154 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
the National Planning Committee, Tagore wanted to see Bose once
more as Congress president.^41 Gandhi was unimpressed by the poet’s
foray into politics and chose to ignore his recommendation.
Abul Kalam Azad was the old guard’s first choice as the next presi-
dent, but Azad wisely considered discretion to be the better part of
valor. Since he was unwilling to enter the fray against Bose, a small
coterie within the Working Committee, in consultation with Gandhi,
set up another member of the High Command, Pattabhi Sitaramayya
of Andhra, as their nominee. Bose remained insistent that a leftist, such
as Acharya Narendra Dev, should be Congress president; but as he
could not find anyone unanimously acceptable, he decided to run for
election himself. Gandhi had been quite sat is fied with Bose’s fairness
when the socialists had walked out of an AICC meeting in September.
Patel, however, seemed to nurse a grievance about the episode and
complained that Bose had favored the unruly leftists. Bose—differing
sharply with Gandhi on this point—had advocated a coalition govern-
ment in Bengal; this was opposed by G. D. Birla, a powerful fi nan cial
backer of the Gandhian Congress who was wary about taking too radi-
cal a stance against the British raj. The socialist agenda of the National
Planning Committee incensed leaders of the right wing of the Con-
gress. K. M. Munshi, a close friend of Patel, complained to Gandhi that
Bose was seeking German help against the British. A conversation with
some German businessmen in December was misreported as a con-
spiratorial meeting with the German consul aimed at fomenting anger
against the British. As it happened, Bose had been critical of German
policies in the course of that conversation.^42
In his private correspondence, Bose sounded remarkably detached
about the prospects of his reelection as Congress president. “Though
there is a very general desire for my re- election,” he wrote on January 4,
1939, “I do not think I will be again President. In a way, it will be good
not to be President again. I shall then be more free and have more
time to myself.”^43 In December 1938, Rabindranath Tagore had written
about his wish to honor Bose at a public reception in Calcutta. He was
delighted when Subhas decided to visit him in Santiniketan during a
quiet moment after the “din and bustle” of the traditional winter fair.^44
Subhas had been doing something unthinkable since 1920: challenging