164 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
lington Square, in central Calcutta. Bose had to escort his colleagues
out of the meeting and protect them from the ire of the crowd that had
gathered in his support.
Bose was comprehensively outwitted and outmaneuvered by Gandhi
in Congress politics during the spring of 1939. Tripuri and its after-
math clearly represented a defeat for Bose, who—notwithstanding his
personal popularity—was temperamentally and or ga ni za tionally inca-
pable of matching the po lit i cal cunning of Gandhi and his lieutenants.
Yet Gandhi emerged from the tussle of 1939 with his aura tarnished.
He had appeared petty and vindictive in the face of a youthful chal-
lenge. Bose’s conduct, by contrast, won the approbation of no less a
fig ure than Rabindranath Tagore, who sent a warm message: “The dig-
nity and forbearance, which you have shown in the midst of a most
aggravating situation, has won my admiration and con fi dence in your
leadership. The same perfect decorum has still to be maintained by
Bengal for the sake of her own self- respect and thereby to help turn
your apparent defeat into a permanent victory.”^68
Robbed of the presidency by the Mahatma, the Deshbandhu’s po-
litical disciple had been, unbeknownst to him, given the appellation
“Deshnayak” (“Leader of the Country”) by “Gurudev,” the “Revered
Teacher,” as Tagore was called by his admirers, including Gandhi. Even
though the public reception Tagore had planned for Bose in February
was postponed, the poet had already composed his “Deshnayak” ad-
dress in January 1939. “As Bengal’s poet,” Tagore wrote with his usual
literary flair: “I invite you to the honored seat of the leader of the peo-
ple. We have the sacred assurance of the Gita that from time to time the
Divine champion of the good arises to challenge the reign of the evil.
When misfortune from all directions swarms to attack the living spirit
of the nation, its anguished cry calls forth from its own being the lib-
erator to its rescue.” Tagore confessed he had felt “misgivings” in the
uncertain dawn of Subhas Chandra’s “po lit i cal Sadhana [quest].” But
now that he was revealed in the “pure light of midday sun,” there was
no room for any doubt. Tagore was not setting up the warrior in coun-
terpoise to the saint. “Let nobody make such a grievous mistake as to
think,” he cautioned, “that, in foolish pride of narrow provincialism, I
desire to see Bengal as an entity separate from the rest of India, or