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90-year-old freedom fighter to revisit Czech Bata factory

Sixty-eight years after he first started working in the Bata Shoe factory in then Czechoslovakia, a 90-year-old Indian freedom fighter is set to return to the factory again.

Rameshwar Mukherjee, who is in Canada to visit his son Roman in Ottawa, will revisit the Bata factory in the Czech city of Zlin this November - a trip that will be sponsored by the Toronto-based Batas.

When Thomas Bata learnt of Mukherjee's long association with the Bata house, he invited the nonagenarian to meet both him and Sonia Bata in Toronto. Soon the trip to Zlin materialized.

Mukherjee used to work in the Czech factory when, in 1941, he took a break and left for Berlin to be a part of Subhash Chandra Bose's Azad Hind (Free India) government-in-exile.

He told rediff.com about his association with Netaji, as Bose was popularly known, and the Bata factory, now in the Czech Republic, where he worked between 1933-1946.

Mukherjee first saw Bose in December 1928 during the Indian National Congress session in Calcutta that was presided over by Motilal Nehru.

In 1933, he met Bose again at the Asiatic Students' Conference in Rome. Netaji, on his way to Vienna for treatment, had stopped to attend the conference.

It was at the conference that Bose picked young Mukherjee, who hails from Uttarpara near Calcutta, and told him, "Don't let the West spoil you. You should return to India one day."

When Bose was selecting Indians for his Azad Hind government in Berlin in 1941, he sent a car with a German police escort to bring Mukherjee from Zlin.

Then Bata president conceded to Netaji's request to release Mukherjee, who was a part of the Azad Hind government-in-exile between 1941-1943.

During that period, Mukherjee monitored the world press to keep leaders informed about what was happening in India and elsewhere.

Azad Hind government volunteers in Europe comprised intellectuals, many of them students staying in Germany, Austria and France.

"I and other young Indian men from all over Europe responded to Netaji's call to help in India's freedom struggle and came to work for him," Mukherjee said.

"Though the attitude of the Germans towards Indians was friendly, the (Adolf) Hitler government was plainly racist," said Mukherjee.

He saw Netaji for the last time in 1942 when the latter left Berlin for Japan.

In 1943, Mukherjee returned to Zlin to resume his work at the Bata factory.

The Nazis fell in 1945.

"Suddenly one day, a group of allied army officials came to my house, searched it and seized papers, diaries, photographs," he said.

Roman, who was present at the Toronto meeting with the Batas, said: "The Batas were very magnanimous, very generous and charming in receiving us and talked about the good old days when my father worked in Zlin, where I was born."

Indo-Asian News Service

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