Sourodipto Sanyal
At around 1:30 am on January 17, 1941, a bearded man disguised as insurance agent Mohammad Ziauddin quietly sat on the left rear seat of a black German Wanderer W24 sedan parked inside 38/2, Elgin Road, Bhowanipore, South Kolkata. The driver shut the front door silently, drove the car out of the main gate and took a right turn. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and his nephew Sisir Kumar Bose, who was driving the sedan, were on their way to the Gomoh railway station, now in Jharkhand, hoodwinking the British government that had kept Netaji under house arrest. Netaji would eventually escape to Germany via the Soviet Union with the aim of seeking support of the Axis powers to overthrow the British government in India.
It has been 78 years since Netaji’s great escape. Today, the house of one of India’s favourite sons on Elgin Road is located opposite a mini-mall. Officially, the road is now named after one of Netaji’s contemporary freedom fighter — Lala Lajpat Rai. However, it will perhaps always be popularly known as Elgin Road by the Kolkattans. A part of the ancestral house of the great Indian freedom fighter is now a museum, run by the Netaji Research Bureau (NRB). The bureau was founded by Sisir Kumar in 1957; it became a registered company four years later. The museum is a part of the Netaji Bhawan, which also houses a library and archives. The current director of the NRB is Sugata Bose, the son of Sisir Kumar. He’s a Harvard historian and current Trinamool MP from the Jadavpur Lok Sabha constituency.
A few metres away from the entrance lies a bust of Subhas Chandra Bose. Electrical transformers outside are painted with the face of the freedom fighter with the words, “Netaji Subhas Ch. Bose lived on 38/2 Elgin Road.”
As you enter through the main gate of the house, painted yellow, green and red, a long courtyard comes into view. This is where the black sedan in which Bose made the daring escape is kept in a large case for public viewing. The tickets have to be bought at a bookstore located to the right as one enters the house. One can also buy various books written over the years on the life of Netaji and the Indian National Army here.
On the left of the courtyard is a replica of the Singapore memorial to the martyrs of the Indian National Army. Netaji laid the foundation of the original memorial on July 8, 1945. It was destroyed by British forces after they reoccupied the island.
The museum consists of two floors. On the first floor lies the study of Netaji, a long corridor which was used by him to escape on the fateful night of January 16-17. It leads to the room where he and his father slept and the room of his elder brother and famed lawyer Sarat Chandra Bose. From the beds of the members of the family, furniture, clocks, wall-hangings, etc., have been preserved and displayed. A few black and white photographs, pinned to the wall in Sarat Bose’s room, elicit nostalgia and grandeur of the Bose family. If one looks at the portraits of Sarat Bose taken in different cities of Europe, one would get a grasp of how wealthy and powerful the Bose family was in its heyday.
The second floor consists of two rooms which pay homage to the life of Netaji. The exhibition begins with the diary of Janakinath Bose — it records the birth of Netaji and ends with the last-known photograph of him taken in Saigon on August 17, 1945. The photo of him shaking hands with Adolf Hitler is also in the collection.
The powerful and rare black and white photographs trace the life of the Cambridge graduate, a Congress politician offering an alternative to Mahatma Gandhi, a family man who fell in love with a German woman and travelled continents by land, air and water with the sole aim of crushing colonialism.
The newspaper clippings from the 1930s, which throws light on Netaji’s role as a member of the Indian National Congress, the memorabilia and his own writings in journals reiterate that despite being born into a privileged family, he happily sacrificed his life for the nation. Netaji’s writings in the Azad Hind journal in 1942 continue to be relevant after eighty years. There is emphasis on strengthening public healthcare and education, employment generation and promoting communal harmony. He wrote: “The vast majority of the Indian Mohammedans are anti-British and want to set India free. There are no doubt pro-British among both Mohammedans and Hindus, which are organised as religious parties. But they should not be regarded as representing the people.”
The museum must be visited by everyone who is fascinated by modern Indian history and the life and times of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. By the time you walk out of it, you are full of respect and gratitude for this great son of India.
from The Tribune http://bit.ly/2Ye7LoL
via Today’s News Headlines
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