Agni Kanya: Preetilata Waddedar

Preetilata Waddedar

10.45 PM, September 24th 1932. Party was in full swing inside the Chittagong European Club. At the entrance of this club hung the infamous notice – Entry of Dogs and Indians Prohibited. Suddenly nightly quiet of the Chittagong Hills was shattered with the sound of gunfire and bombs. A small group of 7-8 Indian revolutionaries from Masterda Surya Sen’s Indian Republican Army (Chittagong Branch) attacked the Club with light fire arms and bombs. As some of the club members were also carrying arms, a gun battle ensued. When gunfire from inside stopped, revolutionaries felt their mission was accomplished and prepared to leave. All the revolutionaries were unhurt and they believed that a number of persons inside the Club were dead (though the official figure was one dead and seven injured). As they were leaving, their leader asked one of them to pour Potassium Cyanide in her mouth. Why did she commit suicide at the hour of victory is still not very clear – but thus ended the short life of Preetilata Waddedar, the only lady to have died fighting against the British since 1857. 

As Bengal gets busy in Shakti –aradhana this week, I thought it is time to pay tribute to a small group of Bengali girls, who did not hesitate to take up arms to free the motherland. Women played an important part in revolutionary movement right from the beginning – but that was more of a passive role, providing shelter, carrying pistol etc. A group of daredevil girls changed that picture in early 1930s – eight decades later they are all completely forgotten. Between 1857, when the valiant young Rani of Jhansi fought against the British and the early 1940s when young girl cadets of Rani Jhansi brigade of INA under Laxmi Swaminathan marched alongside their male colleagues through South-East Asia and Burma to India’s North-East, there were exactly three incidents of girls participating in armed operations against the British.

Suniti

On December 14, 1931, two school girls – Shanti Ghosh and Suniti Choudhuri, belonging to the famous Jugantar group shot dead District Magistrate of Kumilla (now in Bangladesh), Mr CGB Stevens. Both the girls were just 14. They were caught, beaten up badly but spared the gallows because of their age. They were released after seven years in prison.

Beena Das

On 6^th February, 1932, Beena Das fired 5 bullets at Bengal Governor Sir Stanley Jackson (also a former captain of England cricket team) in the convocation ceremony of Calcutta University but failed to hit him. Beena was sentenced to nine years of rigorous imprisonment. Shanti and Beena joined Gandhiji in Noakhali. Suniti finished her studies and became a medical doctor. There were so many others, who did not participate in any action but played key roles in organization – Leela Roy(Nag) was one such remarkable lady, who built Deepali Sangha and later on became a close associate of Netaji. A number of them left valuable autobiographical accounts (mostly in Bengali) but hardly anyone remembers that today. I remember reading a collection of their life stories as a young boy – the collection was perhaps edited by Kamala Dasgupta, herself a noted freedom fighter, but struggled to find any material in English [except one article in Manushi – Women in the Bengal Revolutionary Movement(1902-35), Sandip Bandopadhyay]

Leela Roy (Nag), founder of Deepali Sangha

But the most famous of them were two Chattogram girls – Kalpana Dutta and her one year senior Preetilata Waddedar. Masterda, who led a veritable armed insurrection against the British in Chattogram in 1930, had decided that the attack on the Club would be led by a girl as a sort of symbolic gesture. But Kalpana, who was marked for this role was caught by the police just two days before the planned attack, thus providing Preeti with this golden opportunity.
Preetilata Waddedar was born in a lower middle class family of Chattogram town – her father was a clerk in the local municipality. She did well in Dr Khastagir High School and then joined Eden College, Dhaka for IA. She also joined Deepali Sangha of Leela Roy in Dhaka. She stood first among girls and overall fifth in the IA exam. Her results fetched a scholarship for her and enabled her to join Bethune College in Calcutta for BA. In Calcutta too she maintained her close links with the revolutionaries. She was entrusted with an unusual job during this time – she was asked to go with a forged identity and meet Ramakrishna Biswas at Alipore Jail. Biswas was waiting to be hanged for murder of a high-ranking Bengali official. In a few months leading up to his hanging, Preetilata met Biswas around 40 times and he left a deep impression on her. After her exams she came back to Chattogram. She wanted to leave her family behind but was forced to take up a job instead to support her parents. She joined local Nandankanan Girls High School (now Aparnacharan Girls High School) as the head mistress. Once when she was staying at a safe house along with Masterda and Nirmal Sen, another senior leader of the group, police suddenly encircled them and a gunfight broke out. Though Masterda and Preetilata managed to escape, Nirmal Sen died in the fight. Within days they launched their attack on the Club.

Kalpana Dutta

Why did she commit suicide? Someone said she wanted to make a point that girls were not afraid to lay down their lives for the country. But a number of others believed that Preeti fell in love with first Ramakrishna Biswas and then Nirmal Sen and of course saw both of them dying – the emotional impact was perhaps too much to handle for the 21-year old girl. Her best friend and fellow revolutionary Kalpana, who was incinerated for a long time following her arrest, fell in love with another comrade Ramakrishna Dastidar. Ramakrishna was hanged alongside Surya Sen in 1934. But since Ramakrishna’s body was not handed over to the family, she kept on waiting for a long time, hoping someday Ramakrishna would be back. Later on Kalpana, then a member of Communist Party of India, married its former general secretary P C Joshi. Her daughter-in-law and well known political journalist Manini Chatterjee wrote a book on Chattogram revolutionaries a few years back – Do and Die.  A recent Bollywood movie based on the book Khele Hum Jee Jaan Se, starred Deepika Padukone (as Kalpana Dutta). No one had the time to celebrate Preetilata’s birth centenary earlier this year.

A Greek Tragedy

As the Greek economy totters on the brink of a sovereign default, I found out that it is no new experience for the Greeks. The very first sovereign default in the recorded human history occurred in Greece in 377 BC. In that year 10 out of 13 city clusters in Greece defaulted on loans they had taken from the famous temple of Delos, the mythical birthplace of Apollo. European banks are today unhappy that now the authorities are asking them to accept more losses than 21% they had previously agreed on Greek sovereign debt. But 2400 years ago, the temple – one of the richest in the Hellenic world – had to write off 90 per cent of the loan amount! Lessons are pretty clear from that first default – debt defaults often happen in groups (so, watch out for Spain and Italy and Portugal and Ireland....) and losses turn out to be more than what appears at the first glance (red signals for M/s Sarkozy and Merkel)

Temple of Delos

In modern times, Greece as a nation state has defaulted only 5 times – 1826, 1843, 1860, 1894 and 1932. Some of these defaults lasted quite long, for instance the 1932 default shut Greece out of international market till the early sixties. Roughly Greece has been under default for 90 years or 50% of the time since its independence in the modern era. Quite enviable record – we must concede.

As it seems, history sometimes does repeat itself – at least the Greek tragedies!!!

Rule of Law

This is an unprecedented time in Indian history when a large number of important national issues from reservation controversy to major corruption scandals, from environmental pollution to Ram Janambhoomi – are being increasingly settled in court rooms across the country. Recently when debating on the Lokpal issue in the Rajya Sabha, leader of the opposition Arun Jaitley sarcastically commented that too many lawyers were advising the Prime Minister, the irony of the situation was not lost on any one.  Not only Jaitley himself is an eminent lawyer, there was a preponderance of lawyers on all three sides – government (Chidambaram, Sibal, Salman Khurshid, Pawan Bansal), Opposition (Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, Ravishankar Prasad) and the Jan Lokpal team (Shanti Bhushan, his son Prashant, Santosh Hedge).

Calcutta High Court: the building was modelled after the Town Hall in Ypres, Belgium

In many ways, founding of High Courts in 1861 along with the coming into effect of Macaulay’s famous codes (though drafted in the 1830s, the codes fully came into effect in the 1860s) heralded a new era of justice and fair play for ordinary Indians. With the passage of time higher judicial system has been extended and strengthened by various means, most importantly by the founding of the Supreme Court in 1935. As the High Courts of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras celebrate their 150th anniversary this year, it is perhaps time to look at the interplay of Courts, men of law and politics in early modern India.

Though there were British courts in all three presidencies from at least late 18th century, the present system of High Courts came with the 1861 Act. It was part of an overall effort by the British government to reorganize Indian administration as they took over from the East India Company as a consequence of 1857.Though announced in 1861, three High Courts actually started functioning from 1862. Since then ordinary citizens of this country have consistently shown an unshakable faith in our judicial system.





Justice Ranade



Modern, organizational politics in India emerged largely out of the corridors of law courts. Around 35% members of two main pre-Congress organizations in Calcutta – Indian Association and Indian League - were lawyers. Same was true for Bombay, where three prominent lawyers Pherozeshah Mehta, K T Telang and Badruddin Tyabji founded the Bombay Presidency Association. The other prominent figure was of course Justice Mahadev Govind Ranade, who founded the Puna Sarvajanik Sabha. Even as the Indian National Congress replaced these early organizations, the situation did not change much in terms of leadership profile. Not only was the first President of Congress a barrister – W C Bonnerjee, but more than 1/3 participants in Congress annual sessions in initial years were lawyers. In fact the situation reached such a stage that in many district towns there was hardly any difference between the bar association and the district congress committee!

