162 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
would ultimately fin ish up by asking you to draft their resolution.”
Bose was relentless in his critique. “The unity that we strive for or
maintain,” he said in conclusion, “must be the unity of action and not
the unity of inaction.”^60 Bose was certainly too harsh and perhaps un-
fair in his criticism of Nehru’s vacillation at this decisive moment. But
years later, Nehru was to confess in his interviews with Taya Zinkin that
in 1939 he had “agreed with” what Subhas was trying to do but had “let
him down.”^61
For the moment, Subhas’s plain speaking with Jawahar produced
better results than his pleading with the Mahatma. After being hit by
the long missive, Jawahar hastened to reply on April 3. Regarding the
many failings that Subhas had listed, he had little to say. “I plead guilty
to them,” he wrote, “well realizing that I have the misfortune to pos-
sess them.” He appreciated the “truth of the remark” that Subhas had
treated him well, and he was grateful for it. Personally, he professed
“regard and affection” for Subhas, though sometimes he did not at all
like what the youn ger colleague did or how he did it. Nehru took pains
to explain his various statements and actions. He ended on a rather
melancholy note: he was an “unsatisfactory human being” who was
“dissat is fied with himself and the world, and whom the petty world he
lives in does not particularly like.”^62 Subhas’s withering attack did seem
to have shaken him up. Soon after this exchange, Nehru argued Bose’s
brief with Gandhi. “Subhas has numerous failings,” Nehru urged Gan-
dhi, “but he is susceptible to a friendly approach.” He clearly expressed
the view that the Mahatma should accept Subhas as president. “To try
to push him out,” Nehru felt, with his concern for democratic norms,
“seems to me to be an exceedingly wrong step.” He accepted that the
composition of the Working Committee was for Gandhi to decide, but
the “idea of homogeneity” on which the Mahatma was insisting would
“not lead to peace or effective working.”^63
If Nehru was riding two horses, Rabindranath Tagore had evidently
decided which horse he wanted to bet on. He had been to Calcutta in
late March and early April, and had been able to gauge the “mental at-
titude” of his countrymen. On April 3, he wrote to Subhas with some
earnest po lit i cal advice: