On this day the poet Rabindranath Tagore laid the foundation stone of Mahajati Sadan, an auditorium that was conceptualised by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose as part of the infrastructure he wanted for Bengal Provincial (Pradesh) Congress.
Kolkata Corporation agreed to lease him land on Central Avenue. Tagore called the auditorium “House of the Nation”.
ADVERTISEMENT
By this time, Bose’s relationship with the Congress party was already strained. He had resigned as Congress President on April 29, 1939.
Bose would escape to Europe famously in 1941.
The work of Mahajati Sadan remained incomplete.
After Independence, Bengal chief minister Bidhan Chandra Roy took it up and enacted Mahajati Sadan Act 1949 to complete the construction.