Sir Phirozeshah Mehta

Founding fathers were to be followed by generations of legal luminaries, who dedicated themselves to the national cause. Both Motilal Nehru and Chittaranjan Das - two of India’s top lawyers quit their profession in 1921 following Gandhiji’s call for non-cooperation. Both the first President and Prime Minister of India were lawyers and so were Pakistan’s first Governor General (Md Ali Jinnah) and Prime Minister (Liaquat Ali Khan). A large number of distinguished members of the Constituent Assembly were lawyers, whose best legacy is perhaps our glorious Constitution. A special mention must be made of two non-Congressmen Nehru graciously invited to join the first cabinet – Ambedkar and Shyama Prasad Mukherjee – though from different ends of the political spectrum – both were lawyers. And of course the father of the nation – Mahatma Gandhi, who was trained as a barrister in Inner Temple and called to the bar on 1891. After two failed attempts to establish himself as a lawyer in Bombay and Rajkot, he left for South Africa in 1893 to work as a lawyer and the rest is history.

On the face of it Jaitley’s criticism is unfair - not only today but in the last 150 years, lawyers have always dominated Indian politics. But the real sense of his criticism is true – a political problem needs a political and not legal remedy. Unlike today, lawyer-politicians of pre-independence period did not believe in deciding public issues in a court of law.

The very first modern political movement originated from the debate surrounding power of Judges. In 1883, Law Member of Vice-regal Council C P Ilbert proposed that in districts Indian Judges may be given the power to try British citizens – this prompted an outcry from English newspapers and pressure groups. In reply Indians took to the street and organized public meetings in support of this Bill. Though the government ultimately was forced to compromise but the Ilbert Bill agitation was the first lesson in modern political mobilization for Indians.  

Location of High Courts could act as a magnate for attracting talent and give a boost to urban growth – best example of this were Patna and Allahabad in North India. Some of the greatest social reformers and educators of that period were also associated with the Judicial system – in North India, - again from two different ends of the spectrum - came Sir Saiyyid Ahmed and Pandit Malviya. Similarly in Maharastra the most remarkable reformer was Justice Ranade, who also founded Prarthana Samaj.

Sir Ashutosh known as Bengal Tiger. As the first Indian VC, he transformed Calcutta University into a research institution, recruited C V Raman and S Radhakrishnan among others. Also the first President of Indian Science Congress 

A number of judges and lawyers were associated with social reform and Brahmo Samaj in Calcutta, including the very first Indian High Court Judge, Sambhu Nath Pandit (appointed in 1863). Most of the early Judges were prolific founders of educational institutions but the lawyer most revered as an educator was the first Indian Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University, Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee(father of Shyama Prasad). 

Sir Muthuswamy Iyer

We have seen how early Courts have touched our lives in many spheres other than law. Let us conclude with an anecdote regarding High Court and growth of media – the appointment of Sir Muthuswamy Iyer as the first Indian Judge of Madras High Court in 1877 created a furore. In the face of vicious attack from the British-owned press Indian leaders realized they needed a voice of their own and thus the famous nationalist newspaper, The Hindu was born!

9/11: In Remembrance

When a moment of personal triumph or grief finds resonance in a public one then it acquires a different dimension. Ten years back, on 12th September morning I was travelling in Rajdhani Express from New Delhi to Calcutta. I was too engrossed in myself. I knew for sure that a chapter of my life had ended but did not know what lay ahead. Excited chatter of my co-passengers forced me to come out of my reverie and grab a newspaper. The headline read “Thousands killed in terror attack in New York” - it took a very long time to sink in. It took me another few hours to reach home and see the most dramatic moment ever recorded in the history of television in this planet. For reasons completely unconnected with 9/11, New York had already become a part of my daily existence.
Throughout history, residents of every city on the verge of capitulation must have felt a terrible agony. Yet some of these falls have been more earth-shattering events than the others. Fall of Rome to “barbaric” tribes in 476 AD was seen by contemporaries as a victory of darkness over civilization. Exactly the same sentiments were echoed in 1453, when Constantinople fell to the Ottomans – it was widely believed (not completely acceptable today) that this fall triggered an exodus of ancient wisdom from Byzantium to the cities of Western Europe, thus providing the much needed spark for the Renaissance. Similarly the sack of Baghdad by Mongol forces under Hulagu in 1258 was described as a moment of unacceptable destruction of ancient heritage – when the Tigris was turned into a river of black ink as all the famed libraries of Baghdad were emptied out there. There were many terror attacks in different parts of the world – before and after 9/11, yet 9/11 is the most spectacular terror attack ever recorded in human history.

Since 9/11, experience of air travel has changed completely. As a famous commentator wrote recently, makers of security apparatus are the main beneficiary of our growing sense of insecurity. In India there has been a tremendous boom in the business of security agencies (rest of the world buys more instruments and in India we deploy more security guards – human life is cheaper here than a body scanner). It has also spawned a growing cottage industry of security experts, Af-Pak specialists complete with mind-boggling advances for their latest tome on genuine inside stories of Jehadi organizations.

