Chittranjan Das

Chittaranjan Das (C.R.Das) (popularly called Deshbandhu “Friend of the country”) (November 5, 1870 - June 16, 1925) was a Bengali lawyer and a major figure in the Indian independence movement.
Educated in England, his public career began in 1909 when he successfully defended Aurobindo Ghosh on charges of involvement in the previous year’s Alipore bomb case.
He was a leading figure in Bengal during the Non-Cooperation Movement of 1919-1922, and initiated the ban on British clothes, setting an example by burning his own European clothes and wearing Khadi clothes.
He brought out a newspaper called Forward and later changed its name to Liberty to fight the British Raj. When the Calcutta Corporation was formed, he became its first Mayor. He resigned his presidency of the Indian National Congress at the Gaya session after losing a motion on “No Council Entry” to Gandhi’s faction. He then founded the Swaraj Party, with Motilal Nehru, to express his immoderate opinions .
He was a believer of non-violence and constitutional methods for the realisation of national independence, and advocated communal harmony and championed the cause of national education. His legacy was carried forward by his disciples, and notably by Subhash Chandra Bose.
He is generally referred to by the honorific Desh Bandhu meaning “friend of the nation.”
He belonged to the famous Das family of Telirbagh, Bikrampur, Dhaka, now in Bangladesh. He was son of Bhuban Mohan Das, and nephew of the Brahmo social reformer Durga Mohan Das. Amongst his cousins the better known were: Satish Ranjan Das, Sudhi Ranjan Das, Sarala Roy and Lady Abala Bose.
In 1925, Das’s health began to fail and in May he withdrew to a mountain home in Darjeeling, where Mahatma Gandhi visited him. On 16 June 1925, with a severe fever, he died.
The funeral procession in Calcutta was led by Gandhi, who 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.[1]

Legacy

A few years before his death Das gifted his house and the adjoining lands to the Nation to be used for the betterment of the lives of women. Today it is a huge hospital called Chittaranjan Seva Sadan and has gone from being a women’s hospital to one where all specialities are present including the treatment of cancer.