Exile in Europe 127Gandhi lent a helping hand by taking up their cause with the British
governor of the province. From the prisoners, he sought assurances of
a commitment to nonviolence, something that Subhas urged his Ben-
gali compa tri ots to accept. Gandhi’s exertions made him very ill; on
November 1, his blood pressure rose to dangerously high levels, and
his doctors had to struggle to stabilize his condition. A concerned
Rabindranath Tagore came to visit. He himself was quite frail, and had
to be carried upstairs in a chair by Sarat, Subhas, Jawaharlal, and Gan-
dhi’s secretary Mahadev Desai, to see the Mahatma.^121
“It was utterly impossible for me to think of myself in Calcutta when
Gandhiji was there,” Subhas wrote, “especially after his own collapse on
the 1st of Nov. because we had invited him to tackle the case of about
2,000 imprisoned détenus and po lit i cal prisoners.” By this time, Gan-
dhi had decided—despite the reservations of many Gandhians, includ-
ing Vallabhbhai Patel—that there really was no one other than Subhas
who deserved to become the next president of the Indian National
Congress. Gandhi encouraged the stormy petrel of Indian politics to
take a break in Europe, before taking up his onerous responsibility in
January 1938.^122 On November 4, 1937, Subhas sent a letter to Emilie
in German, saying that he would probably travel to Europe in the
middle of November. “Please write to Kurhaus Hochland, Badgastein,”
he instructed her, “and enquire if I (and you also) can stay there.” He
asked her to mention this message only to her parents, not to reply, and
wait for his next airmail letter or telegram. On November 16, he sent a
cable: “Starting aeroplane arriving Badgastein twentysecond arrange
lodging and meet me station.”^123
On November 18, 1937, the next president of the Indian National
Congress boarded a KLM flight in Calcutta, heading for Europe. The
Ital ian police questioned him and searched his luggage once his plane
landed in Naples. He lodged a complaint and received an apology from
the Ital ian government.^124 He spent a month and a half—from Novem-
ber 22, 1937, to January 8, 1938—with Emilie at his favorite resort of
Badgastein. “It is awfully nice here now,” he wrote to Mrs. Dharmavir
on December 6, “all white with snow and with it, sunshine. A dry cold,
which is so bracing. I have been taking the baths and shall continue
with treatment till the end of the month.”^125 In ten days, during early