  Classes started in the newly established Physics Department of Calcutta
University Science College in 1916. Raman, Bose and Saha were three young
members of the small physics faculty consisting of barely half a dozen faculty
members. Within about one decade, three extraordinary discoveries came from
these young men---Saha ionization equation in 1920, Bose statistics in 1924,
Raman effect in 1928. However, fortunes of Calcutta University quickly got
intertwined with India's freedom struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi exactly at the
same time and the physics group got tragically disrupted. Indian physics never
succeeded in reaching that height again. This paper discusses the difficulties
in reconstructing a critical history of this Calcutta school of physics during
the very short epoch of unmatched brilliance.
