Devdas
Chhotray
In
January 2005, as an additional secretary in ministry of home affairs looking
after department of Justice, I was excited about our second float that would
traverse Vijay Path during the upcoming Republic Day. The year before, we had
put up a tableau of the Supreme Court, guarded by the mythical deity of
Justice, which won an award.
Since
themes of Republic Day floats ordinarily relate to the working of sponsoring
ministries, we conceived the historic INA trial (1945) as our theme. Our float
depicted the courtroom scene, with the majestic ramparts of Red Fort as the
backdrop. The most amazing feature was a huge bust of Netaji Subhas Chandra
Bose, almost 30 feet high, in INA fatigues, an outstretched arm once pointed at
British India from the partly liberated Burma and Andamans, with the clarion
call of “Delhi chalo”. It received a rousing reception.
When
the monolith of Netaji’s likeness descended from Raisina Hills, the cheering
crowd along the boulevard went into a frenzy. As the media observed, never
before in Delhi had such a gigantic statue of Netaji rolled down Vijay Path as
a part of the country’s most known annual pageant. The float was adjudged for
award, marking our second consecutive victory.
The
then defence minister Pranab Mukherjee, while giving away the award, was
curious to know whose idea it was to place Netaji in the frame. This gladdened
my heart and affirmed the rightness of my choice.
I
was always passionate about Bose. I belong to Cuttack, the erstwhile capital of
Odisha, where Bose was born in January 1897. I went to the same school,
Ravenshaw Collegiate, from where he matriculated in 1913, securing second
position in Calcutta University. And I live in Odia Bazar, where in the
palatial Janakinath Bhavan, his family home, he spent the first 17 years of his
life. While walking to school in the 1950s, I would imagine Bose taking the
same road by foot or by carriage half a century before.
Such
physical proximity to Bose’s grooming years, through immovables and artefacts,
his house and school, all within walking distance, were a source of envy for my
Bengali friends in Calcutta. I would spin stories to startle them and then
almost believe them myself. I would imagine the middle row seat under the fan,
assigned to me in Class VIII-A, was where Bose sat. I had no clue if he wore
glasses in school, but I imagined he did and drew warmth of company. I was the
lone bespectacled child in school and often ragged as a Bengali boy! Walking in
the quadrangle of his house at Odia Bazar, now a museum, I would imagine his
footfalls on the stairs or his reclining posture in the study in mild afternoon
light, reading letters to his mother, and gazing at his Cambridge and INA
memorabilia. In Calcutta addas with my friends, these were fancy stories.
Much
later, when I became vice-chancellor of Ravenshaw University, a young Bengali
woman from Calcutta, Sohini Das, on an outreach tour, visited me. She asked if
Bose had studied in Ravenshaw. He did not. I have always felt a little deprived
while stating this fact. While Bose was in Ravenshaw Collegiate, from 1909 to
1913, he left for Presidency in Calcutta for graduation.
Sohini’s
eyes glimmered when I promised to take her to Bose’s house and school. This was
my favourite track as a guide of Cuttack. Sohini scanned the house and its
preserves, from furniture to photographs, and looked longingly at his
sepia-coloured handwritings. She confided in me that as a little girl, she
always imagined herself as married to Bose. What appealed to her was his valour
in both words and deeds.
Though
married to an American diplomat, she moved about the house with ardency of a
new bride in the abode of her in-laws, played the jealous wife at the mention
of Emilie Schenkl, and resented in no uncertain terms my assertion that in many
ways Bose was an Odia. Sohini behaved as if she was crossing borders between two
births.
Then
we then walked to his school that is built in two blocks — the front one in
yellow Georgian style for faculty and administration and the rear in colonial
red brick for classes, with a huge adjoining playground. The doors and windows
were tall with Venetian shutters. I told her how the school evolved from 1841
as the first English-medium School of Odisha to its christening as Ravenshaw
Collegiate in 1875. The school was the cradle for Ravenshaw College as
intermediate classes were opened in its precincts.