USA launched an assault on Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001 itself and today after 10 long years victory is nowhere in sight. President Bush launched a war on terror, famously warned all of us that either we are with him or with “them” and after Afghanistan invaded Iraq in search of elusive WMD (weapons of mass destruction). When we try to think about it a series of photographs come to our mind – Saddam Hussein captured like a rat with his mouth agape, of tortured Iraqis in Abu Ghraib and hooded prisoners of Guantanamo Bay, suicide bombing and helicopter shooting of journalists – in most conservative estimate at least 2 lakhs people have died in these two countries directly from this war on terror. Not to mention millions of refugees and broken lives and families. US troops have now exited Iraq but the country is far from peaceful. Earlier this year, in its biggest success so far, US forces managed to finally kill Al Qaeda Chief Bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan. But still the threat of terror looms large everywhere. As a direct result of these wars, today USA is the most hated country to the Muslims around the world – an image, despite President Obama’s repeated insistence that the US is not against Islam, is not likely to change in near future.

In 2001, ten years after the fall of the Soviet Union, USA was the lone super power and its domination of global politics and economy was absolute. The war on terror cost the US tax payers more than $3 trillion so far and it is going to go up further (Stieglitz et al). As Washington focused more on war, US economy began to slide. Ultra low interest rate regime and housing bubble masked the deep rot. More than 2001, New Yorkers today would perhaps more dreadfully remember a certain Monday in September 2008, when they saw iconic US financial institutions melting into nothingness. By 2021, China would surpass USA as the biggest economy in the world. For much of its existence, USA avoided military conflicts to focus on economy – even during the Cold War economic strength was never neglected – in the last 10 years, they have completely forgotten their age-old credo. If a future historian has to see 9/11 as the starting point of a trend, then that would inevitably be the beginning of the end of US economic hegemony.

2001 was a terrible year for India too– the litany of disaster started with the Bhuj earthquake on 26th January and ended with the attack on Indian Parliament on 13th December. We believe only in placing floral wreaths in remembrance and not in sincere actions. After 2001, USA created its department of Homeland Security and they have so far been able to ensure that no terror attack takes place in the US. If there is a single lesson for India in the events of 9/11, then it should be this example in prevention of disasters. But as long as we fail to put premium on the life of each and every Indian citizen, we will not be able to achieve that.

Standing in lower Manhattan, I got this feeling that I was at the capital of the world and I knew I was not alone in experiencing that. More languages are spoken in this city than anywhere else in the world, you would find food and culture of every part of the world thriving in some corner of this metropolis, everyday market movement and investment decisions made in NY make or break fortune of nations…..it is the dream city of every immigrant…..every idea and innovation finds home in this city. For a decade now, my work day starts with checking New York Times headlines and weather updates of NY-NJ and ends with checking Dow and Nasdaq late night. New York is the ultimate metropolis of dream, which could so easily have been my home too. People around the world share such sentiments and that is how an attack on the Big Apple was felt as an attack on our collective conscience. Even as we blame our soft state, ineffective security agencies, how many of us actually feel that an attack on Mumbai or Delhi is an attack on the idea of India itself?

Ice Ice Baby

There are some people like my wife, who live solely because there is a treat called ice cream in this world. Recently during our visit to Ahmedabad, which could easily be described as the ice cream capital of India, I was amazed to see the craze for ice-cream – of every shape, colour and flavour. It was even more amazing to think that ice creams – as we know it today – arrived here just a century back! Cold desserts in many avatars are known to mankind for a long time. Ancient Babylonians, Romans and Chinese used to pour fruit juices over crushed ice. The process of cooling a mixture using salt petre, to make something akin to ice-cream was discovered in China. The Arabs perfected the recipe of flavouring milk with dry fruits, cinnamon etc and then cooling it at freezing point using salt petre. By tenth century, such ice creams - actually more like Kulfis - were sold in all major cities in the Arab world. Western tradition says Marco Polo brought ice cream to Italy from China – like many other legends associated with Marco Polo – this one is also doubtful. The French learned the secret of flavoured ice - Sorbet - in the early 16th century when Catherine de Medici married Duke of Orleans and brought Italian chefs with her. By the end of the 16th century, flavoured ice was a much-preferred royal treat in Europe.

