The Warrior and the Saint 149negotiations between the Congress and the British government on this
question. Bose said that he did not believe any in flu en tial Congress
leader was negotiating behind the back of the Congress. He added that
weakness shown by any section of the Congress would “amount to
treachery of the first magnitude to the cause of India’s freedom.” He
stood for “open, unmitigated and unrelenting opposition to the mon-
strous Federal Scheme,” and would relieve himself of “the trammels of
of fice” if “the unthinkable contingency” of a majority in the Congress
accepting that scheme ever came to pass. Members of the right wing of
the Congress questioned the need to issue such an aggressive state-
ment, and criticized what they described as a threat to walk out of the
Congress. Bose insisted that his statement was issued not a day too
soon and was “nothing more than a forceful exposition of the Congress
view on federation.” Nothing would ever make him give up the Con-
gress, which was like the “very breath” of his life, and he hoped Con-
gressmen would not reduce themselves to “parliamentary busybodies”
and do nothing to “whittle down our national demand.” He was con fi-
dent that British imperialism could no longer ignore the national de-
mand of a united and renascent India.^30
In order for the Congress to be able to present a united national de-
mand to the British, Bose believed at least one of two conditions had to
be met: a settlement with the Muslim League at the all- India level, or
coalition governments with Congress par tic i pa tion in most, if not all,
of the Muslim- majority provinces. When Bose assumed the presidency
of the Congress, the party governed seven of the eleven provinces of
British India. The four exceptions were Punjab and Sind in the north-
west, and Bengal and Assam in the east. Bose had been opposed in
principle to of fice acceptance in 1937; but in the absence of a mass sat-
yagraha campaign, and given the decision to form ministries in seven
provinces, he felt that coalition provinces in the remaining provinces
would improve Hindu- Muslim relations and strengthen nationalist re-
sistance to British rule. As Congress president, Bose was instrumen-
tal in ousting the Muslim League ministry headed by Muhammad Sa-
adullah and installing the Congress- led coalition government led by
Gopinath Bardoloi in Assam. That gave the Congress party control of
government ministries in eight out of the eleven provinces. In Punjab,