The Bengal government has sanctioned Rs 2 crore for developing uniforms for the “Jai Hind Bahini”, a dedicated student cadet corps where participants will be “empowered to resist such social evils as caste and religious intolerance and gender inequality”.
The government has allocated funds for items like white shirts and blue pants, blazers, badges, caps and other accessories so the uniforms can be produced ahead of Independence day, which will also mark the Raising Day of the Bahini.
The uniforms, to be supplied by the West Bengal State Handloom Weavers Cooperative Society Ltd, will be given to 4,000 students in secondary and higher secondary classes in government and government-aided schools.
The cadets will hold marches on August 15 to “create awareness against discrimination on the basis of gender, caste or religion”.
The Telegraph had reported last August that the school education department had decided to constitute the Bahini.
The students will be provided with a shirt and trouser, blazer, physical training dress, shoes and socks, necktie, sash, wrist band, badge and caps.
The design of the logo and badge on the cap and uniforms have been shared with the weaver’s cooperative society, said an official of the department. “We have asked them to produce the uniforms at the earliest,” said the official.
The government intends to raise four battalions of the Jai Hind Bahini modelled after the National Cadet Corps (NCC).
Chief minister Mamata Banerjee had announced the formation of the Bahini in February 2022 in commemoration of the 125th birth anniversary of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. The Bahini will “uphold the ideal of patriotic service to the nation that was exemplified by Netaji”, say the guidelines.
Sugata Bose, Harvard University professor of Oceanic History, who is the grand-nephew of Subhas Chandra Bose, said: “The values of equal rights of all communities, castes and gender should be instilled in our younger generation. Netaji’s Azad Hind Fauj was the most shining example of those values. So, I hope that whatever effort is underway, will be true to that glorious history."
“We should not focus on the military heroism of Netaji or INA, but the fact that they stood for absolute equality among Hindus and Muslims, Punjabis and Tamils, men and women."
He added: “At a time when the right-wing forces focus only on Netaj’s military heroism shorn of actual values of equality, creating Jai Hind Bahini to instil values of equal rights of all communities has an added significance."