Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Remarks on Public Figures in India

Subhas Chandra Bose [7]

Sarojini Naidu’s daughter Padmaja told me today that when Subhas issued his manifesto from Europe to the effect that he and Jawaharlal were great friends and at one on every point, he actually had been scheming from Europe to bring J. down in the public eye. I could not believe this, I told her point blank. She averred it was absolutely true. I am very pained to hear it. For though I feel there is not a little exaggeration in this business, I fear there may be substance of truth somewhere in this dirty story.

I would certainly not hang anybody on the testimony of Padmaja: she has too much of a delight in scandal-mongering of the worst kind; but I suppose she would not cite Jawaharlal as a witness if there were nothing in it. The question is: how much exaggeration? I am afraid it is not at all impossible that Subhas should say one thing to Jawaharlal and quite another to somebody else. Politics is like that, a dirty and corrupting business full of “policy”, “strategy”, “tactics”, “diplomacy”: in other words, lying, tricking, manoeuvring of all kinds. A few escape the corruption but most don’t. It has after all always been a trade or art of Kautilya from the beginning, and to touch it and not be corrupted is far from easy. For it is a field in which people fix their eyes on the thing to be achieved and soon become careless about the character of the means, while ambition, ego and self-interest come pouring in to aid the process. Human nature is prone enough to crookedness as it is, but here the ordinary restraints put upon it fail to be at all effective. That however is general: in a particular case one can’t pronounce without knowing the circumstances more at first hand or before having seen the documents cited.

20 October 1936