28 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
jendralal Roy, and forged what was to be a life- long friendship. Dilip
later reminisced that from their earliest meetings he noticed that Sub-
has “had a native power to lead, and he knew it.”^34
A dramatic incident in early 1916 shattered the normal routine at
Presidency College. On January 10, Subhas was studying in the college
library when he was told that Edward Farley Oaten, a his tory professor,
had “manhandled” some students who were in Subhas’s year. As class
representative, he took up the matter with the principal, Henry R.
James, and demanded that Oaten should apologize to the students. The
professor claimed that having been disturbed by the chatter of these
students outside his classroom, he had merely “taken them by the arm,”
a gesture that could not be interpreted as an insult. He was a member
of the government’s educational ser vice, and the principal did not have
the power to extract an apology from him. The disaffected students
then called a general strike for the next day. The news of the successful
strike in a college that was meant to be a bastion of loyalism caused
much excitement in the city and encouraged young students at other
institutions to follow the rebellious example. Toward the end of the
second day of the strike, Oaten met the student representatives and
settled the dispute. The principal, however, refused to withdraw the
fine of five rupees that he had imposed on the striking students. The
next day Oaten ordered ten students out of the twelve in his his tory
course—those who had taken part in the strike—to leave the class.^35
On February 15, the students learned that Oaten had “manhandled”
another student belonging to the first- year chemistry class for being
noisy in the corridor. On this occasion, a group of students decided to
“take the law into their own hands.” At the bottom of Presidency Col-
lege’s imposing main staircase, Oaten was given a solid thrashing. The
incident lasted forty seconds, according to the of fi cial inquiry. Oaten
later recalled that he suf fered “no injury except for a few bruises.”
“ Subhas Chandra Bose was supposed to be connected with the af-
fair,” he wrote, “although I never had any proof of this.”^36 He had seen
ten or fif teen students milling around as he came down the stairs and
could not be sure who had hit him, as he was put ting up a notice about
a cricket match. An orderly iden ti fied Subhas and another student,
Ananga Dam, as being among those he had seen leaving the scene.