ON THE EVE OF THE SESQUICENTENARY OF DESHBANDHU DAS
Tomorrow, 5 November, 2020 is Chittaranjan Das' 150th birth anniversary. He was born on 5 November, 1870 and lived till 16 June, 1925. He was the lawyer who gave us Sri Aurobindo by extricating him from the tentacles of law and saving him from being sentenced in the Alipore Bomb Case. Das was 'Deshbandhu' in the truest sense of the honorific as he had befriended the whole mass of living humanity in India and given up a flourishing legal practice to fight for their freedom from the clutches of colonial control. Along with Pandit Motilal Nehru he founded the Swarajya Party which advocated entry into the legislature to effect the required changes necessary for the betterment of the lot of the Indians. In this he differed with Mahatma Gandhi and provided the country with an alternative leadership which drew to him young eagles of the Congress like Subhas Chandra Bose. The latter offered himself body and soul at the feet of the veteran leader and accepted him as his preceptor in politics. When Das died from overwork and consequent strain early in 1925, it was Bose who carried forward his legacy to liberate India eventually.
That stalwarts such as Deshbandhu Das have remained in relative obscurity and have not been accorded due prominence in the national life post independence is to our eternal shame and it is here that we need to redress things. This write-up is a remembrance in reverence but is an insufficient homage for it is incomplete and devoid of much data that is already available online which I request my readers to go through. A man of many accomplishments can scarce be held within the confines of a narrow write-up. Hence, I leave it off here with my reverences at his feet.
Written by Sugata Bose
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