Dreams of Youth 53took charge as general secretary of the Bengal provincial Congress
committee, a post in which he showed great or ga ni za tional skill.
An amended Calcutta municipal act of 1923 laid the basis for elec-
tions to the Calcutta Corporation, the city government: as of March
1924, it broadened the electorate and strengthened the mandate for
elected representatives. The Swarajists decided to field candidates in the
elections, in an attempt to take over India’s largest municipality, and
they succeeded in winning a comfortable majority. Deshbandhu Chit-
taranjan Das was elected mayor of Calcutta, while Husain Shaheed
Suhrawardy, a promising young Muslim politician, became the deputy
mayor. Sarat Chandra Bose was elected an alderman, and Das ap-
pointed the twenty- seven- year- old Subhas as the chief executive of fi cer
of the municipal administration. Initially hesitant to accept this role,
Subhas obeyed his leader’s instructions after deciding to donate half his
salary to charity.
He took to his work with the earnestness which was by now his hall-
mark. He paid particular attention to education and health, setting up
free primary schools across the city and health associations in ev ery
ward. He made careful plans for an informative weekly paper called the
Calcutta Municipal Gazette, which made its first appearance later in the
year. He took an active interest in developing infrastructure—water
supply, lighting, roads—and in administering municipal affairs. Subhas
was intent on proving that Indians were more than capable of running
their own government. He was not sat is fied with the mere symbolism
of his of fice: hosting civic receptions for visiting nationalist leaders,
instead of British viceroys and governors.
More sig nifi cant than the nationalist victory in Calcutta was the
Hindu- Muslim unity that underpinned the triumph. Though Muslims
formed slightly more than 50 percent of the population of Bengal, they
lagged behind Hindus in access and opportunity in education, the pro-
fessions, and government ser vices. C. R. Das was determined to rectify
this imbalance: he proposed a pact between Hindus and Muslims for
an equitable sharing of power and positions acquired by nationalists
from the British. He failed to get his pact accepted by the Indian Na-
tional Congress at its annual session at Cocanada in December 1923,
but the proposal was adopted at the Bengal provincial conference at