94 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
auguration of the Institute, from December 22 to 28. Some six hundred
Asian students converged on Rome from different universities and col-
leges in Europe. The Ital ian railways offered free travel, and the stu-
dents were given accommodation in Rome for a week. The fascist dic-
tator Benito Mussolini addressed the congress on the opening day. In
his opinion, the salvation of the world depended on a rapprochement
between East and West. Il Duce pointed out that while Rome had colo-
nized Europe in the past, its relations with Asia had always been one of
friendly cooperation. “The speech was a fine one,” Bose commented,
“whatever we might think of the speaker.”^22 His ambivalence toward
Mussolini was obvious.
Bose was not the first prominent Indian visitor to encounter Musso-
lini. On a visit in 1926, Rabindranath Tagore had met the Ital ian leader,
who seemed to him “modeled body and soul by the chisel of Michelan-
gelo, whose ev ery action showed intelligence and force.” The poet was
subsequently annoyed when the of fi cial Ital ian news media attempted
to use and exaggerate his remarks to legitimize Ital ian fascism, and
he tried to retract his praise. Yet Tagore drafted a warm letter to Mus-
solini in 1930 while forging scholarly ties between India and Italy at
Santiniketan, and expressed the hope that the misun der stand ings of
1926 would be forgotten.^23 In 1931, Gandhi met Mussolini and found
him a “riddle.” While lamenting the leader’s “iron hand,” the Mahatma
confessed that “many of his reforms attract me.” “What strikes me is
that behind Mussolini’s implacability,” he wrote to Romain Rolland, “is
a desire to serve his people. Even behind his emphatic speeches there
is a nucleus of sincerity and of passionate love for his people. It seems
to me that the majority of the Ital ian people love the iron govern-
ment of Mussolini.”^24 Bose’s phrase—“whatever we might think of the
speaker”—suggested at the very least a degree of skepticism about the
Ital ian dictator. His decision to engage with Mussolini was motivated
not by romanticism or ideology, but rather by the pragmatic consider-
ation that Mussolini was the leader of an im por tant country with cer-
tain con flicts of interest with Britain in the Mediterranean. The Indian
students’ convention that met in Rome simultaneously with the Asian
congress decided, with Bose’s support, to shift the central of fice of the
Federation of Indian Students in Europe from London to Vienna. After