34 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
nationalists had been clamoring since the late nineteenth century for
greater Indianization of this ser vice, but prog ress toward that goal had
been painfully slow. In 1893, the House of Commons had passed a
resolution favoring simultaneous examinations in London and India
for entry into the ser vice, but this administrative reform had not been
implemented. For those Indians willing to serve the British raj, the ICS
was regarded as the “heaven- born ser vice” in which a handful of them
could serve alongside British civil servants in the upper echelons of the
bu reau cracy.
Subhas took counsel with himself and, having persuaded himself
that he could not possibly pass the dif fi cult ICS examination with only
eight months left to prepare for it, decided to accept his father’s offer
anyway. He was more interested in using this opportunity of going
abroad to get a university degree in En gland. Subhas had to leave in a
week’s time. His decision to travel to En gland elicited disapproval from
two entirely different quarters. With the members of the group who
had joined him in spiritual pursuits, there was an unstated “parting of
the ways”: “they threw cold water on the proj ect.” He then went to see
the provincial adviser for studies in En gland, a Cambridge alumnus
and professor at Presidency College, who advised him that he had no
chance whatsoever in the ICS examination “against the ‘tip- toppers’
from Oxford and Cambridge” and asked why he was going to throw
away ten thousand rupees. Subhas was by now determined to follow
his own path and was not easily dissuaded. Seeing there was no hope of
persuading this man to help him gain admission to Cambridge, he
simply replied, “My father wants me to throw away the ten thousand
rupees.” And then he left.
CambridgeOn September 15, 1919, Subhas Chandra Bose set sail for En gland
from Bombay on the S.S. City of Calcutta. It was a slow and tedious
journey. The ship was delayed by a week at Suez because of a coal
strike. At long last, on October 25, a typically gray London day, the City
of Calcutta steamed into Tilbury. The academic year had already com-
menced in En gland. Subhas hastened to see the adviser to Indian stu-