The Quit India Movement as well as the revolutionary movement of colonial India continue to remain embroiled in debates, and, in more recent years, in controversy as well. While in the past, the revolutionary movement was relegated to the margins of the ‘Independence’ movement and seen more as a heroic yet failed enterprise, in the last decade or so, it has become an integral part of a hardened, performative, nationalist repertoire. The word ‘revolutionary’ continues to inspire a strong emotional connection.

Yet this emotional connection is itself varied, diverse and sometimes very complexly interwoven with one another. On the one hand, there is a kind of emotional connection between revolutionaries, their contribution to the anti-colonial movement and the civil society of India today that we get to witness when we visit the world of heritage, especially museums. In this context, I would like to take the reader through a brief journey that I took on a recent visit to two such important museums in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), in West Bengal. The first is the Alipore Central Jail, which has now almost entirely been converted into a museum. The second is the Special Branch Archives in north Kolkata, which used to also be the home of the Kolkata Police Museum.