His Majesty\'s Opponent. Subhas Chandra Bose and India\'s Struggle Against Empire

Exile in Europe 111

Even before the explicit warning, the odds were that he would be
jailed in India. Yet there had been at least a small chance of his being
allowed to attend the Lucknow Congress, over which Nehru would
preside, in the second week of April. That prospect had now been
firmly shut down. Well before Jawaharlal could reply, advising Subhas
to follow his intuition and not submit to indefi nite exile, Bose had
made up his mind.^72 Romain Rolland sent his “sympathetic affection”
and asked him to consider postponing his return. Bose replied that he
felt it was his duty to return to India at once. “It is, of course, a tragic
thing,” he wrote, “that the best and most creative years of one’s life
should be spent behind prison walls, but that is a price which enslaved
people always had and always will have to pay in this world.”^73
Unbeknownst to the world, the greatest dif fi culty for Bose in leaving
Europe was not the certainty of imprisonment in India, but the pain of
separation from the woman he loved. As he prepared to go home, he
wrote Emilie a letter that was a forthright confession of his feelings.
“Even the iceberg sometimes melts,” he began, “and so it is with me
now.” He had “already sold” himself to his “first love”—his country—
to whom he had to return. As usual, it was an adventure into the un-
known:

I do not know what the future has in store for me. May be, I shall spend

my life in prison, may be, I shall be shot or hanged. But whatever hap-

pens, I shall think of you and convey my gratitude to you in silence for

your love for me. May be I shall never see you again—may be I shall

not be able to write to you again when I am back—but believe me, you

will always live in my heart, in my thoughts and in my dreams. If fate

should thus separate us in this life—I shall long for you in my next

life.

He had “never thought before that a woman’s love could ensnare” him.

And he mused:

Is this love of any earthly use? We who belong to two different lands—

have we anything in common? My country, my people, my traditions,

my habits and customs, my climate—in fact ev ery thing is so different