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Barindra Kumar Ghosh [Barindra Ghosh] [Barin Ghosh]
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 6/3/20

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Barindra Kumar Ghosh
বারীন্দ্র কুমার ঘোষ
Born: 5 January 1880
Died: 18 April 1959 (aged 79), Kolkata, India
Nationality: India
Occupation: Revolutionary, Journalist
Parent(s): Dr. Krishnadhan Ghosh, Swarnalata Debi

Barindra Kumar Ghosh or Barindra Ghosh, or, popularly, Barin Ghosh (5 January 1880 – 18 April 1959) was an Indian revolutionary and journalist. He was one of the founding members of Jugantar, a revolutionary outfit in Bengal. Barindra Ghosh was a younger brother of Sri Aurobindo.

Early life

Barindra Ghosh was born at Croydon, near London on 5 January 1880. His father, Dr. Krishnadhan Ghosh, was a physician and district surgeon. His mother Swarnalata was the daughter of the Brahmo religious and social reformer, scholar Rajnarayan Basu. Revolutionary and a spiritualist in later life, Aurobindo Ghosh was Barindranath's third elder brother. His second elder brother, Manmohan Ghose, was a scholar of English literature, a poet and professor of English at Presidency College, Calcutta and at Dhaka University. He also had an elder sister named Sarojini Ghosh.

Barindranath attended school in Deoghar, and after passing the entrance examination in 1901, joined Patna College. He received military training in Baroda. During this time, (late 19th century – early 20th century) Barin was influenced by Aurobindo and drawn towards the revolutionary movement.

Revolutionary activities

Main article: Anushilan samiti

Barin came back to Kolkata in 1902 and started organising several revolutionary groups in Bengal with the help of Jatindranath Mukherjee [Bagha Jatin]. In 1906, he started publishing Jugantar, a Bengali weekly and a revolutionary organization named Jugantar soon followed. Jugantar was formed from the inner circle of Anushilan Samiti and it started preparation for armed militancy activities to oust British from Indian soil.

Barin and Jatindranath Mukherjee, alias Bagha Jatin, were instrumental in the recruitment of many young revolutionaries from across Bengal. The revolutionaries formed the Maniktala group in Maniktala, Kolkata. It was a secret place where they started manufacturing bombs and collected arms and ammunition.

Following the attempted killing of Kingsford by two revolutionaries Khudiram and Prafulla on 30 April 1908, the police intensified its investigation which led to the arrest of Barin and Aurobindo Ghosh [Sri Aurobindo] on 2 May 1908, along with many of his comrades.

Prafulla [Chandra Chaki] and Khudiram Bose tried to assassinate the District Judge, Mr. Kingsford by throwing bombs at the carriage in which Kingsford was supposed to travel, but he was not in the carriage, and two British women were killed instead. Prafulla committed suicide when he was about to be arrested by the Police. Khudiram was arrested and tried for the murder of the two women and sentenced to death. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi did not approve this violence and regretted the deaths of two women. He stated "that the Indian people will not win there freedom through these methods". However, Bal Gangadhar Tilak in his newspaper Kesari, defended the two young men and called for immediate swaraj. This was followed by the immediate arrest of Tilak by the British colonial government on charges of sedition....

Barin Ghosh [younger brother of Sri Aurobindo] brought Prafulla to Kolkata and he was enlisted in the Jugantar party. His first assignment was to kill Sir Joseph Bampfylde Fuller (1854-1935), the first Lieutenant Governor of the new province of Eastern Bengal and Assam. However, the plan did not materialize.

Sir Joseph Bampfylde Fuller KCSI CIE (20 March 1854 – 29 November 1935) was a British inventor, writer and first Lieutenant Governor of the new province of Eastern Bengal and Assam, knighted for his service in India.

Fuller studied at Marlborough College. In 1885, he began his Indian Civil Service career as the Commissioner of Settlements and Agriculture of Central Provinces. He became an Additional member of the Viceroy's Council in 1899. He served as Secretary to Government of India during the period 1901–02. He then served as Chief Commissioner of Assam during 1902–05.

Fuller held office as Lieutenant Governor of Eastern Bengal and Assam from 16 October 1905 until he resigned on 20 August 1906 to Lord Minto over the (British) Government of India's refusal to support reprisals against school agitators in Sirajganj.

Fuller initiated the building of the Governor's residence in Dhaka, which became Old High Court Building, Dhaka. "Fuller Road", an important road at the heart of the University of Dhaka is named after him.

Fuller invented an anti-gas alarm widely used during World War I.

-- Bampfylde Fuller, by Wikipedia


Next, Prafulla, along with Khudiram Bose was chosen for the assassination of Kingsford, the magistrate of Muzaffarpur, Bihar. Kingsford, during his previous tenure as the Chief Presidency Magistrate of Calcutta, was unpopular for passing harsh and cruel sentences on young political workers of Bengal. He was also noted for inflicting corporal punishments on such workers. This led to the planning of his murder, and Chaki and Bose were selected and sent to Muzaffarpur to execute this task. Prafulla took the fake name of 'Dinesh Chandra Roy' in this operation.

Khudiram and Prafulla watched the usual movements of Kingsford and prepared a plan to kill him. In the evening of 30 April 1908, the duo waited in front of the gate of European Club for the carriage of Kingsford to come. When a vehicle came out of the gate, a bomb was thrown into the carriage. There was a mistake of identification by them, as the vehicle was not carrying Kingsford, but the wife and daughter of Mr Pringle Kennedy, a leading pleader of Muzaffarpur Bar. The daughter died soon, and his wife succumbed to her injuries. The revolutionaries fled.


-- Prafulla Chaki [Dinesh Chandra Roy], by Wikipedia


The trial (known as the Alipore Bomb Case) initially sentenced Barin Ghosh and Ullaskar Datta to death. However, the sentence was reduced to life imprisonment, by Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das and Barin was deported to the Cellular Jail in Andaman in 1909 along with other convicts.

In 1789, the Bengal Presidency established a naval base and penal colony on Chatham Island in the southeast bay of Great Andaman. The settlement is now known as Port Blair (after the Bombay Marine lieutenant Archibald Blair who founded it). After two years, the colony was moved to the northeast part of Great Andaman and was named Port Cornwallis after Admiral William Cornwallis. However, there was much disease and death in the penal colony and the government ceased operating it in May 1796.

In 1824, Port Cornwallis was the rendezvous of the fleet carrying the army to the First Burmese War. In the 1830s and 1840s, shipwrecked crews who landed on the Andamans were often attacked and killed by the natives and the islands had a reputation for cannibalism. The loss of the Runnymede and the Briton in 1844 during the same storm, while transporting goods and passengers between India and Australia, and the continuous attacks launched by the natives, which the survivors fought off, alarmed the British government. In 1855, the government proposed another settlement on the islands, including a convict establishment, but the Indian Rebellion of 1857 forced a delay in its construction. However, because the rebellion gave the British so many prisoners, it made the new Andaman settlement and prison urgently necessary. Construction began in November 1857 at Port Blair using inmates' labour, avoiding the vicinity of a salt swamp that seemed to have been the source of many of the earlier problems at Port Cornwallis.

17 May 1859 was another major day for Andaman. The Battle of Aberdeen was fought between the Great Andamanese tribe and the British.


The Great Andamanese are classified by anthropologists as one of the Negrito peoples, which also include the other four aboriginal groups of the Andaman islands (Onge, Jarawa, Jangil and Sentinelese) and five other isolated populations of Southeast Asia. The Andaman Negritos are thought to be the first inhabitants of the islands, having emigrated from the mainland tens of thousands of years ago.

Until the late 18th century, the Andamanese peoples were preserved from outside influences by their fierce rejection of contacts (which included killing any shipwrecked foreigners) and by the remoteness of the islands. Thus the ten Great Andamanese tribes and the other four indigenous groups are thought to have diverged on their own over the course of millennia....

Estimates of the Great Andamanese population by the time of the first British settlement (1789–1796) vary between 2000 and 6600 individuals. When the British established a permanent settlement and penal colony on Great Andaman in the 1860s, the population was estimated at 3500. At that time their isolated stone-age culture was suddenly confronted with the industrial and colonial culture of 19th century Europe. The colonial administrators proactively tried to pacify and co-opt the tribes, recruiting them to capture escaped convicts. Populations went into sharp decline as contact intensified. Imported diseases, to which the islanders had no immunity, decimated the tribes at the end of the 19th century; In some cases, people who became sick were killed by other tribe members in an attempt to stop contagion. The migration of mainland settlers to the islands accelerated this decline.

By 1901, only 625 Great Andamanese were left, and following censuses reported steadily declining numbers: 455 in 1911, 207 in 1921, 90 in 1931. Von Eickstedt counted "around one hundred" in 1927.

In 1949, the surviving Great Andamanese were relocated to a reservation on Bluff Island (1.14 km2) in an attempt to protect them from diseases and other threats. In 1951, after Indian independence, their numbers had shrunk to about 25, mostly from the northern tribes. They became extinct in the mid 20th century, but had a few admixed individuals which went to an all-time low of only 19 in 1961.


-- Great Andamanese, by Wikipedia


Today, a memorial stands in Andaman water sports complex as a tribute to the people who lost their lives. Fearing foreign invasion and with help from an escaped convict from Cellular Jail, the Great Andamanese stormed the British post, but they were outnumbered and soon suffered heavy loss of life. Later, it was identified that an escaped convict named Doodnath had changed sides and informed the British about the tribe's plans. Today, the tribe has been reduced to some 50 people, with less than 50% of them adults. The government of the Andaman Islands is making efforts to increase the headcount of this tribe.

In 1867, the ship Nineveh wrecked on the reef of North Sentinel Island. The 86 survivors reached the beach in the ship's boats. On the third day, they were attacked with iron-tipped spears by naked islanders. One person from the ship escaped in a boat and the others were later rescued by a British Royal Navy ship.

For some time, sickness and mortality were high, but swamp reclamation and extensive forest clearance continued. The Andaman colony became notorious with the murder of the Viceroy Richard Southwell Bourke, 6th Earl of Mayo, on a visit to the settlement (8 February 1872), by a Muslim convict, a Pathan from Afghanistan, Sher Ali Afridi. In the same year, the two island groups Andaman and Nicobar, were united under a chief commissioner residing at Port Blair.

From the time of its development in 1858 under the direction of James Pattison Walker, and in response to the mutiny and rebellion of the previous year, the settlement was first and foremost a repository for political prisoners. The Cellular Jail at Port Blair, when completed in 1910, included 698 cells designed for solitary confinement; each cell measured 4.5 by 2.7 m (15 by 9 ft) with a single ventilation window 3 metres (10 ft) above the floor.

The Indians imprisoned here referred to the island and its prison as Kala Pani ("black water"); a 1996 film set on the island took that term as its title, Kaalapani. The number of prisoners who died in this camp is estimated to be in the thousands. Many more died of harsh treatment and the harsh living and working conditions in this camp.

The Viper Chain Gang Jail on Viper Island was reserved for troublemakers, and was also the site of hangings. In the 20th century, it became a convenient place to house prominent members of India's independence movement.

The Andaman and Nicobar islands were occupied by Japan during World War II. The islands were nominally put under the authority of the Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind (Provisional Government of Free India) headed by Subhas Chandra Bose, who visited the islands during the war, and renamed them as Shaheed (Martyr) & Swaraj (Self-rule). On 30 December 1943, during the Japanese occupation, Bose, who was allied with the Japanese, first raised the flag of Indian independence. General Loganathan, of the Indian National Army, was Governor of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which had been annexed to the Provisional Government. According to Werner Gruhl: "Before leaving the islands, the Japanese rounded up and executed 750 innocents."


At the close of World War II, the British government announced its intention to abolish the penal settlement. The government proposed to employ former inmates in an initiative to develop the island's fisheries, timber, and agricultural resources. In exchange, inmates would be granted return passage to the Indian mainland, or the right to settle on the islands. J H Williams, one of the Bombay Burma Company's senior officials, was dispatched to perform a timber survey of the islands using convict labor. He recorded his findings in 'The Spotted Dear' (1957).

The penal colony was eventually closed on 15 August 1947 when India gained independence. It has since served as a museum to the independence movement.

-- Andaman Islands, by Wikipedia


Release and later activities

Barin was released during a general amnesty in 1920 and returned to Kolkata to start a career in journalism. Soon he left journalism and formed an ashram in Kolkata. He published his memoirs "The tale of my exile - twelve years in Andamans"[1]. In 1923, he left for Pondicherry where his elder brother Aurobindo Ghosh had formed the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. He was influenced by Aurobindo towards spirituality and Sadhana. Barin returned to Kolkata in 1929 and again took up journalism. In 1933 he started an English weekly, The Dawn of India. He was associated with the newspaper The Statesman,...

The Statesman is an Indian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper founded in 1875 and published simultaneously in Kolkata, New Delhi, Siliguri and Bhubaneswar. It incorporates and is directly descended from The Friend of India, founded in 1818. It is owned by The Statesman Ltd and headquartered at Statesman House, Chowringhee Square, Kolkata, with its national editorial office at Statesman House, Connaught Place, New Delhi. It is a member of the Asia News Network.

Asia News Network (ANN) is a news coalition of 24 news organisations from South, Southeast and Northeast Asia.

Asia News Network members comprise The Korea Herald, China Daily, China Post (Taiwan), Gogo Mongolia, The Japan News, Dawn (Pakistan), The Statesman (India), The Island (Sri Lanka), Kuensel (Bhutan), Kathmandu Post (Nepal), Daily Star (Bangladesh), Eleven Media (Myanmar), The Nation (Thailand), Jakarta Post, The Star and Sin Chew Daily (Malaysia), the Phnom Penh Post and Rasmei Kampuchea (Cambodia), The Borneo Bulletin (Brunei), The Straits Times (Singapore), Vietnam News, Philippine Daily Inquirer and Vientiane Times (Laos).

-- Asia News Network, by Wikipedia


The Statesman has an average weekday circulation of approximately 180,000, and the Sunday Statesman has a circulation of 230,000. This ranks it as one of the leading English newspapers in West Bengal, India.

-- The Statesman (India), by Wikipedia


and in 1950, he became the editor of the Bengali daily Dainik Basumati. This time he got married. He died on 18 April 1959.

Works

The following are books by Barindra Ghosh:

• Dvipantarer Banshi
• Pather Ingit
• Amar Atmakatha
• Agnijug
• Rishi Rajnarayan
• The Tale of My Exile
• Sri Aurobindo

Other books

• Barindrakumar Ghosh, Pather Ingit, Calcutta, 1337 (Bengali year).
• Upendra Nath Bandyopadhyaya, Nirbasiter Atmakatha, Calcutta, 1352 (Bengali year).
• RC Majumdar, History of the Freedom Movement in India, II, Calcutta, 1963.

References

1. Ghose, Barindra Kumar (1922). The tale of my exile - twelve years in Andamans. Pondicherry: Arya Publications.

External links

• Works by or about Barindra Kumar Ghosh at Internet Archive
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Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#2)

Postby admin » Thu Jun 04, 2020 7:31 am

Satyendranath Bosu [Satyendranath Boseu] [Satyendra Nath Bosu] [Satyendranath Bose] [Satyen Bose]
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 6/3/20

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Satyendra Nath Bosu
Satyendra Nath Bosu, Bengali Revolutionary
Born: 30 July 1882, Midnapore District, Bengal Presidency, India
Died: 21 November 1908 (aged 26), Alipore Central Jail, Calcutta, India
Nationality: Indian
Known for: Role in Indian freedom struggle

Satyendra Nath Bosu (aka. Satyendranath Bose or Satyen Bose; 30 July 1882 – 21 November 1908) was an Indian nationalist of the Anushilan Samiti. Bosu, while held in Alipore Jail hospital as an under-trial in the Alipore Bomb Case, shot dead, with the help of Kanailal Dutta, the Crown witness, Narendranath Goswami, leading to the collapse of the case against prime accused Aurobindo Ghosh [Sri Aurobindo].[1] Bosu gave himself up on the jail premises, and was subsequently put on trial, along with Dutta, and found guilty and executed by hanging on 21 November 1908 for the murder of Goswami,[2] [3]

Early life

Satyendranath was born on 30 July 1882 in Midnapore district (presently Paschim Midnapore) of West Bengal, India. His father, Abhaya Charan Bosu, was a Professor in the Midnapur College. Since around 1850, he settled at Midnapur, which became the residence of Satyendranath’s family. Abhaya Charan had five sons (Jnanendra Nath, Satyendra Nath, Bhupendra Nath, Subodh Kumar and another boy) and three daughters.[4] Satyendranath was the maternal uncle of Shri [Sri] Aurobindo, though he was about ten years his junior. The Bosu family originally hailed from the village Boral of district 24 Parganas, and were descendants of the famous Babu Raj Narayan Bosu. The father of Babu Raj Narayan Bosu, Babu Nanda Kishore Bosu, was a follower of Raja Ram Mohan Roy and was the first of his family to be initiated into Brahmoism. Babu Nanda Kishore had three sons, the eldest of whom was Babu Raj Narayan. The reputation of Babu Raj Narayan as a man of piety and letters was widespread. Besides, he was a distinguished member of the Adi Brahmo Samaj [Adi Dharm] and was a Senior Scholar of the then Hindu College. [5] His two younger brothers were Madan Mohan and Abhaya Charan. In the year 1850 or thereabout, Babu Raj Narayan, with his two younger brothers, left his ancestral village and settled at Midnapur where he was appointed Head Master of the district School. In 1867, he retired from Government service and came down to Calcutta where he lived for some time. In 1880 he finally settled with his family at Deoghur and died in the year 1899.[6]

Having successfully passed the Entrance and F.A. Examinations Satyendranath studied up to the B.A. standard of the Calcutta University but did not go up for the B.A. Examination. He left College and served for about a year at the Midnapur Collectorate.[4]

Revolutionary activities

Satyendranath got involved in a stunning case of murder of Narendranath Goswami in the sequences of events in a series, in which there were three remarkable events of armed revolution at the dawn of nineteenth century.

Midnapur arms case

Satyendranath was arrested by the police in charge of possessing a gun which was licensed in his brother’s name at Midnapore. He was convicted and sentenced to two months’ rigorous imprisonment, according to the police report.[2]

Kingsford assassination attempt

See also: Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki

Just two days after the Muzaffarpur bomb attack (30 April 1908) aimed at killing Kingsford, the police raided and arrested a number of revolutionaries in Bengal on 2 May 1908.

Prafulla [Chandra Chaki] and Khudiram Bose tried to assassinate the District Judge, Mr. Kingsford by throwing bombs at the carriage in which Kingsford was supposed to travel, but he was not in the carriage, and two British women were killed instead. Prafulla committed suicide when he was about to be arrested by the Police. Khudiram was arrested and tried for the murder of the two women and sentenced to death. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi did not approve this violence and regretted the deaths of two women. He stated "that the Indian people will not win there freedom through these methods". However, Bal Gangadhar Tilak in his newspaper Kesari, defended the two young men and called for immediate swaraj. This was followed by the immediate arrest of Tilak by the British colonial government on charges of sedition....

Barin Ghosh [younger brother of Sri Aurobindo] brought Prafulla to Kolkata and he was enlisted in the Jugantar party. His first assignment was to kill Sir Joseph Bampfylde Fuller (1854-1935), the first Lieutenant Governor of the new province of Eastern Bengal and Assam. However, the plan did not materialize.

Sir Joseph Bampfylde Fuller KCSI CIE (20 March 1854 – 29 November 1935) was a British inventor, writer and first Lieutenant Governor of the new province of Eastern Bengal and Assam, knighted for his service in India.

Fuller studied at Marlborough College. In 1885, he began his Indian Civil Service career as the Commissioner of Settlements and Agriculture of Central Provinces. He became an Additional member of the Viceroy's Council in 1899. He served as Secretary to Government of India during the period 1901–02. He then served as Chief Commissioner of Assam during 1902–05.

Fuller held office as Lieutenant Governor of Eastern Bengal and Assam from 16 October 1905 until he resigned on 20 August 1906 to Lord Minto over the (British) Government of India's refusal to support reprisals against school agitators in Sirajganj.

Fuller initiated the building of the Governor's residence in Dhaka, which became Old High Court Building, Dhaka. "Fuller Road", an important road at the heart of the University of Dhaka is named after him.

Fuller invented an anti-gas alarm widely used during World War I.

-- Bampfylde Fuller, by Wikipedia


Next, Prafulla, along with Khudiram Bose was chosen for the assassination of Kingsford, the magistrate of Muzaffarpur, Bihar. Kingsford, during his previous tenure as the Chief Presidency Magistrate of Calcutta, was unpopular for passing harsh and cruel sentences on young political workers of Bengal. He was also noted for inflicting corporal punishments on such workers. This led to the planning of his murder, and Chaki and Bose were selected and sent to Muzaffarpur to execute this task. Prafulla took the fake name of 'Dinesh Chandra Roy' in this operation.

Khudiram and Prafulla watched the usual movements of Kingsford and prepared a plan to kill him. In the evening of 30 April 1908, the duo waited in front of the gate of European Club for the carriage of Kingsford to come. When a vehicle came out of the gate, a bomb was thrown into the carriage. There was a mistake of identification by them, as the vehicle was not carrying Kingsford, but the wife and daughter of Mr Pringle Kennedy, a leading pleader of Muzaffarpur Bar. The daughter died soon, and his wife succumbed to her injuries. The revolutionaries fled.


-- Prafulla Chaki [Dinesh Chandra Roy], by Wikipedia


33 revolutionaries were charged with waging war against the government.[7] Kanailal Dutta was one of these men, who was also arrested on 2 May 1908 and detained in Alipore Jail.

Alipore Bomb Case

Main article: Alipore Bomb Case

Police raided the premises at 32 Murari Pukur Road at Kolkata on 2 May 1908 and a bomb-factory was discovered, as was a cache of arms, a large quantity of ammunition, bombs, detonators, and other tools. They also confiscated Revolutionary literature. The raids were being conducted at various places throughout Bengal and Bihar, and more detention was on the move. Aurobindo Ghosh [Sri Aurobindo], Barindra Kumar Ghose, Ullaskar Dutt, Indu Bhusan Roy and many others were arrested. During this time one detainee, Narendranath Goswami (aka Norendra Nath Gossain), became approver of the British, and started revealing names of many persons to the police, leading to further arrests.[8]

Goswami was a resident of Srirampur near Chandernagore. He knew all the plans and activities of the revolutionaries. Appearing in the witness box he started implicating many of his former colleagues by mentioning their names. Barin Ghosh, Shanti Ghosh and Ullaskar Dutta's names were mentioned in attempting to blow off the governor's train at Chandernagore station in 1908. Referring to the bomb outrage in the Mayor's house he mentioned the name of Charu Chandra Roy, as being the leader of the revolutionary outfit in Chandernagore;[9] and on 24 June mentioned the names of Aurobindo Ghosh and Subodh Chandra Mullick as being linked to revolutionary activities.[10]


A conspiracy hatched

The under-trial prisoners under the leadership of Barin Ghosh hatched a plan to escape from the Alipur Central Jail, and also to get rid of Goswami. B.C. Roy, Barrister-at-law, defending the prisoners, offered to help with men and arms.[9] Barin wrote letters from jail to Sudhangshu Jiban Rai, Preo Shankar Rai, and Basanta Banerjee of Chandernagore to meet B. C. Roy for arrangements of arms. He also wrote to Shrish Chandra Ghosh to send phial, acid for the purpose of throwing at jail wardens, and wax to copy keys.[11] On Sunday, 23 August, one revolver was smuggled into the jail by Shudhangshu Jiban Rai. The next day, Barin asked Hem Das to give it to Satyendranath with instructions to kill Goswami. That time Satyendranath was admitted in the jail Hospital. He expressed his inability to use such a big revolver, and returned it back. On Sunday, 30 August, another revolver reached Barin though Shrish. it was a smaller one. Kanailal took it, and subsequently got admitted to the jail hospital. The Revolvers were received loaded. The stage was set.[12]

Murder of Narendranath Goswami

It was time for retribution for the traitor inside Presidency Jail.[2] It appears that Narendranath, intentionally kept separated from the other prisoners, was confined in the European Ward in Alipore Central Jail. On 31 August 1908, Narerdranath was brought from that ward to the Jail Hospital by a European Convict Overseer named Highens. Narendranath had apparently previously arranged to meet at that time in the Hospital two fellow prisoners who were already patients in the Jail Hospital, named Kanailal Dutta and Satyendranath Bosu. Kanailal and Satyendra managed to acquire two revolvers secretly. Shrish Chandra Ghosh of Chandernagore smuggled the revolvers into the jail,[12] assisted by Motilal Roy.[13] Narendranath had apparently been approached by the second of these prisoners, who had pretended that he also wished to make a statement, and his visit was really in order to get this statement. Evidently, it was however part of a plot to get Narendranath within striking distance, for it appears that almost immediately on Narendranath’s arrival on the landing, at the head of the staircase leading to the second story of the Hospital, these two prisoners opened fire on him with the two revolvers. Highens, the Convict Overseer, attempted to arrest one of them, and was shot through the wrist. Narendranath, although shot in several places, was not mortally hit, and fled down the stairs out of the Hospital Compound and along an alleyway towards the gate. Kanailal Dutta pursued him and shot him fatally through the back. He was then secured by a Eurasian Prisoner named Linton. (Excerpts from a letter No 1876-C dated 31 August 1908, addressed to The Chief Secretary to the Government of Bengal, Calcutta from Commissioner of Police, Calcutta.[5]

Nine shots fired

Excerpts from the Magistrate’s commitment order in the case of murder of Narendranath Goswami (spellings unchanged):

