CUTTACK: “Ghazion men bu rahegi jab talak iman ki, Tab to London tak chalegi tegh Hindustan ki” (So long as the crusaders are inspired by faith, the Indian sword will continue to sweep up to London).
Soon the immortal verse of the last Moghul emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar that formed the opening of the programmes of Azad Hind Radio established by Netaji Subash Chandra Bose along with other broadcasts including his speeches would be reverberating through the corridors of his birthplace Janakinath Bhawan here.
The ancestral house that has been converted into the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Birthplace Museum is all set to include exclusive galleries on Azad Hind Radio and the National Bank of Azad Hind.
Azad Hind Radio was beamed through Berlin Radio service and went on air for the first time on January 7, 1942. The programmes were transmitted in English, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Pushto, Tamil, Persian and Telugu.
Netaji used the radio to declare war against the British on October 23, 1942.
The museum seeks to recreate the radio station as it was during that time and play the programmes and speeches of Netaji through sound systems in the gallery.
It also has begun work on creating a gallery on the National Bank of Azad Hind established by Netaji, which was an organ of the Provisional Government of Azad Hind. The gallery would have complete settings of a bank with a teller counter, currencies and coins of the Government as well as different forms and papers relating to banking. The bank was opened in Rangoon on April 5, 1944 with an initial capital of Rs 50,000 drawn from voluntary donations, auctions of garlands and deposits from Indian commercial magnates, traders and taxes. The bank also sold postal stamps issued by the Provisional Government. “We would be displaying original stamps of the time,” curator JP Das said.