them in a central chamber alongside democratically elected members
and refused to accept them, so the Centre continued to be based on the
old constitution.
Kamala Nehru died on February 28, 1936. Carrying her ashes, Nehru
returned to India in March 1936 via Rome. Here again he saw evidence
of his growing international importance. Signor Mussolini himself tried
to meet him when he was in transit at Rome airport, but he managed to
avoid the meeting. Earlier, the Italian Consul at Lausanne had visited
Nehru to give him Mussolini’s personal message of sympathy and
condolence after Kamala’s death. ‘The Duce is evidently interested in me,’
Nehru observed wryly to one of his communist friends.^20
While Nehru was in Switzerland, a fellow exile from India was
also in Europe: Subhas Chandra Bose was living in Vienna. Bose had,
like Nehru, spent the past years in and out of British colonial jails –
notably in Mandalay from 1924 to 1927, where he had been imprisoned
without trial on suspicion of supporting the Bengal terrorist movement.
Despite being in prison so often and for so long, he had managed to
build up a formidable following and was seen as a particularly effective
propagandist and organiser. Imprisoned again in 1930 during the Civil
Disobedience Movement, he succeeded in being elected mayor of Calcutta
even though he had to carry out his campaign from jail. In prison once
again from 1932–3, he was released on grounds of ill health on condition
that he go into exile in Europe – an offer he had refused in the 1920s- and he had briefly been allowed to return to India in 1934 for a few
days when his father died, only to be externed again. Now he asked
Nehru whether he ought not to return to India, knowing well that
he would probably be arrested immediately upon his return. Nehru
advised him to return; Bose agreed, adding that he would throw his
weight behind Nehru for leadership of the national struggle and the
Congress.
The two discussed Indian politics, and agreed that the two main tasks
would be to prevent the Congress from accepting office under the new
constitution, and to broaden the composition of the Congress’s ‘Cabinet’,
the Working Committee. Bose saw for Nehru a major role in this. ‘[Y]ou
are the only one to whom we can look up to [sic] for leading the Congress
in a progressive direction,’ Bose wrote. He was particularly astute
regarding the internal equations in the Congress: ‘even Mahatma Gandhi
will be more accommodating towards you than towards anybody else.
78 ‘INEFFECTUAL ANGEL’, 1927–39