Online exhibition documents Presidency's link with Independence movement

Did you know the British government in pre-Independence India suspected that the students of the 200-year-old Presidency College (now Presidency University) could be "secretly associated with revolutionary activities" and they could use the laboratory chemicals to make bombs?

Nuggets of such information dating to the turbulent 1930s to 1950s that offer a peep into how the university was "affected by the Independence movement and the role it played in the process of nation-building" can now be accessed in an online exhibition, titled "Towards Swaraj: Presidency During the Independence Movement of India", courtesy a collaboration between Google Arts and Culture and the varsity.

Sourced from Presidency University Museum, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, and Endangered Archives Programme, British Library, the virtual treat, through leaflets, notices, photographs and letters, takes one through the British accession to power, emergence of nationalism, the clarion call for "Purna Swaraj", Quit India Movement and Direct Action Day, and moves on to Independence.

In these movements, marking the final stages of the freedom struggle, Presidencians like Surendranath Banerjee, Chittaranjan Das, Jatindramohan Sengupta, Saratchandra Bose, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Dr. Rajendra Prasad played important roles.

For example, the assemblage displays a 1931 manifesto of the Hindustan Socialistic Republican Army (established by revolutionaries Chandrasekhar Azad, Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev Thapar and others) issued in Bengali and pasted on the wall of Hare School building, situated within the campus of the college.

Reminding students of the "martyrdom of Benoy Bose, Badal Gupta, Dinesh Gupta, Bhagat Singh, Chandrasekhar Azad and the massacre at the Hijli Camp", it asked them to "take revenge of these deaths and called for their participation in the Independence movement".

With the Civil Disobedience Movement beginning in 1930, leaflets of the Chittagong branch of the Indian Republic Army were found in the college in a bid to "infuse radical ideas among the students".

The digital repository also contains undated leaflets, written in Bengali, that were issued during the Quit India movement (1942).

Found among the old documents of the establishment, one such leaflet "carries the last message of Mahatma Gandhi for his countrymen, before the former's arrest. It ends with his clarion call - "Do or Die."

Similarly, there is another leaflet that carries the "pictures of two students who had sacrificed their lives for their motherland". It was meant to inspire the youth to take part in the final struggle for freedom.

Of interest is a September 2, 1946 report to the Home Secretary of the then Bengal government by eminent statistician P.C. Mahalanobis, the then Principal, who described how the college and the Eden Hindu Hostel -- where the students of the college and other government colleges used to live -- was affected by the Direct Action Day and the measures taken by the college authority to deal with the situation.

One can also sample the first page of "Amrita Bazar Patrika" of August 15, 1947 -- the Independence Day.

Signifying the "ideological transformation which the prominent government institutions of the country underwent in the years immediately after independence", there are two artefacts up for perusal: a notice dated September 30, 1947 which was issued by the then principal of the college in order to declare holiday on account of Mahatma Gandhi's first birth anniversary after Independence (Oct 2, 1947); and another notice dated January 20, 1948 issued by Mahalanobis, the then principal, declaring holiday on account of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose's first birth anniversary after Independence.

Evidence of observance of first anniversary of Independence can be glimpsed from a notice issued by the college authorities requesting staff and students to be present during the hoisting of the India's national flag for the celebration on August 15, 1948.

--IANS

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