"The two revolvers were brought into the office and examined and the smaller one (Exhibit I) was found to have in the chambers four discharged cartridges while the larger (Exhibit II) had five discharged cartridges and one loaded cartridge. Thus we may assume that in all nine shots were fired. Four bullets were found — two inside the dispensary, one just outside the dispensary, and one was extracted from the dead body of Norendra. From the medical evidence it appears that this was the bullet which caused Norendra’s death. It entered fairly high up in the back and severed the spinal cord and almost completely penetrated the breast in front but spent its force before doing so and lay imbedded under the skin of the breast. Exhibit VII is this bullet (contained in a glass bottle sealed by Captain Daley). An examination of this bullet shows that it was fired from the larger of the two revolvers (Exhibit II). The evidence of Linton shows that the revolver was the one used by Kanai Lall Dutt. Thus the fatal shot was fired by Kanai Lall Dutt."[5]


Trial, sentencing and martyrdom

The murder of Narendranath Goswami was a daring act unparalleled in the history of revolutionary terrorism. On 5 September 1908 the Indu Prakash made the following observation:

"The Bengal anarchists were perhaps the most romantic lot in the whole anarchist world, and in point of bravery, daredevilry and cunning they were no doubt far ahead of Russian and Spanish desperadoes - quick in action, quick in revenge and smart in getting rid of any approver."[12]


On 21 October 1908, the High Court pronounced its judgment by giving sentence of death to both the accused. Kanailal declined to file an appeal against such order. The sentence was carried out on 10 November 1908, and Kanailal was hanged till death in the Alipore Jail at about seven in the morning.[13] In the trial of Satyendranath, the Sessions Judge, disagreeing with the majority verdict of the jury, referred the case to the High Court and there Satyendranath was convicted and sentenced to death. He was hanged on 21 November 1908.[14]

While fleeing from Muzaffarpur, on 2 May 1908, Prafulla Chaki was cornered at Mokama Ghat railway station and was about to get arrested when he took his own life by firing two shots, one at the forehead and the other on the left side of his chest at the head.[15] Khudiram Bose was the first martyr in the history of the revolutionary movement for Indian independence, Kanailal Dutta was the second, and Satyendranath Bosu was the third. The execution of these men in 1908 aroused great commotion in public life. The witness accounts of the final moments before martyrdom and accounts of their sacrifices became canonical.[16]

Image
The revolver used by Kanailal Dutta to shoot Narendranth Goswami

Image
Muraripukur Garden House of Barin Ghosh

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Kanailal Dutta and Satyen Bosu arrested after murder of Naren Goswami

See also

• Indian Independence Movement
• Indian nationalism
• Revolutionary movement for Indian independence

References

1. "Alipore Bomb Case". sriaurobindoinstitute.org. Retrieved 13 September2017.
2. "Alipore Bomb Case". sriaurobindoinstitute.org. Retrieved 13 September2017.
3. Mohanta, Sambaru Chandra (2012). "Dutta, Kanailal". In Islam, Sirajul; Jamal, Ahmed A. (eds.). Banglapedia: National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh(Second ed.). Asiatic Society of Bangladesh.
4. "Satyendra Nath Bosu". aurobindo.ru. Retrieved 13 September2017.
5. "The assassination of Narendranath Goswami". sriaurobindoashram.org. Retrieved 13 September2017.
6. Surendra Nath Banerjee. "The Bengalee dated 19th September, 1908". Calcutta.
7. Huda, Nurul (2008). The Alipore Bomb Case: A Historic Pre-Independence Trial. Neogy Books. ISBN 978-81-8973-831-0.
8. Bose, Bejai Krishna (1910). The Alipore Bomb Case - Mr. Beachcrofts Judgment. Calcutta: M N Mitra.
9. Tailleur, Georges (1947). Chandernagore ou le let de Dupleix - in Affaires Politiques. Paris: AOM.
10. Belloir, Jean (1953). Calcutta to Claude de Marolles - Charge d'Affaires. 36. Paris: MEA.
11. Miles, William FS (1995). Imperial Burdens- Counter Colonialism in Former French India. Lynne Rienner Publishers. p. 162. ISBN 978-1-55587-511-4.
12. Sen, Shailendra Nath (2012). Chandernagore - From Bondage to Freedom 1900-1955. Primus Books. ISBN 978-93-80607-23-8.
13. Sengupta, Subodh Ch.; Basu, Anjali (2002). Sansad Bengali Charitavidhan (Bengali) Vol I. Kolkata: Sahitya Sansad. pp. 80, 390. ISBN 81-85626-65-0.
14. Heehs, Peter (2008). The Lives of Sri Aurobindo(Second ed.). Columbia University Press.
15. Arun Chandra Guha (1971). First spark of revolution: the early phase of India's struggle for independence, 1900-1920. Orient Longman. Retrieved 13 September2017.
16. Banerjee, Upendra Nath (1928). Nirbasiter Atmakatha (in Bengali) (Memoirs of the Deported Prisoner). Calcutta: Hrishikesh Kanjilal.

External links

• Hitendra Patel, Khudiram Bose: Revolutionary Extraordinaire
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Kanailal Dutta
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 6/4/20

Image
Kanailal Dutta
কানাইলাল দত্ত
Kanailal Dutta
Born: 31 August 1888, Chandannagar, Hooghly, Bengal, British India
Died: 10 November 1908 (aged 20), Kolkata, Bengal, British India
Nationality: Indian
Occupation: Revolutionary
Parent(s): Chunilal Dutta, Brajeshwari Devi

Kanailal Dutta (Bengali: কানাইলাল দত্ত) (31 August 1888 – 10 November 1908) was a revolutionary in India's freedom struggle belonging to the Jugantar group. He was born in Chandannagar, West Bengal. He, along with Satyendranath Bose, was convicted by the British [1] for assassination of Narendranath Goswami,[2] an approver of the British, in the Jail hospital of Alipore Central Jail on 31 August 1908. Satyendranath Bose was hanged till death on 21 November 1908.[3]

Early life

Image
Birth place of Kanailal Dutta

Kanailal Dutta was born in Chandan Nagar, West Bengal. His father, Chunilal Dutta, was an accountant in Bombay. Kanailal's early school life was started in Girgaon [Girgaum] Aryan Education Society School, Bombay...

The Aryan Education Society's High School is a Marathi medium educational institute located in Girgaon, Mumbai, India.

It is located at 75 Jaganath Shankar Seth Road. It was established in 1897.

The Aryan Education Society has total of three schools under its management. First is the Aryan High School which was a boys'-only school until 1985, when it became co-educational. On the same road (Jagannath Sankerset Road i.e. JSS Road) the society has another school, Sharada Sadan, which is a girls'-only school. The third school is at Palghar.

The Aryan High School building is owned by the Aryan Education Society, while Sharada Sadan is a lease-hold premises with permanent occupancy rights (pagdi). Palghar Aryan School is owned by the society, however, the adjoining ground is on permanent lease.

Alumni of the school include C D Deshmukh, the first Finance Minister of India, Sudhir Phadke, legendary Marathi Singer.

-- Aryan Education Society High School, by Wikipedia


A growing number of Hindu clubs and societies devoted their energies principally to secular ends. They organized 'social gatherings' that breached the boundaries of 'caste and creed'; promoted recreational activities; and established educational trusts, libraries, and reading rooms. For instance, the Aryan Social Union was established in 1892 by Seth Damodhar Sukhadwalla, a prominent philanthropist, to foster 'social intercourse and brotherly [relations] between the members and sympathisers of the Theistic Societies without caste and creed distinctions.'119 Likewise, an Aryan Education Society was founded in 1897 by 'a group of young graduates' to impart education at a moderate cost to poor students of the community. The society was said to be sustained 'by fees received from students, and by grants, subscriptions, donations and contributions, received from time to time from Municipal or other kindred bodies and from members of the public generally.' Another association, the Aryan Excelsior League ran 'a Charity Bureau, a debating club, a library, moral classes for boys, and girls, Mahila Mandal, a lecture series and a publications department.'120

The Making of an Indian Metropolis: Colonial Governance and Public Culture in Bombay, 1890-1920, by Prashant Kidambi


Aryan Education Society that has been founded in 1897 by the youths of Girgaon suburb of Mumbai who were inspired by the National cause before independence. Now this institute is running with full flung in its post centenary period.

This institute has been boosted by the guidance of eminent personalities such as Late Justice Mahadeo Govind Ranade, Late Dr. Sir Bhalchandra Bhatavadekar, Late Gopalkrishna Deodhar, Late Justice Mahadeo Govind Chitale, who were honoured with the presidentship of the society. You may realize the importance of society's deeds in the history society's glorious heritage has been going on for last 117 years ceaselessly.

The eminent personalities who were groomed in the society now prove their performance in the various fields like Art, Sports, Drama, Literature, Politics and Music. We are proud that such personalities were our Aryaputras and Aryakanyas.

We observe a tremendous difference in the situations of pre centenary and post centenary has been observed/happened in the stream of education. New thoughts and policies emerged. The activities of the society expanded. Today there are pre-primary, Primary, Secondary and Vanita Vinayala Teacher's Training College Marathi/English Medium running at Girgaon in Mumbai. Also the same functions are going on in Pre-Primary (Marathi/English Medium), Primary (Marathi/ English Medium), M. N. Dandekar High School and K.G

-- Aryan Education Society


and later he came back to Chandannagar and took admission to Duplex College in Chandannagar. In 1908, he appeared for his BA exam at Hooghly Mohsin College, which was affiliated with the University of Calcutta.

Revolutionary activities

During his early college days, Kanailal met with Professor Charu Chandra Roy [Charuchandra Roy, Professor of the Dupleix College from Chandannagar], who inspired him to join the revolutionary movement during the agitations against the Partition of Bengal. During 1905 movement against partition of Bengal, Kanailal Dutta was in the forefront from Chandannagar group. He also developed a close connection with the Gondolpara revolutionary group, which was led by Srishchandra Ghosh.[4] In 1908, he moved to Kolkata and joined Kolkata based revolutionary group Jugantar.

Kingsford assassination attempt

Just two days after the Muzaffarpur bomb attack (30 April 1908) aimed at killing Kingsford, the police raided and arrested a number of revolutionaries in Bengal on 2 May 1908. 33 revolutionaries were charged with waging war against the government.[5] Kanailal Dutta was one of these men, who was also arrested on 2 May 1908 and detained in Alipore Jail.

Alipore Bomb Case

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Muraripukur Garden House of Barin Ghosh

Police raided premises at 32 Murari Pukur Road at Kolkata on 2 May 1908 and a bomb-factory was discovered as was a cache of arms, a large quantity of ammunition, bombs, detonators and other tools. They also confiscated Revolutionary literature. The raids were being conducted at various places throughout Bengal and Bihar, and more detention was on the move. Aurobindo Ghosh, Barindra Kumar Ghose, Ullaskar Dutt, Indu Bhusan Roy and many others were arrested. During this time one detainee, Narendranath Goswami (aka Norendra Nath Gossain), became approver of the British, and started revealing names of many persons to the police, leading to further arrests.[6]

Goswami was a resident of Srirampur near Chandernagore. He knew all the plans and activities of the revolutionaries. Appearing in the witness box he started implicating many of his former colleagues by mentioning their names. Barin Ghosh, Shanti Ghosh and Ullaskar Dutta's names were mentioned in attempting to blow off the governor's train at Chandernagore station in 1908; referring to the bomb outrage in the Mayor's house he mentioned name of Charu Chandra Roy, being the leader of the revolutionary outfit of Chandernagore;[7] and on 24 June mentioned names of Aurobindo Ghosh and Subodh Chandra Mullick linking to revolutionary activities.[8]

A conspiracy hatched

Image
The revolver used by Kanailal Dutta to shoot Narendranth Goswami

The under-trial prisoners under the leadership in Barin Ghosh hatched a plan to escape from the Alipur Central Jail, and also to get rid of Goswami. B.C. Roy, Barrister-at-law, defending the prisoners, offered help with men and arms.[7] Barin wrote letters from jail to Sudhangshu Jiban Rai, Preo Shankar Rai and Basanta Banerjee of Chandernagore to meet B. C. Roy for arrangements of arms. He also wrote to Shrish Chandra Ghosh to send phial, acid for the purpose of throwing to jail wardens and wax to copy keys.[9] On Sunday, 23 August, one revolver was smuggled into the jail by Shudhangshu Jiban Rai. Next day Barin asked Hem Das to give it to Satyendranath with instruction to kill Goswami. That time Satyendranath was admitted in the jail Hospital. He expressed his inability to use such a big revolver, and returned it back. On Sunday, 30 August, another revolver reached Barin though Shrish. it was a smaller one. Kanailal took it, and subsequently got admitted to the jail hospital. The Revolvers were received loaded. The stage was set.[4]

Murder of Narendranath Goswami

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Kanailal Dutta and Satyen Bosu arrested after murder of Naren Goswami

It was time for retribution for the traitor inside Presidency Jail.[2] It appears that the Narendranath, intentionally kept separated from the other prisoners, was confined in the European Ward in Alipore Central Jail. On 31 August 1908, Narerdranath was brought, from that ward, to the Jail Hospital by a European Convict Overseer named Highens. Narendranath had apparently previously arranged to meet, at that time, in the Hospital, two fellow prisoners, who were already patients in the Jail Hospital, named Kanailal Dutta and Satyendranath Bose. Kanailal and Satyendra managed to acquire two revolvers secretly. Shrish Chandra Ghosh of Chandernagore smuggled the revolvers into the jail, assisted by Motilal Roy.[10] Narendranath had apparently been approached by the second of these prisoners, who had pretended that he also wished to make a statement; and his visit was really in order to get this statement. Evidently it was however part of a plot to get Narendranath within striking distance for it appears that almost immediately on Narendranath's arrival on the landing, at the head of the staircase leading to the second story of the Hospital, these two prisoners opened fire on him with the two revolvers. Highens the Convict Overseer attempted to arrest one of them and was shot through the wrist. Narendranath although shot in several places was not mortally hit and fled down the stairs, out of the Hospital Compound and along an alley way towards the gate. Kanailal Dutta pursued him and shot him fatally through the back. He was then secured by a Eurasian Prisoner named Linton. (Excerpts from a letter No 1876-C dated 31 August 1908, addressed to The Chief Secretary to the Government of Bengal, Calcutta from Commissioner of Police, Calcutta.[11]

Nine shots fired

Excerpts from the Magistrate's commitment order in the case of murder of Narendranath Goswami (spellings unchanged):

"The two revolvers were brought into the office and examined and the smaller one (Exhibit I) was found to have in the chambers four discharged cartridges while the larger (Exhibit II) had five discharged cartridges and one loaded cartridge. Thus we may assume that in all nine shots were fired. Four bullets were found — two inside the dispensary, one just outside the dispensary, and one was extracted from the dead body of Norendra. From the medical evidence it appears that this was the bullet which caused Norendra’s death. It entered fairly high up in the back and severed the spinal cord and almost completely penetrated the breast in front but spent its force before doing so and lay imbedded under the skin of the breast. Exhibit VII is this bullet (contained in a glass bottle sealed by Captain Daley). An examination of this bullet shows that it was fired from the larger of the two revolvers (Exhibit II). The evidence of Linton shows that the revolver was the one used by Kanai Lall Dutt. Thus the fatal shot was fired by Kanai Lall Dutt."[11]


Trial, sentencing and martyrdom

Murder of Narendranath Goswami was a daring act unparalleled in the history of revolutionary terrorism. On 5 September 1908 the news paper Indu Prakash made the following observation:

"The Bengal anarchists were perhaps the most romantic lot in the whole anarchist world, and in point of bravery, daredevilry and cunning they were no doubt far ahead of Russian and Spanish desperadoes - quick in action, quick in revenge and smart in getting rid of any approver."[4]


On 21 October 1908, the High Court pronounced its judgment by giving sentence of death to both the accused. Kanailal declined to file an appeal against such order. Kanailal offered no defense and was averse to an appeal. Sir Prafulla Chandra Roy on a later date commented that Kanailal taught the Bengalees the proper use of "shall" and "will", pointing to his sense of English grammar. When the question of an appeal came up, Kanailal simply said, 'There shall be no appeal'. It was the use of "shall" in the imperative.[12]

Kanailal's statement to the District Magistrate about his motive for assassinating Naren was touchingly direct and simple:

"I wish to state that I did kill him. I do not wish to give any statement why I killed him. Wait, I do wish to give a reason. It was because he was a traitor to his country."


The sentence was carried on 10 November 1908, and Kanailal was hanged till death in the Alipore Jail at about seven in the morning.[10]

In the trial of Satyendranath, the Sessions Judge, disagreeing with the majority verdict of the jury, referred the case to the High Court and there Satyendranath was convicted and sentenced to death. He was hanged on 21 November 1908.[13]

An account of a Jail Warden: Charu Chandra Roy recalled the account of a British jail warden, who, on 9 November 1908, a day before the day of hanging, saw Kanailal smiling, and said, "You are smiling now, but tomorrow morning all the smiles will disappear from your lips." The next day when Kanailal was brought to the gallows he saw the warden, and asked him smilingly, "How do you find me now?" The warden had no answer. Later, the warden told Charu Chandra Roy, "I am the sinner who has executed Kanailal. If you have a hundred men like him, your aim will be fulfilled."[4]

About fifteen years after the death of Kanailal, Motilal Roy published a memorial booklet on Kanailal Dutta in Bengali from Chandarnagore town, which was under French occupation that time and beyond British jurisdiction. It was immediately banned by the British under Sea Customs Act of 1878 which prohibited any "objectionable materials" from being transported into British territories. In that book Motilal recalled the sight of Kanilal's body on the funeral pyre:

"As soon as the blanket was carefully removed, what did we see - language is wanting to describe the lovely beauty of the ascetic Kanai - his long hair fell in a mass on his broad forehead, the half-closed eyes were still drowsy as though from a test of nectar, the living lines of resolution were manifest in the firmly closed lips, the hands reaching to the knees were closed in fists. It was wonderful! Nowhere on Kanai's limbs did we find any ugly wrinkle showing the pain of death.."[14]


An extraordinary scene was witnessed at the day of cremation of Kanailal in the Kalighat burning ghat, when his body was handed over to his family for cremation. A huge crowd gathered and all were pushing each other to touch the bier. The body was decked with flowers. Men, women and children followed the procession in large numbers, shouting Jai Kanai occasionally. He gloried in the deed he had committed and went to his execution without flinching.[4]

Image
Statue of Kanailal Dutta in Chandannagar, Hooghly

While fleeing from Muzaffarpur, on 2 May 1908, Prafulla Chaki was cornered at Mokama Ghat railway station and was about to get arrested when he took his own life by firing two shots one at the forehead and the other on the left side of his chest at the head.[15] Khudiram Bose was the first martyr in the history of revolutionary movement for Indian independence. Kanailal Dutta was the second, and Satyendranath Bose was the third. The execution of these men in 1908 aroused great commotion in public life. The witness accounts of the final moments before martyrdom and accounts of their sacrifices became canonical.[16]

References

1. "Alipore Bomb Case". sriaurobindoinstitute.org. Retrieved 13 September 2017.
2. "Assassination of Narendranath Goswami". sriaurobindoinstitute.org. Archived from the original on 8 March 2017. Retrieved 13 September 2017.
3. Mohanta (2012)
4. Sen (2012)
5. Huda (2008)
6. Bose (1910)
7. Tailleur (1947)
8. Belloir, Jean (1953). Calcutta to Claude de Marolles - Charge d'Affaires. 36. Paris: MEA.
9. Miles (1995)
10. Sengupta (2002)
11. "The assassination of Narendranath Goswami". sriaurobindoashram.org. Archived from the original on 8 March 2017. Retrieved 13 September 2017.
12. "FLASH BACK: Murder And Martyrdom: All Within Jail". bhavans.info/heritage/murder.asp. Retrieved 15 September 2017.
13. Heehs (2008)
14. Ghosh (2017)
15. Arun Chandra Guha (1971). First spark of revolution: the early phase of India's struggle for independence, 1900-1920. Orient Longman. Retrieved 15 September 2017.
16. Banerjee, Upendra Nath (1928). Nirbasiter Atmakatha (in Bengali) (Memoirs of the Deported Prisoner). Calcutta: Hrishikesh Kanjilal.

External links

• Kanailal's picture at museum collection of Institut de Chandernagor

Bibliography

• Bose, Bejai Krishna (1910), The Alipore Bomb Case - Mr. Beachcrofts Judgment, Calcutta: M N Mitra
• Ghosh, Durba (2017), Gentlemanly Terrorist - Political Violence and the Colonial State in India, 1919-1947, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-110-718-666-8
• Heehs, Peter (2008), The Lives of Sri Aurobindo (Second ed.), Columbia University Press
• Huda, Nurul (2008), The Alipore Bomb Case: A Historic Pre-Independence Trial, Neogy Books, ISBN 978-81-8973-831-0
• Miles, William FS (1995), Imperial Burdens- Counter Colonialism in Former French India, Lynne Rienner Publishers, p. 162, ISBN 978-1-55587-511-4
• Islam, Sirajul; Jamal, Ahmed A., eds. (2012), "Dutta, Kanailal", Banglapedia: National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh (Second ed.), Asiatic Society of Bangladesh
• Roy, Motilal (1923), Kanailal, Calcutta: Prabartak Publishers
• Sarkar, Hemanta Kumar (1923), Revolutionaries of Bengal : their methods and ideals, Calcutta: The Author
• Sen, Shailendra Nath (2012), Chandernagore - From Bondage to Freedom 1900-1955, Primus Books, ISBN 978-93-80607-23-8
• Tailleur, Georges (1947), Chandernagore ou le let de Dupleix - in Affaires Politiques, Paris: AOM
• Sengupta, Subodh Ch.; Basu, Anjali (2002), Sansad Bengali Charitavidhan (Bengali) Vol I, Kolkata: Sahitya Sansad, pp. 80, 390, ISBN 81-85626-65-0
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Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#2)

Postby admin » Thu Jun 04, 2020 9:00 am

Part 1 of 2

The Indian “Alsatia”: Sovereignty, Extradition, and the Limits of Franco-British Colonial Policing [The Charu Chandra Roy Affair]
by Mark Condos, Lecturer in Imperial and Global History, School of History, Queen Mary, University of London
2019

Abstract:

By the eve of the First World War, the world’s two most powerful imperial powers, Britain and France, had begun to work together in order to defeat the growing menace posed by transnational anti-colonial networks operating within Europe. When it came to the front lines of the anti-colonial struggle, however, Franco-British collaborative policing efforts continued to be plagued by persistent rivalries and contestations between these erstwhile enemies. This is particularly evident in the case of the French-controlled settlement of Chandernagore in India, which was one of the centres of revolutionary activity in Bengal. This article examines how Chandernagore’s unique legal and political status as a French possession enabled it to become a ‘haven’ or ‘Alsatia’ for Indian revolutionaries operating against the British colonial state. It traces how the persistence of this vestige of French sovereignty placed it at the centre of repeated conflicts between British and French colonial authorities over the detection, arrest, and extradition of these revolutionaries, revealing both the possibilities and limitations of colonial police cooperation. Far from being peripheral in nature, these conflicts cut to the heart of even more fiercely contested debates within the imperial metropole about the relationship between national sovereignty and international law in an increasingly global age.

Funding Details:

This research was supported by the Leverhulme Trust.

Disclosure Statement:

There is no potential conflict of interest. 
 
