12.

When Subhas won his second term as President of the Indian National Congress against Dr. Pattabhi Sitaramayya, Mahatma could not accept Subhas Chandra's victory happily, cheerfully and proudly.

To our greatest sorrow, Mahatma tried unimaginably hard to make Sitaramayya win. He said to the nation, quite surprisingly and, more so, shockingly, "Pattabhi Sitaramayya's defeat is my defeat."

Furthermore, he asked Nehru, Patel and others of the front-rank leaders to boycott Subhas. Needless to say, they obeyed him, as they always did in those days, so there was nothing surprising about their action.

In two weeks' time, Mahatma advised them to form a new party or working committee and designate posts. Gandhi-ji said he would guide them.

During those days, Subhas was bedridden. His fever rose up to 106 degrees. Hard was it for him to breathe. His eyes failed to listen to his command. Nevertheless, he wanted to visit the conference where they were deciding who would get what posts.

When Nehru, Patel, Azad and others — all leaders of the highest order — saw that Subhas was brought to the stage on a stretcher, in no time they came down from the platform and disappeared.

Was Subhas so undesirable? Or did self-doubt and fear torture them? God alone knows. When Subhas had recuperated and was forming his cabinet again, Gandhi-ji's staunch followers stood against him. Subhas became a true victim to sadness and frustration.

He said to himself, 'If Mahatma does not want me, and his dear ones do not want me, then it is useless, utterly useless, for me to continue serving as President for the second time.'

He resigned. To quote Netaji's own words, "Owing to the morally sickening atmosphere at Tripuri, I left that place with such a loathing and disgust for politics as I have never felt before during the last nineteen years…I prayed for light in my dark mind. Then, slowly, a new vision dawned on me, and I began to recover my mental balance, as well as my faith in man and in my countrymen. After all, Tripuri was not India….In spite of what I had experienced in Tripuri, how could I lose my fundamental faith in man? To distrust man was to distrust the divinity in him — to distrust one's very existence."

Look at the meanness of Subhas Chandra's long-standing so-called compatriot-friends versus the unimaginable nobility of Professor Oaten at the Presidency College in Calcutta! While Subhas was a student there, Professor Oaten, who was British, ruthlessly criticised India on more than one occasion. Subhas could not brook these untold insults to his Indian brothers. He took off his shoe and thrashed Professor Oaten black and blue.

The same Professor Oaten, after Subhas Chandra's passing, wrote a poem highly appreciating and admiring Subhas:

Did I once suffer, Subhas, at your hand?
Your patriot heart is stilled! I would forget!
Let me recall but this, that while as yet
The Raj that you once challenged in your land
Was mighty, Icarus-like your courage-planned
To meet the skies, and storm in battle set
The ramparts of High Heaven, to claim the debt
Of freedom owed, on plain and rude demand.
High Heaven yielded, but in dignity
Like Icarus, you sped towards the sea.
Your wings were melted from you by the sun,
The genial patriot fire that brightly glowed
In India's mighty heart and flamed and flowed
Forth from her Army's thousand victories won!