conflict.^34 Given Nehru’s own assessment of the record of the Congress
ministries, it is difficult to take his statement on the Congress’s ‘pro-
gressive’ credentials as more than the projection of an unfulfilled desire;
his internal correspondence reveals that there was a great divergence
between his statements made publicly on behalf of the Congress and
internal criticism.ESCAPES: JOURNALISM AND EUROPE
Faced with his own entanglement in the reactionary tendencies that
controlled the Congress, in which he was unable to make an impact,
Jawaharlal took refuge in journalism. In 1936, he began to consider
running his own newspaper; on September 9, 1938, the inaugural issue
of the National Heraldappeared from Lucknow (the paper remained in
more or less continuous financial difficulties). Nehru began to take on the
role of the opposition to the United Provinces Government from its
pages. The National Heraldeditorial desk seemed to become his spiritual
and political refuge; this was a very active period of writing for Nehru,
with his unsigned editorials presenting to a wider audience some of the
principles he was quite unable to stand for in open public life. He also
wrote the occasional signed article, the frequency of the latter increasing
as he took on the job of foreign correspondent for his paper in the crucial
year of Munich.
The international situation, paradoxically, was a space in which Nehru
was able to make an impact as an internationalist and as a principled
spokesman for liberty, even as he was reduced to ineffectiveness in
domestic politics. In 1937, he visited Burma and Malaya and was warmly
received in both countries. Leaving India in June 1938, he travelled to
Barcelona, where he experienced the agonies of the Spanish Republic.
On July 17, he was among the speakers at Trafalgar Square at a rally on
the second anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, where he
explained to the 5,000-strong crowd the similarities between fascism
and imperialism. His anti-fascist and anti-appeasement editorials were
unambiguous in their condemnation of British foreign policy, and
predicted that war was inevitable. While in Europe he made several public
appearances at which he spoke of the need for Europeans to support the
demand for Indian independence, and the interconnectedness of struggles
for freedom and against fascism and imperialist aggression across the94 ‘INEFFECTUAL ANGEL’, 1927–39