I – Introduction

On the morning of 23 December 1912, crowds of cheering onlookers lined the cramped streets and roofs of the Chandni Chowk market in Old Delhi to witness what was supposed to be the triumphant arrival of Viceroy Hardinge into the city. Hardinge’s grand entry heralded the official transfer of power from the old, and increasingly embattled British capital of Calcutta, to the shining, new, purpose-built colonial city of New Delhi. At around 11:45 a.m., shortly after the Viceroy’s procession entered the market, a bomb struck Hardinge’s elephant-mounted howdah (carriage) as it passed near a crowded block of buildings about midway between the railway station and the Red Fort.[1] The explosion instantly killed Hardinge’s Indian attendant, as well as a young boy in the crowd. Several others were wounded, including Hardinge, who suffered moderate injuries to the back of his right shoulder and neck, causing him to lose consciousness.[2] This sensational attempt against the life of the highest British official in India sent shockwaves throughout the British Empire and around the world.[3] British officials immediately began one of the largest manhunts in the history of British India for the individuals responsible. David Petrie, an officer within the Indian Department of Criminal Intelligence and future Director General of MI5, was given charge of the investigation, and the considerable resources of all of the provincial CIDs across India were placed at his disposal. Known political suspects were rounded up, questioned, or placed under increased surveillance; additional police were posted across North India to monitor and scrutinise people’s movements around Delhi; and a substantial reward of Rs. 15,000 for information that led to arrest of the individuals responsible for the attack was widely publicised across the country.[4]

British investigators quickly uncovered strong links between the Delhi attack and several other recent bombings committed by Bengali revolutionary groups, including an attack at Midnapur less than a fortnight before on 13 December and another at Calcutta’s Dalhousie Square in March 1911.[5] Tracing the common origin of the bombs used in these attacks, officials eventually narrowed their focus to the French-controlled settlement of Chandernagore, located just outside Calcutta.[6] By June 1913, however, the investigation stalled due to a lack of reliable information, which the British blamed on the uncooperative French police.[7] Writing in late August 1913, the Home Member of the Viceroy’s Council, R.H. Craddock, fumed over the apparent British powerlessness to take action against Indian terrorists who took refuge in Chandernagore:


SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1 Held by the French entirely on sufferance, constituting a small enclave within a few miles of the largest city in India, with an incompetent and underpaid Police in the pay of the anarchists, it offers the easiest possible Alsatia to all these political criminals. … In this sanctuary exists unchecked a gang whose object in life is to compass the assassination of high officers of the British Government.[8]

 
In another note from 5 October 1913, Craddock expressed his frustration in similarly stark terms: ‘SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1 Within a few miles of Calcutta is a centre of anarchical conspiracies, where plans may be hatched, bombs manufactured, arms imported, emissaries instructed, and youth depraved, with absolute impunity’.[9]

Despite its general neglect within both South Asian and French historiography, Chandernagore was one of the most important centres of revolutionary activity in Bengal.[10] Between the emergence of the Swadeshi Movement in 1905, and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Chandernagore was the main source of arms for Bengali revolutionaries.[11] Its more liberal press laws also meant that it played a vital role in printing and distributing anti-British propaganda.[12] Even more crucially, the settlement’s close proximity to Calcutta, and the high amount of commercial traffic that passed between its porous borders with British India on a daily basis, made it an obvious choice for Indian revolutionaries seeking to evade the legal jurisdiction of the British police. Because it was not part of British India, and was subject instead to the laws and jurisdiction of the local French colonial authorities, British officials were deeply reliant on the close cooperation and goodwill of their French colleagues when it came to the detection, arrest, and extradition of Indian revolutionaries operating from, or taking refuge within, the settlement. However, as Craddock’s statements suggest, this was far from a smooth and harmonious relationship. Indeed, Craddock’s telling allusion to Chandernagore as an ‘Alsatia’ -– the colloquial term for the area north of the City of London near Whitefriars that provided a legal sanctuary for debtors and other individuals sought by the law until the end of the seventeenth century –- suggests the French had allowed it to become a ‘safe haven’ or legal sanctuary for terrorists.[13]

The existence of such a space so close to the heart of British colonial power in India raises a number of important issues within the history of empire and anti-colonialism. First, it points to the peculiarities and limits of colonial sovereignty within the Indian subcontinent itself. Rather than being an all-powerful colonial regime that stretched smoothly across India, the British state was constrained by the existence of rival and competing sovereignties, like the French. Second, the apparent inability of the French and British to cooperate effectively when it came to putting a stop to Indian revolutionary activity is particularly striking when we consider that this was the same period when these two powers increasingly began to work together in order to police Indian revolutionaries within Europe itself, where the self-professed liberal nature of France and Britain’s imperial metropoles had paradoxically enabled them to develop their anti-colonial politics in similar sorts of ‘safe zones’.[14] This complicates the argument put forward recently by Martin Thomas and Richard Toye that the British and French increasingly acted as ‘co-imperialists’ following the 1904 Entente Cordiale, sharing personnel and much-needed expertise to expand, consolidate, and defend their imperial possessions from various external and internal threats.[15] Instead, it provides a revealing site for the continued conflicts between British and French officials as they attempted to negotiate and balance the competing imperatives of colonial police cooperation and preserving their respective imperial and national interests.[16] Finally, Chandernagore’s unique political and legal status provided new possibilities for the elaboration of Indian anti-colonialism itself. Despite the existence of a wide-array of draconian powers and a higher tolerance for the use of physical violence and other coercive methods for maintaining law and order within the colonial world, Indian revolutionaries in Bengal repeatedly continued to elude British colonial authorities by seeking refuge in this ‘Indian Alsatia’. While it is beyond the scope of this article to present an exhaustive examination of Chandernagore’s contribution to the Indian revolutionary movement, it seeks to understand how the unique political, cultural, legal, and jurisdictional qualities of the settlement afforded Indian revolutionaries operating there an increased freedom of action they did not enjoy in British India. To do so, it explores the highly fraught colonial and imperial politics surrounding the extradition and rendition of Indian revolutionaries between French and British India. These conflicts not only had a profound impact on the unfolding of the Indian nationalist movement and the strategies adopted by revolutionaries, but also fuelled debates within the imperial metropole about national sovereignty and the wider political relations between the French and British governments.

II – A Brief History of Extradition

The practice of surrendering prisoners from one state to another dates back to the ancient world.[17] Extradition treaties were conducted between monarchs who agreed to surrender fugitives who committed treason, attempted regicide, or anything else that might disrupt the established political order.[18] Because the surrender of a person who was granted refuge in another state ran counter to established traditions of asylum and hospitality, extradition from the outset was considered an ‘exceptional’ measure beyond the normal political and legal order.[19] The use of extradition by states to acquire jurisdiction over individuals accused of committing the kinds of ‘political’ crimes outlined above, as opposed to ‘common’ criminal offences (fraud, theft, rape, murder, etc.), remained a central and remarkably durable feature of European extradition agreements until the end of the eighteenth century.[20] During the early nineteenth century, however, the proliferation of railways and steamships made it increasingly easy for criminals of all stripes to quickly travel long distances to evade the authorities of one country, and so states increasingly began to include common criminal offences into extradition agreements.[21] At the same time, political offences were progressively excluded from these treaties. This shift is often attributed to the impact of the French Revolution and the promulgation of the French Constitution of 1793, which promised asylum to individuals exiled from their home countries who were fighting for ‘the cause of freedom’.[22] In 1833, Belgium became the first European nation to codify this principle through what is now known as the ‘political offence exception’.[23] The following year, France and Switzerland both passed similar legislation, and Britain finally followed suit in 1870.[24] Thus, the principle of granting asylum for political crimes rapidly gained acceptance among Western Europe’s more democratic and liberal regimes, enabling them to cast themselves as champions of democracy and freedom.[25]

Once states began to enshrine the political offence exception within their extradition laws, they quickly realised that it was also in their interests to place certain limits on what constituted political crime.[26] Following a failed assassination attempt against Napoleon III in 1855, Belgium was placed in the awkward of position of having to refuse the extradition of the would-be assassins, causing national and international uproar. As a result, Belgium became the first country to introduce an exception to the political offence exception. Known as the Belgian clause or attentat (‘attempt’ or ‘attack’) clause, this provision denied protection to individuals who murdered or attempted to murder heads of state.[27] Over the course of the nineteenth century and twentieth centuries, the attentat clause was gradually expanded to include genocide, war crimes, apartheid, and acts of ‘terrorism’.[28] The attentat clause forced states [to] reconsider how they conceived of legitimate political crimes they still deemed worthy of protection. To do so, they began to differentiate between ‘pure political’ and ‘relative political’ offences. ‘Pure political offences’ referred to actions directed against the political organisation or government of a state which contained no element of common crime, and which did not cause any injury or harm to private persons or property.[29] ‘Relative political’ offences, on the other hand were political acts that also incorporated elements of common crime, such as the assassination of a public official. In the 1890s, for example, European anarchists seeking to overthrow various governments were placed outside the political offender exception.[30] As legal scholars have pointed out, however, relative political offences are highly problematic due to the often hybrid nature between common crime and political crime, and the difficulty in disentangling the two.[31] In the absence of a clear and universally accepted definition of what constitutes legitimate political action, it is difficult for states to maintain their neutrality in international struggles, support individuals and groups genuinely seeking democratic and liberal goals, and to prevent the potentially unjust treatment of prisoners at the hands of authoritarian regimes, especially in this age of heightened terrorism when states are increasingly wary of applying the political offence exception.[32]

In the imperial world, extradition was seldom a straightforward affair, and colonial governments often had to navigate an overlapping and sometimes competing set of extradition procedures and laws within the same imperial political formation. In the case of the British Empire, colonies had to reckon with agreements and procedures developed by their own local governments as well as by the British Parliament back in London. Although imperial statues such as the Extradition Act of 1870 (33 Vict.) and the Fugitive Offenders Act of 1881 (44 & 45 Vict.) were designed to clarify and standardise the procedures governing the extradition of criminals to foreign states and the transfer of fugitives between different parts of the empire,[33] colonial governments nonetheless retained the ability to formulate their own local measures, so long as they were generally in keeping with the parameters of these imperial laws.[34] In India, for example, the Government of India (GOI) passed four different extradition laws and amendments between 1872 and 1903 alone.[35]

The need for so many different extradition laws was a reflection of the complexity of reconciling the GOI’s commitments under the imperial Extradition Act of 1870 with its unusually vast and tangled legal and political geography. Though the most iconic maps of the British Empire depict India as a solid mass of red or pink, suggesting that British dominion stretched evenly and assuredly across the entire subcontinent, this was hardly the case. Aside from the tenuous control exerted by the colonial state over India’s porous frontier regions, the continued existence of its nominally independent ‘princely states’ disrupted the smooth and even unfolding of British legal and political authority.[36] The princely state of Hyderabad, to take one example, was often a reluctant partner when it came to the arrest and extradition of criminals operating across its borders, which led to a series of repeated political disputes and legal contestations with British authorities about the applicability of laws like the Fugitive Offenders Act.[37]

British hegemony was additionally complicated by Portuguese possessions in Goa and Daman along India’s western coast, as well as a handful of small, scattered comptoirs (trading posts) that the French had managed to cling to in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars.
Geographically dispersed, with a total area of little more than 500 square kilometres, and completely dependent on the British for trade and defence, these French enclaves, known collectively as l’Inde Française posed little obvious threat to British rule.[38] Nevertheless, these vestiges of Dupleix’s [Joseph Marquis Dupleix, Governor-General of French India and rival of Robert Clive] once ‘glorious’ Indian empire retained a strong emotional and symbolic significance among France’s pro-colonial lobbyists, despite their relative economic and strategic insignificance within the wider French colonial empire.[39] French officials in India accordingly sought to preserve and advance their nation’s sovereign claims over these territories by repeatedly challenging their British neighbours for greater political concessions through appeals to evolving notions of international law.[40] Thus, far from being a unified political entity, colonial India was punctuated by various enclaves or islands of overlapping, ‘layered’, and competing sovereignty.[41]

As a result, when it came to the arrest and rendition of fugitive criminals, the British colonial government was regularly required to transact with an array of different political formations. Within this context, extradition treaties and agreements can be understood as one of the key ways in which colonial authorities attempted to tame and re-order this tangled legal geography.[42] In the case of Franco-British political relations, extradition treaties were also seen as an important mechanism for reducing tensions and ensuring peaceful relations between these two frequent rivals. As legal scholars have long recognised, one of the key purposes for the development of extradition treaties was to foster mutual respect and goodwill between sovereigns, while also tackling the shared international problem of preventing and punishing criminal acts.[43] As William Magnuson has pointed out, however, this model of rational inter-state exchange could also be profoundly complicated and shaped by domestic politics, which might provide governments or their officials with different incentives to breach these agreements.[44] By the turn of the twentieth century, both Britain and France had an increasingly strong interest in working together to expand, police, and defend their respective empires. British and French officials alike recognised the dangerous threat posed by global revolutionary movements, and should have had strong incentives to work together. Indeed, in the metropole they increasingly did.[45] Yet, in places such as India, this remained a much more complicated affair. Overlapping ideas about extradition, difficulties in distinguishing between ‘pure political’ and ‘relative political’ offences, local political exigencies, as well as wider imperial and metropolitan considerations all combined to hamstring their ability to work together effectively when it came to rendering fugitives in India.

III – L’Affaire Charu Chandra Roy

Just after 8 a.m., on 22 June 1908, British and French police forces raided the home of Charu Chandra Roy in Chandernagore. When the police entered the residence, Godfrey Charles Denham, a British officer within the Special Branch of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Bengal Police, produced and read out a warrant for Roy’s arrest. Roy was then placed under the custody of the French Commissioner of Police, E. Prieur, while Denham and the French police searched the house for an hour. Following the search, Roy was conducted into a car and taken by the French authorities to the Prosecutor’s Office, where he was officially given over to the custody of Denham. An adjutant then escorted Denham and Roy to a jetty where a steamship from Calcutta was waiting to convey them down the Hooghly river and into British territory.[46] At first glance, Roy’s arrest and extradition appear to offer a glimpse into the successful workings of Franco-British colonial policing of Indian revolutionaries. Roy’s extradition, however, quickly became a source of international controversy which demonstrated the complexity and the limits of collaborative colonial policing in India.

On the surface, Roy was a respectable and prominent citizen of the French settlement. In addition to being the deputy director of the local Dupleix College, he was also a registered elector who helped select India’s representative to the French Chamber of Deputies in Paris.[47] Roy, however, was also a leading Swadeshi activist and one of the main revolutionary leaders in Chandernagore. In addition to promoting the movement to his students at Dupleix College, Roy also organised boycotts and public meetings within the settlement. On 4 April, one of these protests had turned violent after armed soldiers and police were despatched by Mayor Paul Emile Léon Tardivel to shut it down.[48] In revenge, Roy gave his approval to Barin Ghosh, one the leaders of the Calcutta-based Manicktolla [Maniktala] secret society, to assassinate Tardivel.[49] Ghosh and his associates subsequently attempted to kill Tardivel by throwing a bomb into his dining room on the night of 12 April 1908, but the detonator failed and Tardivel escaped unharmed.[50] Based on his public activities and his known connections with the Manicktolla group, the Bengal Government suspected that Roy was closely involved in the preparation of explosive materials and the planning of various other terrorist attacks, including an assassination attempt against former Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, Sir Andrew Fraser, and the notorious botched attack against Magistrate Douglas Kingsford at Muzzafarpur.[51] Following the Kingsford attempt, the members of the Manicktolla group were arrested and prosecuted in a high-profile trial that became known as the Alipore Conspiracy Case.[52] During their investigation, British officials discovered that two of the accused in the Alipore Conspiracy Case, Upendra Nath Banerji and Kanailal Dutta, had actually studied under Roy at Dupleix College, and that Roy also had close connections with Narendra Nath Goswami, who later turned state’s evidence and was assassinated in the Alipore prison by Dutta and Satyendra Nath Bose.[53] It was Goswami’s testimony that finally provided British authorities with sufficient evidence to obtain a warrant for Roy’s arrest and extradition, after which Roy was transferred to the same prison ward in the Alipore jail as the Manicktolla conspirators, including Aurobindo Ghosh.[54]

Shortly after Roy’s extradition and imprisonment, the case against him began to unravel. Because British authorities believed Roy had been directly involved in helping to prepare explosives and organise attacks, his arrest warrant cited charges under sections 107, 150, and 157 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) of 1860, and sections 19 and 20 of the 1878 Indian Arms Act.[55] British officials had hoped that incriminating evidence, including bomb-making materials, would be found at his home, and were obviously disappointed when the police came back empty-handed. Lacking sufficient evidence to indict him for the aforementioned charges, the British authorities decided to change their strategy and arraign Roy under the much more serious and wide-ranging charges of conspiring to ‘wage war’ against the sovereign (sections 121, 121A, and 123 of the IPC).[56] This fateful decision to unilaterally revise the charges levied against Roy would ultimately force a confrontation between the French and British governments over the extremely sensitive issue of national sovereignty and the respective rights of their citizens and subjects.

From the outset, French officials had been uneasy about extraditing such a prominent public official, and the Bengal Government became noticeably incensed when it had to wait for over two weeks while the cautious Administrator of Chandernagore, Maurice Guizonnier, considered their request.[57] Although Guizonnier reluctantly agreed to help his British counterparts, he wrote to his superior, Governor Adrien Bonhoure, highlighting the ‘delicate’ judicial and political questions surrounding the case. In particular, he gestured to the complexities of Britain and France’s overlapping extradition treaties and agreements.[58] Roy’s extradition had been requested according to the Franco-British Convention of 1815, which governed the sale and production of salt and opium in India. Article 9 of this treaty provided for the mutual extradition of both Indians and Europeans who violated the laws of British and French India.[59] In 1876, however, the French and British governments concluded a new Extradition Treaty, which included an article specifying that ‘nationals’ were exempt from extradition.[60] Guizonnier, therefore, concluded that it would have been within French rights to refuse Roy’s extradition.[61] When the General Prosecutor and Chief of the Judicial Service, A. Raynaud, weighed in a few weeks later, however, he pointed out that the 1876 Treaty specifically did not alter or revoke the wide-ranging powers granted by article 9 of the 1815 Convention. ‘Nationals’, Raynaud concluded, ‘are therefore liable to extradition in India’.[62] In light of the confusion about the validity of the procedure followed in Roy’s arrest and extradition, Bonhoure decided to refer the entire case to his superior in Paris, the Minister for the Colonies, Raphaël Milliès-Lacroix.[63]

While Roy languished in a British jail cell and the French authorities debated the legality of the extradition, his brother, Kanailal Roy Gupta, began an aggressive publicity and letter-writing campaign in the hopes of obtaining his release. Three day’s after Roy’s arrest, Gupta, published an open letter of vigorous protest addressed to the French Public Prosecutor in Chandernagore in the local newspaper, Matribhumi (motherland). With its motto, ‘liberté, égalité, fraternité’, Matribhumi was known for its advocacy of French republican and liberal values, while also being a prominent mouthpiece for Indian radicals and revolutionaries.[64] In his letter, Gupta proclaimed his brother’s innocence and argued that both the search of Roy’s house, as well as his arrest and extradition were technically illegal. To make his case, Gupta stressed that Roy was a loyal and respectable ‘French citizen’, and cited the 1876 Extradition Treaty, which guaranteed that ‘citizens’ were protected against extradition.[65] In a subsequent letter published in Matribhumi on 25 July, Gupta renewed his attacks against the legality of the extradition, this time pointing out that the 1876 Treaty specifically prohibited the extradition of individuals accused of ‘political crimes’.[66] As we have seen, the convention of not extraditing political prisoners was a vital principle of international law governing the rendition of prisoners from one state to another. It was considered so important, in fact, that the French and British had concluded a separate agreement in 1861 which clarified that while the GOI retained ‘the widest possible powers of extradition’ under the 1815 Convention, that this did not apply to ‘political offences’.[67]

Gupta clearly understood that upholding the political offence exception would be an important priority for a self-professed liberal regime like France that sought to position itself as a champion of liberty and democracy, and so on 15 July, he personally wrote to Bonhoure, informing him that the British had abandoned the initial charges against Roy, and had replaced them with charges for political crimes. Gupta stirred the pot further by claiming that the ‘charges of murder and attempted murder against Charu Chandra Ray were nothing more than a ploy to catch your good faith unawares and to easily obtain his extradition’.[68] Two weeks later, on 23 July 1908, Gupta wrote a similar letter to the Minister for the Colonies, Milliès-Lacroix, peppering it with patriotic language and beseeching the Minister to protect the rights of a fellow citizen.[69] In yet another letter to Bonhoure from 31 July 1908, Gupta forwarded various documents and correspondence obtained from the British authorities that provided irrefutable evidence that Roy was to be prosecuted for crimes against the state, and reminded him that France did not extradite individuals accused of political offences. He also argued that the involvement of a British officer in the search and arrest invalidated the entire extradition procedure. According to Gupta, only French agents had the legal authority to arrest Roy and search his home, and Roy should have been conducted to the Chandernagore frontier before being handed over to the British authorities.[70]

Back in Paris, the pro-colonial press attempted to turned Roy’s plight into a national cause célèbre. One sympathetic daily entitled La Politique Coloniale came to Roy’s defence by reprinting Gupta’s letters and whipping up patriotic sentiment and outrage by claiming that the arrest of a French civil servant by a British police officer represented a violation of France’s sovereignty.[71] Another newspaper entitled La Presse Coloniale decried Roy’s treatment as ‘monstrous’, declaring that ‘[t]here could be no more overt violation of our fellow citizens’ rights and no greater compromise to their interests and the interests of the metropole’.[72] As the press stoked the flames of public outrage, the League for the Defence of the Rights of Man and Citizens also became involved in the affair. Founded in 1898 to defend Captain Alfred Dreyfus against his unjust and illegal conviction for treason during the infamous Dreyfus Affair which dominated French politics between 1894 and 1906, the League was a powerful and politically influential left-wing organisation.[73] On 21 August, the President of the League, Francis de Pressensé, wrote to Milliès-Lacroix, drawing his attention to Roy’s case:

If the facts relayed … are accurate, our countryman was the victim of a monstrous violation of our laws, and indeed of the law of man. I am aware of the serious events which led a renowned liberal, Lord Morley, Secretary of State for India, to order measures of prevention and suppression to be enforced across the entire peninsula. Yet the law, the law of man, and international guarantees cannot, in any circumstance, exist in isolation. France’s honour, and the safety of her representatives, are at stake.[74]


As such, De Pressensé implored Milliès-Lacroix and the French government to undertake ‘the most energetic intervention’ on Roy’s behalf to obtain his release from the British authorities.

As the pressure mounted, the French government found itself on the defensive, searching for new ways to justify and uphold the legality of the extradition. In the metropole, much of the outrage over the Roy case appears to have been driven by the misapprehension that he was a French ‘citizen’, rather than a French ‘subject’. The French government therefore tried to deflect criticism by clarifying that Roy was not, in fact, a natural-born Frenchman, and was simply a ‘native subject’. This meant that, from a judicial point of view, Roy’s extradition was completely legal and consistent with French treaty obligations toward the British.[75] Officials also continued to insist that the proper extradition procedure had been followed, and that there had been no violation of French sovereignty.[76] All of this changed, however, when the Bengal Government, after numerous delays, finally confirmed on 15 September that they had, indeed, changed the charges against Roy.[77] The following day, Guizonnier registered his strong disapproval to Bonhoure, and expressed irritation that the Bengal authorities had previously been so unresponsive to his requests for clarification about the progress of Roy’s case.[78] Now that the British authorities had demonstrated their bad faith in unilaterally deciding to switch the charges without asking the French for authorisation, Guizonnier believed that it was within their rights to challenge the extradition.[79]

From a strictly legal point of view, there was little the French government could officially do unless a verdict of guilty was rendered against Roy.[80] By October 1908, however, public scrutiny of Roy’s case had become so great that the French government feared the potential national embarrassment and domestic political backlash that would occur if the apparent irregularities of the affair were officially raised in the Chamber of Deputies. Eager to portray themselves as defenders of liberty, while also avoiding any appearance that they had violated the generally recognised principles of granting asylum to political prisoners, the French authorities intervened on Roy’s behalf and pressured the British to retract the charges of conspiracy and waging war against the sovereign. Writing to the Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and future Viceroy of British India, Charles Hardinge, French Ambassador Paul Cambon pointed out SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1 that ‘Great Britain had always declared herself as opposing the principle of extraditions for political offences’ and asked that they limit themselves to the original charges listed on Roy’s arrest warrant.[81] Two days later, on 12 October 1908, Cambon sent another letter to the Foreign Office, urging them to ‘avoid introducing any political aspect into this judicial affair’.[82] Just over two weeks later, on 27 October, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs finally reported to the Ministry for the Colonies that the British had relented and withdrawn all the political charges against Roy.[83] With insufficient evidence to proceed against Roy for the initial charges, and the option of pursuing him for political crimes now closed to them, British authorities were compelled to drop all charges against Roy, and he was finally released from the Alipore jail on 7 January 1909.

The controversy provoked by the handling of Roy’s case fed into a growing sense distrust and simmering tension between British and French authorities. Embittered by the apparent reluctance on the part of the French to aid them in their efforts, the Bengal Government concluded that drastic measures would need to be taken in [the] future if French authorities were not more cooperative when it came to extraditing individuals accused of political offences:

If the French Government persisit [sic] in a wide construction of the word ‘political’ and in the perpetuation of the state of things described, it is obvious that the old friendly and altogether easy-going relations between the local administrations must cease. The only possible course for this Government would be at great expense to surround Chandernagore with a cordon of police, and to instute [sic] the severest scrutiny for contraband of every kind. Such action would impose intense inconvenience on the residents of the settlement and there is no doubt that the French local authorities at least would recommend any possible concession in order to avoid it.[84]

 
The French, for their part, were clearly annoyed about the apparent British duplicity in changing the charges against Roy, but also realised they needed to maintain the goodwill of their powerful neighbours. In an effort to placate their irritated British counterparts, Bonhoure unsuccessfully attempted to block Roy’s reinstatement as deputy director of Dupleix College shortly after his release from prison.[85] If Roy’s reinstatement was not insulting enough to the Bengal Government, the appearance of a copy of the radical Jugantar newspaper on the public notice board at Dupleix College a few days later was seen as positively provocative. Commenting on the incident, the Calcutta-based newspaper The Englishman made veiled, yet sufficiently obvious, insinuations that Roy was responsible, and chastised French authorities for not doing enough to ‘prevent Chandernagore becoming a spawning-bed for sedition-mongers’.[86] After reading The Englishman article, the French Consul General in Calcutta, Ernest Ronssin expressed his understandable concern that the French would permit someone who openly ‘preaches’ murder against British authorities to continue to serve as a public official, and warned that Roy’s known connections with the Chandernagore ‘anarchists’ would erode the good relations between the British and French in India.[87]

The Charu Chandra Roy affair left a bad taste in the mouths of both British and French officials alike. Yet just over a year after its conclusion, the French and British governments found themselves drawn into an even more acrimonious conflict surrounding the extradition of another Indian revolutionary. On 8 July 1910, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar escaped from his British captors as his ship passed through the French port city of Marseilles from London enroute to India, where he was meant to face trial. Savarkar jumped ship and managed to swim ashore, but was promptly arrested by a French police officer and surrendered back to the British. When the French public caught wind of these events, however, there was an outcry against the impromptu extradition. This became the spark for a major diplomatic incident between the two powers, at the heart of which lay an intense legal debate about national sovereignty in an increasingly international age. Although the case was finally decided at the Hague in favour of the British, it continued to cast a long shadow over the still fragile Franco-British Entente Cordiale.[88] As Edouard Néron, a member of the French Chamber of Deputies put it in an article written for Les Annales Coloniales shortly after the verdict was rendered: ‘This judgment will, undoubtedly, be of great significance. It is concerned, in fact, with one of the most delicate questions concerning territorial sovereignty and the right of asylum, and it is probable that it will form the subject of jurisprudence for similar disputes in the future’.[89]

Although neither the political scandal nor the ensuing diplomatic crisis were on the same scale as that of the Savarkar case, the Roy affair nonetheless set an important precedent within India itself when it came to determining the possibilities and limits of Franco-British collaborative colonial policing. After British officials learned that Aurobindo Ghosh [Sri Aurobindo] had fled to Pondicherry via Chandernagore in 1910, Secretary of State for India John Morley gestured explicitly to the Roy case when he ordered Viceroy Hardinge not to pursue the French for his extradition in the hopes of avoiding a similar political incident.[90] The apparent success of Gupta’s letter-writing offensive and the ensuing publicity campaign by liberal newspapers and organisations also provided a sobering lesson to the French authorities about the problems that could arise if they were seen to be colluding too openly with their British counterparts. This was reinforced during King George V’s royal visit to India in 1911, when the League for the Defence of the Rights of Man pressed the French government over the presence of special undercover British police officers in Chandernagore, claiming that it was an ‘invasive’ violation of French sovereignty.[91] Finally, the apparent confusion surrounding Britain and France’s overlapping extradition agreements and procedures highlighted the importance of clarifying these issues, and prompted French colonial officials to try and obtain greater power to resist extradition requests when they were deemed to run counter to their interests.[92] As we shall see in the following section, all of these factors played a role in the inability of the French and British authorities to apprehend Rash Behari Bose, the mastermind behind the assassination attempt against Viceroy Hardinge in 1912.

