26th May 2016
Rocketgrams are mail delivered by firing crude rockets towards their destinations. Stephen Hector Taylor-Smith, an Indian aerospace engineer, launched the first rocketgram in the 1930s. In the ten-year span of his experiments he made around 270 launches. The first successful livestock dispatch was of a cock and a hen, Adam and Eve, across the Damodar River near Burnpur in West Bengal.
20th April 2016
Back in the nineteenth century, the Brahmo Movement emerged in colonial Bengal. It was a social and religious movement that centred around the institution known as the Brahmo Samaj. The movement was initiated by Raja Rammohan Roy (1772–1833), who is famous in history for his crusade against the age-old practice of Sati. Rammohan established the Brahmo Sabha in 1828 which became the Brahmo Samaj in 1830. The Brahmo Samaj became the mouthpiece of the movement, and through it Rammohan launched a protest against the popular practice of idol worship among the Hindus. The Samaj preached monotheism or belief in one god. The god of the Brahmo Samaj is formless or nirakara and thus, invisible. Rammohan held that centuries of idol worship had degenerated Hinduism and that the Samaj aimed to revive it to its truest form.
18th March 2016
Three sisters-in-law have joined three different political parties. Tapati Kole, Mita Rani Kole and Krishna Rani Kole got married into the same family in the Kamalpur Village of West Midnapore. They contested against each other donning the colours of three ideologically different parties – Tapati (Congress), Mita Rani (Trinamool Congress) and Krishna [CPI(M)]. They eat together, live together and perform household chores together. But out in the campaign field for Panchayat Elections (Rural Polls) 2013 in West Bengal, this well-knit trio of sisters-in-law had gone to out-do each other.
16th March 2016
During the Quit India Movement, a parallel government was established in Tamluk, West Bengal, called the Tamralipta Jatiya Sarkar, an independent government. The Tamralipta Jatiya Sarkar was really active since it set up Police Stations, Military Departments, Courts and even a system for revenue collection. The Government functioned from December 17, 1942 to August 8, 1944. It was dissolved on the explicit directions of Mahatma Gandhi. The chief protagonists were Satish Samanta, Sushil Dhara and Ajoy Mukherjee. The Tamralipta Jatiya Sarkar commemorative stamp depicts Ajoy Mukherjee (who became the Chief Minister of West Bengal thrice) a march to observe Quit India Movement on the 29th September, 1942 and the famous martyr, Matangini Hazra who laid down her life during the march.
