The first Indian Mayor

CALCUTTA has become the first city in India whose Corporation’s President now bears the name of Mayor. This change in the designation of the office is due to the new Municipal Act, for the framing and successful passage of which the credit belongs in no small measure to Sir Surendranath Banerjea, and which has given the Calcutta Corporation a fairly democratic Constitution. Before this Act had been passed, the President of the Corporation had always been a nominee of the Government and until Sir Surendranath had made the bold departure of appointing Mr Surendranath Malik, first as officiating and then as permanent Chairman, the office had always been held by a European official. The large powers which this official enjoyed, no less than the glamour which naturally belonged to the highest civic office in what until a decade ago had been the metropolis of India, had the “most brilliant of Indian Viceroys” declare publicly, though obviously half-humorously, that if he had not been Viceroy he would have liked to be the occupant of this office. There is a singular appropriateness in the fact that as soon as the Constitution of the Corporation is democratised and the office of its Chairman thrown open to election, its destinies should not only cease to be controlled by an official or European, but should be entrusted to the first non-official citizen of Calcutta, the undoubted leader and representative of the large majority of the people of Calcutta. It is their sense of his appropriateness which must have made the members of the Corporation receive the result of the voting with “a tremendous outburst of cheering”.