In the 18th century, we come across the recipe of modern ice-cream for the first time. Availability of ice in summers through import from Scandinavia and prosperity of Victorian Britain helped in experimentation. Still the difficulty of large scale production and refrigeration restricted the appeal of ice creams. In Britain Carlo Gatti opened a shop selling ice cream outside Charing Cross station in 1851. Several manufacturers started selling ice creams from their shops or carts making it available to general public for the first time. But the lady, who changed the complexion of the industry in Britain, was Agnes Marshall. Mrs Marshall, who wrote four famous recipe books dedicated to ice creams, came up with a portable hand-cranked machine to make ice-cream easily. She is also credited with the idea of serving ice-creams in edible cones. Apart from selling ice-creams, she also started selling machinery for ice-cream making. Mrs Marshall for the first time came up with the idea of using liquid nitrogen to make ice cream (the idea came to her after attending a lecture at Royal Society). When she died in 1905, rights of her recipes were bought by famous Mrs Beeton and thus, it became part of the most famous recipe book in British culinary history.

Of course, the Americans believe they invented true ice cream. Quakers introduced flavoured ice treats in the New World. Leaders like Washington, Jefferson, Franklin regularly used to enjoy ice creams. In 1843, Nancy Johnson of Philadelphia was issued a patent for a hand-cranked ice-cream maker. Throughout 19th and 20th century, a whole range of innovations in ice-cream right from sundae to banana split to dots took place in the states, not to mention top brands like Ben & Jerry or Haagen-Dazs. Improvement in refrigeration technology from 1870s is the single most important factor, which made ice-cream accessible to all.

In September 1833, an American ship named Tuscany arrived in Calcutta. The most unusual cargo carried by this ship ensured a rousing reception. Tuscany brought ice blocks from lakes near Boston. This is for the first time shipment of pure ice reached India. Since that first arrival, every time an ice ship landed in Calcutta for next 50 years, its arrival sparked off spontaneous celebration in Calcutta’s White town. The crew in 1833 was presented with a silver cup by Governor General William Bentinck and the owner was instantly granted a monopoly of ice trade in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. Ice was declared a duty-free good and Calcuttans pooled their own resources to build a modern ice house close to the river. Similar ice houses came up in Bombay and Madras too. Madras is the only place out of these three cities, where the original ice house still stands – Swami Vivekananda once stayed here and in his memory this building located right on the sea beach has now been converted into a museum.

The man behind this unusual venture was a Boston businessman, Frederic Tudor. He had earlier exported ice to some places in the USA and nearby tropical islands but the business failed miserably. He was persuaded to send ice to Calcutta by another businessman, who was eager to import tea and other stuff from Asia but had to send an empty ship every time. Ice trade was fairly common in Europe. It may be difficult to believe today but till around 1950s, Britain used to regularly import ice from the Scandinavian countries. In fact one can still see remnants of underground icehouses almost all over the continent, where large blocks of ice used to be stored for use in summer. But sending ice from Boston to Calcutta was an altogether different matter. Tudor came up with significant innovations to ensure that a large part of his cargo survives nearly 5 month long sea voyage. He decided to cut ice in rectangular blocks of equal size and then pack them so closely that air could not pass through them, he designed special insulation chambers and covered ice blocks with pine dust, which was a bad conductor of heat but fragrant. This way Tudor managed to keep a large part of his cargo intact throughout this long journey.

Till Tuscany arrived in Calcutta, the only thing close to ice was Hooghly slush – they used to store boiled water in earthenware on riverbank and the cooling effect used to produce thin films of ice. It is generally believed that the Mughals brought Kulfi to India. Kulfi was frozen by using salt petre. Was Kulfi a commonly available treat in those days? Unfortunately I could not find any reference to that. Abul Fazl has mentioned in the Ain-i-Akbari that everyday a boat laden with 10-12 blocks of ice used to arrive at Lahore from the hills for Akbar. Perhaps there was a similar system to bring ice to Agra or Delhi as well. Till well into the 19th century, rich households used to have special servants, known as aubdars - it was their responsibility to ensure that drinks are stored properly and served chillled. Their normal practice used to be cooling down water using sal petre and then wrap bottles with wet clothes.

For around fifty years from 1833 ice trade was a thriving business. Tudor, who was neck deep in debt in 1833, died a multi-millionaire. In 1879, Bengal Ice Company established the first plant in India to produce artificial ice – very quickly artificial ice business spread to other cities and towns, particularly to upper India. Soon, every town came to have a Barfkal of their own. Modern ice creams became available in Indian cities – particularly at hotels and clubs - at the turn of the century. In the 1930s, ice creams were no longer a novelty for upper class children in metro cities like Calcutta and Bombay. Today un-branded push carts of our childhood have yielded to ice-cream parlours and multinational brands launch Indian flavours, prominently displaying a green dot!

