Netaji Birth Day Commemorative Volume Centenary Eve Tribute (An Old and Rare Book)

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About the Book You have grown rich through many experiences of life. The consequences you were to face for keeping firm in your promise is a proof of your enormous life force. You have shown your strength through many ordeals of life-sufferings in prison, in exile and in pains of most atrocious diseases. But they could little overpower you. They had only widened your mind and helped to shape your perception that stretched along the far fields of history even beyond the frontiers of your own motherland. You have suffered as if it was an opportunity for you. You have trod through obstacles as though they were stairs to climb high above. These were made possible because you have proved yourself invincible even at moments of defeat and disaster. May this unbending spirit of your character kindle every heart of Bengal.

Foreword This Book is a Study of the Political Career of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose since when he became associated with the Calcutta Corporation. Before that he was engaged in the flood relief operations in North Bengal in which work he proved his great organizational ability. It was Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das who discovered in him the potentials of a great administrator. He was therefore, called upon to work as the first Chief Executive Officer of the new Corporation constituted under the Calcutta Municipal Act of 1923.

Netaji's career in the Corporation, as Councillor, as Chief Executive Officer as Alderman, as Mayor and also as an influential member of the Congress Municipal Association was full of many vicissitudes. Dr. Ladli Mohon Raychaudhury, Director, West Bengal State Archives the editor of the present volume of a collection of official documents partaining to Netaji's chequered career the Corporation has touched upon the most eventful phases of urban politics in Bengal. This collage may serve as a very useful source-material of history. I am quite sure that scholars trying to understand the curious mechanism of urban politics including the basic trends of our freedom struggle will find it valuable for their research work.

It may not be in the fitness of the ensuing Netaji birth centenary celebrations to recall the sickening chapters of history which describe how this indomitable fighter was let down by some off-stage manoeuvres of a group of faceless and insidious people. It is also at the same time most gratifying to note that the Communist Party including its two most eminent leaders, Somnath Lahiri and Bankim Mukherjee supported Subhas Chandra when the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee moved a resolution (30 August 1939) expressing its full confidence in his leadership. It may also be noted that Rabindra Nath Tagore paid the most glowing tribute to Subhas Chandra in the same year when he had to resign from the Presidentship of the A.I.C.C. He wrote:

You have grown rich through many experiences of life. The consequences you were to face for keeping firm in your promise is a proof of your enormous life force. You have shown your strength through many ordeals of life-sufferings in prison, in exile and in pains of most atrocious diseases. But they could little overpower you. They had only widened your mind and helped to shape your perception that stretched along the far fields of history even beyond the frontiers of your own motherland. You have suffered as if it was an opportunity for you. You have trod through obstacles as though they were stairs to climb high above. These were made possible because you have proved yourself invincible even at moments of defeat and disaster. May this unbending spirit of your character kindle every heart of Bengal.

Preface Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose played an important role to build up the Calcutta Corporation when he was the Chief Executive of the Calcutta Corporation for a very short time. Later on he was the Mayor of the Calcutta Corporation also for a stipulated period.

His work, meditations and motivation have been scatterdly found in the different papers and records kept in the Calcutta Corporation. 13ut these were never collected and compiled to publish in a book.

We very much felt the necessity of publishing these records.

Accordingly, the Mayor requested Dr. L.M. Roy Chowdhury to compile and prepare this in a book. It is needless to mention that Dr. Roy Chowdhury has endeavoured sincerely in this short span of time to make our dream a success.

The writings of Dr. Roy Chowdhury will speak for itself as he cited the example how Subhas Chandra Bose drawn the line of European method of making the urban city as Liverpool and Birminghumn Municipality, and then he added the salt of humanity to do much more towards the downtrodden slum dwellers of Calcutta.

The writers' profound knowledge and deep love towards the great personality is an excellent idea so far given in the book. And this will help the people at large to know about him, as well as the scholars to research more about him.

In fine I must add that the book published is an achievement. And the main architect is Dr. Ladly Motion Roy Chowdhury.

Introduction Subhas Chandra was ushered in the arena of Bengal politics by his political mentor Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das. He was elected a councillor of the Corporation constituted under the Bengal Municipal Amendment Act, 1923. Thereafter he resigned from this position to become the first Chief Executive Officer of Calcutta Corporation at the instance of his master, C. R. Das who became its first Indian Mayor. However, Subhas Chandra could not complete his full term as Chief Executive Officer. The British government had thrown him into prison (October 1924) only to be released on grounds of broken health towards the middle of 1927. Since then he had won an accredited position in Congress leadership and became more involved in the politics of the Corporation as well as in those of the province and the state. During this period Subhas Chandra was elected a Mayor of the Corporation (1930) and although it was a very short spell of mayoralty (he was released form jail to assume the charge in September 1930 and was then replaced by Dr. B. C. Roy in April 1931) he was able to remain in a key position of Corporation politics until 1940. Soon after he was again thrown into jail and then kept in house internment wherefrom he fled incognito beyond the borders of India in order to launch upon a more eventful and fretful career abroad. Subhas Chandra's association with Corporation politics has to be, therefore, studied in the broad perspective of urban politics with due consideration being had to the role played by him in formulating the strategy of the Congress which stood as the most effective platform of nationalist agitation against the counter-offensive built by the British imperialism.

The Reforms Act of 1919 had for the first time opened up the prospect for effective Indian participation in the country politics. The Act, however, having not come upto the full expectations of the Nationalists there were differences of opinion between the 'pro-changers' and 'no-changers' as to the desirability of entering the Councils. But the confusion was set at rest when the Swarajya Party, a Congress satellite agreed to contest the Corporation election which was reconstituted, thanks to the signal efforts of the Minister of the Local Self-Government Sir Surendra Nath Bannerji, under the Municipal Amendment Act of 1923. Such a decision when judged in the context of the time proved to be both politically mature and Significant.1 It had paved, the way for the ascendancy of the Congress in the Corporation and had also provided an opportunity for the political grooming of the Nationalists who used the newly captured Corporation as a vantage ground for launching further campaign against imperialism at the provincial level.

The Corporation which thus came under the complete control of the Nationalists was hitherto a stronghold of imperial interests notably of the European business community at Calcutta. There had been of course other pressure groups in municipal politics but they were never so strong when compared to the European business community.2 At the turn of the century the Bengal Chamber of Commerce which represented European merchants and manufacturers in Calcutta became the most politically active organisation. Also it became so influential as to be able to exert pressure on the government for implementing policies to the benefit of European commercial interests in the city. Further, as a result of such predominating influence of the Europeans the Corporation came to be used to primarily safeguard the interests of the European residents of Calcutta. In a debate arranged at the Calcutta University, Alderman Sarat Chandra Bose, had therefore rightly remarked that the chief concern of the Corporation before 1924 was to "provide quarters for Europeans and their comforts in various ways. There was no problem raised in the Corporation or any local body to provide medical relief to the poor or to improve sanitation in their quarters or the like."3

Besides the opposition of the European business community there were other constraints which threatened to weaken the solidarity of the Nationalists who captured power in the Corporation. C. R. Das made substantial electoral and job concessions to the Muslims and the Hindu-Muslim Pact of 1923 which was largely a brainchild of Deshbandhu had won him the support of the Muslims who stood behind him like a rock in his struggle to build up the Corporation as a cent per cent national institution.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages