46 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
to concede Indian freedom? How would Gandhi fulfill his promise to
the people of delivering swaraj (“self- rule”) within one year?
Bose was sat is fied with Gandhi’s answer to the first question on how
he planned to ratchet up the agitation as it gathered momentum. He
was not persuaded, however, by Gandhi’s vague responses to the other
questions. Perhaps the commander of the nonviolent campaign to boy-
cott British goods and institutions did not wish to divulge all the se-
crets in his armory, the new lieutenant tried to persuade himself. Giv-
ing the leader the bene fit of the doubt, Bose tried to believe that there
must be a lack of comprehension on his own part. His reason, however,
told him that there was “a deplorable lack of clarity” in Gandhi’s po lit-
i cal strategy.^1 One thing was clear after the very first meeting between
Gandhi and Bose. The Mahatma had failed to cast his hypnotic spell on
Subhas, as he had done with so many of his followers—those who
chanted in unison, “Gandhi Maharaj ki Jai!” (“Victory to the Great
King Gandhi!”).
Another admiring skeptic, Rabindranath Tagore, had traveled on the
same ship with Subhas on the return voyage from Europe to India.
During the journey, the poet and the pa tri ot had discussed the Con-
gress policy of noncooperation. Tagore had not been actively involved
in anticolonial politics since the Swadeshi (“Own Country”) move-
ment of 1905–1908. He had seen how the boycott of educational insti-
tutions in those days had—in the absence of a successful alternative—
blighted the future of an entire young generation. He did not want
another generation to suf fer the same fate. Besides, the mechanical
pursuit of spinning and weaving at Gandhi’s urging would, he feared,
dull the critical faculties of the people. Subhas found in his conversa-
tions that Tagore was not opposed to the idea of noncooperation as
such, and was “only anxious that there should be more of constructive
activity.” This line of thinking Bose saw as “analogous to the construc-
tive side of the Irish Sinn Féin movement” and “completely in accord”
with his own views.^2 After their arrival in India, Tagore was persuaded
that Gandhi’s personal antagonism to modern science and medicine
was in flu enc ing the tenor of the po lit i cal movement. This, according to
Bose, led Tagore to deliver his powerful speech in Calcutta on the