The Warrior and the Saint 139of bamboo, wooden rafters, and date mats were supplied with all the
modern amenities: water, drainage, electricity, telephones, and postal
ser vice. The public and private spaces of the Congress venue were em-
bellished with a couple of hundred painted posters depicting Indian
rural life, eighty- six of them by the famous painter Nandalal Bose. This
was a creative display of the popular culture of mass nationalism. “Fol-
lowing the pat style,” Nandalal Bose later recalled, “we did a large num-
ber of paintings and hung them ev erywhere—on the main entrance,
inside the volunteers’ camps, even in the rooms meant for Bapuji [Ma-
hatma Gandhi] and Subhasbabu [Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose], the
President.”^5 On reaching Vithal- nagar, Bose hoisted the Indian tricolor
flag and proclaimed: “There is no power on earth that can keep India
enslaved anymore. India shall be free.”^6
Subhas Chandra Bose assumed the post of Congress president as
soon as his predecessor, Jawaharlal Nehru, placed around his neck the
Rashtrapati’s green cloth garland with saffron and white stripes. He
gave several formal and informal speeches in flu ent En glish and halting
Hindustani, and conducted the open session of the Congress with
aplomb. His lengthy and weighty presidential address articulated his
vision of the climactic phase of the freedom struggle and the socioeco-
nomic reconstruction of free India. It was the most im por tant, most
detailed po lit i cal speech that he would ever deliver in India. He began
with an incisive analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of Britain’s
global imperialism. For someone who had suf fered grievously at Brit-
ish hands, his address was remarkably devoid of rancor toward the co-
lonial masters. He challenged them to transform their empire into a
“federation of free nations,” not unlike the Commonwealth that even-
tually came into being after 1947. Quoting Lenin on how “reaction in
Britain is strengthened and fed by the enslavement of a number of na-
tions,” he claimed that those who were battling for India’s freedom and
that of other countries enslaved by the British Empire were “inciden-
tally fight ing for the economic emancipation of the British people as
well.” “Once we have real self- determination,” he argued, holding out
an olive branch, “there is no reason why we should not enter into the
most cordial relations with the British people.”^7
While cautioning his compa tri ots against accepting colonial consti-