Alipore museum kolkata

By Suryagni Roy: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, inaugurated the Alipore Jail museum on Wednesday. While inaugurating the museum in Kolkata, she stated that there's a need for future generations to know about history, especially the contribution of freedom fighters in India's freedom struggle. She alleged that a concept is being pushed to change the history of the country for a 'political purpose'. "Why is the new concept coming? What is the concept? To Change the real world? To change the history and geography for a political purpose" said the West Bengal CM. She further stated that this is being done so that future generations won't come to know of India's history and there's an urgent need to preserve it. ALIPORE JAIL TURNS MUSEUM The 116-year-old Alipore jail has been turned into a museum and was inaugurated by CM Mamata Banerjee on September 21. The museum is now open to the general public at an entry fee of Rs 30. The light and sound show inside the museum will cost around Rs 100. The visitors will also get to see many historical attractions, such as cells in which Jawarharlal Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose and other freedom fighters were kept during British rule, libraries and more.

KOLKATA: The state's much awaited Alipore Independence museum project is nearing completion and will be open to public soon. Hidco, which is developing the museum, is engaging an event management agency for organizing the opening ceremony of the museum. "An event management agency will be kept ready to open the museum once the dates are finalised," said a Hidco official. Hidco officials said the main attractions at the museum will be a Netaji exhibition hall, the light-and-sound show with seating gallery, decorative lighting inside cells and a landscape lighting decoration behind the watch tower. There will also besome book shops and cafes in the building.

…K ato biplobi bondhur rokte ranga/ Bondi shalar oi shekol bhanga/ Tara ki phiribe aaj su-probhate/ Jato torun arun gyachhe ostacholay/ Muktiro mondiro sopano tolay/ Kato pran holo bolidan/ Lekha ache ashrujoley… (The shackles in the prison cells are stained and broken with the blood of freedom fighters/ On this glorious morn/ Will they, the ones who have faded with the sunset, ever return/ The annals of those who sacrificed their lives on the altar of freedom/ Are written with tears) This popular patriotic song was penned by famous lyricist Mohini Chowdhury and sings paeans about the revolutionaries who laid down their lives for their motherland, suffering inhuman torture in prisons in the hands of the British. Some of those prisons no longer exist, a few are on the brink of atrophy, a handful continue to stand tall. Kolkata’s Alipore Jail was one such iconic detention camp that harboured revolutionaries during British regime. Built in 1906, the 21-feet paneled rust-colored penitentiary on the banks of Adi Ganga has witnessed a great deal of history in the making and has become an inseparable part of that history. Freedom fighters including Sri Aurobindo Ghosh, Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, Jawaharlal Nehru, Bidhan Chandra Roy– were all inmates here at some point or the other part of their lives as political workers who opposed British rule and demanded freedom for the country. Also read : Alipore prison inmates make Kali idols Jails from the B...

The museum at Alipore Jail. Pictures by Bishwarup Dutta From a single-accommodation cell inside the Alipore Jail Subhas Chandra Bose contested and won Kolkata’s mayoral election in 1930. It was here that Bose had also cooked for his mentor Chittaranjan Das when both were imprisoned at the same time. A young Indira Gandhi visited her father, incarcerated in a cell in the Alipore Jail. The cells and the buildings where Bose, Nehru and Das stayed were never used to keep other inmates post-Independence and were preserved as relics of history. Their places of confinement, however, remained closed to common people. That is going to change when a museum that has been created inside the former Alipore Jail opens doors. The jail shut down in 2019 and the inmates were shifted to Baruipur. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee is likely to throw open the museum soon. “The work of restoration in a portion that will be opened is almost done. We have sought a date from the chief minister for the opening,” said a senior member of the Bengal government. Spread over 15.5 acres, the Alipore Jail premises has 35 buildings. Partha Ranjan Das, the architect who is leading the conservation work, said five buildings have been restored so far and the museum will start its journey from the restored buildings. The doors to the cells where Bose, Nehru and C.R. Das were interned and a central watch tower will be open to the public, said Das. “We have done bare minimum restoration of these cells because the ...