Book: Nehru & Bose: Parallel Lives
Author: Rudrangshu Mukherjee
Publisher: Viking
Pages: 288
Price: Rs599
Subhas Chandra Bose and Jawaharlal Nehru are two of India's most iconic leaders in institutional and popular history, politics and memory. Rudrangshu Mukherjee's book, an intellectual history of interaction, sets out to explore why and how Bose and Nehru, comrades for a period, turned into implacable opponents. Culled mainly from the writings and speeches of Bose and Nehru — both wrote and spoke well — with occasional help from other private papers, the book explores their intellectual and personal formations and transformations.
Bose and Nehru were close colleagues in the late 1920s-early 1930s. Their proximity grew from political and intellectual values picked up from their Europe trips in the early '30s. These were disapproval for imperialism and capitalism and an affinity for socialism and planned economy. Bose was also with Nehru when his wife died in a sanatorium in Lausanne and helped make the funeral arrangements. Likewise, Bose wrote to Nehru for advice when, faced with the threat of arrest by the colonial state, he considered returning to India. Nehru too wrote and spoke forcefully against the arrest of Bose, "a dear and valued Comrade". In his second stint as Congress president in 1936, Nehru confessed to missing Bose's counsel. Though Nehru did not want Bose as Congress president in 1939, he did not sign 'questions of principle', the Working Committee joint statement against Bose's candidature which Gandhi evidently masterminded.
The affinity, however, was more intellectual than personal. Bose was passionate in temperament and flamboyant in articulation, yet focused fiercely on his objective: India's freedom, by any means. Nehru was austere and detached, yet deeply moved by a collective, expansive universalism of which he considered India's freedom only one aspect. But there were two major differences. One was their understanding of and relationship with Gandhi. More precisely, how the latter perceived and responded to them. Bose respected Gandhi as his leader, but since the 1920s, challenged Gandhi's leadership when it clashed with his beliefs and objectives. Conversely, Nehru had what can only be called filial loyalty for Gandhi. Despite his stated reservations against some of Gandhi's decisions and actions, he never publicly challenged his authority.
Gandhi went against both when he thought fit. In 1936, for instance, he 'disingenuously' favoured right-wingers and capitalists within the Congress to 'undermine (Nehru's) socialist vision'. Mukherjee's use of GD Birla's letters in this context must be commended. How Gandhi dealt with Bose's second presidency in 1938 is too well-known to bear repetition. In both instances, Gandhi trumped elected presidents, Nehru and Bose, but they responded in vastly different ways. Bose resigned but Nehru carried on, ostensibly in deference to the higher call of party discipline. "He could have resigned," writes Mukherjee, "but he prided himself as not being a quitter."
The other point of difference was their perspective on fascism. If Nehru had a consistent disdain for fascism, Bose admired it as an instrument of order and discipline. Only once did Nehru pay a back handed-tribute to Mussolini — Mukherjee picks that instance with exemplary forensic skill. Bose had no compunction to solicit assistance from fascists and Nazis where such help could liberate India from colonial rule. Mukherjee recalls Bose's Austria visits with surprise at the absence of written matter that express disapproval of the racism in practice there.
There are minor quibbles. Why does it seem as though Nehru did not consistently articulate or maintain a distinction between his personal loyalty to Gandhi and the greater idea of the Congress, to which, Mukherjee argues, Nehru submitted? Mukherjee is too careful a historian to altogether avoid the question. But he does not address it in greater detail.
The book is written in elegant prose without trivialising the serious concerns raised. Each chapter flows smoothly into the next. The painstaking details morph into a charming story which, though persuasively framed, does not claim to be the last word.