A Century of Emotion

On 29 July 1911, eleven young Bengalis playing for Mohun Bagan scored the most romantic win in the Indian football history. Playing barefoot (except for one Christian player, Reverend Sudhir Chatterjee), they defeated the all-white army team of East York Regiment 2-1 in the finals of IFA Shield on that day. Coming as it is on the background of first wave of Swadeshi, this victory was celebrated as a national victory against the colonial power. This was for the first time an Indian team managed to defeat a white team in a major tournament. The issue became a deeply emotional one as could be seen in battles waged in both Indian and English-owned newspapers of that time. People thronged the Maidan from all corners of the undivided Bengal as well as from neighbouring provinces on that day as Mohun Bagan surprised everyone by reaching the finals. Most of them could not enter the stadium but they finally burst into an unprecedented jubilation as thousands of maroon kites were floated in air immediately after Abhilash Ghosh scored the winning goal in dying minutes of play. That team, led by Shibdas Bhaduri (his brother Bijoydas was another key member of the team), was hailed by the largest selling paper of the day, Amritbazar Patrika as The Immortal Eleven. The centenary of this famous victory is being celebrated with enthusiasm in Bengal today. A film called Egaro(the eleven) on the immortal eleven and their famous victory has also been released.

                               The Immortal Eleven with IFA Shield 1911

In the annals of Indian sports and nationalism, it was something akin to the 1983 Prudential Cup victory. An entire country steeped in stagnation for long found joy, pride and self-belief in the summer of 1983. Similarly in 1911, roused with the first stirring of militant nationalism, a suppressed nation found a cause for celebration in that historic victory. There is also a prophetic story associated with the win – when someone told Captain Shibdas Bhaduri that he hoped their win would inspire the countrymen to fight for independence, Bhaduri replied the next time Mohun Bagan wins the IFA Shield, Indian National Flag would replace the Union Jack flying high at nearby Fort William – Mohun Bagan actually managed to win the IFA Shield second time only in 1947!

According to traditions, a young Bengali named Nagendra Prasad Sarbadhikari was the first to learn football from the British soldiers in the early part of the 19th century. soon the new game caught on with Bengali youngsters. Coincidentally, Mohun Bagan Club - India's national football club - was founded on 15th August 1889 at the house of a nationalist leader Bhupendranath Bose in North Calcutta's Balaram Ghosh Street. Bose, a noted lawyer, went on to become a President of Indian National Congress.

After that epoch-making victory, Indian football progressed from strength to strength. In the 1920s, a barefooted Mohun Bagan defender Gosto Pal – nicknamed the Great Wall of China – became a living legend for his skills in fending off British strikers. A statue of Pal – the first footballer to be honoured with Padmashree – today stands in Calcutta Maidan – close to the statues of national leaders like Subhas Bose, Rashbehari and others – an indication of the importance of football in the national life of Bengal.

In the 1930s, Indian national team for the first time started playing against foreign teams. India played in 1948 Olympic and qualified for 1950 FIFA world Cup – though could not participate due to administrative reasons. Most of the Indian players in that team used to play barefoot. Legends like Umapati Kumar and Shailen Manna belonged to this generation.

Under the great coach, Syed Abdul Rahim, Indian football enjoyed their golden years between 1951 and 1962. Still mostly playing without boots, India lost to 10-1 to Yugoslavia in 1952 Olympics,  but managed to finish fourth in Melbourne Olympics four years later – this, till date, remains India’s best international show. During this period, India was number one team in Asia and predictably this team of P K Banerjee, Tulsidas Balaram, Peter Thangaraj, Samar ‘Badru’ Banerjee and Neville D’Suza (who was the first Asian to score a hat-rick in Olympics in 1956) won two Asian Games (1951, 1962) and a number of other international tournaments. India’s last notable international success came in 1970, when they were placed third in Bangkok Asian Games. Even till mid-1980s, India was a respectable team in the Asian circuit – I will always remember the famous 3-2 victory against Malaysia, when India came back from 0-2 down to win the match, courtesy magical brilliance of Krishanu Dey and his partnership with players like Bikas Panji and Mauricio Alfonso.

But for Bengalis, football meant much more than the success of their national team. Football was the ultimate identity – at least for four decades, starting from 1940s. Most prominent expression of Bengal’s traditional East-West (Ghoti-Bangal) debate was the derby between arch-rivals Mohun Bagan (symbolically representing traditional values of settled West Bengal, refined, renaissance-inspired Bengali bhadraloks) and East Bengal (representing Bangals of East Bengal, now Bangladesh -upcoming, not-so-refined but full of energy and verve). As people from the East – who came as refugees in two large waves in 1947 and 1971 – struggled to make ends meet in West Bengal – Red and yellow colours of East Bengal club became a symbol of their fight for survival. How deep was the divide it is impossible to bring out today, it would be suffice to say that every keenly contested league or Shield match produced millions of heart burns and broken relationships. Best friends never spoke to each other again, marriage proposals were turned down - a number of stories and novels found their perfect theme in this rivalry and in at least three mainstream Bengali movies, the real tension was built up around East Bengal- Mohun Bagan rivalry. Also closely connected with this contest was the prices of two of the most favourite fishes of Bengalis – Illish (or Hilsa for Mohun Bagan) and Chingri (or Prawn for East Bengal) – prices of one or the other would skyrocket depending on which side comes out victorious.

