Exile in Europe 133the Labour opposition in the House of Commons, and other Labour
party leaders, including Stafford Cripps, George Lansbury, and Arthur
Greenwood. He was clear, however, that India would have to win in de-
pen dence and could not expect it as a gift from a future Labour gov-
ernment. In London, he exchanged views with a range of prominent
po lit i cal philosophers and constitutional experts, such as Harold Laski,
J. B. S. Haldane, and Ivor Jennings. In those discussions, he consistently
pointed out the deficiencies of the 1935 constitution that had to be
remedied. He made a day trip to his alma mater, Cambridge, where he
had lunch and tea with Masters and Fellows of a number of Cambridge
colleges, and addressed a well- attended meeting of faculty and stu-
dents. To maintain bipartisanship in his dealings with po lit i cal leaders
and academics, he visited Oxford the next day. He discussed politics
with G. D. H. Cole and had dinner with Gilbert Murray, seeking to cre-
ate a broad con stit u en cy of support among British intellectuals for
rapid prog ress toward Indian self- rule. He was diplomatic and tactful
in his conversations about the path forward, while being firm in his
demands for complete in de pen dence.^140
On his arrival in London, Bose had been described by one newspa-
per as “India’s de Valera.”^141 From Badgastein he had written to Mrs.
Woods expressing his wish to make a fly ing visit to Dublin from Lon-
don in order to see de Valera.^142 As it happened, the Irish leader was in
London to hold negotiations with the British government about cer-
tain outstanding issues following the transformation of the Irish Free
State into the Republic of Eire. At midnight on January 15–16, 1938,
Bose met de Valera and had a “long talk” in which they reportedly “dis-
cussed the po lit i cal destinies of India and Eire in detail.”^143 When to
fight and when to negotiate was something that Bose was constantly
trying to learn from the example, both positive and negative, of Irish
his tory.
As he concluded his visit to Britain, on January 18, 1938, Acha-
rya J. B. Kripalani, general secretary, announced in India that Subhas
Chandra Bose had been duly elected president of the Indian National
Congress. Bose’s own assessment, as he communicated it privately to
Naomi Vetter on January 21, was that his visit was “a great success
from ev ery point of view.”^144 His British hosts were pleasantly surprised