IV– The Flight of Rash Behari Bose

In February 1914, a series of police raids in Delhi and Lahore uncovered evidence that the mastermind behind the 1912 assassination attempt against Viceroy Hardinge was Rash Behari Bose, the head clerk in the Forest Department at Dehradun in Uttarakhand.[93] The police subsequently attempted to arrest Bose in Lahore, but he managed to escape and eventually made his way back to his home town of Chandernagore, where he had even studied under Charu Chandra Roy at Dupleix College. Though it did not take long for British authorities to pick up Bose’s trail, it did take them several days to obtain permission from the French authorities to conduct a search of his house.[94] By the time French and British police raided Bose’s home on the morning of 8 March, Bose had already escaped to Benares after reading reports in the Calcutta-based newspapers advertising the large reward for his arrest.[95] Two subsequent searches of his domicile turned up nothing more than a few proscribed publications.[96] Although Bose departed Chandernagore for Benares before the British began their extradition proceedings, Petrie later lamented how ‘the delay inseparable from the arranging of extradition formalities has greatly prejudiced our chances of capturing him’.[97] The Governor of the French Settlements, Alfred Albert Martineau, however, saw it slightly differently, and described the failure to apprehend Bose and the repeated impositions placed on his administration by the British authorities as ‘a humiliating and grotesque situation’.[98]

On 5 March 1914, after learning that the British authorities were in hot pursuit and seeking his extradition from Chandernagore for violations of the Explosives Act (1884) and section 302 (murder) of the IPC, Bose petitioned the French Minister for the Colonies in Paris, Albert François Lebrun, to deny their request. Citing both the Treaty of 1815 and the Convention of 1876, Bose insisted that the ‘political character’ of his supposed crimes protected him against extradition and implored Lebrun to grant him asylum.[99] Less than two weeks later, on 16 March, Bose’s uncle, Nandakisor Sinha, sent a similar petition to Martineau. Sinha also argued that the Convention of 1876 protected Bose from extradition due to the political nature of his alleged crimes, and he beseeched Martineau for the ‘protection of the French Government’.[100] As with the various petitions sent on behalf of Roy six years earlier, Bose and Sinha both presented an ardently juridical defence against Bose’s extradition by insisting it was the legal duty of the French authorities to grant him political asylum. At the same time, they also implicitly advanced an important moral argument as well. By casting Bose in the role of a legitimate freedom fighter, these petitions attempted to exploit French national pride about being a self-professed liberal, democratic state that was committed to the causes of freedom and justice.

When the pro-colonial press caught wind of the Bose affair, they also rallied to his defence. On 15 April 1914, La Presse Coloniale published an article entitled ‘An Illegal Extradition in Chandernagor’, accusing the British Viceroy of ‘having nothing better to do’ than ‘invade’ French territory in order to ‘ransack’ the houses of French citizens and subjects without sufficient warning or even official authorisation.[101] According to the article, this represented an unacceptable threat to the security and rights of French citizens and subjects: ‘SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1 our compatriots from overseas are not only frustrated by the searches of a foreign nation, but those who carry even some small suspicion are still extradited with an unlawful and abusive ease’.[102] As Henry Croisilles, the paper’s correspondent put it, ‘We may soon see foreign police entering the home of any citizen without prior permission’.[103] Alarmist as it may have seemed, this kind of rhetoric touched a nerve with the French public, tapping into their sense of patriotism and also insecurity and emotional attachment to these vestiges of their ‘lost’ empire.[104]

On 21 April 1914, Gaston Doumergue, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, wrote to Lebrun and compared Bose’s plea for protection to the one mounted in 1908 by Roy and his supporters. Doumergue reminded Lebrun that his predecessors had ultimately sanctioned Roy’s extradition because the initial charges levied by the British authorities constituted common criminal offences, and were not protected by the political offence exception.[105] Thus, regardless of the overtly political implications of Bose’s alleged offences, their violent nature also necessarily invalidated them from being non-extraditable offences. As Doumergue put it, ‘It is the first duty of insurgents or rebels who claim to be in a state of war to abstain from barbarous or disloyal acts which the customs of war reject’.[106] Doumergue was well aware of the political difficulties that would arise if the French were seen to being offering shelter to violent revolutionaries, and he took a hard line by insisting that the French colonial authorities should do everything in their power to cooperate and help the British in their efforts.[107]


In a subsequent letter, Doumergue reiterated that the French were not to extend Bose any protection because of both the special nature of the case, as well as the difficulty of extending political legitimacy to ‘anarchist attacks committed in Hindustan’.[108]

Yet despite his avowed commitment to rooting out Indian revolutionaries, Doumergue also recognised that French sovereignty and national pride might be damaged if they were seen to be too acquiescent toward British demands. As such, he stressed that French colonial authorities should not allow their cooperation with the British to compromise the ‘independence of our authority in our Indian possessions, however compelling the obligations of applying Article 9 of the Convention of 7 March 1815’.[109] In order to minimise this, Doumergue suggested that in future the French authorities could simply expel revolutionaries from their territory.[110] In response, Martineau agreed that expulsion would help ‘avoid the ever-unpleasant procedure of extradition’, but cautioned that it ‘would in reality be tantamount to purely and simply handing over of criminals to the English authorities’.[111] Martineau was particularly sensitive to how these kinds of political entanglements threatened French sovereignty in India and political stability back home, and was prepared to take fairly remarkable steps to avoid future disputes of this nature. In May 1914, after Bose managed to elude the French and British police, Hardinge asked Martineau to do everything in his power to arrest Bose should he ever return to Chandernagore. Although Martineau offered his assurances to Hardinge, he secretly instructed the Administrator of Chandernagore to inform Bose’s family that he would be arrested if he returned. Writing to Maurice Raynaud, the Minister of the Colonies in Paris, Martineau justified this bold decision by arguing that it would help prevent even greater ‘diplomatic difficulties’.[112]

For Martineau, the kinds of political disputes surrounding extradition and inter-imperial policing were merely symptomatic of the much more fundamental and apparently insurmountable problem of having two clashing imperial sovereignties in India. As a result, Martineau believed that the only viable solution was for France to cede control of Chandernagore directly to the British in return for expanded territorial concessions around Pondicherry.[113] As he put it in a letter from 1917:

In Chandernagor we assume a most thankless and futile role. We are obliged to defend, in the name of our principles, a right of hospitality which may turn against our interests, and yet, after the victories of the Marne and Verdun, which have caused the greatest stir in India, we cannot sacrifice those principles which bind us. That is why the cession of Chandernagor has always seemed to me the most political and honourable way of escaping from an extremely difficult and, as it were, hopeless moral situation.[114]


Yet despite Martineau’s best efforts, and a sporadic series of informal and formal negotiations between the British and French governments over the next several years, this proposal ultimately came to nothing.[115]

Following his flight from Chandernagore to Benares, Bose continued his revolutionary activities, and was one of the key organisers in the unsuccessful Ghadar uprising in Punjab that terrified the British colonial establishment during the First World War.[116]


The Ghadar Mutiny, also known as the Ghadar Conspiracy, was a plan to initiate a pan-Indian mutiny in the British Indian Army in February 1915 to end the British Raj in India. The plot originated at the onset of World War I, between the Ghadar Party in the United States, the Berlin Committee in Germany, the Indian revolutionary underground in British India and the German Foreign Office through the consulate in San Francisco. The incident derives its name from the North American Ghadar Party, whose members of the Punjabi Sikh community in Canada and the United States were among the most prominent participants in the plan. It was the most prominent amongst a number of plans of the much larger Hindu–German Mutiny, formulated between 1914 and 1917 to initiate a Pan-Indian rebellion against the British Raj during World War I. The mutiny was planned to start in the key state of Punjab, followed by mutinies in Bengal and rest of India. Indian units as far as Singapore were planned to participate in the rebellion. The plans were thwarted through a coordinated intelligence and police response. British intelligence infiltrated the Ghadarite movement in Canada and in India, and last-minute intelligence from a spy helping to crush the planned uprising in Punjab before it started. Key figures were arrested, mutinies in smaller units and garrisons within India were also crushed.

Intelligence about the threat of the mutiny led to a number of important war-time measures introduced in India, including the passages of Ingress into India Ordinance, 1914, the Foreigners act 1914, and the Defence of India Act 1915. The conspiracy was followed by the First Lahore Conspiracy Trial and Benares Conspiracy Trial which saw death sentences awarded to a number of Indian revolutionaries, and exile to a number of others. After the end of the war, fear of a second Ghadarite uprising led to the recommendations of the Rowlatt Acts and thence the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

-- Ghadar Mutiny, by Wikipedia


After the failed Ghadar uprising, Bose once again managed to evade the British authorities and return to Chandernagore, before finally escaping to Japan in May 1915. Although Bose’s escape to Japan signalled an end to the controversy with the French government, British officials continued to pursue Bose’s extradition with the Japanese authorities. In the absence of an official extradition treaty with Japan and faced with the ever-problematic issue of extraditing persons accused of political offences, Hardinge resorted to diplomatic subterfuge. Concealing the political nature of Bose’s offences, Hardinge applied considerable pressure through the British embassy in Tokyo and depicted Bose as part of a wider German conspiracy to undermine the Allied war effort.[117] When the Japanese government finally agreed to issue a deportation order, Bose went into hiding with the help of his friends connected to the ultranationalist Kokury [Black Dragon Society/Kokuryu-Kai] SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1 ūkai and Gen’y SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1 ôsha secret societies. The deportation order was eventually rescinded in March 1916, and Bose freely continued to write and lecture against British colonial rule in India throughout the 1920s and 30s.[118]

The ultimate failure of British authorities to apprehend one of the would-be assassins of the Viceroy of India was a great blow to their prestige, and provides yet another striking demonstration of the enduring fault lines that continued to plague Franco-British colonial police cooperation during this period. In August 1913, while harried British officials desperately sought those responsible for the Delhi bombing, R.H. Craddock vented his frustration about their inability to intervene in the affairs of Chandernagore. The French police, Craddock claimed, were underfunded, understaffed, and either too corrupt, timid, or incompetent to suppress the revolutionaries who operated there.[119] As a result, Chandernagore had become a dangerous haven of sedition, propaganda, and terrorist violence. ‘We cannot’, Craddock wrote, ‘go on quietly in the knowledge that Chandernagore contains men skilled in making bombs and living there in impunity, who can at any time plot an outrage of their own, or supply bombs to trusted emissaries of seditionaries in other parts of India who make their plots and supply their own throwers’.[120] As Tegart put it a few years later, ‘the Chandernagore Settlement provides, in its present state, an Alsatia for revolutionary fugitives and is an active centre of plots directed towards the subversion of British rule in India’.
[121] Although it would be unfair to blame Bose’s initial escape from Chandernagore on the French authorities, the inability of the British police to operate freely within the French settlement certainly did not help matters. Martineau’s somewhat astonishing decision to warn Bose’s family that he would be arrested if he ever returned also reveals how the patience of his beleaguered colonial administration had run out, and that this kind of close police cooperation was ultimately incompatible with upholding France’s dignity and honour.
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Part 2 of 2

V – Conclusion

The inability of the British authorities to bring revolutionaries like Charu Chandra Roy and Rash Behari Bose to justice demonstrates the complexity of collaborative colonial policing and counter-insurgency across South Asia in the early twentieth century. Colonial India was never a unified or homogenous political entity, and its overlapping and competing legal jurisdictions meant that the British and French colonial administrations came into repeated conflict as they attempted to disrupt or apprehend Indian revolutionaries operating between their respective territory. Although both powers recognised that it was in their mutual interests to put a stop to anti-colonial activities, they also had to balance this against larger imperial and national considerations. In the case of the arrest and extradition of criminal offenders residing in foreign territory, colonial authorities were required to navigate the complicated waters of international law governing the right of political asylum, while also measuring this against the essential imperative of maintaining the integrity of their imperial sovereignty and national honour. The end result was an uneven and fitful unfolding of colonial police power across the subcontinent. Despite repeated British efforts, Chandernagore remained a constant thorn in their side. During the 1920s and 30s, Chandernagore continued to be an important entrepôt for arms smuggling, as well as a key site for production and distribution of anti-colonial propaganda.[122] It also remained a regular refuge for Indian revolutionaries fleeing from British authorities, including Ganesh Ghosh, Lokenath Bal, and some of the other leaders of the Chittagong Armoury Raid of 1930.[123]

The ability of the British police to disrupt the movement and activities of trans-border criminals and revolutionaries in India was always deeply contingent on the level of cooperation they could secure from those with whom they competed for legal and political sovereignty within the subcontinent – whether they were princely states, such as Hyderabad, or their age-old French rivals. The French were ultimately more successful in resisting British encroachments than Hyderabad because, while their territory in India remained small, the larger geo-strategic power of the French Empire was always something that needed to be reckoned with. The British themselves were certainly aware of this, and their officials and newspapers alike made every effort to remind the French about their mutual obligations toward them. During the height of the Savarkar affair in July 1910, for instance, The Madras Gazette wrote that ‘the French Government should never forget that a revolution against the British In India is a revolution against the French Government in India’, urging them to use ‘all possible means’ to assist the British or risk losing ‘the few possessions she still has in the East’.[124] Despite such appeals for cooperation, however, British authorities were frequently vexed by the perceived incompetence and apathy of the their French colleagues. Writing in July 1913, Tegart complained that the French police ‘have no semblance of discipline and no sense of responsibility’. Tegart was equally unimpressed by what he saw as an unwillingness or apathetic attitude on the part of French officials when it came to sharing intelligence and cooperation more generally.[125] Indeed, the chequered history of Franco-British police cooperation in Chandernagore perhaps suggests why these types of endeavours were not more common across the globe.[126]

Yet, despite British perceptions to the contrary, many French colonial officials were actually quite anxious to assist their neighbours as much as possible, recognising that the security and prosperity of their own colonial possessions in India depended on the continued stability of British rule.[127] The problem, however, was that the French wanted to cooperate as equal partners, not as mere lackeys of their age-old rivals. Bowing down to British pressure, whether it was regarding rules and regulations governing firearms ownership, laws protecting the freedom of the press, or the arrest and extradition of political suspects in French territory not only threatened to undermine their sovereignty and authority in India, but it also opened the door for a potential political backlash back home. Despite their relatively insignificant geo-strategic, political and economic value within the greater French Empire, the five comptoirs of French India commanded a disproportionate cultural and sentimental importance within the French imagination.[128] As such, French public opinion could tolerate only so much acquiescence in India as a matter of national pride. The problems associated with international extradition are particularly revealing of these tensions, and disputes between the French and British authorities surrounding their respective legal jurisdictions, treaty obligations, and evolving notions of international law continued to remain unresolved well into the 1930s.[129]

The apparent failures and limitations of Franco-British efforts to disrupt these revolutionaries were also importantly shaped by the strategies and methods adopted by the revolutionaries themselves. Although revolutionary figures and their supporters are often associated with being outside the law, this article has shown how – at least in the case of colonial extradition – they actually revealed themselves to be knowledgeable and capable of wielding colonial law for their own purposes. Indeed, it was through their understanding of India’s complex and overlapping legal jurisdictions, as well as their fluency of extradition law and the wider political ramifications of enforcing it, that individuals such as Roy, Gupta, Savarkar, and Bose were able to manipulate colonial officials and public opinion alike in order to achieve their goals. In so doing, they helped to transform Chandernagore into one of the key hubs of the Indian nationalist movement in Bengal during the early twentieth century.

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Notes:

[1] GOI to Crewe, 26 December 1912, BL, IOR, Mss Eur E224/20, para. 1, fp. 95; and D. Petrie, ‘Report on the Delhi Bomb Investigation’, 8 November 1914, BL, IOR, NEG 10612, para. 1, fp. 66.

[2] GOI to Crewe, 26 December 1912, BL, IOR, Mss Eur E224/20, para. 1, fp. 95. Despite being seated right next to Hardinge, the Vicereine, Winifred Selena Sturt, and her Indian attendant, managed to escape unscathed.

[3] ‘An Attempt to Kill the Viceroy’, The Times, 24 December 1912, 4; ‘Un Attentat Contre le Vice-Roi des Indes’, Le Figaro, 24 December 1912, 2; ‘Viceroy of India Wounded by Bomb’, New York Times, December 24 1912, 3.

[4] This reward was subsequently increased to Rs. 50,000, and finally to Rs. 1,00,000 or one lakh: Petrie, ‘Report on the Delhi Bomb Investigation’, 8 November 1914, BL, IOR, NEG 10612, paras. 4, 6, fp. 67, 69.

[5] Despatch no. 150-158-C from C.R. Cleveland to all C.I. Depts., 5 January 1913, BL, IOR, NEG 10612, para. 3, fp. 8.

[6] D. Petrie, (Secret) ‘Enquiry into the Delhi Bomb Outrage’, 31 March 1913, BL, IOR, NEG 10612, para. 5, fp. 21.

[7] See G.C. Denham, ‘Calcutta Enquiry Progress Report’, 26 April 1913 BL, IOR, NEG 10612, para. 2, fp. 19.

[8] Note by R.H. Craddock, 22 August 1913, BL, IOR, NEG 10612, para. 17, fp. 62.

[9] Ibid., 5 October 1913, BL, IOR, NEG 10612, fp. 62.

[10] South Asian historiography has tended to focus almost exclusively on developments within British India itself, whereas French scholars often overlook Chandernagore due to its provincial status within what was already seen as backwater of the larger French Empire. See, for example, Ghosh, Gentlemanly Terrorists; Sanyal, Revolutionary Pamphlets; and David, ‘Chandernagor et le swadeshisme’, 89-90.

[11] Heehs, ‘Revolutionary Terrorism in British Bengal’, in Boehmer and Morton, eds., Terror and the Postcolonial, 168; Popplewell, Intelligence and Imperial Defence, 115; also, ‘Note on Chandernagore, by Mr. Abdul Majid, Deputy Superintendent of Police, Criminal Intelligence Department’, 7 September 1913, in Samanta, ed., Terrorism in Bengal, vol. 3, 319-29.

[12] See Letter from Viceroy Willingdon to the Governor of the French Settlements in India, 10 April 1933, British Library (BL), India Office Records (IOR), L/PJ/12/6, fp. 109; and Confidential Letter no. 2320P from the Bengal Government (BG) to the Government of India (GOI), 27 February 1925, IOR, L/PJ/12/185, file 8807/23.

[13] The use of the term Alsatia is also interesting because of its strong associations in some quarters with ‘liberty’ and ‘freedom’. For a history of the concept of legal sanctuary in London that discuss Alsatia, see McSheffrey, ‘Sanctuary and the Legal Topography of Pre-Reformation London’; and Hertzler, ‘The Abuse and Outlawing of Sanctuary for Debt’.

[14] See Brückenhaus, Policing Transnational Protest; and Owen, ‘The Soft Heart of the British Empire’. During the First World War, British and American authorities also began to work together to combat the threat posed by the revolutionary Ghadar Party: Sohi, Echoes of Mutiny, 36. For more on the rise of global anti-colonialism during this period, see: Fischer-Tiné, ‘Mass-Mediated Panic in the British Empire?’; ibid., ‘Indian Nationalism and the “World Forces”’; Khan, Egyptian-Indian Nationalist Collaboration; Silvestri, ‘“The Sinn Féin of India”’; Heehs, ‘Foreign Influences on Bengali Revolutionary Terrorism’; Makalani, In the Cause of Freedom; Aydin, The Politics of Anti-Westernism, chap. 4; Schneer, London 1900, chap. 9; and Adi, West Africans in Britain.

[15] Thomas and Toye, Arguing About Empire, 10.

[16] Although Pondicherry provided an occasional refuge for revolutionaries, most notably Aurobindo Ghosh, and was also used to smuggle arms and propaganda into British-held territory, it was still of secondary importance and British authorities never considered it represented the same threat as Chandernagore: (Confidential) Political Department Memo by E.P. Donaldson on French Possessions in India, September 1933, IOR, L/PJ/12/6, fp. 104.

[17] Bassiouni, International Extradition, 2

[18] DeFabo, ‘Terrorist or Revolutionary, 71.

[19] This gave rise to the notion that the term ‘extradition’ derives from it being literally ‘outside’ or ‘beyond’ tradition. The most commonly accepted etymological origin for the term, however, is from the Latin extradere, meaning the forceful return of an individual to their sovereign: Bassiouni, International Extradition, 4.

[20] Magnuson, ‘The Domestic Politics of International Extradition, 847; DeFabo, ‘Terrorist or Revolutionary’, 71.

[21] de Vazelhes, Étude sur l’Extradition, 6-7; and Magnuson, ‘The Domestic Politics of International Extradition’, 852.

[22] Magnuson, ‘The Domestic Politics of International Extradition’, 851.

[23] Bassiouni, International Extradition, 669; DeFabo, ‘Terrorist or Revolutionary’, 73.

[24] Buckland, ‘Offending Officials’, 440; DeFabo, ‘Terrorist or Revolutionary’, 73; also Parliamentary Papers (PP), 1870 (138) I.669, Bill for Amending Law Relating to Extradition of Criminals.

[25] Goldie, ‘The “Political Offence” Exception’, 59; Magnuson, ‘The Domestic Politics of International Extradition’, 851-52.

[26] DeFabo, ‘Terrorist or Revolutionary’, 74.

[27] Goldie, 61; DeFabo, ‘Terrorist or Revolutionary’, 75.

[28] DeFabo, ‘Terrorist or Revolutionary’, 75.

[29] Ibid., 76.

[30] Ibid., 90.

[31] Ibid., 76.

[32] Ibid., 82-83, 91.

[33] PP, 1870 (138) I.669, Bill for Amending Law Relating to Extradition of Criminals; PP, 1881 (194) II.221, Bill, Intituled, Act to Amend Law with Respect to Fugitive Offenders in H.M. Dominions, and for Trial of Offenders; Bassiouni, International Extradition, 38.

[34] See, for example, Miller, Borderline Crime, 155, 160-61.

[35] These included the Indian Extradition Act of 1872 (Act XI of 1872), the Foreign Jurisdiction and Extradition Act of 1879 (Act XXI of 1879), the Extradition (India) Act of 1895 (Act IX of 1895), and the Indian Extradition Act of 1903 (Act XV of 1903).

[36] See, generally, Condos and Rand, ‘Coercion and Conciliation’; Simpson, ‘Bordering and Frontier-Making’; and Ramusack, The Indian Princes.

[37] Beverley, ‘Frontier as Resource’.
 
[38] Marsh, ‘Introduction’, in Marsh and Frith, eds., France’s Lost Empires, 3. These included Chandernagore, Mahé, Karikal, Yanaom, and the capital of Pondicherry. The French also retained possession of a number of small warehouses and other properties, usually located inside British-administered towns or settlements, known as loges (factories).
 
[39] Ibid.

[40] Yechury, ‘L’Inde retrouvée’, in ibid., 98, 103.

[41] Benton, A Search for Sovereignty, 2.

[42] The 1903 Indian Extradition Act, in particular, was conceived as a way of clarifying the procedure for the mutual surrender of fugitives between different parts of British India, India’s independent princely states, as well as other any other ‘neighbouring Asiatic State’: T. Raleigh, ‘Statement of Objects and Reasons’, 7 February 1901, BL, IOR L/PJ/6/653.

[43] Bassiouni, International Extradition, 2, 6.

[44] Magnuson, ‘The Domestic Politics of International Extradition’, 843-44

[45] Brückenhaus, Policing Transnational Protest.

[46] Report by E. Prieur, Commissionner of Police, Chandernagore, 9 August 1908, Archives Nationales d’Outre Mer, Aix-en-Provence (ANOM), Ministère des Colonies, Direction des Affaires Politiques (MC/Aff. Pol.), 53, dossier 2.

[47] The Decree of 1 February 1871 issued by the Third Republic restored India’s right to elect a deputy to Paris: Weber, ‘French India’, in Markovits, ed., A History of Modern India, 512; and ibid., ‘Chanemougam, “King of French India”’, 293.

[48] Report by Dhrubodash Collé, 4 April 1908, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 5.

