Скачать или смотреть Azadi ka Safar 29 December

In today’s episode, we remember one of the earliest moderate leaders Womesh Chundra Bannerjee, who was born on December 29, 1844. He was the co-founder and first president of the Indian National Congress.Bannerjee won a government scholarship to study Law in England and was called to the Bar in June 1867. In England, he founded the London Indian Society, and advocated representative and responsible government in India. He returned to Calcutta in 1868 and within a few years he became the most sought after barrister in the High Court. In 1883 he defended Surendranath Banerjee in contempt of court case against him in the Calcutta High Court. Womesh presided over the first session of Congress in 1885. In the 1886 session held at Calcutta, under the presidency of Dadabhai Naoroji, he proposed the formation of standing committees of the Congress in each province for the better co-ordination of its work and it was on this occasion that he advocated that the Congress should confine its activities to political matters only, leaving the question of social reforms to other organisations. He was the president of the Indian National Congress again in the 1892 session in Allahabad. We pay tributes to the great leader.
We also remember revolutionary freedom fighter Bhupendra Kumar Dutta, who died on 29th December, 1979. A prominent Jugantar leader, he went on a hunger strike for 78 days in Bilaspur Jail in December 1917, which was till that time the longest ever period of hunger strike in any country.Born on October 8, 1892, in the village Thakurpur in Jessore, now in Bangladesh, Dutta got inspired by the anti-Partition agitations of Anushilan Samiti, and joined the organisation. In September 1915, after the death of Bagha Jatin, massive repression and imprisonment prevailed in India. Bhupendra Kumar Datta was arrested on 17th May 1917. In Jail, Jiten Lahiri and Bhupendra Kumar Datta went on a protest against the imprisonment of freedom fighters without habeas corpus and against the physical and moral torture meted inside the prisons. They published an eight-page long appeal which was sent across to many important personalities to inform the country about the decision of a hunger strike. Bhupen was later transferred to Bilaspur Jail, where he continued his hunger strike for 78 days. He was released in 1920. Arrested again on 23rd September 1923, Bhupen was deported to Mandalay in Burma, where Subhash Bose was also imprisoned soon after. Netaji presented him the book ‘Memories of a Revolutionist’ that he had smuggled for Bhupen during his last trip to Europe.After his release in 1928, Bhupen resumed his usual multifarious role of maintaining contacts with various Jugantar leaders, editing the journals, collecting arms and distributing them. He was jailed again for eight years in 1930 for sheltering the absconding revolutionaries of the Chittagong Armoury Raid. He edited the weekly newspaper “Forward” and was again detained in 1941 for five years.Bhupen stayed back in East Pakistan after partition to rescue victims of communal riots, and was even elected Member of Parliament. He supported a motion to make Bengali the official language of Pakistan in the Pakistan Constituent Assembly in 1948. Bhupen came back to India in 1962, and devoted his time to the nation. We salute the great freedom fighter.