, the movement had been neither suf fi ciently militant nor suf fi-
ciently diplomatic. Gandhi had surrendered at the wrong moments, in
1922 and 1931, and on poor terms. Bose went on to enunciate his own
ideal: that of samyavada. Attracted by European po lit i cal experiments
in socialism, he nevertheless preferred to use the ancient Buddhist
Indian term to articulate his ideology of socialism suited to Indian
conditions, one that invoked equality in an atmosphere of balance
and harmony. “Samya means ‘equality,’” he explained to a young Eu-
ropean interlocutor. “Samyavadi means ‘one who believes in equality.’
The idea of samya is a very old Indian conception—first popularized
by the Buddhists five hundred years before Christ. I therefore prefer
this name to the modern names now popular in Europe.” Bose closed
his London address by expressing his messianic faith in the mission
that India would fulfill in world his tory. He gave credit to En gland for
contributing ideas of constitutional and democratic government in the
seventeenth century, to France for the transformative ideas of liberty,
equality, and fraternity in the eigh teenth century, to Germany for the
gift of Marxian philosophy in the nineteenth century, and to Russia for
achievements in proletarian revolution and culture in the twentieth
century. “The next remarkable contribution to the culture and civiliza-
tion of the world,” he asserted, “India will be called upon to make.”^8
The address had been printed at the appropriately named Utopia
Press, London, in the form of a twelve- page pamphlet. Printed copies
of Bose’s speech were prevented from entering India, through a ban