[49] Heehs, The Bomb in Bengal, 138.

[50] Rognon to the Minister of the Colonies, 15 April 1908, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 5.

[51] Streatfeild to Guizonnier, 18 June 1908, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 2.

[52] For more on the Alipore Conspiracy Case, see Ghosh, Gentlemanly Terrorists, 41, 71-72; and Heehs, The Bomb in Bengal, chap. 24.

[53] BG to the GOI, 10 October 1908, BL, IOR, L/PJ/6/895, file 3753, para. 2.

[54] According to Aurobindo Ghosh’s accounts, Roy did not adapt well to conditions in the prison and almost succumbed to a nervous breakdown: Heehs, The Lives of Sri Aurobindo, 205.

[55] BG to Guizonnier, 29 May 1908, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 2. Sections 107, 150, and 157 of the IPC covered offences relating to abetting and harbouring an unlawful assembly with criminal intent, which, in this case, referred to the alleged terrorist conspiracy against the state (see also section 141), while sections 19 and 20 of the Arms Act outlined the punishments for either the open or clandestine violation of the laws governing the trade or possession of arms, ammunition, or military stores: see ‘The Indian Penal Code, Act No. XLV of 1860’ and ‘The Indian Arms Act, Act No. XI of 1878’, in W.F. Agnew, The Indian Penal Code and Other Acts of the Governor-General Relating to Offences (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co., 1898), BL, IOR, V/5500, 74, 76-77, 662-63.

[56] BG to the GOI, 10 October 1908, BL, IOR, L/PJ/6/895, file 3753, para. 4; ‘The Indian Penal Code, Act No. XLV of 1860’, BL, IOR V/5500, pp. 60-62; and Letter from F.W. Duke , 27 June 1908, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 2.

[57] Guizonnier to the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, 15 June 1908, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 2; BG to the GOI, 10 October 1908, BL, IOR, L/PJ/6/895, file 3753, para. 3, p. 3.

[58] Guizonnier to Bonhoure, 22 June 1908, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 2.

[59] Convention between Great Britain and France, signed at London 7th of March 1815, PP, 1816 (2) XVII.89, Treaties between Great Britain and Portugal, France, Russia, Netherlands, Sardinia, Austria, Prussia, United States of America, and Saxony, 1815, on Territories, Commerce, and Slave Trade, art. 9, 14

[60] Convention Conclue le 13 Août 1876 entre la France et la Grande-Bretagne pour l’Extradition Réciproque des Malfaiteurs, in de Vazelhes, Étude sur l’Extradition, 214.

[61] Guizonnier to Bonhoure, 22 June 1908, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 2.

[62] Raynaud to Bonhoure, 2 July 1908, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 2.

[63] Bonhoure to Guizonnier, 9 July 1908, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 2.
 
[64] See ‘Note on Chandernagore, by Mr. Abdul Majid’, in Samanta, ed., Terrorism in Bengal, vol. 3, 328.

[65] Kanailal Roy Gupta, ‘A Monsieur le Procureur de la Republique’, Matribhumi, 25 June 1908, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 2.

[66] He also questioned the applicability of the Treaty of 1815, arguing that it was intended primarily for offences relating to the contraband trade in salt and opium: Kanailal Roy Gupta, ‘A Monsieur le Procureur de la Republique’, Matribhumi, 25 July 1908, ibid.

[67] BG to the GOI, 10 October 1908, BL, IOR, L/PJ/6/895, file 3753, para. 6, p. 4.

[68] Gupta to Bonhoure, 15 July 1908, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 2.

[69] Gupta to Milliès-Lacroix, 23 July 1908, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 2. Gupta also wrote several other letters to both Bonhoure and Milliès-Lacroix: Gupta to Bonhoure, 24 July 1908, ibid.; ibid., 31 July 1908, ibid.; Gupta to the Minister for the Colonies, 6 August 1908, ibid.

[70] Gupta to Bonhoure, 31 July 1908, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 2.

[71] Lucien Saignes, ‘Sommes-nous chez nous dans l’Inde française?’, La Politique Coloniale, 17 July 1908.

[72] P.N., ‘Extradition d’un fonctionnaire français à Chandernagor’, La Presse Coloniale, 17 July 1908.

[73] For a relatively recent history of the League, see Irvine, Between Justice and Politics.

[74] De Pressensé to Milliès-Lacroix, 21 August 1908, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 2.

[75] Milliès-Lacroix to de Pressensé, n.d., ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 2.

[76] Raynaud to Bonhoure, 17 August 1908, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 2; and Aristide Briand to the Director of the Political and Administrative Affairs, Ministry for the Colonies, 19 August 1908, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 2.

[77] BG to Guizonnier, 15 September 1908, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 2; Guizonnier to Bonhoure, 16 September 1908, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 2.

[78] See Guizonnier to the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, 8 August 1908, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 2.

[79] Guizonnier to Bonhoure, 16 September 1908, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 2.

[80] Raynaud to Bonhoure, 19 September 1908, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 2; Bonhoure to the Ministry for the Colonies, 23 September 1908, ibid.

[81] Letter from the Minister of Foreign Affairs to the Minister for the Colonies, 10 October 1908, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 2.

[82] Cambon to the Foreign Office (FO), 12 October 1908, BL, IOR, L/PJ/6/895, file 3753.

[83] Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Ministry for the Colonies, 27 October 1908, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 2.

[84] They also insisted on the necessity ‘of strictly limiting the meaning of political offences, if political offences are to continue to be excluded from extradition between the French Indian Dependences and British India’: BG to the GOI, 10 October 1908, BL, IOR, L/PJ/6/895, file 3753, paras. 9, 12.

[85] Bonhoure to the Ministry for the Colonies, 27 January 1909, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 2.

[86] ‘Ici on Parle Francaise [sic]’, The Englishman, February 4 1909.

[87] Ronssin to Pichon, 4 February 1909, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 2.

[88] See Brückenhaus, Policing Transnational Protest, 35-41.

[89] Edouard Néron, ‘L’Affaire Savarkar,’ Les Annales Coloniales, 10 March 1911.

[90] Heehs, The Lives of Sri Aurobindo, 219.

[91] de Pressensé to Lebrun, 22 September 1911, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 7.

[92] Ministry for the Colonies Note for the 2nd Direction (Asia Office), 11 November 1909, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 1.

[93] D. Petrie, ‘Report on the Delhi Bomb Investigation’, 8 November 1914, BL, IOR, NEG 10612, para. 15, 75-76.

[94] Administrator of Chandernagore to Martineau, 19 March 1914, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 4

[95] Petition by Rash Behari Bose to the Minister for the French Colonies, 5 March 1914, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 4.

[96] The police also searched the home of Bose’s friend and compatriot, Srish Chandra Ghosh, but again turned up empty-handed: Administrator of Chandernagore to Martineau, 19 March 1914, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 4; and Sinha to the Minister for the Colonies, 19 March 1914, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 4.

[97] D. Petrie, ‘Note on the Delhi Conspiracy Case’, 14 April 1914, BL, IOR, L/PJ/6/1301, file 706, para. 7, fp. 14-15.

[98] Martineau to the Ministry for the Colonies, 18 June 1914, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 4.

[99] Petition by Rash Behari Bose to the Minister for the French Colonies, 5 March 1914, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 4.

[100] Sinha to the Minister for the Colonies, 19 March 1914, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 4.

[101] ‘Une Extradition Illégale à Chandernagor,’ La Presse Coloniale, 15 April 1914.

[102] Ibid.

[103] Ibid.

[104] Marsh, ‘Introduction’, 1-13.

[105] Doumergue to Lebrun, 21 April 1914, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 4.

[106] Ibid.

[107] Ibid.

[108] Ibid., 29 April 1914, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 4.

[109] Ibid.

[110] Ibid., 21 April 1914, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 4.

[111] Martineau to the Ministry for the Colonies, 18 June 1914, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 4.

[112] Ibid.

[113] See Martineau to the Ministry for the Colonies, 18 June 1914, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 4; Martineau to Maginot, 2 September 1917, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 57, dossier 5.

[114] Martineau to Maginot, 2 September 1917, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 57, dossier 5.

[115] See, generally, BL, IOR, L/PJ/12/6; BL, IOR L/PS/10/289; ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 57, dossier 5;

[116] C.A. Tegart, ‘Notes on the Situation in Chandernagore’, 10 March 1917, in Samanta, ed., Terrorism in Bengal, vol. 3, para. 30, 287. For the history of the Ghadar Movement and the aborted uprising in Punjab, see Condos, The Insecurity State, chap. 5; Sohi, Echoes of Mutiny, chap. 5; Singh, ‘India and the Great War’; and Puri, Ghadar Movement.

[117] McQuade, ‘The New Asia of Rash Behari Bose’, 647-48.

[118] See BL, IOR, L/PJ/12/163; also McQuade, ‘The New Asia of Rash Behari Bose’.
 
[119] Note by R.H. Craddock, 22 August 1913, BL, IOR, NEG 10612, para. 9, fp. 58.

[120] Ibid., para. 12, fp. 59.

[121] Tegart, ‘Notes on the Situation in Chandernagore’, in Samanta, ed., Terrorism in Bengal, vol. 3, para. 3, 276.

[122] See Letter from Viceroy Willingdon to the Governor of the French Settlements in India, 10 April 1933, BL, IOR, L/PJ/12/6, fp. 109; and BG to the GOI, 27 February 1925, IOR, L/PJ/12/185, file 8807/23.

[123] BG to the GOI, 21 March 1933, BL, IOR, L/PJ/12/6, para. 1, fp. 69-70.

[124] ‘Savarkar’, The Madras Gazette, 28 July 1910.

[125] Ibid., p. 280.

[126] Aside from exchanges of information between security services, there are very few examples of collaborative Franco-British policing to be found anywhere in the colonial world. Martin Thomas’ Empires of Intelligence provides perhaps the most comprehensive treatment of this subject to date, and reveals precious few occasions when French and British colonial forces actively collaborated with each other.
 
[127] de Selves to Lebrun, 28 August 1911, ANOM, MC/Aff. Pol., 53, dossier 5.

[128] Marsh, ‘Introduction’, 3.

[129] See, generally, BL, IOR, L/PJ/12/6.
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Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#2)

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Chandernagore College [College Dupleix] [École de Sainte Marie] [École Publique des Garçons]
Constituent College of University of Burdwan
by chandernagorecollege.org
Accessed: 6/4/20

INTRODUCTION

The origin of Chandernagore College dates back to the establishment of École de Sainte Marie in 1862 by the French Jesuit Missionary Father Magloire Barthet. French is being taught since the very first day of the establishment of this institution, which was run by the Jesuit missionaries. It was placed under the responsibility of the French Government on the 15th of December 1887. It was later on named École Publique des Garçons. In 1901, it changed its name to College Dupleix. The participation of Shree Charu Chandra Roy, Deputy Director of the College, and of his friends in the freedom movement led to the closing of the College in 1908. The trial against Shree Charu Chandra Roy was not tenable. He therefore led another popular movement to re-establish College Dupleix and his efforts were crowned with success. On the 4th of July, 1931, College Dupleix was re-established. On the 2nd of June, 1938, by the order of the Governor of French India, College Dupleix came under the control of the French Government. Since then, the College has developed rapidly. B.A. degree course in French was introduced in July, 1947. Later on, College Dupleix came to be known as Chandernagore College. The Government of West Bengal controls it ever since the merger of Chandernagore to West Bengal in 1954.

Post-Graduate Course in French was introduced in 2008.

The Ambassador of France in India, The Consul General of France in Kolkata, the Linguistic Attachés of the French Institute in India and other dignitaries of the Embassy of France in India frequently visit this Department as part of the cultural exchange program between the two nations. Ambassador Alexandre Ziegler visited our College several times in the recent past, on 6th February 2017, on 15th June 2017, in December 2018.

The cultural wing of the French Consulate in Kolkata maintains its liaison with the Department. The Directors of Alliance Française du Bengale visit the Department from time to time. The Teachers of the Department are frequently invited to attend the various cultural and pedagogical programs organized by the Alliance Française du Bengale. The students of our Department take part in various activities e.g. French Nightingale competition or other workshops on French language and literature arranged by the Alliance Française du Bengale or the Consulate General in Kolkata.

The Department of French of Chandernagore College has a very rich and glorious heritage. The history of this Department is as old and colorful as that of the College. French is being taught in this College since the very first day of its inception.

The most significant feature of this Department is that in keeping with the history of Chandernagore, a former French settlement, it was, until very recently, the solitary instance in West Bengal where French is taught at the Under-Graduate Honours level. And herein lies the fact for which Chandernagore College is unique among the educational institutions of West Bengal.
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Vinayak Damodar Savarkar
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 6/4/20

Image
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar
Born: 28 May 1883, Bhagur, Bombay Presidency, British India (present-day Maharashtra, India)
Died: 26 February 1966 (aged 82), Bombay, Maharashtra, India
Known for: Hindutva
Height: 5 ft 2.5 in (159 cm)[1]
Political party: Hindu Mahasabha
Relatives: Ganesh Damodar Savarkar (brother)

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (About this soundpronunciation (help·info); 28 May 1883 – 26 February 1966), commonly known as 'Swatantryaveer Savarkar' in Marathi language,[2] was an Indian independence activist and politician who formulated the Hindu nationalist philosophy of Hindutva.[3][4] He was a leading figure in the Hindu Mahasabha.[5]

As a response to the Muslim League, Savarkar joined the Hindu Mahasabha and popularized the term Hindutva (Hinduness), previously coined by Chandranath Basu,[6] to create a collective "Hindu" identity as an essence of Bharat (India).[7][8] Savarkar was an atheist and also a pragmatic practitioner of Hindu philosophy.

Savarkar began his political activities as a high school student and continued to do so at Fergusson College in Pune.[9] He and his brother founded a secret society called Abhinav Bharat Society. When he went to the United Kingdom for his law studies, he involved himself with organizations such as India House and the Free India Society. He also published books advocating complete Indian independence by revolutionary means.[10] One of the books he published called The Indian War of Independence about the Indian rebellion of 1857 was banned by the British authorities. In 1910, Savarkar was arrested and ordered to be extradited to India for his connections with the revolutionary group India House.

On the voyage back to India, Savarkar staged an attempt to escape and seek asylum in France while the ship was docked in the port of Marseilles. The French port officials however handed him back to the British in contravention of international law. On return to India, Savarkar was sentenced to two life terms of imprisonment totalling fifty years and was moved to the Cellular Jail in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

After 1937, he started travelling widely, becoming a forceful orator and writer, advocating Hindu political and social unity. Serving as the president of the Hindu Mahasabha political party, Savarkar endorsed the idea of India as a Hindu Rashtra (Hindu Nation). Savarkar was critical of the decision taken by the Congress working committee in its wardha session of 1942, passed a resolution which said to British: "Quit India but keep your armies here" which was reinstallation of British military rule over India, that he felt would be much worse. In July 1942, as he felt extremely stressed carrying out his duties as the president of Hindu Mahasabha, and as he needed some rest; he resigned from the post of the president of the Hindu Mahasabha. The timing of which, unfortunately coincided with Gandhi’s Quit India Movement.[11]

In 1948, Savarkar was charged as a co-conspirator in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi; however, he was acquitted by the court for lack of evidence. Savarkar resurfaced in the popular discourse after the coming of the BJP into power in 1998[12] and again in 2014 with the Modi led BJP government at the center.[13]

Life and career

Early life


Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was born on 28 May 1883 in the Marathi Chitpavan Brahmin Hindu family of Damodar and Radhabai Savarkar in the village of Bhagur, near the city of Nashik, Maharashtra.[14][15] He had three other siblings namely Ganesh, Narayan, and a sister named Maina.[16] When he was 12, he led fellow students in an attack on his village mosque following Hindu-Muslim riots, stating: "we vandalised the mosque to our heart’s content."[17][18]

Arrest in London and Marseille

In India, Ganesh Savarkar had organised an armed revolt against the Morley-Minto reforms of 1909.[19] The British police implicated Savarkar in the investigation for allegedly plotting the crime.[20] Hoping to evade arrest, Savarkar moved to Madame Cama's home in Paris.[21] He was nevertheless arrested by police on 13 March 1910. In the final days of freedom, Savarkar wrote letters to a close friend planning his escape. Knowing that he would most likely be shipped to India, Savarkar asked his friend to keep track of which ship and route he would be taken through.[citation needed] When the ship SS Morea reached the port of Marseille on 8 July 1910, Savarkar escaped from his cell in the hope that his friend would be there to receive him in a car.[citation needed] But his friend was late in arriving, and the alarm having been raised, Savarkar was re-arrested.[citation needed]

Case before the Permanent Court of Arbitration

Savarkar
Court: Permanent Court of Arbitration
Full case name: Arrest and Return of Savarkar (France v. Great Britain)
Decided: 24 February 1911
Court membership
Judges sitting: M. Beernaert, president, elected by panel; Louis Renault; Earl of Desart; G. Gram; Alexander de Savornin Lohman
Case opinions
Decision by: Unanimous panel


Savarkar's arrest at Marseilles caused the French government to protest to the British, arguing that the British could not recover Savarkar unless they took appropriate legal proceedings for his rendition. The dispute came before the Permanent Court of International Arbitration in 1910, and it gave its decision in 1911. The case excited much controversy as was reported by the New York Times, and it considered it involved an interesting international question of the right of asylum.[citation needed]

The Court held, firstly, that since there was a pattern of collaboration between the two countries regarding the possibility of Savarkar's escape in Marseilles and there was neither force nor fraud in inducing the French authorities to return Savarkar to them, the British authorities did not have to hand him back to the French for the latter to hold rendition proceedings. On the other hand, the tribunal also observed that there had been an "irregularity" in Savarkar's arrest and delivery over to the Indian Army Military Police guard.[22]

Trial and sentence

Arriving in Bombay, Savarkar was taken to the Yervada Central Jail in Pune. The trial before the special tribunal was started on 10 September 1910.[23]:pg.456 One of the charges on Savarkar was abetment to murder of Nashik Collector Jackson. The second was waging a conspiracy under Indian penal code 121-A against the King emperor.[24][self-published source?][25][26] Following the two trials, Savarkar, then aged 28, was convicted and sentenced to 50-years imprisonment[23]:pg.455 and transported on 4 July 1911 to the infamous Cellular Jail in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. He was not considered by the British government as a political prisoner.

Prisoner in Cellular Jail

Image
A statue of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar at Cellular Jail.

Savarkar applied to the Bombay Government for certain concessions in connection with his sentences. However, by Government letter No. 2022, dated 4 April 1911, his Application was rejected and he was informed that the question of remitting the second sentence of transportation for life would be considered in due course on the expiry of the first sentence of transportation for life.[23]:pg.467

A month after arriving in the Cellular Jail, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Savarkar submitted his first mercy petition on 30 August 1911. This petition was rejected on 3 September 1911.[23]:pg.478

Savarkar submitted his next mercy petition on 14 November 1913, and presented it personally to the Home Member of the Governor General's council, Sir Reginald Craddock.[27] In his letter, asking for forgiveness, he described himself as a "prodigal son"[28] longing to return to the "parental doors of the government". He wrote that his release from the jail will recast the faith of many Indians in the British rule. Also, he said "Moreover, my conversion to the constitutional line would bring back all those misled young men in India and abroad who were once looking up to me as their guide. I am ready to serve the government in any capacity they like, for as my conversion is conscientious so I hope my future conduct would be. By keeping me in jail, nothing can be got in comparison to what would be otherwise."[29]

In 1917, Savarkar submitted another mercy petition, this time for a general amnesty of all political prisoners. Savarkar was informed on 1 February 1918 that the mercy petition was placed before the British Indian Government.[23]:pg.480

In December 1919, there was a Royal proclamation by King-Emperor George V. The Paragraph 6 of this proclamation included a declaration of Royal clemency to political offenders.[23]:pg.469 In the view of Royal proclamation, Savarkar submitted his fourth mercy petition to the British Government on 30 March 1920,[23]:pg.472–476 in which he stated that "So far from believing in the militant school of the Bukanin type, I do not contribute even to the peaceful and philosophical anarchism of a Kuropatkin [sic.] or a Tolstoy. And as to my revolutionary tendencies in the past:- it is not only now for the object of sharing the clemency but years before this have I informed of and written to the Government in my petitions (1918, 1914) about my firm intention to abide by the constitution and stand by it as soon as a beginning was made to frame it by Mr Montagu. Since that the Reforms and then the Proclamation have only confirmed me in my views and recently I have publicly avowed my faith in and readiness to stand by the side of orderly and constitutional development."[30]

This petition was rejected on 12 July 1920 by the British government.[23]:pg.477 After considering the petition, the British government contemplated releasing Ganesh Savarkar but not Vinayak Savarkar. The rationale for doing so was stated as follows[23]:pg.472

It may be observed that if Ganesh is released and Vinayak retained in custody, the latter will become in some measure a hostage for the former, who will see that his own misconduct does not jeopardize his brother's chances of release at some future date.


In 1920, the Indian National Congress and leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Vithalbhai Patel and Bal Gangadhar Tilak demanded his unconditional release.[citation needed] Savarkar signed a statement endorsing his trial, verdict and British law, and renouncing violence, a bargain for freedom.

Restricted freedom in Ratnagiri

On 2 May 1921, the Savarkar brothers were moved to a jail in Ratnagiri. During his incarceration in Ratnagiri jail in 1922, he wrote his "Essentials of Hindutva" that formulated his theory of Hindutva.[31] On 6 January 1924 was released but confined to Ratnagiri District. Soon after he started working on consolidation of Hindu society or Hindu sanghatan.[32] The colonial authorities provided a bungalow for him and he was allowed visitors. During his internment, he met influential people such as Mahatma Gandhi, and Dr. Ambedkar.[33] Nathuram Godse, who later on in his life assassinated Gandhi, also met Savarkar for the first time as a nineteen year old in 1929.[34] Savarkar became a prolific writer during his years of confinement in Ratnagiri. His publishers, however, needed to have disclaimer that they were wholly divorced from politics. Savarkar remained confined to Ratnagiri district until 1937. At that time, he was unconditionally released by the newly elected government of Bombay presidency.[35]

Leader of the Hindu Mahasabha

Savarkar as president of the Hindu Mahasabha, during the Second World War, advanced the slogan "Hinduize all Politics and Militarize Hindudom" and decided to support the British war effort in India seeking military training for the Hindus.[36] When the Congress launched the Quit India movement in 1942, Savarkar criticised it and asked Hindus to stay active in the war effort and not disobey the government;[37] he also urged the Hindus to enlist in the armed forces to learn the "arts of war".[38] Hindu Mahasabha activists protested Gandhi's initiative to hold talks with Jinnah in 1944, which Savarkar denounced as "appeasement". He assailed the British proposals for transfer of power, attacking both the Congress and the British for making concessions to Muslim separatists. Soon after Independence, Dr Shyama Prasad Mookerjee resigned as Vice-President of the Hindu Mahasabha dissociating himself from its Akhand Hindustan (Undivided India) plank, which implied undoing partition.[39]

Opposition to Quit India Movement

Under Savarkar, the Hindu Mahasabha openly opposed the call for the Quit India Movement and boycotted it officially.[40] Savarkar even went to the extent of writing a letter titled "Stick to your Posts", in which he instructed Hindu Sabhaites who happened to be "members of municipalities, local bodies, legislatures or those serving in the army ... to stick to their posts" across the country, and not to join the Quit India Movement at any cost.[40]

Alliance with Muslim League and others

The Indian National Congress won a massive victory in the 1937 Indian provincial elections, decimating the Muslim League and the Hindu Mahasabha. However, in 1939, the Congress ministries resigned in protest against Viceroy Lord Linlithgow's action of declaring India to be a belligerent in the Second World War without consulting the Indian people. This led to the Hindu Mahasabha, under Savarkar's presidency, joining hands with the Muslim League and other parties to form governments, in certain provinces. Such coalition governments were formed in Sindh, NWFP, and Bengal.[41]

In Sindh, Hindu Mahasabha members joined Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah's Muslim League government. In Savarkar's own words,

"Witness the fact that only recently in Sind, the Sind-Hindu-Sabha on invitation had taken the responsibility of joining hands with the League itself in running coalition government[42][43][44]


In the North West Frontier Province, Hindu Mahasabha members joined hands with Sardar Aurangzeb Khan of the Muslim League to form a government in 1943. The Mahasabha member of the cabinet was Finance Minister Mehar Chand Khanna.[45][46]

In Bengal, Hindu Mahasabha joined the Krishak Praja Party led Progressive Coalition ministry of Fazlul Haq in December 1941.[47] Savarkar appreciated the successful functioning of the coalition government.[43][42]

Arrest and acquittal in Gandhi's assassination

Image
A group photo of people accused in the Mahatma Gandhi's murder case. Standing: Shankar Kistaiya, Gopal Godse, Madanlal Pahwa, Digambar Badge. Sitting: Narayan Apte, Vinayak D. Savarkar, Nathuram Godse, Vishnu Karkare

See also: Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi

Following the assassination of Gandhi on 30 January 1948, police arrested the assassin Nathuram Godse and his alleged accomplices and conspirators. He was a member of the Hindu Mahasabha and of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Godse was the editor of Agrani – Hindu Rashtra, a Marathi daily from Pune which was run by the company "The Hindu Rashtra Prakashan Ltd" (The Hindu Nation Publications). This company had contributions from such eminent persons as Gulabchand Hirachand, Bhalji Pendharkar and Jugalkishore Birla. Savarkar had invested ₹ 15000 in the company. Savarkar, a former president of the Hindu Mahasabha, was arrested on 5 February 1948, from his house in Shivaji Park, and kept under detention in the Arthur Road Prison, Bombay. He was charged with murder, conspiracy to murder and abetment to murder. A day before his arrest, Savarkar in a public written statement, as reported in The Times of India, Bombay dated 7 February 1948, termed Gandhi's assassination a fratricidal crime, endangering India's existence as a nascent nation.[48][49][50] The mass of papers seized from his house had revealed nothing that could remotely be connected with Gandhi's murder.[51]:Chapter 12 Due to lack of evidence, Savarkar was arrested under the Preventive Detention Act.[51]:Chapter 11

Approver's testimony

Godse claimed full responsibility for planning and carrying out the assassination. However, according to the Approver Digambar Badge, on 17 January 1948, Nathuram Godse went to have a last darshan (audience/interview) with Savarkar in Bombay before the assassination. While Badge and Shankar waited outside, Nathuram and Apte went in. On coming out Apte told Badge that Savarkar blessed them "Yashasvi houn ya" ("यशस्वी होऊन या", be successful and return). Apte also said that Savarkar predicted that Gandhi's 100 years were over and there was no doubt that the task would be successfully finished.[52][53] However Badge's testimony was not accepted as the approver's evidence lacked independent corroboration and hence Savarkar was acquitted.

