Kolkata: In a 2017 report, the heritage commission said it found no proof that Michael Madhusudan Dutt lived at 20B, Karl Marx Sarani. It said given Dutt was revered in Bengal, a “statue of the poet along with a plaque citing his life history” could be built on the premises.
The HC asked KMC to re-examine the issue but the civic body stuck to its stand. A KMC heritage committee meeting in Aug 2018 cited newspaper articles and books to support its claim.In 1928, Manmatha Ghosh wrote about the poet spending a part of his life in the house in a magazine, ‘Manasi o Marmabani’. In 1950, Nagendranath Som mentioned the same in an article in ‘Bharatbarsha’ magazine. Both articles found mention in two books by Gurudas Chattopadhyay, ‘Rangalal’ and ‘Madhusmriti’. A third book, ‘Ramtanu Lahiri O Tatkalin Banga Samaj’, written by Shibnath Shastri, also mentioned the articles. The fourth “evidence” was Wikipedia.
Lawyer Srijib Chakraborty, who extensively argued in this case, said, “The legal battle also involved the point who has the final word on matters relating to heritage — the heritage commission or KMC’s heritage committee.”
Justice Rai Chattopadhyay said Wikipedia being open ended and editable is unreliable as evidence. “The bibliography regarding the data on which the writers might have elaborated about the fact of the poet residing at the relevant point of time, in the said premises, is not available. Thus, the information available from the said books cannot be accepted to be a result of research-oriented fact-finding works,” she said.
Judge Chattopadhyay also referred to the fact that KMC itself did not have any document on the property prior to 1875. Dutt, by all accounts, had died in 1873. The HC held that KMC’s decision “declaring the concerned premises as a heritage building cannot be sustained, being baseless and illegal. It is an unreasonable exercise of power, and arbitrary.”