Exile in Europe 119want him to in flu ence the formation of the ministry in Bengal.^101 Even
though Subhas was opposed, in principle, to accepting of fice at the
provincial level, the Bose brothers soon came to believe that if Con-
gress was going to form governments in provinces where the party had
won majorities, then it had to form coalition governments in provinces
like Bengal for the sake of Hindu- Muslim unity. Once the stage had
been set for a Krishak Praja–Muslim League coalition government in
Bengal, with the Congress led by Sarat Chandra Bose cast into the role
of the opposition, the governor of Bengal, John Anderson, saw no rea-
son to delay the release of Subhas Chandra Bose.
Around ten o’clock at night, on March 17, 1937, Bose was suddenly
released and came home from Medical College Hospital. He promptly
informed Emilie of this new development the next day. “My freedom
means,” he wrote, “that I can move about freely and that my correspon-
dence will not be of fi cially censored—though, of course, it will always
be secretly censored.” In his letter of March 25, 1937, he promised to
“try to write a few lines ev ery week,” a promise he kept during the next
few months, corresponding with Emilie regularly from Calcutta, La-
hore, Dalhousie, and Kurseong. His doctors allowed him to attend one
public meeting in Calcutta, before sending him off to the hills once
more to recoup his health. “Tomorrow there will be a public recep-
tion for me,” he wrote on April 5, 1937, “and it will be a very big gath-
ering.”^102
The size of the gathering on April 6 probably exceeded Subhas’s
fondest expectations. Six hundred different associations offered him
garlands and bouquets at a huge meeting at Shraddhananda Park in
Calcutta, and a message of welcome from Tagore was read out. Subhas
felt like “a po lit i cal Rip Van Winkle.” Nevertheless, he visualized a bold
strategy of forging “a broad anti- Imperialist front of workers, peasants
and middle class” under “the aegis of the Indian National Congress for
effecting the po lit i cal and economic liberation of our hungry and en-
slaved millions.” He sought the forbearance of his supporters, since he
needed time “to pick up the old threads, to find my bearings and then
to look into the future.”^103
When his friend Dilip had come to see him at his Elgin Road home
in late March, Subhas had embraced him and “wept like a child.” A