212 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
Subhas Chandra Bose was also able to send wireless messages from
Berlin to Tokyo that were delivered to his brother Sarat by diplomats
of the Japanese consulate in Calcutta. Sisir would drive the Japanese
consul- general, Katsuo Okazaki, to his father’s garden house in Rishra.
After Okazaki’s departure, another of fi cer named Ota, along with his
wife, wearing an Indian sari, would come to Rishra for ostensibly social
visits. While the British police in Calcutta were aware that these meet-
ings were taking place, they could do no more than speculate on the
content of the conversations. The vulnerability of the Japanese tele-
graphic code at the highest governmental level eventually undermined
the security of the messages the Bose brothers exchanged via Tokyo. A
telegram from the Japanese foreign minister in Tokyo to his ambassa-
dor in Berlin—a message containing one of Sarat’s communications
with Subhas, dated September 1, 1941—landed on Winston Churchill’s
desk on September 5. The prime minister was assured that “the Gov-
ernment of India were awaiting an opportunity to arrest Sarat and the
prominent members of his group.”^26
Toward the end of the year, Sarat Chandra Bose was able to bring
about a major change in the provincial politics of Bengal. The coalition
of the Krishak Praja party and the Muslim League was replaced by a
new formation headed by the Krishak Praja leader, Fazlul Huq, in alli-
ance with Sarat’s followers in the Bengal legislature. Sarat himself was
slated to become the home minister in charge of police and law and
order in Bengal. On December 11, 1941, as the new ministry of the
Progressive Coalition party took of fice, J. V. B. Janvrin arrived at Wood-
burn Park to arrest Sarat. The detainee was to be held as a prisoner in
distant south India for the duration of the war. His Japanese contacts
were seen to present “a very real and defi nite danger” to security, and
Richard Tottenham of the Home Department in Delhi was clear “that
it would be impossible to contemplate having Sarat Chandra Bose as a
Minister.” On December 10 a telegram had arrived from L. S. Amery,
secretary of state for India, addressed to Viceroy Linlithgow and calling
for the arrest of Sarat Bose “without delay.”^27
Meanwhile, in mid- December, the Germans gave the green light to
shift Indian prisoners- of- war from Italy to Germany and to try recruit-
ing them into an Indian legion.^28 But this tardy policy decision was