द इण्डियन स्ट्रगल / भारतीय स्वाधीनता संग्राम (नेताजी सुभाष चन्द्र बोस - ऐतिहासिक विश्लेषण)

68 THE INDIAN STRUGGLE
pressure would be brought to bear on Parliament and the
Cabinet to make peace with India. But the Mahatma gave
me to understand that he did not consider that to be the
means whereby the Government would be forced to come to
terms with the Congress. What his real expectation was, I
was unable to understand. Either he. did not want to give
out all his secrets prematurely or he did not have a clear
conception of the tactics whereby the hands of the Govern-
ment could be forced.¹ Altogether, his reply to the second
question was disappointing and his reply to the third was
no better. What was to him a question of faith—namely, that
Swaraj would be won within one year—was by no means
clear to me and personally speaking, I was prepared to work
for a much longer period. However, I had no other course
but to feel thankful for what I had been able to learn after
an hour's conversation. But though I tried to persuade myself
at the time there must have been a lack of understanding on
my part, my reason told me clearly, again and again, that
there was a deplorable lack of clarity in the plan which the
Mahatma had formulated and that he himself did not have
a clear idea of the successive stages of the campaign which
would bring India to her cherished goal of freedom.
Depressed and disappointed as I was, what was I to do?
The Mahatma advised me to report myself to Deshbandhu
C. R. Das on reaching Calcutta. I had already written to the
latter from Cambridge that I had resigned the Indian Civil
Service and had decided to join the political movement.
Stories had reached us in England that he had given up his
princely career at the Bar and was going to devote his whole
time to political work, while making a gift of his entire
property to the nation. In my eagerness to meet this great
man, I overcame the somewhat depressing effect of my
interview with Mahatma Gandhi and I left Bombay with the
same excitement and the same enthusiasm with which I had
landed there. On reaching Calcutta, I went straight to the
house of Deshbandhu Das. Once again I was disappointed.
¹Looking back on the incident to-day, it strikes me that possibly the
Mahatma expected a 'change of heart' on the part of the British Govern-
ment, leading to an acceptance of India's national demands.