52 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
hold positions of advantage within the po lit i cal system. He favored a
tactical shift and suggested entering the legislatures to wreck the inad-
equate and hypocritical constitutional reforms from within. Yet before
Bose could embark on this mission, another crisis took priority; poli-
tics could not be his first call of duty. Once their prison sentences came
to an end, Subhas and the band of young workers he had gathered
around him headed for the districts of northern Bengal, which had suf-
fered devastating floods in late September. Social ser vice had always
been Subhas’s forte. He or ga nized a thousand Congress volunteers and
spent six weeks directing relief operations in the affected districts.
Their outstanding work in providing succor to the distressed villagers
earned the appreciation of Lord Lytton, the governor of Bengal.^10
In December 1922, C. R. Das, head of the Indian National Congress,
presented his ideas about a change in po lit i cal strategy at its annual ses-
sion held at Gaya. His proposal to work from within the legislatures
was rejected by a majority of “no changers,” who followed Gandhi in
wanting a continued boycott of these bodies. Das resigned as Congress
president; and soon after, he and Motilal Nehru, leader of the Congress
in northern India, announced the formation of the Swaraj party in
pursuit of their activist strategy. During the course of 1923, Das gradu-
ally regained support within the Congress, and by September 1923 an
accommodation was reached between the “pro- changers” and the “no
changers.” Congress members were permitted to compete in elections
to the legislatures under the banner of the Swaraj party led by C. R. Das
and Motilal Nehru, while Gandhi’s followers spent their time at the
spinning wheel and doing constructive work in the villages.
The Swarajists, supported by Hindus and Muslims, did remarkably
well in the elections of 1923 to the Bengal legislative council. Under the
leadership of C. R. Das, they kept up a barrage of criticism and de-
feated the government in key votes. When it came to mea sures that had
no legislative sanction, the British governor had to approve these by
executive fiat, revealing the 1919 reforms to be a sham. Subhas worked
energetically as a Swarajist and a Congressman. In addition to editing
the Bengali paper Banglar Katha, he managed a new En glish newspa-
per, Forward, which made a mark in the field of journalism as soon as
it was launched in the autumn of 1923. Around the same time, Subhas