Siddhartha Shankar Ray, or, perhaps the last Mohicans of the Congress creed and culture had once said: “Whether in cricket or in life, one does not succeed without a straight bat.” Yes, Siddhartha Shankar Ray had almost always played his innings with a straight bat, be it in the arena of politics, administration, diplomacy, law or in the field of cricket. Ray was always a true blue.
Ray popularly known as Manuda was born in 1920 in an aristocratic family with a parentage of politics. Being the grandson of great barrister-politician Chittaranjan Das, he had started his career as a barrister in the Calcutta high court. Later, helped by former Union minister Ashoke Kumar Sen, he started his political career as a Cabinet minister in Bidhan Chandra Ray’s Cabinet in Bengal. Through the 1960s, he steeply rose in the all Indian level politics in Delhi to became Union Cabinet Minister of Education and Youth Services of the Government of India.
He was at the helm of affairs literally, in Bengal politics, being the chief minister from 1972 to 77 during the Naxal turmoil. Finally, he was also made the Governor of Punjab and that too when the state was passing through its most turbulent days . Ray ended his chequered political career after being the Ambassador of India to United States of America from 1992 to 96.
Ray who had joined school as a seven-year-old in 1926 in the first standard of St Xavier’s (known as an Anglo-Indian school in those days), was withdrawn at the height of the nationalist movement, post 1930 when he was in the sixth standard. “Both my parents were from nationalist families. But I would like to testify that, contrary to the belief of some, the St. Xavier’s auth-orities never harboured anti-nationalist feelings. They were beyond all that,” Ray had once reminisced. “One incident that comes to mind was that I had skipped school the day martyr Jatin Das’ mortal remains were brought to Calcutta, to watch his funeral procession from the first floor balcony of our house. The next day, I had to go the Father Prefect to explain why I had been absent.