In the last week of August 1974, Mr. Manohar Malgonkar saw Digamber Badge several times and in particular, questioned him about the veracity of his testimony against Savarkar.[51]:Notes Badge insisted to Mr. Manohar Malgonkar that "even though he had blurted out the full story of the plot as far as he knew, without much persuasion, he had put up a valiant struggle against being made to testify against Savarkar".[51]:Chapter 12 In the end, Badge gave in. He agreed to say on oath that he saw Nathuram Godse and Apte with Savarkar and that Savarkar, within Badge's hearing, had blessed their venture...[51]:Chapter 12

Kapur commission

See also: Kapur Commission

On 12 November 1964, at a religious programme organised in Pune to celebrate the release of Gopal Godse, Madanlal Pahwa and Vishnu Karkare from jail after the expiry of their sentences, Dr. G. V. Ketkar, grandson of Bal Gangadhar Tilak,[54] former editor of Kesari and then editor of "Tarun Bharat", who presided over the function, gave information of a conspiracy to kill Gandhi, about which he professed knowledge six months before the act. Ketkar was arrested. A public furor ensued both outside and inside the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly and both houses of the Indian parliament. Under pressure of 29 members of parliament and public opinion the then Union home minister Gulzarilal Nanda appointed Gopal Swarup Pathak, M. P. and a senior advocate of the Supreme Court of India as a Commission of Inquiry to re-investigate the conspiracy to murder Gandhi. The central government intended on conducting a thorough inquiry with the help of old records in consultation with the government of Maharashtra. Pathak was given three months to conduct his inquiry; subsequently Jevanlal Kapur, a retired judge of the Supreme Court of India, was appointed chairman of the Commission.[55]

The Kapur Commission was provided with evidence not produced in the court; especially the testimony of two of Savarkar's close aides – Appa Ramachandra Kasar, his bodyguard, and Gajanan Vishnu Damle, his secretary.[56] The testimony of Mr. Kasar and Mr. Damle was already recorded by Bombay police on 4 March 1948,[57]:317 but apparently, these testimonies were not presented before the court during the trial. In these testimonies, it is said that Godse and Apte visited Savarkar on or about 23 or 24 January,[57]:317 which was when they returned from Delhi after the bomb incident. Damle deposed that Godse and Apte saw Savarkar in the middle of January and sat with him (Savarkar) in his garden. The C. I. D. Bombay was keeping vigil on Savarkar from 21 to 30 January 1948.[57]:291–294 The crime report from C. I. D. does not mention Godse or Apte meeting Savarkar during this time.[57]:291–294

Justice Kapur concluded: "All these facts taken together were destructive of any theory other than the conspiracy to murder by Savarkar and his group."[58][59][60]

The arrest of Savarkar was mainly based on approver Digambar Badge's testimony. The commission did not re-interview Digambar Badge.[57] At the time of inquiry of the commission, Badge was alive and working in Bombay.

Later years

After Gandhi's assassination, Savarkar's home in Dadar, Bombay was stoned by angry mobs. After he was acquitted of the allegations related to Gandhi's assassination and released from jail, Savarkar was arrested by the government for making "Hindu nationalist speeches"; he was released after agreeing to give up political activities. He continued addressing social and cultural elements of Hindutva. He resumed political activism after the ban on it was lifted; it was however limited until his death in 1966 because of ill health. His followers bestowed upon him honours and financial awards when he was alive. Two thousand RSS workers gave his funeral procession a guard of honour. According to McKean, there was public antipathy between Savarkar and the Congress for most of his political career, yet after independence Congress ministers, Vallabhbhai Patel and C. D. Deshmukh unsuccessfully sought partnership with the Hindu Mahasabha and Savarkar. It was forbidden for Congress party members to participate in public functions honouring Savarkar. Nehru refused to share the stage during the centenary celebrations of the India's First War of Independence held in Delhi. After the death of Nehru, the Congress government, under Prime Minister Shastri, started to pay him a monthly pension.[61]

Death

On 8 November 1963, Savarkar's wife, Yamuna, died. On 1 February 1966, Savarkar renounced medicines, food and water which he termed as atmaarpan (fast until death). Before his death, he had written an article titled "Atmahatya Nahi Atmaarpan" in which he argued that when one's life mission is over and ability to serve the society is left no more, it is better to end the life at will rather than waiting for death. His condition was described to have become as "extremely serious" before his death on 26 February 1966 at his residence in Bombay (now Mumbai), and that he faced difficulty in breathing; efforts to revive him failed and was declared dead at 11:10 a.m. (IST) that day. Prior to his death, Savarkar had asked his relatives to perform only his funeral and do away with the rituals of the 10th and 13th day of the Hindu faith.[62] Accordingly, his last rites were performed at an electric crematorium in Bombay's Sonapur locality by his son Vishwas the following day.[63]

He was mourned by large crowds that attended his cremation. He left behind a son, Vishwas, and a daughter, Prabha Chiplunkar. His first son, Prabhakar, had died in infancy. His home, possessions and other personal relics have been preserved for public display[citation needed]. There was no official mourning by the then Congress party government of Maharashtra or at the centre.[64] [note 1] The political indifference to Savarkar continued long after his death. [note 2].

Religious and political views

Hindutva


See also: Hindutva

See also: Hindu nationalism

During his incarceration, Savarkar's views began turning increasingly towards Hindu cultural and political nationalism, and the next phase of his life remained dedicated to this cause.[65] In the brief period he spent at the Ratnagiri jail, Savarkar wrote his ideological treatise – Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?. Smuggled out of the prison, it was published by Savarkar's supporters under his alias "Maharatta." In this work, Savarkar promotes a farsighted new vision of Hindu social and political consciousness. Savarkar began describing a "Hindu" as a patriotic inhabitant of Bharatavarsha, venturing beyond a religious identity.[65] While emphasising the need for patriotic and social unity of all Hindu communities, he described Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism and Buddhism as one and the same. He outlined his vision of a "Hindu Rashtra" (Hindu Nation) as "Akhand Bharat" (United India), purportedly stretching across the entire Indian subcontinent. He defined Hindus as being neither Aryan nor Dravidian but as "People who live as children of a common motherland, adoring a common holyland."[66]

Scholars, historians and Indian politicians have been divided in their interpretation of Savarkar's ideas. A self-described atheist,[67] Savarkar regards being Hindu as a cultural and political identity. He often stressed social and community unity between Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains, to the exclusion of Muslims and Christians. Savarkar saw Muslims and Christians as "misfits" in the Indian civilization who could not truly be a part of the nation.[68] He argued that the holiest sites of Islam and Christianity are in the Middle East and not India, hence the loyalty of Muslims and Christians to India is divided.[69][68]

After his release from jail on 6 January 1924,[70] Savarkar helped found the Ratnagiri Hindu Sabha organisation, aiming to work for the social and cultural preservation of Hindu heritage and civilisation.[71] Becoming a frequent and forceful orator, Sarvakar agitated for the use of Hindi as a common national language and against caste discrimination and untouchability.

Another activity he started was to reconvert to Hinduism those who had converted to other faiths. This included the eight members of a Brahmin family named Dhakras who had converted to Christianity. Savarkar re-converted the family at a public function and also bore the marriage expenses of the two daughters in the family.[72]

Focusing his energies on writing, Savarkar authored the Hindu Pad-pada-shahi[37] – a book documenting the Maratha empire – and My Transportation for Life – an account of his early revolutionary days, arrest, trial and incarceration.[73] He also wrote and published a collection of poems, plays and novels. He also wrote a book named Majhi Janmathep ("My Life-term") about his experience in Andaman prison.[74]

Savarkar professed atheism and favoured modern science. He was an ardent critique of Hindu religious practices not endowed with reason and viewed them as a hindrance to the material progress of the Hindus. He believed that religion is an unimportant aspect of "Hindu identity".[75][76]

Fascism

See also: Fascism

Savarkar has praised the growth of Italy and Germany during the Fascist and Nazi rule; he believed that at that specific point in their history, Nazism and Fascism were "the most congenial tonics, their health demanded."[77] Savarkar criticised Nehru for opposing Nazism, arguing "Surely Hitler knows better than Pandit Nehru does what suits Germany best".[78] However, in the very next sentence of his speech, he goes on to say, "India may choose or reject, particular form of Government, in accordance with her political requirements".[79] In his 1949 book, Hindu Rashtra Darshan, Savarkar wrote "Nazism proved undeniably the savior of Germany".[80] Savarkar often compared Germany's German majority and Jewish minority as analogous to India's Hindu majority and Muslim minority,[78] though Savarkar never mentioned the persecution of Jews in Germany. Savarkar never said that he was a proponent of murder and genocide against minorities, and instead desired peaceful assimilation.[81] Savarkar condemned both German Jews and the Indian Muslims for their supposed inability to assimilate.[82] In 1938, he said, "But if we Hindus in India grow stronger in time, these Moslem friends of the league type will have to play the part of German Jews.[83]"

Israel

Savarkar supported the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel, which was not only in the spirit of his nationalism but also what Savarkar saw in the Jewish state as a barricade against the Muslim Arab world.[84][85] Savarkar said in his statement titled, 'A Statement on the Jewish International Question', "I have every sympathy with the Jewish people in Europe and elsewhere in their distress".[79]

Muslims

Historians including Rachel McDermott, Leonard A. Gordon, Ainslie Embree, Frances Pritchett and Dennis Dalton state that Savarkar promoted an anti-Muslim form of Hindu nationalism.[86] Scholar Vinayak Chaturvedi states that Savarkar was known for his anti-Muslim writings.[87][88]

Savarkar saw Muslims in the Indian police and military to be "potential traitors". He advocated that India reduce the number of Muslims in the military, police and public service and ban Muslims from owning or working in munitions factories.[89] Savarkar criticized Gandhi for being concerned about Indian Muslims.[a] Chaturvedi notes that there was a "shift" in Savakar's views: in his earlier writings he argued for "Indian independence from British rule", whereas in later writings he focused on "Hindu independence from Christians and Muslims". In his 1907 Indian War of Independence, Savarkar includes Muslims as heroes. This was omitted in his later writings; his 1925 Hindu-pad-paatshahi included Hindu heroes but not Muslim ones. In his 1963 Six Glorious Epochs, Savarkar says Muslims and Christians wanted to "destroy" Hinduism.[88]

In the 1940s, the two-nation theory was supported by Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Savarkar. While Jinnah supported a separate country for Muslims as a part of this theory, Savarkar wanted both religions in the same country where the Muslims lived in a subordinate position to the Hindus. Since then, RSS continued pursuing this unequal citizenship.[91]

Legacy

Image
Prime Minister Narendra Modi pays tributes to Savarkar at Parliament of India.

The airport at Port Blair, Andaman and Nicobar's capital was renamed Veer Savarkar International Airport in 2002.[92] One of the commemorative blue plaques affixed on India House fixed by the Historic Building and Monuments Commission for England reads "Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, 1883–1966, Indian patriot and philosopher lived here".[93]

• A commemorative postage stamp was released by government of India in 1970.[94][95]
• In the 1996 Malayalam movie Kaalapani directed by Priyadarshan, the Hindi actor Annu Kapoor played the role of Savarkar.
• The Marathi and Hindi music director and Savarkar follower, Sudhir Phadke, and Ved Rahi made the biopic film Veer Savarkar, which was released in 2001 after many years in production. Savarkar is portrayed by Shailendra Gaur.[96][97]
• A portrait of Savarkar was unveiled in the Indian Parliament in 2003.
• The Shiv Sena party has demanded that the Indian Government posthumously confer upon him India's highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna.[98] Uddhav Thackeray, Shiv Sena chief, while reiterating this demand for Bharat Ratna in 2017, has also suggested that a replica of the prison cell where Savarkar was imprisoned should be built in Mumbai and the youth should be educated about Savarkar's contribution towards the 'Hindu Rashtra' and the Indian freedom struggle.[99]

Biography

In 1926, two years after the release of Savarkar from the prison, a biography titled "Life of Barrister Savarkar" and authored by a certain "Chitragupta" was published. A revised version was published in 1939 with additions by Indra Prakash of the Hindu Mahasabha. A second edition of the book was published in 1987 by Veer Savarkar Prakashan, the official publisher of writings by Savarkar. In its preface, Ravindra Vaman Ramdas deduced that, "Chitragupta is none other than Veer Savarkar".[100][101] There exists ample debate among scholars about the authenticity of this deduction.[citation needed]

In January 1924 Savarkar was released from Jail and was confined to the territories of Ratnagiri District and was banned from engaging publicly or privately in any manner of political activities. The same year, a brief biography of Savarkar was published in Marathi by Sadashiv Rajaram. Ranade titled स्वातंत्रवीर विनायकराव सावरकर ह्यंचे संक्षिप्त चरित्र which in english translates to "A Short Biography of Swatantraveer Vinakarao Savarkar" in which he was first referred to as Swatantraveer throughout the biography.[102]

Books

He wrote 38 books in English and Marathi,[103] consisting in many essays, two novels called Moplah Rebellion and the Transportation,[104] poetry and plays, the best-known of his books being his historical study The Indian war of independence, 1857 and his pamphlet Hindutva: Who Is a Hindu?.[citation needed]

References

Notes


1. He described Mahatma Gandhi's nonviolence as "absolutely sinful" and criticized Gandhi's often-expressed concern for the well-being of India's Muslims.[90]
1. After his death, since Savarkar was championing militarisation, some thought that it would be fitting if his mortal remains were to be carried on a gun-carriage. A request to that effect was made to the then Defence Minister, Y.B. Chavan. But Chavan turned down the proposal and not a single minister from the Maharashtra Cabinet showed up to the cremation ground to pay homage to Savarkar. In New Delhi, the Speaker of the Lok Sabha turned down a request that it pay homage to Savarkar.
2. When Y.B. Chavan, as the Home Minister of India, went to the Andaman Islands; he was asked whether he would like to visit Savarkar's jail but he was not interested.[citation needed] Also when Morarji Desai went as Prime Minister to the Andaman islands, he too refused to visit Savarkar's cell.

Citations

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20. Rana 2016, p. 25.
21. Trehan 1991, p. 23.
22. Goldie 1972.
23. M.R. Palande, ed. (1958). Source Material for a History of the Freedom Movement of India (PDF). 2. Maharashtra: Government of Maharashtra.
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61. McKean 1996, p. 94.
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87. Vinayak Chaturvedi (2003). "Vinayak & me: Hindutva and the politics of naming". Social History. 28 (2): 155–173. doi:10.1080/0307102032000082525. Savarkar had acquired an important public reputation throughout India, especially within the Hindu Mahasabha, for his nationalist and anti-Muslim writings, for his patriotic actions in India and Britain, and for having spent the bulk of his adult life as a political prisoner.
88. Vinayak Chaturvedi (2010). "Rethinking knowledge with action: V. D. Savarkar, the Bhagavad Gita, and histories of warfare". Modern Intellectual History. 7 (2): 417–435 [420]. doi:10.1017/S1479244310000144. As one of the intellectual founders of Hindu nationalism, Savarkar has emerged as the most controversial Indian political thinker of the last century, gaining notoriety for his program to "Hinduize Politics and Militarize Hindudom", for his anti-Muslim and anti-Christian politics, and for his advocacy of violence in everyday life.
89. McKean 1996, p. 89.
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Sources

• Bhave, Y. G (2009), Vinayak Damodar Savarkar: The Much-maligned and Misunderstood Revolutionary and Freedom Fighter, Northern Book Centre, ISBN 978-81-7211-266-0
• Chandra, Bipan (1989), India's Struggle for Independence, New Delhi: Penguin Books India, ISBN 978-0-14-010781-4
• Elder, Joseph W. (2009), "International Handbook of Comparative Education", in Cowen, Robert; Kazamias, Andreas M. (eds.), Hinduism, Modernity and Knowledge: India, Springer Netherlands, ISBN 978-1-4020-6403-6
• Gier, Nicholas F. (2014), The Origins of Religious Violence: An Asian Perspective, Lexington Books, ISBN 978-0-7391-9222-1
• Goldie, Louis (1972), "Legal Aspects of the Refusal of Asylum by U.S. Coast Guard on 23 November, 1970", Lithuanian Quarterly Journal of Arts and Sciences, 18 (3), archived from the original on 30 June 2011, retrieved 19 April 2011
• Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas (2000), Hitler's Priestess: Savitri Devi, the Hindu-Aryan Myth, and Neo-Nazism, NYU Press
• Grover, Verinder (1993), V.D. Savarkar, Deep & Deep Publications, ISBN 978-81-7100-425-6
• Keer, Dhananjay (1950), Savarkar and His Times, A. V. Keer
• Keer, Dhananjay (1966), Veer Savarkar, Bombay: Popular Prakashan, ISBN 978-0-86132-182-7, OCLC 3639757
• McKean, Lise (1996), Divine Enterprise: Gurus and the Hindu Nationalist Movement, University of Chicago Press, ISBN 978-0-226-56009-0
• Misra, Amalendu (1999), "Savarkar and the Discourse on Islam in Pre-Independent India", Journal of Asian History, 33 (2), JSTOR 41933141
• Rana, Bhawan Singh (2004), Veer Vinayak Damodar Savarkar: An Immortal Revolutionary of India, Diamond Pocket Books (P) Ltd., ISBN 978-81-288-0883-8
• Rana, Bhawan Singh (2016), Veer Vinayak Damodar Savarkar: An Immortal Revolutionary of India, Diamond Pocket Books Pvt Ltd, ISBN 978-81-288-3575-9
• Ranade, Sadashiv Rajaram (1924), A short biography of Swatantraveer Vinakarao Savarkar (in Marathi)
• Salam, Ziya Us (2018), Of Saffron Flags and Skullcaps: Hindutva, Muslim Identity and the Idea of India, SAGE Publishing India, ISBN 978-93-5280-735-2
• Sharma, Jyotirmaya (2011), Hindutva: Exploring the Idea of Hindu Nationalism (Third ed.), Penguin Books India, ISBN 978-0-14-341818-4
• Sinha, Babli (2014), South Asian Transnationalisms: Cultural Exchange in the Twentieth Century, Routledge, ISBN 978-1-135-71832-9
• Trehan, Jyoti (1991), Veer Savarkar: Thought and Action of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Deep & Deep Publications, ISBN 978-81-7100-322-8
• Wolf, Siegfried O. (January 2010), "Vinayak Damodar Savarkar's strategic agnostism: A compilation of his socio-political philosophy and world view", Heidelberg Papers in South Asian and Comparative Politics., Working paper no 51, ISSN 1617-5069, archived from the original on 12 November 2012, retrieved 10 September 2010
Further reading
• Kumar, Megha (November–December 2006). "History and Gender in Savarkar's Nationalist Writings". Social Scientist. 34 (11/12): 33–50. JSTOR 27644182.
• Sharma, Jyotirmaya (2011). "Vinayak Damodar Savarkar". Hindutva: Exploring the Idea of Hindu Nationalism (Third ed.). Penguin Books India. pp. 127–175. ISBN 978-0-14-341818-4.

External links

• Official Website of Savarkar National Memorial
• Savarkar's literary work
• Savarkar's Hindu Pad-pada-shahi
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Rash Behari Bose
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Image
Rash Behari Bose
Born: 25 May 1886, Village--Subaldaha, Block--Raina 2 ,Dist--Purba Bardhaman West Bengal, India
Died: 21 January 1945 (aged 58), Tokyo, Japan
Nationality: Indian
Citizenship: British India (1886–1915); Stateless (1915–1923); Japan (1923–1945; his death)
Organisation: Jugantar, Indian Independence League, Indian National Army
Movement: Indian Independence movement, Ghadar Revolution, Indian National Army
Spouse(s): Toshiko Bose (1916–1924; her death)
Children: 2

Rash Behari Bose (About this soundpronunciation (help·info); Bengali: রাসবিহারী বসু Rashbihari Boshu; 25 May 1886 – 21 January 1945) was an Indian revolutionary leader against the British Raj. He was born in Village Subaldaha, Purba Bardhaman district of West Bengal. He was one of the key organisers of the Ghadar Mutiny, and later the Indian National Army. Rash Behari Bose handed over Indian National Army to Subhas Chandra Bose.

Early life

Rash Behari Bose was born in a Kayastha family[1] in village Subaldaha, Purba Bardhaman district, in West Bengal. His father's name was Binod Behari Bose. Bhubaneswari Devi was his mother. Tinkori Dasi was Rashbehari Bose's foster mother. The major part of the childhood of Rashbehari Bose and Sushila Sarkar was spent in the village Subaldaha. They lived in this village at the house of madam Bidhumukhi and his paternal house. Bidhumukhi was a widow from her early life. Bidhumukhi was the sister in law of Kalicharan Bose. His early education was completed under the supervision of his grandfather, Kalicharan Bose, at village Pathsala (Presently "Subaldaha Rashbehari Bose F.P School"). Rash Behari Bose got an education of Lathi Khela in his child at Subaldaha. He got the inspiration of revolutionary movement hearing stories from his grandfather at his birthplace Subaldaha. He was the cynosure of all villagers. His nickname was Rasu. He was stubborn and the villagers loved him very much. It is heard from villagers that he was at Subaldaha till he was 12 or 14 years old. His father, Binod Behari Bose, was stationed in Hooghly district for few years. Bose studied at Dupleix College with his friend Shrish Chandra Ghosh. The principal Charu Chandra Roy inspired them into revolutionary politics. Later he joined "Morton school" in Kolkata. Bose later earned degrees in the medical sciences as well as in Engineering from France and Germany.

Revolutionary activities

Main articles: Delhi conspiracy case and Gadar Conspiracy

He was interested in revolutionary activities from early on in his life, he left Bengal to shun the Alipore bomb case trials of (1908). At Dehradun he worked as a head clerk at the Forest Research Institute. There, through Amarendra Chatterjee of the Jugantar led by Jatin Mukherjee (Bagha Jatin), he secretly got involved with the revolutionaries of Bengal and he came across eminent revolutionary members of the Arya Samaj in the United Provinces (currently Uttar Pradesh) and the Punjab.[2] Originally Rash Behari Bose stay few years in Hooghly district, West Bengal.

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1912 assassination attempt on Lord Hardinge

Following the attempt to assassinate Lord Hardinge, Rash Behari was forced to go into hiding. The attempt was made on 23 December 1912 in Delhi when Lord Hardinge was in a ceremonial procession transferring the capital from Calcutta to New Delhi. He was attacked near the Red Fort by Basanta Kumar Biswas a disciple of Amrendar Chatterjee, but missed the target and failed. The bomb was made by Manindra Nath Nayak. Bose was hunted by the colonial police due to his active participation in the failed assassination attempt directed at the Governor General and Viceroy Lord Charles Hardinge in Delhi. He returned to Dehra Dun by the night train and joined the office the next day as though nothing had happened. Further, he organized a meeting of loyal citizens of Dehradun to condemn the dastardly attack on the Viceroy.

Lord Hardinge, in his My Indian Years, described the whole incident in an interesting way. During the flood relief work in Bengal in 1913, he came in contact with Jatin Mukherjee in whom he "discovered a real leader of men," who "added a new impulse" to Rash Behari's failing zeal.[3] Thus during World War I he became extensively involved as one of the leading figures of the Gadar Revolution that attempted to trigger a mutiny in India in February 1915. Trusted and tried Ghadrites were sent to several cantonments to infiltrate into the army. The idea of the Gadar leaders was that with the war raging in Europe most of the soldiers had gone out of India and the rest could be easily won over. The revolution failed and most of the revolutionaries were arrested. But Rash Behari managed to escape British intelligence and reached Japan in 1915.

Indian National Army

Bose fled to Japan in 1915, under the alias of Priyanath Tagore, a relative of Rabindranath Tagore.[4] There, Bose found shelter with various Pan-Asian groups. From 1915–1918, he changed residences and identities numerous times, as the British kept pressing the Japanese government for his extradition. He married the daughter of Aizō Sōma and Kokkō Sōma, the owners of Nakamuraya bakery in Tokyo and noted Pan-Asian supporters in 1918, and became a Japanese citizen in 1923, living as a journalist and writer. It is also significant that he was instrumental in introducing Indian-style curry in Japan. Though more expensive than the usual "British-style" curry, it became quite popular, with Rash Bihari becoming known as "Bose of Nakamuraya".

