An enslaved country can have but one foreign policy - that which would hasten the attainment of independence. A subject country like India, he argued, could not sit in judgement on the internal policies pursued by the great powers. If Britain would not grant India independence, or even immediate internal self-government, the Congress should be prepared to launch another non-violent mass movement.

When Mahatma Gandhi refused to accept this policy or to cooperate with Bose in appointing a new Working Committee of the Congress, Bose stepped down as Congress president in April 1939. He immediately began a tour of all parts of India to explain why it was a matter of life and death for Indians to pursue a policy that would hasten independence.

He had, during 1933-36, travelled Europe extensively to understand the main inter-war world trends. This was when an ailing Bose had been exiled from India, and was forbidden to visit any other British territory, not even, Britain. By 1936, when he returned to India defying the British ban, he was sent again to prison.

By 1937, he had concluded that both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were neo-imperialist powers. He admired Japan's early resistance to the European powers' colonial encroachment. But condemned Japan for aping European colonial ambition in the wars of conquest it had launched in East Asia. As Congress president, Bose not only condemned Japan's war against China but also sent a medical mission to China.

But, by 1939, when he foresaw the early outbreak of another world war, he concluded that nationalist India should enlist sympathy and help of such powers as would assist India because they were at war with the British Empire.

An enslaved India, Subhas Bose argued, could not reject help from such countries because Britain pursued policies that divided the Indian people to perpetuate British rule in India.

This roughly was Bose's war policy. He did not want to spend war years in British Indian prisons which were again filling up with freedom fighters after the Viceroy of India announced that India was at war on the British side in September 1939.

Bose decided to probe at high levels of the governments of Germany, Italy and Japan if India could get any diplomatic and military help for India's freedom struggle.