158 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
an ambiguous separate statement, which led many to believe that he
too had joined Patel in leaving the Working Committee. The battle
lines were now being drawn, to determine who should form the new
Congress Working Committee—the elected president or the Mahatma,
whose word had been law in the party until very recently.
Though he had pneumonia in both lungs, Bose decided to defy
his doctors’ orders and attend the annual session of the Congress at
Tripuri in the Central Provinces. He traveled by train from Calcutta to
Jubbulpore, where on March 6 he was taken by stretcher to an ambu-
lance and transported to the Congress venue. His po lit i cal opponents
had so assiduously spread the rumor that he was faking his illness that
even the doctors at Tripuri were surprised to find him genuinely ill.^53
Despite his fever of 103 degrees, Bose managed to welcome a fraternal
delegation from Egypt and preside over a meeting of the Subjects’
Committee. He was too ill to deliver his presidential address, which
had to be read by Sarat. The speech was much shorter than the one he
had delivered at Haripura.
In his Tripuri address, Bose called upon the Congress to submit its
national demand in the form of an ultimatum to the British govern-
ment and to incite mass civil disobedience if no satisfactory reply was
forthcoming. He anticipated war in Europe in about six months. He
wanted the Congress to guide the popular movements in the princely
states “on a comprehensive and systematic basis,” rather than making
efforts that were of a “piecemeal nature.” Gandhi had absented himself
from the Congress session at Tripuri and was occupying himself with
the politics of Rajkot, a tiny princely state in western India; he even
went on a fast in support of civil liberties in that autocratic enclave. He
wanted the British viceroy, Linlithgow, to introduce a semblance of
representative government, which was being fiercely resisted by the
ruler and the minorities. Bose deplored Gandhi’s focus on one small
princely fiefdom, where Patel’s followers were angling for power. Bose
believed in a coordinated policy to promote democracy in the 565- odd
states that acknowledged British paramountcy. He was as unequivo-
cal as before on the need for “close co- operation with all the anti-
imperialist or ga ni za tions in the country, particularly the Kisan [peas-
ant] movement and the Trade Union movement.”^54