Tripuri

In March 1939 the Congress session took place at Tripuri, in the Central Provinces (near Jabalpur in present Madhya Pradesh). It was obvious that all was not well within the Congress. The working committee, the ruling body of the Congress, is not elected, but nominated by the president; the election of the president is thus a constitutional opportunity through which the membership expressed the nature of the leadership of the Congress. With Bose’s victory the polarisation in terms of ideology and method of future struggle was clear. Thus the election of Bose, in the face of the opposition of the official machine, led to a sharp inner crisis.

Subhash Bose had accused the working committee leaders of being ready to reach a compromise with the government on the matter of federation. Now, those leaders felt they could not work with a president who had publicly cast doubts on their nationalistic principles and resigned from the working committee.

Bose was ill when the Tripuri session took place, but he attended it and in his presidential speech he prophecised that an imperialist war was about to take place in Europe. He declared: “In the first place, we must give clear and unequivocal expression to what I have been feeling for some time past, namely, that the time has come for us to raise the issue of Swaraj and submit our national demand to the British government in the form of an ultimatum...” He was in favour of giving a six-month ultimatum to Britain to grant the national demand of independence; if the ultimatum was rejected, he said, a mass civil disobedience movement should be launched.

In his opinion, as Bose was to write later, the Congress was strong enough just as the masses were ready for such a struggle. He felt that advantage should be taken of the international crisis to strive for independence.

Gandhi, on the other hand, was firm in the belief that it was not the time for such ultimatums as neither the Congress nor the masses were yet ready for struggle. He was also aware that there were communal discord and class strife and a lack of unified vision and that this would undermine any movement.

A resolution was moved by Govind Ballabh Pant, reaffirming faith in Gandhian policies and asking Bose to nominate the working committee “in accordance with the wishes of Gandhiji”, and it was passed without opposition from the socialists or the communists. Apparently, the Left was not keen on discarding Gandhi’s leadership. However, Gandhi said that he would not like to impose a working committee on the president and that, since Bose was the president, he should choose the members of the working committee and lead the Congress.

Bose continued his effort to win Gandhi’s confidence but did not succeed. Bose refused to nominate a new working committee. Bose wanted an immediate struggle led by Gandhi, whereas Gandhi was firm in his belief that the time was not ripe for struggle. The problem was that ideologically Gandhi and Bose were on different platforms. Gandhi was not willing to lead a Congress struggle based on the radical lines preferred by Bose, even as Bose was not willing to

compromise on his ideas. Gandhi was of the view that he would either lead the Congress on the basis of his own strategy and style of politics or surrender the position of the leader. In his reply to a letter from Bose, Gandhi wrote: “The views you express seem to be so diametrically opposed to those of the others and my own that I do not see any possibility of bridging them.”

Bose had misjudged the support he had got in his election. Even the socialists and the communists for the most part were not keen on a split in the Congress. They realised that a split would reduce the Left (which was not very consolidated at the time) to a splinter group. They preferred a united Congress led by Gandhi, as the national struggle was of utmost importance and the Congress was at the time the main organ of this struggle.

In the circumstances, Bose saw no option but to resign. He resigned from the president’s post in April 1939. This led to the election of Rajendra Prasad as president of the Congress. The crisis in the Congress had been overcome for the present.

In May, Bose and his followers formed the Forward Bloc (at Makur, Unnao) as a new party within the Congress. But when he gave a call for an all-India protest on July 9 against an AICC resolution, the Congress Working Committee took disciplinary action against Bose: in August 1939, he was removed from the post of president of the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee besides being debarred from holding any elective office in the Congress for a period of three years.

Among the resolutions at Tripuri was an interesting one relating to China: “The Congress sends its greetings to the people of China and its deepest sympathy in their trials and privations in their struggle against ruthless and inhuman imperialism. It congratulates them on their heroic resistance.

“The Congress expresses its approval of the sending of a Medical Mission on its behalf to the people of China and trusts that this Mission will continue to receive full support, so that it may carry on its work of succour effectively and be a worthy symbol of Indian solidarity with China.”

Gandhi and Bose: Ideological Differences

Gandhi and Subhash Bose had a deep respect for one another despite their hugely differing ideologies. Each appreciated the work done by the other in the national struggle for freedom.

In 1942, Gandhi called Bose the “Prince among the Patriots”. When the death of Bose was reported, Gandhi said that Netaji’s “patriotism is second to none... His bravery shines through all his actions. He aimed high and failed. But who has not failed.” On another occasion Gandhi said, “Netaji will remain immortal for all time to come for his service to India.”

Bose was fully aware of Gandhi’s importance as a symbol of Indian nationalism and called him “The Father of Our Nation” in a radio broadcast from Rangoon in 1944 even though in the same speech he expressed his own conviction that force was the only way to win freedom from the British. When forced to resign at the Tripuri session, Bose said he would “yield to none in my respect for his (Gandhi’s) personality”, adding that “it will be a tragic thing for me if I succeed in winning the confidence of other people but fail to win the confidence of India’s greatest man.” Later, Bose said that the “service which Mahatma Gandhi has rendered to India and to the cause of India’s freedom is so unique and unparalleled that his name will be written in letters of gold in our National History—for all time”.

Incidentally, both men considered socialism to be the way forward in India, though in slightly different ways. Gandhi did not subscribe to the Western form of socialism which he associated with industrialisation, but agreed with the kind of socialism advocated by Jayaprakash Narayan. Both Gandhi and Bose were religious men and disliked communism. Both worked against untouchability and spoke for women’s emancipation. But they differed widely in their ways and methods and in their political and economic ideologies.

Non-Violence versus Militant Approach Gandhi was a firm believer in ahimsa and satyagraha, the non- violent way to gain any goal. He believed that it was the way

in which the masses could be involved. He objected to violence firstly because an unarmed masses had little chance of success in an armed rebellion, and then because he considered violence a clumsy weapon which created more problems than it solved, and left behind hatred and bitterness which could not be overcome through reconciliation.

Bose believed that Gandhi’s strategy based on the ideology of non-violence would be inadequate for securing India’s independence. To his mind, violent resistance alone could oust the alien imperialist rule from India. He considered the Gandhian civil disobedience campaign as an effective means of paralysing the administration, but did not think it to be efficacious unless accompanied by a movement aimed at total revolution that was prepared, if necessary, to use violence.