168 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
committee for Bengal headed by Abul Kalam Azad. In doing so, the
Congress central leadership alienated itself from the bulk of the na-
tionalist forces in Bengal. The move precipitated a split in the Congress
legislative party as well. Sarat Chandra Bose now led the Bose group in
the Bengal legislative assembly while Kiran Sankar Roy was appointed
leader of the group owing allegiance to the ad hoc Congress. Disciplin-
ary action was taken against Sarat as well for siding with his youn ger
brother.^74
Subhas Chandra Bose resisted being expelled from the party he had
joined in 1921. Reacting to the news of disciplinary action against him
by the Congress High Command, he wrote on August 19, 1939:
I shall cling to the Congress with even greater devotion than before and
shall go on serving the Congress and the country as a servant of the na-
tion. I appeal to my countrymen to come and join the Congress in their
millions and to enlist as members of the Forward Bloc. Only by doing
so shall we be able to convert the rank and file of the Congress to our
point of view, secure a reversal of the present policy of Constitutional-
ism and Reformism and resume the national struggle for Inde pen dence
with the united strength of the Indian people.^75
On the same day, in Calcutta, he welcomed Rabindranath Tagore at
the foundation- laying ceremony of Mahajati Sadan (“House of the
Great Nation”), which he hoped would become “the living center of
all those ben e fi cial activities for the emancipation of the individual
and the nation.” This edifice had been conceived as the home of the
Indian National Congress; to fi nance its construction, benefactors had
con trib uted liberally to the Subhas Fund started in March 1937. Bose
visualized it as a memorial for the martyrs who had laid down their
lives in the freedom struggle, and as an active venue for planning the
nation’s future. Introducing Tagore as the “poet of humanity,” Bose
asked him to perform the “sacred ceremony” as the “high priest of to-
day’s national festival.”^76
In giving enlightened and dig ni fied expression to the idea of a “great
nation,” Tagore distinguished the strength of the nation they were try-