Bose along with A M Nair was instrumental in persuading the Japanese authorities to stand by the Indian patriots and ultimately to officially actively support the Indian independence struggle abroad. Bose convened a conference in Tokyo on 28–30 March 1942, which decided to establish the Indian Independence League. At the conference, he moved a motion to raise an army for Indian independence. He convened the second conference of the League at Bangkok on 22 June 1942. It was at this conference that a resolution was adopted to invite Subhas Chandra Bose to join the League and take its command as its president.

The Indian prisoners of war captured by the Japanese in the Malaya and Burma fronts were encouraged to join the Indian Independence League and become the soldiers of the Indian National Army (INA), formed on 1 September 1942 as the military wing of Rash Behari Bose's Indian National League. He selected the flag for the Azad Hind movement and handed over the flag to Subhas Chandra Bose. But although he handed over the power, his organizational structure remained, and it was on the organizational spadework of Rash Behari Bose. Rash Behari Bose built the Indian National Army (also called 'Azad Hind Fauj'). Prior to his death caused by tuberculosis, the Japanese Government honoured him with the Order of the Rising Sun (2nd grade).

Personal life

Bose met Toshiko Soma when he was hiding at her house in Shinjuku City. She was the daughter of Aizō Sōma and Kokkō Sōma, the owners of Nakamuraya bakery (ja:中村屋) in Tokyo and noted Pan-Asian supporters in 1918. At that time, Bose was a fugitive with the British searching for him. Their initial contact was during those intense moments of hiding though without any interactions. In 1916, when Bose was a fugitive no more, he invited the Soma family to his house as a gesture of gratitude. That was the first instance of their interaction in a social context.[4]

However, Bose stuck out like a sore thumb in Japan. People would consider them with suspicion. Mitsuru Toyama, as a solution proposed to the Soma's a marriage between Toshiko and Rashbehari. He thought that marriage with a Japanese citizen would make it easy for Bose to apply for citizenship. Despite their initial reservations, the Soma's agreed to the match. When they asked for Toshiko's consent, she took three weeks to decide.[4]

They had a happy marriage that lasted for eight years. Bose taught Toshiko Bengali and how to wear a sari. Bose got Japanese citizenship in 1923. Toshiko's health declined soon after and it claimed her life in 1924. After her death, he never remarried. They were buried together after Bose's death.

They had two children together. Masahide Bose (Bharatchandra) was born in 1920. He died in World War II aged 24. Their daughter Tetsuko was born in 1922.[4]

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A dinner party given to Bose in his honour by his close Japanese friends, including Mitsuru Tōyama, a right-wing nationalist and Pan-Asianism leader (centre, behind the table), and Tsuyoshi Inukai, future Japanese prime minister (to the right of Tōyama). Behind Tōyama is Bose. 1915.

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Bose and his Japanese supporters in 1916

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Bose with wife c. 1918

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Bose on a 1967 stamp of India

See also

• महान स्वतंत्रता सेनानी रासबिहारी बोस
• Anushilan Samiti
• Delhi-Lahore conspiracy
• Hindu–German Conspiracy
• Gadar Mutiny

References

1. Sahai, Krishna N. (2001). Ambasth Kayastha. Commonwealth Publisher. p. 5. During the upsurge of national movement for freedom of India , Kayasthas were in the forefront . The great revolutionary Rash Behari Bose , Netaji Subhash Bose
2. Uma Mukherjee (1966). Two great Indian revolutionaries: Rash Behari Bose & Jyotindra Nath Mukherjee. Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay. p. 101.
3. Uma Mukherjee (1966). Two great Indian revolutionaries: Rash Behari Bose & Jyotindra Nath Mukherjee. Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay. p. 119.
4. বন্দ্যোপাধ্যায়, পারিজাত. "বাংলা থেকে রান্না-শাড়ি পরা, জাপানি বউকে শিখিয়েছিলেন রাসবিহারী বসু". Anandabazar Patrika (in Bengali). Retrieved 27 July 2018.

Further reading

• Eston, Elizabeth (2019). Rash Behari Bose: The Father of the Indian National Army, Vols 1-6. Tenraidou.

External links

• Rash Behari Bose materials in the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA)
• The Indian revolutionary who fought to overthrow British rule while living in Japan CNN
• Shinjuku Nakamuraya 新宿中村屋
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Part 1 of 2

The Maniktala secret society: An early Bengali terrorist group
by Peter Heehs
Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives and Research Library
Pondicherry

Author’s Note: I am grateful to Dr Jacques Pouchepadass, Director of the French Institute of Pondicherry, for going through two drafts of this paper and offering many helpful suggestions.

Introduction

The subject of this study is the secret society (gupta samiti) that developed out of the Calcutta Anushilan Samiti around 1905 and engaged in terrorist acts under the direction of Barindrakumar (’Barin’) Ghose between 1906 and 1908. This society was closely connected with the Jugantar newspaper and that name was sometimes used to denominate its members.1 In later years the Government and former members as well referred to the group as the ’Jugantar Party’, which property speaking was the name of a loose grouping of revolutionaries that grew out of the remnants of Barin’s organisation after 1910.2 In fact between 1906 and 1908, the period of this study, the society in question had no particular name. In order to distinguish it from its descendant I will refer to it as the Maniktala secret society, after the Calcutta suburb where its headquarters was located during the most eventful phase of its brief life.

The Maniktala secret society was modern India’s first organised terrorist group with a clear political aim.3 It prefigured and influenced the development of similar societies that rose in Bengal and elsewhere after its extinction. In this study, after looking briefly at the group’s aim and ’ideology’, I will examine its structure, that is its theoretical and actual organisation, and its activities both in its preparatory and active stages. I will also point out similarities and contrasts between it and other terrorist groups in India and abroad. In concluding I will discuss the reasons for its inability to achieve its immediate aims, but show that its attempts were not altogether without effect.

Aim and Ideology

The Maniktala secret society aimed at the achievement of complete independence. The leaders of the Extremist party, one of whom, Aurobindo Ghose, was also one of the founders of the society, formulated this goal twenty-five years before it was taken up by the Indian National Congress and stated it with remarkable candour in their printed propaganda. Setting forth ’Our Political Ideal’ in the third issue of the Bengali weekly Jugantar on March 1906, Aurobindo wrote: ’independence [swadhinata] in our educational, commercial and political life has to be attained by any means possible.4 In subsequent issues other Jugantar writers laid stress on the fundamental need of independence. This was the primary thing, without which there could be no real social or economic progress.5 Aurobindo made the same point in his English newspaper Bande Mataram: ’Political freedom is the iife-breath of a nation. To attempt social reform, educational reform, industrial expansion, the moral improvement of the race without aiming first and foremost at political freedom is the height of ignorance and futility.’6 Bipin Chandra Pal had written earlier in the same journal: ’we desire to make it [India] autonomous and absolutely free from foreign control.7Aurobindo felt that Pal’s phrasing, unprecedented as it was, ’could have meant or even included the Moderate aim of colonial self-government’, and in his own writings he stressed that the independent government towards which his party aimed must be ’unhampered even in the least degree by foreign control’. 8

Such statements unquestionably influenced the members of the Maniktala society who, whatever their level of education, had a clear idea that the goal of their revolutionary efforts was to obtain political independence.9 Other ideology was of little use to them. Certainly they had no interest in European economic theory. One member of the society, Hem Chandra Das, went to Europe in 1907 because he wanted to learn about the organisation of secret societies and the manufacture of explosives.10 Believing that ’anarchist’ was synonymous with ’revolutionary’, he sought out the French anarchist ’Libertad’ (Joseph Albert, 1875-1908) and learned from him and his comrades something about anarchism, socialism communism, and so forth.11 Hem showed little interest in these competing theories and indeed stopped frequenting his anarchist acquaintances once he discovered what they believed in. Sister Nivedita, an intimate of several members of the Maniktala society, was a correspondent of Peter Kropotkin, but there is no evidence that the Russian anarchist’s ideas influenced society members.

It has sometimes been asserted that Aurobindo and others replaced legitimate politico-economic ideology with religious belief, and that their movement failed for this reason.12 I will examine the reasons for the movement’s failure before concluding. Here I will look briefly at the complex question of the presence of religion in the politics and action of the 1905-10 period. It certainly is true that writers in Bande Mataram, Jugantar and other Extremist organs made use of Hindu terminology and symbolism. What is more doubtful is the assertion, advanced by certain writers, that by so doing the Extremists prepared the way for the development of communalism.13 As is often the case when scholars take up popular controversies, some at least of these claims are based on a rather superficial reading of the sources. A passage from one of Aurobindo’s speeches-’What is Nationalism? Nationalism is a religion that has come from God’-is frequently held up as an example of pre-communalistic Hindu religiosity, Aurobindo’s statement being interpreted, roughly: national politics in India is part and parcel of (the Hindu) religion.14 A .careful reading of the text shows several deficiencies in this interpretation. First, by ’Nationalism’ Aurobindo meant primarily the Nationalist Party, which (as all specialists in the period know) was one of the names that he and Tilak applied to the party now generally known as the Extremists. He certainly was not referring to nationalism in general. Second, Aurobindo was not a Hindu properly speaking. For a few years he used this label for himself, but with the qualification that he did not mean ’the ignorant customary Hinduism of today’, but ’the purer fprm of Vedanta’.15 Finally and most importantly, Aurobindo was not using ’religion’ here in the sense of ’a set of beliefs, ritual practices, etc.’, but in the extended sense of ’a high and noble calling under the direction of a higher power’. The sentence following the quoted one, which often is replaced by ellipsis points by those who quote,’16 runs: ’Nationalism is a creed which you will have to live.’ This sentence, and the speech as a whole, make it clear that what Aurobindo meant was that ’Nationalism’ itself was a ’religion’, one made up, as he explained, of faith, selflessness and courage. While certainly himself a religious, or, as he would have preferred to say, a ’spiritual’ man, Aurobindo never asserted that politics ought to be infused with the spirit of any formal religion, Hindu or other.

It is true that Hindu-Muslim relations worsened during the Swadeshi agitation, but this does not seem to have been caused by a pronounced Hindu slant in Extremist propaganda. The writers of the two most influential Extremist pamphlets of the period, Sonar Bangla and Raja Ke?, both addressed themselves to Muslims as well as Hindus. Sonar Bangla proclaimed: ’This is the time for the Bengali to show the people of the world that [sic] he can do.... Brothers, Hindus, Mussalmans, gird up your loins for the honour of your mother. Since all must one day die, why fear?’ Raja Ke? accused the ruling power of destroying the country’s commerce and industry by unfair practices and ruining both cultivators and landowners by overtaxation. The people therefore had no true ’king’ and should rise against the foreign usurpers. The writer urged his readers to ’circulate from village to village that we Hindus and Mohammedans jointly worship the feet of the mother native country.’17 The emblem of Jugantar combined Hindu and Muslim symbols, and its editors made efforts to be non-sectarian. Writing about the ideal of the ’kingdom of righteousness’ (dharma rajya), which generally is associated with the Hindu tradition, Jugantar declared: ’Each man has his own dharma and it is by the cultivation of this dharma that he becomes fit for the path of emancipation. Therefore the kingdom of righteousness is as indispensible to the Muslim or Christian as it is to the Hindu.’ The first step for everyone was to establish ’a distinct independent [political] aggregate.’18 Here, as always, the ’one thing needful’ (as Aurobindo called it) was the attainment of political independence. If the Extremists and their activist followers had any ideology, this was it.19

The reasons for the falling out between Hindus and Muslims during the swadeshi period are too complex to be discussed here.20 As the two communities became polarised over such issues as partition and boycott, the ecumenism of Sonar Bangla and Raja Ke? was replaced by the sectarianism of the Lal Ishtahar (’Red Pamphlet’) and threatening statements in Jugantar such as the following: ’Favoured sons of independence, Musalmans, be warned!... The Hindus are certain to be independent. Will Musalmans then allow themselves to remain without that nectar?’ In 1907 relations between the two communities were poisoned by serious riots in Comilla and Jamalpur. Contemporary Hindus believed that the British government instigated or gave its support to Muslim rioters.21 Partly as a result of this, Hindus began lumping the Muslims and British together. In the aftermath of the riots at least one society barred Muslims from membership.22 This deprived the terrorist movement of a potential source of strength.

Activities-Period of Preparation

During the preparatory period of the Maniktala society, roughly between 1902 and 1907, its members were concerned chiefly with the collection of men, arms and money. Each of these requisites will be considered in turn.

Collection and Organisation of Men

Direct Recruitment


The Calcutta Anushilan Samiti, from which the Maniktala group developed, was founded in 1902 to promote physical, mental and moral culture among Calcutta students. Its organisers, P. Mitra and later Jatindranath Banerji and Aurobindo Ghose, regarded the promotion of healthy physical and mental activities as a means to cultivate pro-nationalist attitudes in young Bengalis. In addition they viewed Anushilan and similar samitis as training grounds for men who would take part in a future military uprising against the British. 23 When Jatin Banerji began to recruit men for the society in 1902 he used the legitimate activities of a branch of the Calcutta Anushilan as a cover for his revolutionary training. 24

Jatin Banerji’s method was to invite young men to learn physical skills such as lathi-play, drill, cycling and horseback riding at his North Calcutta akhara (gymnasium). In 1903 he was joined by Aurobindo’s brother Barindrakumar, who used to go to places in Calcutta frequented by students to try to win them over. Barin, Jatin and Bhupendranath Dutt also made tours of the districts for this purpose.25 In a statement given to the police after his arrest in 1908, Barin said:

After being there [Baroda, where his brother Aurobindo was posted] for a year I came back to Bengal with the idea of preaching the cause of independence as a Political Missionary. I muvrd about from District to District and started gymnasiums. There young men were brought together to learn physical exercises and study politics. 26


It should be noted that Barin, did not preach ’the cause of independence’ until he was sure the prospective recruit was interested. Before 1905 very few were. After a feud with Jatin in 1904 that resulted in the practical disappearance of the Calcutta society Barin went back to Baroda were he remained until the start of the Swadeshi movement (August 1905) made it seem worthwhile to try again.

Printed Propaganda

The Swadeshi movement galvanised the students of Bengal but also provided them with an outlet for their new-found political enthusiasm in the form of organisations such as the National Volunteers, which enforced the boycott of British goods, and the Anti-Circular Society, which opposed certain official ’circulars’ directed against students. Those interested in revolutionary change had to divert the students’ enthusiasm from passive to active resistance. Such a general change of attitude could not be accomplished by word-of-mouth promotion, which between 1902 and 1905 had reached only a few hundred students. A printed organ was needed and in March 1906 Barin and others started Jugantar. This Bengali weekly was characterised by James Campbell Ker, author of the official history Political Trouble in India 1907-1917, as ’the first and most pernicious of the revolutionary papers of Calcutta’.27 It unquestionably was the most important single factor in the development of revolutionary thinking in Bengal between 1906 and 1908. Fifteen months after its founding its circulation was still only 200; but a year later, after four sedition prosecutions, it had reached the ’hitherto unknown’ figure of 50,000.28 Of the ten members of the Maniktala society who gave statements to the police after their arrest, eight spoke of the importance of Jugantar in their conversion. Only two said they were convinced by verbal arguments.29 Most if not all of the other three dozen men directly connected with the Maniktala society were influenced by what they read in Jugantar, as were many others who joined other societies. Birendranath Dutta Gupta, who assassinated the detective Shamsul Alam in January 1910, said in his confession: ’On reading the Jugantar I got a very strong wish to do brave and violent works.’30

Probably in 1907 a selection of articles from Jugantar was published under the title Mukti Kon Pathe? (Which Way Freedom?). This became one of the best known revolutionary publications in India, circulating widely in Bengal and reaching other provinces as well. (A Gujarati translation was issued before 1911.) As late as 1933 it was used for recruitment purposes in Bengal, years after the party that had issued it had disappeared.31 All the points discussed in the present study-the building up of public opinion through newspapers, the collection of money and arms, etc.--were discussed quite openly in this book.32 Another popular revolutionary publication issued by the Maniktala society was Bartaman Rananiti or ’The Modern Art of War’, which was essentially an adaptation in Bengali of an English military text.33 But the book contained some original material directed specifically towards Bengali readers. The last chapter took up the question, ’How can a weak and disarmed nation fight against armed and trained soldiers?’ The writer answered that nothing was impossible if the people were determined to attain liberty even at the cost of death. When conditions were right native troops would desert, the hill tribes would rise, young men would engage in irregular warfare and all this together with pressure from abroad would eventually wear the enemy down. 34

Internal Organisation of the Society

The men who responded to this propaganda and became members of the Maniktala society or others like it were, with few exceptions, young Bengali Hindus. Most of them were from the ’respectable’ (bhadralok) castes and most of them fairly well educated. The leaders, all well-read and intelligent, provided the society with a well-thought-out theoretical structure, which however may never have been put into practice. Certain documents discovered by the police during searches in Bengal around 1908 set forth a complex group hierarchy based on the Russian model.35 A diagram discovered at the headquarters of the Maniktala society outlined something that must have resembled the group’s actual structure more closely, though it too may have been more theoretical than practical. According to the diagram the primary division was between the leadership, consisting of Barin Ghose and Upendra Nath Banerjee, and the rank-and-file, consisting (at the time the document was drawn up) of fourteen members. Each member was assigned to one or more of three ’circles’, which dealt with (a) ’band work’, said to mean collection of funds (by solicitation or perhaps by dacoity); (b) ’exp., mech., and an.’, apparently ’explosives, mechanics and anarchy’, i.e., practical terrorist work; and (c) missionary, training and intelligence work. Each of the circles was under the supervision of one or more leaders, namely: (a) Barin Ghose, (b) Ullaskar Dutt and Upendranath Bannerjee, and (c) Barin and Upendranath.36

These divisions seem to correspond fairly closely to those actually reported by society members in their confessions and reminiscences. Barin and Upendranath were certainly the active leaders of the society, though they thought of themselves as subordinate to Aurobindo Ghose, who exercised some control over the society’s operations. Barin and Upendranath, with Aurobindo and others above them, constituted what might be called the society’s ’central command’. Such a command is said by Walter Laqueur to be a characteristic feature of all terrorist movements.37 The Maniktala society had a relatively weak central command due to the free-and- easy personality of its leaders. In contrast the rigid command structure of the Dacca Anushilan was a reflection of the personality of its leader Pulin Behari Das.38

In their reminiscences society members Upen Banerjee and Nolini Kanta Gupta speak of an actual functional division into two sections rather than three ’circles’. According to Nolini there was a ~military’ side and a ’civil’ side, the former concerned with terrorist actions, the latter with propaganda and recruitment. According to Upendranath the senior members busied themselves with ’works’ while the younger ones were occupied with ‘studies’.39 In both cases the first section corresponds to circles one and two of the diagram, the second to circle three.40 All the recruits did in fact spend much of their time in study. But it was of course not true (as the group’s lawyers attempted to convince the Courts) that the ’students’ knew nothing about ’works’. Bomb-making formed part of the general curriculum and even one of the youngest was asked to copy out the bomb-manual brought from Paris by Hem Chandra Das.41

Interconnection and Factionalism

The Maniktala society was loosely connected with a number of other samitis in Bengal such as the Calcutta Anushilan, of which it was an outgrowth, the Atmonnati Samiti, with whom it shared members and undertook joint actions, and more remotely the Dacca Anushilan and other East Bengal groups such as the Sadhana Samaj of Mymensingh. Members of different samitis were drawn together by a common dedication to ’the idea’ and a shared respect for leaders like P. Mitra and Aurobindo Ghose. But the forces tending to keep them apart were stronger than those drawing them together. Factionalism has always been a characteristic of terrorist societies.42 To be sure terrorist groups often deliberately divide themselves into small, manageable cells for strategic and protective purposes. There is some evidence that Indian groups were aware of foreign groups having this kind of structure.43 But the abundant evidence of quarrelling among Bengali groups (despite efforts by the leaders to keep them together) suggest that the actual reason for the fragmentation in Bengal was the inability of the groups to cooperate. Indeed the leaders seem to have contributed to rather than reduced the fragmentation. The general rule that active heads of terrorist groups tend to be authoritarian is borne out by the examples of Jatin Banerjee, Pulin Das and Barin Ghose. Revolutionary leaders of genius like Lenin or on a smaller scale Pulin Das can weld masses of men into a powerful union. More commonly however, as Laqueur has pointed out, strong leadership tends to produce rivalry and opposition and even small groups have built in centrifugal tendencies.44

The Maniktala society was itself the product of three acts of division. Jatin Banerji broke first with P. Mitra and then with Barin Ghose; Barin later broke with the Jugantar group led by Nikhileshwar Roy Maulik.45 Some memorialists have tried to smooth over these breaches, but it is clear from statements by the participants themselves that there was a good deal of bad blood involved. Barin Ghose alluded to this on two occasions in the 1930s:’ ’No one knows better than the terrorists themselves how mean personal jealousies and senseless feuds among leaders of small units are working towards disintegration in their ranks.’ ‘A cult of violence is always the mother of bitter jealousies and personal animosities.’46 Aurobindo Ghose spoke of the same tendencies to a young man desirous of taking part in revolutionary activities:

Young men come forward to join the movement being goaded by idealism and enthusiasm. But these elements do not last long. It becomes very difficult to observe and extract discipline. Small groups begin to form within the organization, rivalries grow -between groups and even between individuals. There is competition for leadership.... Sometimes they sink so low as to quarrel even for money.47


Similar statements were made by Upendranath Banerjee and others.48 Even the judge who tried the members of the society after their arrest remarked that the documents exhibited in the case gave evidence of ’much jealousy’.49 At the moment the police broke up the society a fissure had opened between Hem Das on the one side and Barin on the other that would probably have led to the formation of yet another splinter group.50

In the light of this pervasive factionalism we can examine claims that the Maniktala society had connections with similar groups all over India and indeed was part of a vast and unified revolutionary confederation. Terrorist supporter and organiser C.C. Dutt once spoke of a country-wide organisation with men like Aurobindo Ghose and Lala Lajpat Rai in charge of their respective provinces. 51 There is no evidence at all to support Dutt’s story. Barin Ghose made inflated claims of the extent of the revolutionary organisation when he went on recruitment and fund-raising drives. Such misrepresentation was also practised by Jatin Banerji, Devabrata Bose, Hem Chandra Das and other members of the Maniktala society. 52 It was in fact common practice among leaders of Bengali terrorist groups and has been noticed in other groups in Europe and elsewhere.53 Barin seems to have picked up the habit of exaggeration from others and may at first have actually believed what he was saying. While in Maharashtra in 1902-3 he had been told that every province except Bengal was ready for the uprising. It was only when he returned to Western India at the time of the Surat Conference (1907) and reported that Bengal was now ready that he learned that no country-wide organisation existed.54

Certain members of the Anglo-Indian community, with memories of 1857 to haunt them, also made more of the ’revolutionary conspiracy’ than it was worth. After the Maniktala arrests the Europeans of Calcutta became ’hysterical’ and even the Viceroy Lord Minto spoke of the possibility of organised terrorist outrages ’throughout India’.55 Sir Harold Stuart, former head of the Criminal Investigation Department, came closer to the truth when he wrote after the arrests: ’My experience is that this society had no branches outside Calcutta or in other provinces, but there may be similar societies elsewhere, having a loose sort of connection with the Calcutta society.56 The first part of Stuart’s statement was not strictly correct, since the Maniktala society did have at least one ’branch’ in Midnapore and was closely allied to societies in Nadia, Chandernagore and elsewhere. But the phrase ’a loose sort of connection’ describes well the relationship existing between the Maniktala society and others. Its connection with other Bengal groups has been indicated above. It also had ties with groups in Baroda, Bombay and the Central Provinces and was in contact with like-minded individuals in Madras and Punjab. The Baroda link was due to Aurobindo Ghose, who had served in that Native State before coming to Bengal. Correspondence with and documents mentioning Madhavrao Jadhav and K.G. Deshpande, Baroda men who were interested in revolutionary action, were found during the Maniktala searches.57 Sisir Ghose, one of the Maniktala revolutionaries, visited Jadhav, an officer in the Baroda army, to speak to him about military training for Bengalis.58 Balkrishna Hari Kane, a Maharashtrian arrested in Calcutta with the Maniktala men, had been sent there for training by G.S. Khaparde, an associate of Tilak’s in the Central Provinces.59 Hem Das met a number of revolutionaries from western India during his stay in London and Paris. P.M. Bapat, who studied chemistry and politics with Hem, was a Maratha having ties with the Mitra Mela group of Nasik.60 On his return to India Hem Das met several men in Bombay whose names he had been given by friends in Paris and London.61 Aurobindo Ghose was in correspondence with Chidambaram Pillai during 1908 and later entered into contact with other Madras revolutionary leaders.62 After leaving Bengal Jatin Banerji transmitted the ’idea’ to Kissan Singh, the father of Bhagat Singh. Later stronger links between Bengal and Punjab were forged by Sarala Devi Chaudhurani and Rash Behari Bose.63 But for all this there was never a national terrorist organisation in India. Factionalism was always stronger than association and even in Bengal (as Barin Ghose perhaps too graphically put it) the terrorists were ’honeycombed into small bands each ready to cut the throats of the other.64

Collection of Arms

The Arms Act of 1878 made it illegal for natives of India (certain dignitaries excepted) to possess swords, firearms and most other weapons. By incorporating these forbidden items in their ceremonies of initiation the Bengali secret societies ritualised law-breaking. But the importance of firearms to the society was more than symbolic. Rifles and guns were needed for the future uprising, handguns essential for carrying out terrorist acts. To obtain them was one of the society’s chief concerns during the preparatory period; to transport them became a practical rite of passage, allowing recruits to demonstrate their manliness and mettle.65 Two principal methods were used to obtain arms: theft and misuse of legal channels. Two of the revolvers carried by members of the Maniktala group had been snatched from Calcutta policemen.66 The revolvers that killed Narendranath Goswami and other handguns used by the Maniktala society came from French Chandernagore, where no arms act was in force. Chandernagore soon became the principal centre of arms traffic in Bengal if not in India.67

