42 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
local campaigns of nonviolent protest in his home province of Gujarat
and another against European indigo planters in the Champaran dis-
trict of Bihar. At war’s end, he launched his first all- India satyagraha
—“quest for truth,” through mass po lit i cal activity—against what he
described as the “satanic” British government which had turned a war-
time ordinance into peacetime legislation enabling the imprisonment
of Indians without trial. With the support of Indian Muslims worried
about the fate of the Khilafat (Caliphate) in Turkey, Gandhi had risen
to the leadership of the Indian National Congress by 1920. The party
had launched a mass campaign for boycotting British textiles, schools,
courts, and representative institutions.
Subhas’s father thought that the so- called leaders of this movement
were not genuinely unselfish. But did that give him any right, Subhas
countered, to prevent him from taking the unselfish path of a con-
scious and deliberate sac ri fice? He could not see how he might per-
suade his father that the day he resigned would be one of “the proudest
and happiest moments” in his life. Sarat had gently suggested that per-
haps he could resign after returning to India. Subhas was not per-
suaded. For him, it would be “a galling thing” to “sign the covenant
which is an emblem of servitude.” In Sarat’s assessment, the movement
his youn ger brother wanted to join was in a “nebulous and chaotic
condition.” Subhas turned that argument around: it was the “appre-
hension of failure or slackening” that impelled him to take the plunge
before it was “too late to mend matters.” In case he changed his mind
about his decision to resign, he would cable his father to “relieve his
anxiety.”^64
On April 20, 1921, Subhas informed Sarat that he was going to send
in his resignation “day after tomorrow.” He had been touched pro-
foundly by his elder brother’s “magnanimous spirit” and could not
have expected “a more cordial and sympathetic response.” “I know how
many hearts I have grieved,” he concluded, “how many superiors of
mine I have disobeyed. But on the eve of this hazardous undertaking
my only prayer is—may it be for the good of our dear country.”^65 Sub-
has had decided to give up all that he had been groomed for and strike
out on an uncertain path. It was a decision that placed him outside the
framework of the British raj and shaped the rest of his life. On April 22,