Keepers of History

The Mukherjees from the Hooghly district of West Bengal have been the caretakers of the Jallianwala Bagh National Memorial Trust since its inception in 1961 and for the current generation of the family, it is both home and residence. Their tryst with Punjab began in 1910 when Sashti Charan Mukherjee, a homeopath practicing in Allahabad organized a Congress session in Amritsar at Madan Mohan Malviya’s behest. Having survived the shower of bullets on 13^th of April at the Bagh, Sashti Charan was determined to procure the land for development of a trust as homage to the martyrs. Despite being arrested by the British for possessing the land deed as they wished to erase the episode from public memory and construct a cloth market at the site, Sashti Charan remained resolute. Earlier through a nationwide appeal for funds by Gandhi, a trust had been set up for the cause with Malviya as president and Sashti Charan as secretary. The family’s earnest efforts and sense of responsibility helped them protect the Trust even during the dark days of militancy in the 1980s when despite threat they refused to abandon the site and continued as sentinels.