A membership of Mohun Bagan or East Bengal was a badge of honour. Watching every match of your club - braving rains, wooden stands and horse-mounted police were some of the symbols of ultimate devotion. Needless to add, footballers were absolute heroes (and of course if the team loses biggest villains!). Another huge annual excitement was the actual signing of players – they would be kidnapped and kept in safe houses and each and every movement would be followed keenly by news-hungry millions in daily papers till the dust settles on that year’s transfer drama.

Throughout the golden period of Indian football history and even in the 1970s, Mohun Bagan as well we its rivals depended on Indian players and not merely on Bengali players. But the situation started changing from the 1980s – first came a bunch of Iranian players – Majid Basker and Jamshed Nasiri in particular enthralled the Calcutta crowd. And then came the biggest star of Calcutta club football – a Nigerian student, who discovered his football genius in Calcutta – Chima Okorie. For the first time in its history Mohun Bagan changed its rule to sign him as the first foreign footballer. Chima was followed by a number of Nigerians but only two of them became real heroes – Emeka Ezeugo and Chibuzor. Emeka briefly appeared as a substitute player in the 1994 World Cup for Nigeria – providing great excitement for football-crazy Calcuttans.

 

Pele with his Cosmos team playing against Mohun Bagan at Eden Gardens, Calcutta 1977

 

Two world cups of 1986 and 1990 changed this picture forever. Those of us grew up preserving paper cuttings of Krishanu-Bikas or Chima-Emeka overnight discovered Rummenigge and Ruud Gullit, Rene Higueta and Carlos Valderama, Roberto Baggio and Gary Linekar and above all a God named Diego Armando Maradona. In our class rooms and para adda, we were no longer shouting for Mohun Bagan and East Bengal – first it was replaced by Brazil-Argentina and then as we got to watch European club football, Napoli-Juventus-Sampadoria debate (highlights of Italian Serie A matches were the first to be telecast with expert commentaries by P K Banerjee and others). Today, routinely on weekends, we join rest of the world in cheering for Man U or Chelsea or Liverpool. Very few of my generation of football crazy Bengalis would know the name of India captain today, forget about Mohun Bagan and East Bengal (as school students in mid-80s, greatest pride for me and my friends was in the fact that the then Indian captain, Sudeep Chatterjee was an alumni of our school).

 

You would still find considerable crowd and die-hard fans of Mohun Bagan or East Bengal in Maidan today exactly like over-crowded narrow streets of North Calcutta, from where Mohan Bagan started its journey more than a century back. As miasma of a dead civilization envelope North Calcutta, much the same way Bengali football tradition disintegrates into a non-entity.

Bees Sal Baad

24^th July 1991 - this date should be hailed as the Second independence Day for India.  On this date, Dr Manmohan Singh presented his first budget and officially inaugurated the process of economic liberalization. Equally, if not more important, was the announcement of a new Industrial Policy on the same date by the then Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao. Both the announcements paved the way for end of license-permit Raj in the country and opened up the pent-up economic energy of the country. This date of course marks both the culmination of a desperate attempt to save the country from default and the beginning of the economic reform process.

When Dr Singh rose to present his first budget at 5 PM on that date, there was no mobile phone (you were lucky if you had a residential phone and more importantly if it worked) or a single shopping mall in the country. There was no cable TV, packaged drinking water, Coke, Pepsi or Pizza Hut. There was no ATM, credit card, no NSE and Infosys was yet to be listed. I was in high school then and it was very difficult for us to imagine that one day we would be having personal computers at home, highest level of information access (in Calcutta) was British Council Library, and foreign vacation was unimaginable. Our maximum ambition was to crack engineering or medical entrance exam and to see India winning cricket world cup again.

Previous few years were disastrous for India – two Prime Ministers were killed between 1984 and 1991. First V P Singh’s campaign against Bofors and corruption shook the Congress and altered the political equation in the country and then came Mandal and Mandir – society was polarized along caste and communal lines like never before. Added to it was the political instability – V.P. Singh government made way for Chandrasekhar-led another third front experiment, which barely lasted a few months. In the summer of 1991, when Congress looked almost set to regain power, Rajiv Gandhi was brutally assassinated. Elections were rescheduled and a new  Congress government – though minority in the House – was formed under Narasimha Rao. Brought back from retirement to lead the party and the country, he sprung a surprise by naming Manmohan Singh as his Finance Minister. After serving in almost all the top posts in economic administration – Chief Economic Advisor, Secretary, Deputy Chairperson Planning Commission, RBI Governor, Dr Singh was heading University Grants Commission at that time. It is now widely believed that Rao’s first choice was another veteran economic administrator - Dr I G Patel, who was the Director of London School of Economics at that time. After Patel declined the offer, the choice fell on Manmohan Singh.

