It's Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das's birthday, one of our most amazing leaders, a top lawyer who had his suits laundered in Paris who gave it all up to work for the freedom struggle. He defended Aurobindo Ghosh was the first mayor of Calcutta & did amazing work with the Congress..
..but this thread is actually about his relationship with another man, Mahatma Gandhi. In 1922, Gandhi suspended the non-cooperation movement because of the Chauri Chaura tragedy. Das, Netaji and many others felt one isolated incident could not & should not derail the movement.
After the heated Gaya seassion, the Swaraj Party was formed with Das & Motilal Nehru as leaders. The Swaraj Party won the most seats in the Bengal elections in 1923. Two years later, Chittaranjan Das's health was failing and he was advised by doctors to move to a hill station
He went to Darjeeling, & Mahatma Gandhi came & stayed with him. When Deshbandhu passed away in 1925, Gandhi led the funeral procession in Calcutta.
In his words 'Deshbandhu was one of the greatest of men... He dreamed... and talked of freedom of India and of nothing else...
They, and so many others of the time had so much personal regard for each other and understood that it was possible to have differences of opinion while being equally committed towards the freedom struggle.
That spirit never fails to move me.

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More from @joybhattacharj

7 Nov
On the 153rd anniversary of her birth, a story about Marie Curie. In 1890, 23 years old without any formal degree, she was working as a governess in her father's friends house in Warsaw to help support her sister who was struggling to get an education in Paris. Image
She fell in love with the elder son of the family who refused her as she had no prospects. Heartbroken and weary she wrote to her sister Bronia that she was stupid, would remain stupid and nothing would ever come of her life.
Thirteen years on she won a Nobel Prize along with her husband Pierre, and won another one for Chemistry eight years later.
On Marie Curie's birthday, giving up shouldn't ever be an option.
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2 Nov
One of the most amazing stories in entrepreneurship originated from the revolutionary fervour of a man in Bengal. Nani Gopal had to flee Calcutta to avoid the British police and came to the US, where he took a job as a salesman & married an American schoolteacher
His son, young Amar supplemented his family income by repairing radios. “We put up signs in all the little hardware stores where my father used to sell his imported goods,” “The signs said, ‘We repair radios...
...So people would drop off their radios at the store and I’d take them home and repair them, and we’d give the store 10% of the invoice. I had a little pact with my father that if my grades remained good, I could go to school only four days a week..
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1 Nov
It's the formation day of two states, small in population, who punch hugely above their weight in sport, specially women's sport. Haryana & Kerala have given us PT Usha, Shiny Abraham, Anju Bobby George, the Phogat sisters, Saina Nehwal, Rani Rampaul and so many more!
Rampal.
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27 Oct
October 1947. The instrument of accession had not yet been signed, and thousands of tribal troops had started advancing towards Srinagar. Sardar Patel knew there was little time and turned to the one pilot he knew, Biju Patnaik, to help.
Patel announced the requisition of all civilian passenger planes on All India Radio, and Biju took charge of the operations.
The aircraft came from the No 12 squadron of the Royal Indian Air Force & the likes of Himalayan Aviation, Indian National Airways & many others.
The unit that was to take the first brunt of the attack was the 1st battalion of the Sikh Regiment, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Dewan Ranjit Rai. Stationed at Gurgaon at the time, they immediately assembled at Willingdon airport.
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27 Oct
Something I wrote in 2013. Happy birthday @KumarSanga2.
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Ponting and Lee chatting about Ashes battles over their steak, Kohli catching with his India fielding coach, Trevor Penney, and Adam Gilchrist and Trevor Bayliss exchanging notes on good golf courses. And, of course, Kumar Sangakkara in vintage form.
A couple of hours just flew by while he regaled us with his cricket anecdotes and the the misadventures of his cricket board, guys who made even Suresh Kalmadi look saintly in comparison.
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19 Oct
Nobel Laureate Subrahmanyam Chandrashekhar's 110th birth anniversary today, and a story that tells you exactly what kind of a man he was...
In January 1935, twenty five year old Chandrashekhar first presented his revolutionary theory at the Royal Society outlining a size limit after which stars would collapse into black holes.
The most famous English astrophysicist of the time, Sir Arthur Eddington, some one whom Chandrashekhar actually regarded as a mentor, ripped into and completely ridiculed his theory.
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