Word: congress
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...under way in Peiping. To the Red capital from Hong Kong and elsewhere came a motley group of anti-Kuomintang fellow travelers. The Communist masters dubbed them "democratic personages," decked them in cool blue summer uniforms, then directed them to a preparatory conference for a "people's congress" and "coalition government." Best guess as to the Red timetable: by late August the "New Democracy" would be ready for formal launching and a bid for the world's diplomatic recognition...
Most prominent of the three was fiery chauvinist Subhas Chandra Bose. He came out of South Calcutta's anti-British underground to go to the presidency of the Indian National Congress in 1938; then he broke with Gandhi, joined the Japanese to fight the British, met death in a Japanese plane...
...third brother, Sarat Chandra Bose, now 60, fat and moonfaced, was Minister of Works, Mines and Power until the Congress in 1946 gave his cabinet job to a Moslem Leaguer. In a huff, Sarat Bose quit the Congress, organized his own Socialist Republican Party. He was in Switzerland, recuperating from a mild heart attack, when a by-election was scheduled for his brother Satish's legislative seat. Promptly he declared himself a candidate. Onto his bandwagon leaped opportunist Communists, disgruntled Socialists and rabid Hindu Communalists-all united against an old Congress Party warhorse, Suresh...
Through all the sound & fury, Candidate Bose remained in Switzerland, rallying his supporters with long-distance statements: "Black-marketeering, profiteering, corruption, favoritism and nepotism stalk the land. There is resort to police terrorism on the slightest pretext. The Congress' name today is mud." Congress was split by petty quarrels, weakened by a 10% rise in food prices during the past year, and harassed by a Communist gang-up with Bose...
...jail riots brought up Congress big guns. Prime Minister Nehru, who seldom intervenes in local elections, sent a message endorsing faithful Suresh Das, decrying Bose's tactics: "I fail to see how unbalanced attacks on Congress and destructive criticism can help the country in any way." Deputy Prime Minister Sardarj Patel was blunter: "China, Malaya and Burma have all a lesson to teach us. If we fail to learn it, Bengal would be the first to suffer...