Policy makers led by the Finance Minister in the Chandrasekhar government, Yashwant Sinha were working overtime in previous few months to ensure that there was no default for the country. Through their desperate efforts they could manage some loans and then Sinha took the bold step of shipping out gold to raise money abroad. Yet on 24th July, India had forex of just $ 1.2 billion - enough for less than three weeks. And India’s GDP size was just under 300 billion dollars. Just to compare – today our forex reserve itself is around 300 billion dollars and GDP is around 1.3 trillion dollars. Immediately after taking over as the Finance Minister, Dr Singh had to pledge more gold and then in two installments devalued Rupee by 20 per cent. Along with abolishing license raj and opening up export-import, India also opted for IMF’s Structural Adjustment Programme. From 1991 to 1994, in all the Budget and policy announcements, Dr Singh and Commerce Minister P Chidambaram tore away the entire fabric of control economy. For businessmen, who literally spent their lifetime at New Delhi’s Udyog Bhavan to get one license, it was unbelievable that they do not need to even apply for one. All these sparked tremendous reaction both from the Left and the Right. Also there were strong critics within the Congress Party and among the well-entrenched Indian business groups. It was Narasimha Rao, who withstood all the pressure and provided unstinted support to his Finance Minister and Commerce Minister – both lacking any political clout.

In next two decades, both the Right and grudgingly, even the Left would embrace Reform. Many would argue that more substantial reforms have taken place under the Third Front governments (1996-98) and NDA government (1998-2004) than the subsequent Congress-led government. Similarly it would not be wrong to argue that today’s robust growth is more inspite of the government than due to the government. Once the shackles were removed, then the entrepreneurial spirit and business acumen of Indians drove the economy faster and faster. And indeed today’s bottlenecks – infrastructure, social development, labour reform - are more due to the inefficiency of the government than any other factor.

Reform has shaken this ancient civilization out of its decades-old slumber. Now India, along with China is one of the power houses of growth for the global economy. Despite its obvious limitations, reform has changed not only the economy but also the society and relationship in this country. India – a nation of Maharajahs and snake-charmers is today mentioned more in terms of its economic and intellectual prowess. Apart from the people, who lived through this incredible revolution it is difficult to understand how almost everything around us stands thoroughly transformed today.

                                                                                                              

For individuals at the helm of affairs, it has been a different journey – right from Sriranga Purushottam Shukla (1991) to Ashok Chawla - we have been fortunate to have a series of brilliant bureaucrats as the Finance Secretary. After playing their stipulated innings, most of them have faded out of public life. On the other hand, the group of economist- technocrats, which played the most crucial role in changing the course of Indian economy right from 1991, is still mostly around. Apart from Dr Singh, other luminaries in this group include Montek Singh Ahluwalia (Commerce Secretary in 1991), Rakesh Mohan (Advisor in the Industry Ministry), C Rangarajan (soon to become RBI Guv) and a series of economic advisors – Deepak Nayyar, Arvind VIrmani, Shankar Acharya, Ashok Desai, Ashok Lahiri. It is a tribute to their capabilities that under their stewardship, not only the basic structure of Indian economy underwent a revolutionary change but India also emerged from regional or global crises like East Asian Crisis of late nineties or recent sub-prime crisis almost unscathed.

                                                         

Two main actors in 1991 were Manmohan Singh and Narasimha Rao. Contemporary history has treated them very differently – Rao – a visionary Prime Minister – got embroiled in a series of controversies and his political life ended in sad humiliation. Manmohan Singh – the technocrat-politician – has been hailed as the mascot of liberalization by the media and middle class. Dr Singh rose to become the Prime Minister in 2004 – even though many would argue that he is the first appointed and not elected, Prime Minister of this country. As Prime Minister he steered the nation towards a new foreign policy but has long lost his reformist zeal. I do not know how history will remember him but looking at 20-something people of this country, I know for sure, this country has changed forever and it does not really matter which party is in power or who is the Finance Minister – Indian middle class today more or less can decide their future themselves – two decades down the line, perhaps that is the greatest legacy of the Reform. Though open economy has helped to lift more people out of poverty in last two decades than in previous four decades of socialism, sadly, the super highway of growth has not yet reached the poor.