ROTARY INTERNATIONAL

ROTARY CLUBS

    Rotary International is an organization of service clubs known as Rotary Clubs located all over the world. The stated purpose of the organization is to bring together business and professional leaders to provide humanitarian service, encourage high ethical standards in all vocations, and help build goodwill and peace in the world. It is a secular association opens to all persons regardless of race, color, creed, gender, or political preference. There are 33,976 clubs and over 1.22 million members’ worldwide. The members of Rotary Clubs are known as Rotarians. Members usually meet weekly for breakfast, lunch or dinner, which is a social event as well as an opportunity to organize work on their service goals.

      CALCUTTA was the home town for the first Rotary club in the mainland of Asia. R.J. Combes, the manager of a steel products company while on a business trip to U.S.A. was so impressed by the "Friendship, fellowship, and service" aspects of the movement called Rotary that he wanted to introduce the idea to his friends in Calcutta also. There was no difficulty for him to convince enough people and convene the first meeting on 26 September, 1919. The new club was chartered just after three months of the first meeting, on the new year day of 1920 to be exact. All the twenty charter members were non-Indians. The first Indian member was S.C.Rudra who was inducted in 1921. In 1921 itself Sir Surendranath Banerjee was made an honorary member. The first Indian to become the club secretary was Nitish. C. Laharry (1926) who climbed all steps to reach Rotary's top slot viz. R.I. president ship in 1962-'63. A.FM.Abdul Ali was the first Indian to adorn the collar of a club president.

                                                       Prof. John Kurakar