Dreams of Youth 69Sarat replied that the sentiments Subhas had expressed were worthy
of him, but did not stop negotiating with the government for his
brother’s transfer from Burma. He wanted the government to move
him in detention to the north Indian hill resort of Almora, where he
could meet his relatives and recover his strength.^50 On April 11, 1927,
Subhas went ahead and formally snubbed the authorities. “Much as I
value my life—I love honor more,” he wrote to the superintendent of
Insein Jail, “and I cannot for the life of me barter away those sacred and
inviolable rights which will form the future body politic of India.”^51 On
May 6 he reaf firmed this attitude, which (he explained to Sarat) flowed
from his general outlook on life. “Ideas are the stuff of which human
movements are made,” he passionately proclaimed to Sarat, “and they
are not static but dynamic and militant. They are as dynamic as the
Absolute Idea of Hegel, the Blind Will of Hartmann and Schopenhauer,
the élan vital of Henri Bergson.” A life consecrated to ideas was “bound
to fulfill itself.” He then invoked Saint Paul’s famous words: “We wrestle
not against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers,
against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wick-
edness in high places.”^52 Subhas had unflinching faith in the ultimate
triumph of the ideas for which he stood.
The offer of European exile having been rejected, the government
ordered that Subhas be transferred to Almora Jail. On May 11, 1927, he
was taken from Insein Jail to a boat departing from Rangoon. A four-
day voyage across the Bay of Bengal brought him to Diamond Harbor,
where he was met by the same police of fi cer, Mr. Lowman, who had
escorted him to Mandalay in 1924. Subhas was suspicious when he was
asked to disembark, thinking this was a ploy to smuggle him away
without taking him to Calcutta. He was assured, however, that the new
governor of Bengal, Sir Stanley Jackson, had put the gubernatorial boat
at his disposal and that he was to be examined by a high- powered
panel of doctors, including the governor’s own physician. The next
morning, Mr. Lowman arrived with a telegram in hand and informed
Subhas that the governor had ordered his release. Bose concluded that
Stanley Jackson had arrived with “an open mind,” and with “the unerr-
ing instinct of a trained politician he had sensed the grievance of the