We remember one of the firebrand revolutionary Kalpana Dutta who fought against the British.
Kalpana Dutta was born in 1913 in a middle-class Bengali home in East Bengal, was a student in Calcutta’s Bethune College in 1930 when she came in contact with the group of Chittagong revolu-tionaries whose leader was the great Surya Sen, fondly called ‘Masterda’ by all his disciples.
Soon Kalpana came under the hawk’s eyes of the police and she had to return to Chitta-gong where she was interned at home. But the young revolutionary, in her secretly maintained close links with Surya Sen’s revolutionary group, learnt handling firearms and engaged herself in other revolutionary activity. She would have been in the party of revolutionaries whose famous attack on the Armoury and the European Club touched off the famous Chittagong upsurge, an incident which electrified the entire nation. Kalpana at that time was serving a short prison term. As soon as she was released she went underground and for two years moved with Masterda’s team. When Surya Sen was betrayed by a police informer, Kalpana escaped, and moved into hiding for three months, when she was arrested and brought to trial in what was known as the Chittagong Armoury Raid Supple-mentary Case, in which she was sentenced for life. After the nationwide campaign for the release of the imprisoned Bengal revolutionaries, she came out of prison in 1939.
Like many other Bengal revolutionaries, Kalpana took to Marxism in prison and after her release, joined the banned Communist Party. It was in those days that the present writer met her—a remarkable blend of humility and elegance with unswerving dedication to the cause of the country’s freedom and the uplift of the downtrodden. During the Bengal famine, one saw her totally devoted to organising relief kitchen for the starving and medical relief for the sick in the Chittagong villages.
Meantime she was married to Indian Communist Party Secretary Comrade P C Joshi and shifted to Calcutta where she joined Indian Statistical Institute. She served there till retirement. During our great war of Liberation she worked relentlessly in the refugee camps. In 1972 she toured her free dream Bangladesh at Bangabandhu's invitation. This great revolutionary soul left for eternity on 8 February, 1995. She has written several books on her reminiscence of the Chittagong Armory Raid and related revolutionary activities.
Patriotism of the highest order in Kalpana shall remain a shining memory for all those who knew her.
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