Suburban Reading Club: You’re never alone with a library of rare books and periodicals

Here are some excerpts from the rare copy of Souvenir number of the then Calcutta Municipal Corporation published in the year 1935.

“A little over eleven years ago Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das, at the head of a group of men, renowned alike for their unprecedented cohesion and iron discipline, undertook the direction of civic affairs as the first Mayor of Calcutta. During the inaugural ceremony he outlined a policy and a programme, which his followers were pledged to follow, and which they have ever set before them as the ideal to be achieved. This policy and programme, which was Deshabandhu’s civic testament, bear in every single detail the impress of his own character and personality. The service of the poor and lowly, which was his watch-word in life; his heart-strings and theirs were ever tuned to unison, and naturally the programme he outlined kept in its forefront the down trodden and the depressed.”

In the inaugural address as first Mayor of Calcutta (1924-25) Deshabandhu said,

“It is the great ideal of the Indian people that they regard the poor as Daridra Narayan. To them, God comes in the shape of the poor, and the service of the poor is the service of God to the Indian mind. I shall therefore try to direct your activities to the service of the poor, and you will have seen that in the programme which I have drawn up most of the items deal with the poor--- Housing of the poor, Free Primary Education, and free Medical Relief. These are blessings for the poor, and if the corporation succeeds, even to a very limited extent, in this work it will have justified itself.”