100 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
at the Russian Embassy.^39 He wrote to Emilie from Rome on Janu-
ary 25, thanking her for remembering his birthday two days before,
which he himself had forgotten. He also informed her that he would
have an interview with Mussolini that evening and was going to pre-
sent Il Duce with a copy of his book, adding that she should “treat this
matter as strictly private.”^40 In the book’s preface, dated November 29,
1934 (their daughter would be born on that date in 1942), Emilie was
the only person he mentioned by name. “In conclusion,” he wrote, “I
have to express my thanks to Fraulein E. Schenkl, who assisted me in
writing this book, and to all those friends who have been of help to me
in many ways.”^41
The Indian Struggle, Bose’s interpretation of the freedom movement
from 1920 to 1934, was published by Lawrence and Wishart in London
on January 17, 1935. The colonial government in Delhi, with the ap-
proval of London, lost no time in proscribing the book and banning
its entry into India. Samuel Hoare, the secretary of state for India,
alleged in the House of Commons in reply to a question from the La-
bour MP Colonel J. Wedgwood that the action had been taken because
the book “tended generally to encourage methods of terrorism and
direct action.” This was rather a strange charge to make, since the book,
if anything, made some constructive suggestions on how to deter revo-
lutionaries from the path of terrorism and turn them toward peaceful
methods of struggle.
Despite the hostility of the British government, The Indian Struggle
was particularly well reviewed in the British press and warmly wel-
comed in European literary and po lit i cal circles. Reviewing the book in
the Manchester Guardian, J. T. Gwynne, a British of fi cer of the elite In-
dian Civil Service, gave the following assessment:
This is perhaps the most interesting book which has yet been written
by an Indian politician on Indian politics. His his tory of the last four-
teen years, though written avowedly from the standpoint of the Left-
Wing, is as nearly fair to all parties and ev ery one as can be reason-
ably expected of an active politician. He is interested in trade union
movements, the peasants’ revolt, and the growth of Socialism. Alto-