The Warrior and the Saint 177not the people. “What interest can we have in fight ing for the perpetu-
ation of our own slavery,” he asked, “for that is exactly what is implied
in fight ing to defend an enslaved India.”^101 At the end of June 1940, he
reiterated his demand for national cabinets at the center and in the
provinces, which “will ensure internal peace and harmony during the
transitional period and will pave the way to a lasting Hindu- Muslim
settlement.” India, much as Britain did, faced a wartime emergency re-
quiring rival parties to come together. If it proved impossible to set up
a national cabinet at the center straightaway, Bose was in favor of try-
ing the experiment of national cabinets in the provinces. He was, in
effect, calling for a reversal of the Congress policy, which in 1937 had
left the Muslim League out in the cold in places like the United Prov-
inces. He wanted broad- based national coalitions in Hindu- majority
and Muslim- majority provinces alike. “In the present dynamic situa-
tion,” he believed, “national cabinets in the provinces will be a great
help not only in maintaining internal harmony, [and] not only in es-
tablishing Hindu- Muslim unity[,] but also in winning power at the
center—should there be obstacles in the path of attaining Swaraj.”^102
In his pursuit of Hindu- Muslim unity in Bengal, Subhas Chandra
Bose called for the observance of Siraj- ud- daula Day on July 3, 1940,
to honor the memory of Bengal’s last in de pen dent Nawab. That day,
he proposed to launch a movement for the removal of the Holwell
monument from Dalhousie Square, in front of the Writers’ Building in
Calcutta. The edifice, according to Bose, was both “an unwarranted
stain on the memory of the Nawab” and “the symbol of our slavery and
humiliation.”^103 Although the movement was successful and the gov-
ernment removed the offending monument from public view, the Brit-
ish seized this opportunity to place Bose behind prison bars even be-
fore the agitation began. July 2, 1940, turned out to be the last day that
Bose spent as a free man in India. During the day, he went to see Ra-
bindranath Tagore at his home in the Jorasanko neighborhood of
Calcutta. A couple of hours later, the police arrested Bose at his home
and took him away to Presidency Jail.^104
During this, his last spell in prison, from July 3 to December 5, 1940,
Bose wrote a number of letters and essays. In his private letters to Sarat
Chandra Bose, he criticized the moral failings of the Congress leader-