The late CR Das

THE unexpected and entirely untimely death of CR Das not only removes the most striking and forceful personality from the public life of Bengal, and one who at the time of his death was, next to Mahatma Gandhi, undoubtedly the foremost public man in the whole of India, but illustrates in the most impressive manner possible the truth of Burke’s famous saying on a memorable occasion, “What shadows we are, what shadows we pursue.” If any man could humanly speaking be said to be indispensable to his country at any time, Das was undoubtedly indispensable to this country at the present time. The accredited leader of the foremost of India’s political parties, he was the one man in whom, more than in any other, the hopes of all that was best and sanest in political India were centred, the one man who along with the Mahatma, and assisted by able and almost equally distinguished colleagues, was universally looked up to for leading the bark of the national movement safely to the haven of Swaraj. Not only so, by his latest gesture, Das had won the golden opinion even of those who differed most from him, including not a few Anglo-Indians wielding tremendous influence in their community. So far as the government is concerned, it is a matter of common knowledge that not only the Governor of Bengal and the Viceroy but two successive Secretaries of State had looked upon him not only as a foreman worthy of their steel, but as the man who more than any other had to be reckoned with by all those who had anything to do with the governance of India.