The
school’s centenary was observed in 1954, the year of my entry. The centenary
souvenir cover, drawn by art teacher Bhagwan Das, had three flames emerging
from a torch, each presenting the visage of an ex-student. Flanked by portraits
of Madhusudan Das and Pyarimohan Acharya, Bose in his INA tunic and round
spectacles burned bright in the middle. It was my first countenance with the
star of Cuttack. A sense of glory for sharing the same institution and the same
neighbourhood had always compensated for any momentary loss of self-esteem in
me. For me, he was an incarnation of Vivekananda.
Once,
media persons had asked me if the Odisha government was doing enough to
preserve his memory and if that was comparable with what Bengal was doing. I said
it was time to go beyond the old colonial Bengali-Odia schism and its blinkers.
We must firmly believe that Netaji was as much Odia by birth and upbringing as
he was Bengali or Indian. Claiming him as Odia is not a parochial pursuit, but
a pursuit of right heritage. In Odisha, the springing tiger was in the making.
Odias, therefore, should never shy away from claiming SB as their own, no
matter how precious little governments may do.
Aspects
of Bose’s Odisha connections may not fill up volumes in a relentless life of
many worlds, but they had a vital formative impact. His reminiscences of
Ravenshaw Collegiate in his unfinished autobiography “An Indian Pilgrim” are
significant.
He
joined the school in January 1909 and almost immediately noticed changes
occurring within. The then headmaster Beni Madhav Das, who induced in him a
deep craving for value system in life, made the strongest impact on his mind.
Contrary
to partisan perception, Bose had referred to a happy mélange of teachers and
students belonging to Odia and Bengali communities at the school. He felt
gratified that his parents were seldom discourteous to Odias. His father,
Janakinath Bose, had migrated to Cuttack in 1880s and was a well-known lawyer.
The family was remembered even after they left for Calcutta. When Bose’s
daughter Anita, barely 18 then, visited the ancestral house in 1960s,
newspapers were full of loving anecdotes from her on Bose.
Even
after leaving for Calcutta, Bose was a part of the assertion of the Odia
identity in 1920s. He collaborated with Pandit Gopabandhu Das in articulating
issues of Odia labourers and dockworkers. He spoke in Odia at a Calcutta
meeting drawing huge cheers. His nostalgia for Odisha was evident from
expressions and utterances such as “The best part of my life was spent in
Odisha...”, “Being a son of Utkal, my heart is always there...” and the like.
The
constitution of Forward Bloc in May 1939, as a new grouping inside the
Congress, to rally all anti-imperialist and radical elements drew predictable
flak from mainstream Congressmen here.
But
his faithful supporters had a sizeable number of young Odias, mostly students,
recruited through afternoon meetings at Ravenshaw College and through
All-Orissa Students Federation.
Satish
Guha, part of Bose’s team, was proactive in Puri to recruit locals. There was a
fiery band of young Odia youth who were beholden to Bose. The INA too had an
Odia component. Most soldiers were from Ganjam and Puri. Of the 1,100 east and
south Indian civilians detained in Burma, many were Odias. About 55 Odia
soldiers of the INA were kept in the central jail of Rangoon.
Bose’s
Odia connections remained in virtually every activity of his.
A
tender chord is struck in his relationship with Cuttack. Like Rome, the Cuttack
of Bose was not built in a day. This ancient city has seen the rise and fall of
a thousand years. It was built as a military cantonment, in the delta of two
rivers in 989AD, and it remained Odisha’s capital till 1948. The new capital,
Bhubaneswar, has virtually grown out of it and its cultural and commercial
primacy has always placed Cuttack on a separate footing.
Bose
loved the city of his birth. He loved the river Mahanadi, on whose bridge he
would relax in winter sun and prepare his anti-English shenanigans. It is the
heat and dust of Cuttack that prepared him for the sterner stuff of future.
That intense 16-year-old lad of Odia Bazar has since become the brightest star in
the firmament of this city of thousand years.
(THE
AUTHOR IS AN EMINENT LITTERATEUR AND FORMER VICE-CHANCELLOR OF RAVENSHAW
UNIVERSITY)
Courtesy
The
Telegraph
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