released a year later, on March 18, 1937, and had been welcomed into
the Congress left. Gandhi then asked him to accept the presidency of the
Congress, and he had duly ascended to it in 1938. It seems likely that
Gandhi sought to do with Bose what he had so successfully done with
Nehru: kick him upstairs the better to control him.
Bose had always had the ability to inspire large numbers of people.
He has sometimes been described as a fascist on the make – this was
made easier retrospectively after his activities in the Second World War
in trying to ally with Germany and Japan to liberate India from the
British. But his relationship with fascism was more complex. He may well
have retained some admiration for the successes of strong leaders; he had
indeed once praised Mussolini’s Fascists and called for ‘a synthesis between
Communism and Fascism’ (in his book The Indian Struggle) – but later
retracted this, claiming that he had not known enough about them at the
time, and that fascism had therefore appeared to be ‘merely an aggressive
form of nationalism’.^40 Cleared of charges of fascism by none other than
Rajani Palme Dutt – Dutt himself publicised his interviews with Bose
to de-fascistise him – Bose was able to take command of the Congress with
the support of the left under the Popular Front policy.
Bose nonetheless remains difficult to classify. It is true that he stressed
physical discipline and military preparedness among volunteer groups in
the national movement, but he had this in common with a great many
groups, both inside and outside the mainstream of the nationalist
movement – and, it might be added, worldwide. If they all had proto-
fascist views, perhaps this is a call to reassess the history of worldwide
fascism in terms of how far it was part of the spirit of the age – and not an
aberration – rather than classify movements and groups as fascist on the
basis of retrospective identification of characteristics of fascism that may
have been common to more than merely fascist groups.
From 1938, the Congress Socialists, by now weary of waiting for
Nehru to do something, began to work through Bose. Indeed, Bose’s
presidency of the Congress produced the initiative that became the
hallmark of ‘Nehruvian’ politics and the Congress’ post-independence
vision – a planned economy with a quasi-socialist touch – represented in
the work of the National Planning Committee. A brief wave of optimism
could be discerned on the left, finding its way into the pages of its official
journal, the Congress Socialist. Bose also took the initiative in trying to
mend the Congress’s relations with the Muslim League; but although Bose98 ‘INEFFECTUAL ANGEL’, 1927–39