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Netaji's home gets its due at last

Netaji's home gets its due at last

Author: Statesman News Service
Publication: The Statesman
Date: January 23, 2003

The stage is set for converting Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's birthplace, Janakinath Bhavan, into a museum with the shifting of the maternity home functioning there for nearly 50 years. The chief minister will inaugurate a building to house the maternity home tomorrow on the occasion of Netaji's 106th birth anniversary.

With the shifting of the maternity home, the Netaji Birthplace Museum Trust will formally take over control of the more than 125-year-old mansion from the Netaji Seva Sadan Trust Board. The Centre had sanctioned Rs 1.5 crore for the purpose and half of the amount has been given to the Museum Trust.

The chief minister is the ex-officio president, the state culture minister is the ex-officio vice-president and the superintendent of the state archaeology department is the ex-officio secretary of the Trust. It has 10 other members including representatives from the departments of culture, tourism and finance at the Centre and local MPs and MLAs. As part of the museum project, efforts are on to prepare a masterplan with the assistance of Intach and the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, and landscaping with the help of local experts.

The Trust had also sought the expertise of Indian Conservation Institute and Orissa Art Conservation Centre for chemical treatment of the existing artefacts connected with Netaji's family. An archive on Netaji also forms part of the memorial project.

The Trust had initiated the process for collecting documents connected with Netaji's life from the National Archives and other archives on Netaji in different parts of the country.

The renovation work had been handed over to the state archaeology department and the work would be completed within three years in three phases.

The ancestral house of Netaji had been lying in a dilapidated condition for decades before the decision was taken to turn it into a memorial. Netaji's father Janakinath Bose had migrated to Cuttack in 1885 and taken up the profession of a lawyer.

Later as one of the most successful men at the Cuttack Bar, he had received the two-storeyed house with 23 rooms at Oriya Bazar area of the city as his fees from the mahanta of Deogiri.

Netaji had spent the first 16 years of his life in this house before he went to Kolkata to join the Presidency college. His aunt Bibhabati Bose had handed over the land along with the building to the state government in 1954. Subsequently, Netaji Seva Sadan Trust Board with the Orissa chief minister as ex-officio president was handed over the building to function as a maternity home.
 


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