98 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
make use of international diplomacy in his efforts to win swaraj. Gan-
dhi’s efforts in reconciling cap ital and labor, landlord and peasant, had
their limits. In the ultimate analysis, Mahatma Gandhi had failed, in
Bose’s view, because “the false unity of interests that are inherently op-
posed is not a source of strength but a source of weakness in po lit i cal
warfare.”^34
In a penultimate chapter titled “A Glimpse of the Future,” Bose made
certain comments about communism and fascism that would be seized
upon years later to make him the target of hostile criticism from vari-
ous quarters. The context in which he made those remarks was an at-
tempted answer to the question that was on ev ery one’s lips in Europe:
“What is the future of Communism in India?” Bose wanted to differen-
tiate his own response from the emphatic one that Jawaharlal Nehru
had given in December 1933. Nehru saw a stark choice before the
world between “some form of Communism and some form of Fas-
cism” and declared himself to be “all for” communism. “There is no
middle road between Fascism and Communism,” he asserted. “One has
to choose between the two and I choose the Communist ideal.” Bose
believed Nehru’s view to be “fundamentally wrong” and saw no reason
to hold that the choice was “restricted to two alternatives.” Whether
one adhered to a Hegelian or Bergsonian theory of evolution, the end
of his tory and creativity had not been reached. And then, in a rather
mechanistic application of Hegelian dialectics, Bose announced that he
was “inclined to hold that the next phase in world- his tory will produce
a synthesis between Communism and Fascism. And will it be a surprise
if that synthesis is produced in India?” He went on to list a series of
quite convincing reasons why “Communism will not be adopted in
India.” Its lack of sympathy with nationalism, the inward- looking na-
ture of contemporary Russia, and the antireligious and atheistic ele-
ment in the ideology would combine to make communism unappeal-
ing to Indians. It would therefore be “safe to predict that India will not
become a new edition of Soviet Russia.” With “equal strength” it could
be said that “all the modern socio- po lit i cal movements and experi-
ments in Europe and in America will have considerable in flu ence on
India’s development.” In the future, India would take “more and more
interest in what goes on in the outside world.”^35