31/01/2022
Chitta Ranjan Das (1870-1925) was an Indian lawyer and poet who became a nationalist leader. His main aim was swaraj, or self-rule, for India. He was born into the famous Das family of Telirbagh to Baby Mohan Das. His father was a solicitor and journalist who used to edit the English Church Weekly, The Brahmo Public Opinion. Das finished his studies from the Presidency College in Kolkata in 1890 and then went to England to pursue higher studies. He wanted to complete his civil service examination from there. Although he flunked in the exams but afterwards found success in the field of legal profession and defended many accused of political offences and took an active part in nationalist journalism. After successfully proving himself as a lawyer by defending Aurobindo Ghose in the celebrated Alipore Bomb Case, he was fondly christened the name "Deshbandhu". Standing firm in his belief of Swaraj, he rejected all the political ideas and economic development of India along the Western line. Soon, he left law and started planning out his vision for Swatantra Bharat. With his oratory skills, political vision and diplomacy, he soon became an important leader of the Congress and joined Mahatma Gandhi’s Non-Cooperation movement in 1920. He took active part in the Non-Cooperation movement with Gandhi and even went to jail in the process. But after the failure of the movement, he became disillusioned and proposed a strategy to end dyarchy but Congress did not accept it and he formed his own party - Swarajya Party - along with Motilal Nehru. At the time of his death, Gandhi publically said, “Deshbandhu was one of the greatest of men... He dreamed... and talked of freedom of India and of nothing else... His heart knew no difference between Hindus and Mussalmans and I should like to tell Englishmen, too, that he bore no ill-will to them". To honour his memory, many institutions have been named after him - Chittaranjan Avenue, Chittaranjan College, Chittaranjan High School.