CALCUTTA, Aug 6: Seventy years ago, here lived one of India's finest brains who conquered `kala-azar', the dreaded disease which killed millions. From tomorrow Congress president Sitaram Kesri will stay in the same bungalow, politicking with colleagues during the Congress plenary session.

In the golden jubilee of India's independence, an ace politician will take the place of a doctor who hardly had any interest in politics. No better irony could have been planned by the country's oldest political party.

Brahmachari House, where Kesri will stay, belonged to Sir Upendra Nath Brahmachari, who discovered the antidote to kala-azar, also called black fever. In this age, it's like discovering a cure for AIDS. The doctor was never a freedom fighter as the Congress has claimed. On the contrary, Brahmachari spent his time in dingy laboratories while others were out in the streets fighting the British.

It was pure convenience and not any sense of history that led to Kesri's choice of this bungalow. On Loudon Street, renamed as the Dr U N Brahmachari Street, the house is massive, centrally located and can easily accommodate the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting tomorrow after Kesri's arrival.And a desperate race is on to get the bungalow ready for Kesri. Twenty-odd men are peeling the grime off the walls as Sir Brahmachari's bust looks on. Two new telephone lines are in place and brand new air-conditioners, furniture, mattresses and microphones have been rented out for the big occasion.

The doctor probably never dreamt that his house would one day face this. His biggest achievement was discovering `urea stibamine' in 1921, a powerful antidote to kala-azar. Eight years later, Dr Brahmachari spoke about his work in his presidential address to the Asiatic Society of Bengal: ``I recall with joy that memorable night in the Calcutta Campbell Hospital at Sealdah where after a very hard day's work I found at 10 pm, in a little room with a smokey, dimly-burning lantern, that the results of my experiments were upto my expectations.

``But I did not know then that providence had put into my hands a wondrous thing and that this little thing would save the lives of millions of my fellow men. I shall never forget that room where urea stibamine was discovered. The room where I had to labour for months without a gas point or a water tap and where I had to remain content with an old kerosene lamp for my work at night.

The room still remains but the signs of a laboratory in it have completely disappeared. To me it will ever remain a place of pilgrimage where the first light of urea stibamine dawned upon my mind.''

Dr Brahmachari was knighted in 1934 for his invaluable discovery. He died on February 6, 1946.

It is mystifying, therefore, to see the Congress calling the doctor a freedom fighter when his contributions, no less important, were in the field of medicine. The Congress is paying for the renovation but with no clue about the owner's history. Dr Brahmachari's faded nameplate has been untouched like his bust in the front of the house. According to the doctor's family, he had no known connections with the Congress nor was he keen to build any.

Kesri is not scheduled to pay his respects to Dr Brahmachari; in all probability he hasn't even been told of the doctor's fame. It is as a freedom fighter and, by implication, a Congressman that the party sees Sir Brahmachari. Not exactly a wise way to start what is being billed as a vital plenary session, one where the party's fading future will be discussed.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.