148 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
socialists, he tried to maintain a stance of neutrality and fairness in
dealing with the left and right wings of the party. The two sides had a
serious argument at a meeting of the All- India Congress Committee in
late September 1938. The followers of Gandhi proposed a resolution
saying that some left- leaning Congressmen were fomenting class war in
the name of defending civil liberties, and reaf firmed the Congress’s
unequivocal support of life and property. Bose, in his presidential role,
allowed ev ery one full freedom of expression, as even Gandhi acknowl-
edged. The radicals, who believed in the equitable redistribution of
property, brought amendments to the conservative resolution. Upon
being defeated in the voting on these amendments, the members of the
Congress socialist party staged a dramatic walkout. Gandhi was might-
ily annoyed, and said that those who had walked out should perma-
nently leave the Congress if they could not abide by basic principles
accepted by the majority. Bose stayed with Gandhi on this occasion,
even though later the Congress right wing did not appreciate the mid-
dle ground that he had occupied as president.^28
Bose had also sided with Gandhi in dealing with a ministerial crisis
in the Central Provinces in July and August of 1938. This large admin-
istrative unit in the middle of India had Marathi- speaking and Hindi-
speaking areas. A Marathi- speaker, N. B. Khare, had become the Con-
gress premier in 1937, and he accused the Congress’s central leadership
of backing the rival Hindi- speaking faction led by D. P. Mishra in 1938.
What seems to have in flu enced Bose in taking Gandhi’s side in this
dispute was Khare’s decision to hobnob with the British governor in
seeking to outdo his rivals. Khare later claimed that Bose had sympa-
thized with him. The records of the time, however, make clear that
Bose as Congress president worked with Gandhi and the Congress
Working Committee to discipline Khare and install a new Congress
ministry under a new premier. Whatever his commitments to regional
rights, Bose would have no truck with the of fi cial representatives of the
British Empire in India’s provinces.^29
It was his staunch opposition to British constitutional maneuvering
to retain power that led Bose to issue a couple of stiff statements warn-
ing against any compromise on the scheme of federation with the
princely states. The British media had been reporting back- channel