Talking to The Indian Express ahead of the Independence Day, Bhattacharya — the President of the Bengal Chapter of the All India Freedom Fighters’ Organisation — rued that many freedom fighters are suffering untold misery today. The families of those who died do not receive the government pension due to lack of documentation. Members of the association save from their monthly pension to help them.

But the contribution of the ones like him who lived to receive the prize is nothing, he says. “If we really did something, why are we alive? Those who really contributed have been hanged or lost their lives to British bullets,” says Bhattacharya, who was 21-year-old when he went to jail for the first time during the Quit India movement. “I was arrested while in hiding and had to give my BA Examination from jail.”

He has more respect for Jayprakash Narayan and Subhash Chandra Bose than Gandhiji. “Though we worked together, at some level we hated the Congress because they were against Purna Swaraj for long,” says Bhattacharya, who joined the Maimansingh branch of the Indian Republican Army in 1928 and was a part of the gang which conspired to murder Colonel Graham. “We tried five times but missed, my colleagues Sashindranath Chakrobarty and Bhupesh Dutta lost their lives.” India fills the imagination of Bhattacharya, who has no sympathy for the underground red rebels of today. “I would have committed suicide before uttering ‘China’s Chairman is our Chairman’. Yes, today people are agitated. They have been duped by a government, but this is not the way to protest,” says the 90-year-old, who still keeps up with the news of the day.