136 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
The differences of perspective between Bose and Gandhi were not
limited to what each considered legitimate methods of anticolonial
struggle. Bose’s dream of a modern industrial future for free India was
at variance with Gandhi’s utopia: a Ramrajya, an earthly kingdom of
the righ teous epic hero Ram based on self- governing and largely self-
suf fi cient village communities. Yet it was quite possible that their com-
monalities in the anti- imperialist effort, and a sense of mutual respect
and affection despite their differences, would enable them to work to-
gether in relative accord. The situation was com pli cated, however, by
the followers of Gandhi in the upper echelons of the Congress party
or ga ni za tion, the Congress ministries in the provinces, and the party’s
fi nan cial supporters from India’s cap italist class. Even if Bose made ev-
ery effort to accommodate Gandhi and abide by his deeply held wishes,
the Mahatma’s loyal lieutenants could never quite accept the Bengali
radical leader as one of their own. Much depended on which way Jawa-
harlal Nehru would lean—toward the left, with his po lit i cal principles
in Bose’s support, or toward the right, out of deference to Gandhi. For
some time, Nehru and Bose had been representing the broad radical
tendency within the Congress, though they had refrained from form-
ing a group of their own. Others, including Jai Prakash Narayan, had
set up a Congress socialist party in 1934 to act as a lobby within the
larger nationalist or ga ni za tion. M. N. Roy had been disillusioned with
communism and represented another leftist force preaching radical
humanism. The Communist party of India, founded in 1920, was from
the mid- 1930s working in concert with the Congress under the “Na-
tional Front” rubric, much the way communist parties in Europe were
forging popular fronts with their social democratic allies. The possi-
bilities were numerous.
Gandhi Maharaj (“Great King Gandhi”) had wisely decided not to
play King Canute to the rising leftist tide within the Congress. Instead,
he hoped to contain, control, and channel it by anointing first Jawahar-
lal Nehru and then Subhas Chandra Bose as Congress president. The
chief of the premier nationalist party was by now called Rashtrapati
(“Head of State”) and accorded the reverence due that august post
by the nationalist public. In 1936 and 1937, Nehru had experienced
many con flicts with members of the fif teen- member Congress Work-