The Terrible Price of Freedom 221possible.” Bose dubbed Hitler “baddha pagal” (“raving mad,” in Ben-
gali) to his compa tri ots, but the record of their conversation reveals the
Führer to be quite rational, if rather long- winded, in his comments and
analyses.^47
Bose certainly was aware of the pernicious character of the regime
he was dealing with, though in May 1942 he could not have known
how much worse things would get. It is doubtless dif fi cult to reconcile
Bose’s ethics, sensibilities, and friendships since the 1930s with his po-
lit i cal choice of allies in the 1940s. But he was not alone in accepting as
po lit i cal and strategic allies those whom he would not dream of having
as friends. “I am glad to see you,” Roosevelt would say to Sta lin, when
they met in November 1943. In fact, the U.S. president was not pleased
to meet a totalitarian dictator who had presided over campaigns of
mass murder; but Sta lin was a necessary ally in the effort to protect
American national interests during World War II. Bose’s passionate
commitment to the goal of Indian in de pen dence determined his war-
time alliances with unsavory regimes and their leaders. Gandhi, in his
inimitable fashion, had addressed Hitler as “Dear Friend” in a letter he
had written on July 23, 1939. “It is quite clear,” the Mahatma wrote,
“that you are today the one person in the world who can prevent a war
which may reduce humanity to its savage state.”^48 Once war and sav-
agery did break out, both Gandhi and Bose, in their different ways,
tried their best to protect and promote the interests of India.
Bose seemed even more anxious than before to stress his ideological
distance from the Axis powers during the weeks following his meeting
with Hitler. He had boldly condemned the German invasion of the So-
viet Union in 1941, but had remained silent about Germany’s domestic
policies. He now kept repeating that once freedom was won, it would
be “the duty of the Indian people to decide what form of Government
they desire and who should guide the future Indian state.” “In this
fateful hour in India’s his tory,” he proclaimed in a key broadcast on
June 17, 1942, “it would be a grievous mistake to be carried away by
ideological considerations alone. The internal politics of Germany or
Italy or Japan do not concern us—they are the concern of the people of
those countries.” He wanted Indians to “differentiate between the inter-