Prafulla Chandra Sen

Prafulla Chandra Sen (1897-1990) was a Bengali Indian politician and freedom fighter. He was the Chief Minister of West Bengal during the period 1961-1967.

Background

He was born in Senhati village in Khulna district, in undivided Bengal in 1897. Due to his father's transferable service, he spent his childhood in Bihar province in eastern India. He passed his matriculation examination from the R. Mitra Institute in Deoghar in Bihar. After that, he studied science at the Scottish Church College in Calcutta and graduated from that institution. After that, he joined an accountants' firm and was preparing to leave for England to be apprenticed as an Articled Clerk, when he came across Mahatma Gandhi's soul-stirring speech at the Calcutta session of the Congress Party in 1920.

Sen was extremely influenced by Gandhi's speech and after that, he abandoned all plans of studying abroad and rallied to the Mahatma's nationwide call for a mass Non-cooperation movement against the British. Later, almost immediately, in 1923, Sen shifted to the remote area of Arambagh in the Hooghly district, which became his laboratory for Gandhian experiments in Swadeshi and Satyagraha.

Political career

During the Raj

Sen plunged headlong into the freedom struggle. He was one of the staunchest supporters of the Indian National Congress Party, and led the freedom struggle against the British. He was a die-hard nationalist and was committed to Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of grass-root democracy and a self-reliant rural economy. So pervasive was Gandhi's influence on Sen, that in the 1920s, he shifted his area of social and political activity to Arambagh, an under-developed and malaria-infested area of West Bengal and worked ceaselessly for its upliftment. For his efforts, Sen earned the sobriquet "Gandhi of Arambagh".

Sen threw himself into the freedom struggle and spent over 10 years in various jails between 1930 and 1942 for anti-British activities. During that time period, the Congress Party office at Serampore was his home and he earned virtually nothing, simply possessing one home-spun dhoti (sarong) and kurta. In the partial exercise of democracy permitted by the British in the 1940s, Sen was elected to the Bengal Assembly in 1946.

After Independence

In 1948, he was inducted by the then Chief Minister Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy into the West Bengal Cabinet as Minister for Food. This was a portfolio he held until 1967. He also functioned as Roy's deputy and was acknowledged as his political heir.

After Dr. Roy's death in 1961, Sen became West Bengal's third Chief Minister. Three years later, his regime faced a drastic food shortage in the state following countrywide drought. At a Food Ministers' conference in Delhi, Sen advocated introducing the politically unsound measure of food rationing in urban areas. Within months, he had introduced food-grain rationing in the state, a system which has continued with minor modifications to this date.

To build food stocks, he imposed a heavy levy on rice mills. In the process he alienated the business community. Shortages of essentials led to anti-Congress Party strikes. This was followed by violence and police excesses which further isolated Sen's government. In 1967, the Congress lost the West Bengal election to the Marxists with Sen losing his Arambagh seat in the West Bengal Legislative Assembly as well.

After this setback, Sen, although re-elected to the West Bengal Assembly, never recovered high political office. In the 1980s he fruitlessly espoused the cause of party-less democracy and although he had left the Congress (I), having little sympathy for its leaders, came around to publicly supporting the party at public forums.

His political legacy

He was strongly opposed to the Marxists. He helped to transform the Congress Party in Bengal from an anti-imperialist unit into one capable of winning elections and capable governance. When the Indian National Congress was split in the 1960s by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, its more powerful faction took the name of its benefactor and was called the Congress(I), whilst the other less powerful faction, and the one that Sen joined was called the Congress(O). By the 1980s the latter had virtually disappeared. Although disillusioned with the state of the Congress(I) Party later, he remained an optimist to the end. One of his last acts a fortnight before he died was to participate, sitting in a wheelchair, in a Congress(I) sponsored march in Calcutta, to protest against the state's CPI(M)-led government.

A tireless Gandhian

To his last, he remained a bachelor with an undemanding lifestyle. He passionately championed the upliftment of village industry including home-spun cloth or khadi. For most of his later life, Sen wore only khadi and a week before he died, sold khadi from a newly-opened shop to inaugurate its sale.

He passed away in Calcutta on September 25, 1990.

According to the The Independent dated September 28, 1990, Sen was

Primary Source

Obituary in The Independent (London) dated September 28, 1990.