The void left by CR Das’ death

MANY are the great Indians who have been gathered to their fathers during the last 40 years, some of them at least as distinguished in their time, as richly endowed by nature with the gifts that make great leaders of men, and with a longer and even more glorious record of public services to their credit than the eminent man (CR Das) who has just quitted the scene of his activities, but we cannot recall a single instance in which the passing away of any of these great men created the sense of void that fills the mind of every patriotic Indian, and more particularly every patriotic Bengalee, at the present time. G Subramania Iyer, Ananda Charlu, WC Bonnerjee, Ananda Mohan Bose, Rash Behari Ghosh, Syed Ahmed, Ajodhya Nath and Dyal Singh Majithia — to confine our attention only to political or semi-political workers — were all conspicuous figures. Some of them filled an even larger space in the minds of their contemporaries and filled it for a much longer time than Das could possibly be said to have done. Nor can it be denied that several of them far surpassed him both in the range of their activities and in the originality and permanence of their contribution to nation-building in India and to India’s national self-realisation. But of not one of them can it be said that he left behind him that sense of void, bordering almost on despair, which is uppermost in the mind of every patriotic Indian as he contemplates the cruel and irreparable loss which has been inflicted directly on Bengal and indirectly on India as a whole by the death of Das.