God’s Beloved Land 31
though in a very restricted sphere—and of the martyrdom that it in-
volves.”^42
The “tragic events” had more to do with social tensions than with
individual animosities. Oaten was by no means the only British profes-
sor to be assaulted by his Indian students in Calcutta in the early twen-
tieth century. The episode surrounding him was best remembered be-
cause of its association with the early life of Subhas Chandra Bose, a
future iconic fig ure of India’s in de pen dence movement. Professors who
later suf fered a similar fate at the hands of their students were said to
have been “oatenized.” The professor whose name became a verb was
for de cades portrayed as a villain in popular accounts of the incident in
India. But his reputation was redeemed more than two de cades after
in de pen dence when a poem composed by him on the Indian leader
came to light:
Did I once suf fer, Subhas, at your hands?
Your pa tri ot heart is stilled, I would forget!
Let me recall but this, that while as yet
The Raj that you once challenged in your land
Was mighty; Icarus- like your courage planned
To mount the skies, and storm in battle set
The ramparts of High Heaven, to claim the debt
Of freedom owed, on plain and rude demand.
High Heaven yielded, but in dignity
Like Icarus, you sped towards the sea.^43Such a grand historical reconciliation lay in the distant future. In
March 1916, a promising young student’s future looked bleak as he
returned to Cuttack. Yet Indian society accorded him sympathy and
respect, while his immediate family showed him un der stand ing in his
predicament. If anything, a distance developed between him and his
spiritual circle of friends, whom he had not cared to consult during
the tribulations of January and February. Subhas was setting his own
course now by cutting loose from the group given to esoteric exercises.
Instead, he threw himself more resolutely into social ser vice. He spent
his enforced year away from college in the environs of Cuttack, nursing