Exile in Europe 89
imposed under the Sea Customs Act. In the British view, Bose was
seeking “to advertise himself as the Lenin of the coming Indian revolu-
tion.” He had made reference to an or ga ni za tion called the Samyavadi
Sangh that might be formed to spread his message of samyavada. Sev-
eral colonial of fi cials wanted to outlaw this “new po lit i cal society” and
its “militant policy.” One sensible of fi cial pointed out that the govern-
ment had “no information to prove that the Sangh really exists except
on paper and in the brain of Subhas Chandra Bose,” and so the plan of
banning the utopian or ga ni za tion was abandoned.^9
Wishing to blend the old and the new, Bose was keen to learn from
social and technological innovations in Europe. He was impressed by
the practice of municipal socialism, which had been working effectively
in Vienna for more than a dozen years. He met the socialist mayor of
Vienna, and urged the mayor of Calcutta to emulate the Viennese ex-
ample. He noted the prog ress Vienna had made in housing, education,
medical relief, and social welfare. He was especially admiring of the
socialist municipality’s ability to provide housing to nearly 200,000
people by taxing luxuries and amusements, and without falling into
debt. He visited the Kindergarten houses, where children from poor
families were well looked after and given a decent education while their
parents were at work. In Vienna, Subhas became friends with Naomi
Vetter, who translated his speeches into German, and with her hus-
band, a state of fi cial and the director of two theaters. Through an in-
troduction supplied by his friend Dilip, he also formed close ties with
Hedy Fülöp- Miller, a Hungarian singer and wife of the writer René
Fülöp- Miller. These friends, along with Betty Hargrove, an American,
and Helen Ashkanazy, the head of several women’s associations in Vi-
enna, were of great help to him in building bridges with Austrian soci-
ety, media, and po lit i cal circles. In 1933, Austria stood on the cusp of
its socialist past and its fascist future. What Bose most admired about
Vienna was soon to be swept away by the Nazi tide, unleashed by an
Austrian in neighboring Germany.^10
Czechoslovakia and Poland were two central and east European
countries of special interest to Bose. He carefully studied the way a
Czechoslovak legion had been formed during World War I, with Brit-
ish and Russian help, to win Czechoslovakia’s freedom from Austrian