Silence. That was all that could be heard at Hyderi Manzil in Kolkata on Tuesday, even as the country celebrated Independence Day. It was here that Mahatma Gandhi, seeking to douse the flames of Partition in Bengal, had stationed himself exactly 70 years ago.
His presence is marked in the house in the form of a mattress (and on top of it a pillow, bolster and his walking stick), surrounded by three charkhas, three pairs of slippers, a lantern and a tumbler — they are all preserved. Three swords — weapons surrendered to him by rioters — are in a glass case. Photographs of his visit to Noakhali, hit by communal riots, and of his hunger strike in the city, adorn the galleries of the single-storied house.
A plaque says, in Bengali, that the Mahatma came here on August 12, 1947 and left on September 6, 1947. Seventy years later, this historical site, at 150B Suresh Chandra Banerjee Road in north Kolkata, hardly has the kind of visitors one would expect on Independence Day. Neither the State government, nor the Centre, had organised an event; only a few elderly Gandhians were there.
Maya Das, the treasurer of Purba Kolkata Gandhi Smarak Samity, a voluntary organisation comprising those who believe in Gandhian ideals, was the first to arrive. She placed flowers at a portrait of the Mahatma.
More people trickled in, almost all of them in their sixties and seventies. Bulbul Sen, a retired school teacher and joint secretary of the Samity, said without the government’s support, the house languished in obscurity. “The place got some attention when Gopalkrishna Gandhi [a grandson of Mahatma Gandhi] was the Governor [of West Bengal]. After his tenure, all activities came to a halt. A few years ago we were discussing with the State tourism department on placing it on the list of prominent tourist sites, but nothing happened,” Ms. Sen said.
Amidst the blaring of loudspeakers outside Ashok Naskar and Asit Kumar Sen both vice presidents of the samity talked about how in the present political context the Gandhian way has become more relevant. They however lament that there are not many takers for the ideology of the Father of the Nation, particularly among the youth. The register of the visitors coming to the place has not kept a proper count of people visiting the place in 2017 but it appears that the number has not crossed to even 500.
Of late a number of activities have come to a halt here as differences have cropped up between the members of the samity and PWD department.
“We had got 10 mechanised charkhas and the finished product was also to be procured by the State Khadi Development Board but owing to small issues the PWD has kept all the 10 chakrkas under lock in one of the stores,” one of key functionaries of the samity said.
Mr. Gopalkrishna Gandhi described it as “a monument to the freedom struggle’s commitment to India’s composite culture”. The site “ranks next only to the house on Tees Janvari Marg in New Delhi for the power of its historical magnetism. Its preservation...is a duty we owe to our future as a plural society,” he told The Hindu in an email.
Mr. Gandhi recalled that on the 60th anniversary on Independence, former Chief Minister of West Bengal and legendary Marxist leader Jyoti Basu came to the house which had just been restored and equipped with audiovisual materials pertaining to its history, and spoke movingly of his having met Gandhiji there in 1947.
On the problems faced by the heritage building, Mr. Gandhi said he was “confident that the building’s compelling spirit will overcome any mundane difficulty that it may face.”
