THE THREE NATIONAL LEADERS OF INDIA: Bose in Europe (1933-1936)

With Patel's (Vithalbhai)

help , Bose was trying to sort out his proper work for India abroad.Patel had been doing propaganda work for India for some time . Patel had helped him found the Indo-Irish League and was able to bring Bose into contact with Mrs. M.Woods , an official of this organisation , and its president

Propaganda had not assumed the negative ring that it has today.For Patel and Bose, it meant disseminating positive and accurate information about India's national struggle against the British Raj and India's great cultural achievements . The second half of 1933 was darkened for Bose by the serious illness of Patel who was moved to Switzerland.Bose went there to be near him and to try to improve his own health, which still had not greatly improved . As Patel grew more gravely ill . Bose helped to nurse him. And Bose was by him when Patel breathed his last in late October. Patel bequeathed to Bose political and financial legacy and the later turned into a long and nasty legal dispute with Sardar Patel and other relatives of Vithalbhai.The provision in his will for
( Maud Gonne McBride) substantial monies to e left to Bose to to be used for propaganda work was challenged in an Indian court which eventually found that Patel's bequest was stated too vaguely . Bose to his dismay never got one rupee. He always believed he would have used the funds just as Vithalbhai wanted. This legal battle went on into the late 1930s and did not improve his relations to Sardar Patel , one of the most adept of his Gandhian adversaries in the Congress.

During 1933, Bose made a trip to Czechoslovakia , Poland, and Germany that listed about two months At the end of this trip , He joined Patel for the last period of his life.After the death of Patel , he went tyo France and then Rome . From Rome he traveled to Milan and then Geneva , where an Indian information center had been established. In March 1934 he began another lengthy trip , this time to Germany , back to Italy, and then on to Hungary , down again in Vienna and worked on a book about Indian politics , the contract for which he had signed with a British publisher. He spent some time on Karlsbad , a famous health resort, where he took the mineral waters. hoping they would alleviate this abdominal problems.After flying from Vienna to Prague

with indian students in Berlin 1934

with the mayor of Rome