Persons exempted from the operations of the Arms Act included large landowners, the nobility, and government servants. Terrorists made use of contacts with persons in each of these classes to obtain weapons. Satyen Bose’s brother Jnan Bose possessed a licence for the rifle found in his house. Members of another group purchased seven guns and three revolvers in the name of a Rani of Putia.68 Indra Nandi made good use of the exemption of his father, a member of the Indian Medical Services.69 By means of such haphazard methods the Maniktala society managed to build up an ’arsenal’ consisting of three sporting rifles, two double-barrelled shotguns, and nine revolvers over the course of three years.70

Even the boldest band of revolutionaries could do little to overthrow the government with fourteen miscellaneous firearms. Aware of this, at an early stage Barin Ghose became interested in explosives. Bombs are more powerful and also more stimulating than revolvers. The publicity generated by terrorist acts has always been considered as important as the act itself.71 In the first years of the twentieth century nothing could grab more headlines than a successful bombing. After the invention of nitroglycerine and gelignite in the 1860s and 1870s the bomb became the weapon of choice of the European terrorist and the symbol of the ’anarchist’ movement.72 Barin began bomb-making experiments shortly after the refounding of the society in the latter part of 1905. By mid-1906 he was going around East Bengal demonstrating a crude bomb to prospective donors.73 Publicists wrote rashly about bombs in nationalist organs and more than one young man resolved to acquire a sufficient knowledge of chemistry to produce them. One of the first to succeed was Ullaskar Dutt. His first dynamite mine was a dud; but the one he made to derail the train of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal near Kharagpur almost did the job. The dynamite in this device was supplied by Manoranjan Guha Thakurta, an Extremist politician and terrorist sympathiser who owned a mica mine.74 Society members also purchased acids and other bomb-ingredients openly and in bulk and began ’the actual manufacture of high explosives on a large scale’. Eight finished bombs were discovered when the headquarters of the society was raided in May 1908.75

The society’s main explosives expert received his training in Europe.76 Hem Chandra Das returned from Paris early in 1908 with an excellent knowledge of chemistry and a 70-page manual on bombs and demolition given to him by his teacher. This manual was, a British expert later testified, ’The best work on explosives I have ever seen.’ Written in simple nontechnical language, it permitted a layman to ’use the contents of a Chemist’s shop for the manufacture of explosives’. Its general purpose was described in its opening sentence: ’The aim of the present work is to place in the hands of a revolutionary people such a powerful weapon as explosive matter is.77 The first fruit of Hem’s studies was a book-bomb delivered to an unpopular magistrate in January 1908. This was quite an up-to-date device: the world’s first parcel-bomb had been tried out in Berlin only thirteen years earlier.78 Hem’s bomb was well-made and failed in its purpose only because the magistrate neglected to open it.79 Later working together with Ullaskar Hem produced a picric-acid bomb used in Chandernagore and a gelignite bomb used in Mazaffarpur in April. The first did not go off (Ullaskar blamed the inferior picric acid); the second killed two women and led to the arrest of most of the members of the society.80

Collection of Funds

The German anarchist Johann Most ’maintained that in money-even more than in dynamite-the key was to be found.’81 Terrorist movements are expensive to run. Arms and explosives are costly and the printing of propaganda a constant drain; but probably the greatest expense is the feeding and lodging of members. The ’General Principles’ manuscript lists three sources of income: (a) profit-making enterprises; (b) contributions from men of wealth; and (c) robbery, euphemistically referred to as ’imposing taxes on rich people with the aid of the terroristic department’.82 The Bengal Extremist-terrorist party made use of all three of these methods. Early on they made an attempt at self-sufficiency by setting up the Chhatra Bhandar or student’s store. This enterprise was intended to earn money legitimately as well as to launder funds acquired illegally. It was-never a great success. Bande Mataram, Jugantar and other newspapers brought in a certain amount of money, but owing to bad management almost all of this had to be used to keep the papers afloat. As the papers flirted ever more dangerously with sedition they began to attract undue attention from the police, causing Barin Ghose to sever his connection with them. As the chief fund-raiser of the terrorist party he came to depend on donations from ’people of great wealth’.83 These included Subodh and Nirode Mullick, heirs of an established shipbuilding business; Rajendranath Mukherjee, son of the zamindar of Uttarpara; Surendranath Tagore, a scion of Bengal’s most prominent zamindari family; mine owner Manoranjan Guha Thakurta; and government servants C.C. Dutt and Abinash Chakravarty.84 Professional men such as C.R. Das and P. Mitra, both lawyers, and Aurobindo Ghose, a professor before his retirement, also contributed money when they could.85 Barin managed to get enough from such men to keep the society going. But the donations were not unconditional. Barin latter claimed that he was forced to undertake assassinations by contributors who wanted spectacular results. Some ’donations’ were earmarked for the killing of specified officials. 86

Even more than the turn to assassination, the turn to dacoity was prompted by the need for money. As early as 1906 Narendra Nath Goswami was told: ’Money would be got by looting which was to be used to buy arms and ammunition.’ C.C. Dutt referred to this as the ’Mahratta’ method, an allusion to the plundering raids of the eighteenth-century Maratha freebooters.87 This gave a romantic aura to what well-bred bhadralok boys might otherwise have considered immoral behaviour. Another way to justify robbery was to refer to it as ’levying taxes’ (as in the document cited above) or ’collecting loans’ that would be repaid when independence had been achieved. One victim of a Calcutta dacoity received an ’official’ letter (complete with seal) from the ’Finance Secretary to the Bengal Branch of the Independent Kingdom of United India’ which began:

’Six honorary officers of our Calcutta Finance Department have taken a loan of Rs 9,891-1-5 from you and have deposited the amount in the office noted above on your account to fulfil our great aim. The sum has been entered in our cash book on your name at 5 per cent per annum.’ When the ’great aim’ had been attained ’the whole amount with interest’ would be repaid. The victim also was politely warned that if he cooperated with the police, the Finance Department would ’not leave anyone in your family to enjoy your enormous wealth’. It would be better if ’the rich men of the country’ would ’subscribe monthly, quarterly and half-yearly amounts’ to the Finance Secretariat.88 The terrorists no doubt enjoyed the joke; the victim presumably took the threat seriously.

Activities-Period of Action

It will be apparent from the above that the Maniktala terrorists undertook two types of operations or ’actions’: assassinations and dacoities. Both were continued by the group’s successors in Bengal. They in fact are the most frequently attempted operations by terrorist groups everywhere.89 The assassination of representatives of the adversary government has been the classic terrorist tactic since the time of the Assassins.90 It appealed to the Maniktala group for the usual reasons: the political effect of the blow, the publicity it would generate, and simple revenge. There was also, as mentioned above, a financial incentive.

Robbery is a more direct means of acquiring funds and it has been engaged in by many terrorist groups. Russian terrorists began to rob banks in 1879; in 1906 there were 362 ’expropriations’ of this sort in Russia.91 A Bengali document on Russian revolutionary methods found along with ’General Principles’ declares: ’The major portion of the money [for the Russian revolutionary parties] is obtained by dacoity and by an imposition of a cess on zamindars and (other) rich people. 92

The Bengali press, including even organs published by the Extremists, expressed horror over attempted and successful assassinations, but demonstrations of sympathy for assassins like Khudiram Bose and Kanailal Dutt show that the Bengali public were not opposed in principle to the murder of officials. The public attitude towards dacoities was of course different, since many of the victims were ordinary Bengalis. Citing an account of a 1907 train-station robbery, in which the station staff attempted to subdue the dacoits, Gordon comments, ’it seemed to them that dacoits were dacoits and robbery was robbery’.93 So it seemed to the Bengali villagers who cooperated with the police during the 1915 dacoity in which Sushil Sen was killed and the Oriya villagers who cooperated with the police in 1916 when they were hunting down Jatin Mukherjee.94 The villagers, even if supporters of the terrorists’ ’great aim’, may be said to have been justified in so far as the line between political dacoity and ordinary theft was not clearly drawn. The Government’s claim that the terrorist movement gave birth to a ’bhadralok loafer criminal class and an anarchical condition of things in which, although the revolutionary idea existed, there was undoubtedly a very big element of ordinary crime’ is supported by statements of Hem Chandra Das and Barin Ghose.95 Moreover, as Gordon has pointed out, the violent acts committed by Bengali terrorists (particularly in the period after 1910) ’were often only vaguely related to the goals of India’s independence’. Gordon made reference to a suggestion by Nirad Chaudhuri that the revolutionary murders and dacoities grew out of a tradition among well-to-do Bengalis to make use of hooligans (goondas) or even private armies to carry out murders for revenge.96 The police believed that Rajendranath Mukherjee, a zamindar’s son who was an important terrorist supporter, instigated a murder of this sort.97 One could find a parallel to this nexus between influential men and criminals in the so-called ’criminalization’ of political parties in post-independence India.

The Maniktala terrorists seem to have been relatively humane. Both Hem Chandra Das and Nolini Kanta Gupta felt relieved when dacoities they had been assigned to were called off.98 Later however, as dacoities became more common and more lucrative, Bengali dacoits became more ruthless. Up to the Muzaffarpur incident no innocent person was killed during a terrorist act. But starting from June 1908, when four persons were killed and one wounded during a dacoity that Petted Rs 26,837, civilian casualties became frequent.99

A remarkable feature of the policy of assassination in Bengal was the lack of success in killing European officials as compared to the high success rate in killing Bengali policemen, informers, etc. Between the shooting of the missionary Hickenbotham in March 1908 and the assassination of police inspector Shamsul Alam in January 1910 Bengali terrorists tried to kill four Europeans and failed each time. (At Muzaffarpur they succeeded in killing two innocent European women.) During the same period they carried out six successful assassinations of Bengalis with no failures. Western Indian terrorists chalked up a better record during these months: three attempts against Europeans, two of them successful, no known attempts against Indian. 100
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Part 2 of 2

The Reasons for the Society’s Failure

Table 1. Actions Undertaken by the Maniktala Secret Society

Year / Month / Place / Target / Type / Result


1906 / ? / East Bengal / Fuller / Assassination / Aborted
1906 / ? August / Rangpur / a widow / Dacoity / Aborted
1907 / ? August / Bankura / a mahani / Dacoity / Aborted
1907 / October / Darjeeling / Fraser / Assassination / Aborted
1907 / November / Mankundu / Fraser / Derailment / Failure
1907 / November / Mankundu / Fraser / Derailment / Aborted
1907 / December / Narayangarh / Fraser / Derailment / Failure
1908 / January / Calcutta / Kingsford / Assassination / Failure
1908 / April / Chandernagore / Tardivel / Assassination / Failure
1908 / April / Muzaffarpur / Kingsford / Assassination / Wrong persons killed
Sources: GOB pol. conf. 26fiI1908; ABT, p. 16; Nixon Report, Table A; GOI HP-A September 1910, nos. 33-40, pp. 18-21, 42, GOI HP-D, August 1911, no. 9, p. 13.


The Maniktala secret society was more ineffective than most such groups, failing in all ten actions it undertook. (Table 1) The first six attempts may be considered training exercises. In the four that followed those involved did not fail for want of pluck, but because of carelessness and lack of discipline. In contrast the centrally organised Dacca Anushilan, which began later than the Maniktala society, got positive results from the first, seriously wounding their initial assassination-target (a British Collector) and then carrying out a series of successful dacoities and collaborator-assassinations.101 On the other hand Jatin Mukherjee, who like Barin preferred non-centralised organisation, achieved many of his revolutionary dims and generally managed to keep himself out of jail. The failures of the Maniktala group must be attributed primarily to slackness on the part of its senior members. The breaches of security that led to its penetration and capture were the responsibility of two long-time members, Satyen Bose and Abinash Bhattacharya.102 Barin Ghose, whose rashness has been attested to by his brother Aurobindo and Hem Chandra Das, did not properly dispose of the society’s arms and explosives even after he learned that a search was imminent. Many members including the usually circumspect Aurobindo were exceedingly incautious with regard to documents that when produced in court often resulted in conviction.

Some writers have maintained that the failure of the Maniktala group, and the early Bengali revolutionary movement in general, should be attributed to its lack of a proper ideological foundation. Beginning with society member Hem Chandra Das, a class of writers have suggested that the infusion of religion crippled the movement almost from the beginning.103 Others, basing themselves on the Marxist conception of terrorism, have argued that the lack of mass contact or ’peasant base’ was the undoing of Indian revolutionaries before the 1920s.104 It certainly is true, as I have noted above, that early Bengali terrorists lost a potential source of strength by shutting out the Muslims. But religious beliefs do not necessarily weaken a movement of violent resistance. Many religious terrorist groups have been quite effective. The conflict between the ’religious’ and ’non-religious’ members of the Maniktala group no doubt was a drain on their energies; but all members shared a common dedication to the goal of independence and this should have been enough to permit them to engage in effective action. They were urban terrorists, not rural guerrillas needing peasant support to set up ’liberated areas’.105 They could have succeeded in their immediate aims if they had applied themselves to the job. They failed not because of mistaken ideology but because they lacked circumspection, discipline, and experience.

Failure is the lot of most terrorists. According to one expert there is no known case of modern terrorists seizing political power; at best they have influenced the course of revolutionary movements by applying pressure on the rulers and by providing publicity to the cause. 106 The Maniktala society definitely succeeded in making public the demands of the most extreme school of nationalist politics. They also appear to have helped force the government to take remedial steps faster than it would otherwise have done. In December 1908 Lord Minto commented in a letter to Secretary of State for India John Morley ’that up to the murders at Muzaffarpore we thought we were dealing merely with sedition as represented by treasonable speeches and writings, but that the Manicktola Garden discoveries shed an entirely new light on the dangers we had to face.’ Minto was hardly one to admit to being swayed by a show of force; but he did acknowledge in the same letter: ’The conspiracy is far better organized than I had ever imagined and though the idea of any attempt at revolution seems fantastical, there might if we had not made the discoveries we have, have been something in the nature of simultaneous assassinations of Europeans followed by tremendous punishment by us. The dangers, which I hope we have avoided, are terrible to think of.’107 Minto did not and perhaps could not imagine that the dangers represented by a race he considered ’hysterical’, ’impressionable’ and ’devoid of manly qualities’ might prove a challenge to the Empire. Such complacency would not be possible for his successors, for example Lord Irwin, who had to negotiate with Gandhi in the wake of the Chittagong Armoury Raid and the execution of Bhagat Singh. Morley, a more perceptive statesman than Minto, was aware even in 1908 that the terrorists could not be answered by police repression alone. Three weeks after the Muzaffarpur attempt he wrote to Minto from London: ’The Bomb (here at least) has made old John Bull waken up and rub his eyes; he won’t be satisfied with mere Police Vigour (though we may throw him judicious morsels of this sort); he will want rational endeavors to set right Whatever may be amiss.'108 A year later it was ’common talk in Calcutta that the Council reforms [’Morley-Minto Reforms’] and the appointment of the Hon’ble Mr Sinha [to the Viceroy’s council] were the direct resuits of the [Alipore] conspiracy. It is said that the Congress begged for 20 years and got nothing, but one year of bombs has brought all this reform.’109 This of course was an exaggeration: work on the reforms had begun two years before the first bomb was thrown. But it seems likely that the terrorist threat was one of the factors that made Morley lash out at Minto after reading a tardy and timid draft reform proposal of July 1908: ’India can’t wait.’ ’It [the draft scheme] will have to be extended immensely.110 The proposal was in fact much extended before its tabling a half year later, and an Indian member of council, previously unthinkable to Minto, was appointed. No bureaucrat will freely admit in an official document that his decisions have been influenced by actions outside the legitimate political ~tocess. But such actions certainly have an influence on government policy. Was Barin Ghose far off the mark when he remarked to Charles Tegart in 1913: ’Can any official assure me that bombs had nothing to do with the undoing of the partition of Bengal’?111

Conclusion

The Maniktala secret society set the pattern for Bengali terrorist organisations before the 1920s. The group was loosely structured and dependent on leaders whose incompetence led it to ruin before its aims could be achieved. In some respects, for example, organisational patterns and the use of high explosives, the society followed the example of European, particularly Russian terrorist societies. In other respects -- composition, methods of collection of funds and arms, types of operation -- it was typical of terrorist groups everywhere. All its actions were failures, but it influenced the course of the freedom movement by introducing to it a new and dangerous element.

_______________

Notes:

1. The term ’Jugantar Group’ was first used in 1907 to designate those who continued to work for the newspaper Jugantar after the split between Barindrakumar Ghose and Nikhileshwar Roy Maulik (J. Mukhopadhyay, Biplabi Jibaner Smriti, Calcutta, 1983, p. 38). The police seem to have thought the term applied to Barin’s faction, for in a Government of Bengal file dated I May 1908, the Chief Secretary applied the terms ’Jugantar Party’ and ’Jugantar boys’ to those arrested in Manicktolla and Calcutta the next day (Government of Bengal, political confidential file 266/1908, file marked ’Spare Copies etc.’ Government of Bengal political confidential files are kept in the West Bengal State Archives (WBSA). Hereafter they will be referred to as GOB pol. conf.) In 1909 and 1910 the Bengal Government used the term ’Jugantar Gang’ to refer to the group that had published Jugantar in 1907 and 1908 and later continued its operations in secret (Note on the ’Jugantar’ Gang Subsequent to the Search of the Manicktola Garden (WBSA); Government of India Home Political A, March 1910, nos. 33-40, p. 46. Government of India Home Political files, kept in the National Archives of India, will be referred to hereafter as GOI HP-series A, B or D.) During the Howrah Gang Case (1910) the Bengal Government named one of twelve groups of persons accused in the case the ’Yugantar Gang’ or ’Group’ (Report of Committee Appointed to Investigate Revolutionary Conspiracies in India (hereafter Rowlatt Report), Annexure (1), 6.) It is not true as suggested by G. Haldar and others that the term Jugantar Party was invented by the Government at the time of the Howrah Case and later on adopted by the revolutionaries. G. Haldar, ’Revolutionary Terrorism’, in Studies in the Bengal Renaissance, Calcutta, 1977, p. 243; S. Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal 1903-1908, Calcutta, 1973, pp. 465-66.

2. An Account of the Revolutionary Organisations in Bengal Other than the Dacca Anushilan Samiti, 1917 (hereafter Nixon Report) (WBSA), pp. 1-7; Memorandum on the History of Terrorism in Bengal 1905-1933 (hereafter Terrorism 1905-33) (WBSA), p. 3; B. Ghose, Wounded Humanity, Calcutta, n.d. (1936), p. 52.

3. The Chapekar brothers’ ’club’ (1895-97) was not in my opinion a terrorist organisation. since its only active members (after a brief experiment with street waifs) were from a single family. Nor did it have a clear political aim. See Damodar Chapekar’s ’Autobiography’ in Source Materials for a History of the Freedom Movement in India, vol. 2, Bombay, 1958, pp. 955-1015. Taking this and other documents into consideration, the writers of the Rowlatt Report concluded, correctly, I think, that the brothers were first and foremost ’ultraorthodox’ and had ’no definite political aims’ (Rowlatt Report, para 20).

4. Jugantar, 8 April 1906. Text reproduced in Haridas Mukherjee and Uma Mukherjee, eds., Bharater Swadhinata Andolane ’Jugantar’ Patrika Dan, Calcutta, 1972, p. 56; article ascribed to Aurobindo Ghose by Bhupendranath Dutt (a sub-editor of J)ugantar in ’Aurobindo Smarane’ (Nirnay, Paush-Magh 1357 Bengali era, p. 55).

5. Jugantar articles reprinted in Mukherjee and Mukherjee, eds., ’Jugantar’ Patrika, pp. 62, 78, 131, 72-73, 190, etc. The word swadhinata, not the vague and more ambiguous swaraj, was almost invariably used for ’independence’.

6. Bande Mataram, 11 April 1907.

7. Bande Mataram, quoted in Times (London) 10 September 1906 under date 8 September. The issue of Bande Mataram in which Pal’s editorial appeared has been lost.

8. Sri Aurobindo [Ghose], On Himself, Pondicherry, 1972, p. 29; Bande Mataram, 12 April 1907.

9. See the memoirs of participants passim, for example, B. Ghose, Agniyug, Calcutta, n.d.; U. Bannerjee, Nirbasiter Atmakatha, Calcutta, 1976; H. Kanungo [Das], Banglay Biplab Pracheshta, Calcutta, 1928; N. Gupta, Smritir Pata, Calcutta, 1381 Bengali era.

10. Kanungo [Das], chapter 12.

11. For ’Libertad’ see Archives Nationales, Paris, F/7/12723, and Jean Maitron et al., Dictionnaire Biographique du Mouvement Ouvrier Français, vol. 13, Paris, 1975, pp. 283-84. One of the men Hem studied with was the Russian Nicolas Safranski; see Archives Nationales F///12894, no. 1; Cf. James Campbell Ker, Political Trouble in India 1907-1917, Calcutta, 1973, pp. 130-31. This edition (hereafter Ket) was a reprint of the Calcutta edition of 1917.

12. Kanungo [Das], chapter 5; M.N. Roy, Selected Works of M.N. Roy, vol. 1, Delhi, 1987, pp. 332 ff., cf. vol. 2, 1988, 165-68. Sarkar, Swadeshi Movement, pp. 484-88.

13. For a journalistic expression of this opinion see Indranil Banerjie, ’Roots of Revivalism’, Sunday, 25-31 October 1987, p. 27. Among historians, Amales Tripathi asserts that ’the inevitable recoil from [Aurobindo’s] unnatural blend of religion and politics had one tragic side-effect viz. strengthening of communalisin’ (’Aurobindo—A Study in Messianic Nationalism’, The Calcutta Historical Journal 4 (July-December 1979), p. 75. Bipan Chandra states that Aurobindo and others ’encouraged religiosity and thus indirectly a sense of communal identity among Hindus’ (Communalism in Modern India, Delhi, 1987, p. 175). Gopal Krishna states more prudently that Aurobindo, Tilak and others imparted ’a profoundly religious charactei’ to the national movement, but absolves them from promoting ’an exclusive Hindu nationalism’ (IESHR, 8, 4, 1971, pp. 378-79).

14. Romila Thapar, The Past and Prejudice, New Delhi, 1975, p. 13; Chandra, Communalism, p. 142; Banerjie, ’Roots’, p. 27. Note that all three writers equate Aurobindo’s ’religion’ with Hinduism and that Thapar and Banerjie print ’Nationalism’ (upper case in the text) as ’nationalism’.

15. Sri Aurobindo papers (Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives), Notebook G10.

16. I.e., Thapar, ibid. and Chandra, ibid.

17. These are official translations. So far as I know the Bengali texts of the two pamphlets have not survived. English translation of Sonar Bangla reprinted in Empress (Calcutta) September 1906, reproduced in Shankari Prasad Basu, Nivedita Lokamata, vol. 3, Calcutta, 1395 Bengali era, pp. 114-16; text of Raja Ke? reproduced as Exhibit 1226 in Alipore Bomb Trial, Alipore Bomb Trial Papers, Victoria Memorial (Calcutta) Collection (hereafter VM ABT records), III.6.1226.

18. Jugantar articles reproduced in Mukherjee and Mukherjee, eds., ’Jugantar’ Patrika, 131, 53.

19. I have discussed the terrorists’ aims and the ’religious’ and ’revolutionary’ influences on their thinking at greater length in a paper to be published by The Historian (Tempe, Arizona).

20. The best treatment of the subject is in Sarkar, Swadeshi Movement, pp. 405-64.

21. There was, said one contemporary political and labour leader, ’a belief [among Hindus] that the East Bengal Government was responsible for the aggressiveness of the Mahomedans; for instance for the desecration of the temples at Jamalpur’ (Deposition of A.C. Bannerjee in Alipore Bomb Trial, VM ABT records IV.5.423).

22. ’Rules of Membership of the Anushilan Samiti’, cited in P.K. Ghose, ’Ideology of a Revolutionary Secret Society’. India Past and Present 1 (1984); 96.

23. Aurobindo, On Himself, p. 23.

24. A. Bhattacharya, ’Baiplabik Samitir Prarambh Kaler Itihas’, in B. Datta, Dwitiya Swadhinatar Sangram, Calcutta, 1949, pp. 190-200; A. Bhattacharya, ’Aurobindo’, Galpa Bharati 6 (Paush 1357 Bengali era): 829-34; B. Ghose, Agniyug, p. 47.

25. GOI HP-A May 1908, nos. 112-50, pp. 13, 25; B. Ghose, Agniyug, pp. 69, 77.

26. ’Statement of Accused Person’, in Bijoy Krishna Bose, ed., The Alipore Bomb Trial, Calcutta, 1922, p. 22. This book, hereafter referred to as ABT, contains transcripts of documents and summaries of testimonial evidence. It is more convenient to cite this book than the often unnumbered transcripts of the court proceedings kept in the Alipore Judges Court and in the Alipore collection of the Victoria Memorial, Calcutta.

27. Ker, p. 62.

28. GOI HP-D July 1907, no. 66: 1; V. Chirol, Indian Unrest, London, 1910, pp. 22, 95; Letter Minto to Morley 27 May 1908, q. Mary Minto, India: Minto and Morley: 1905-1910, London, 1934, p. 234.

29. ABT, pp. 29, 39, 41, 35, 32, 36.

30. GOB History Sheet 679 (Appendix A), p. i (WBSA).

31. Terrorism 1905-33, p. 2.  

32. Ker, Political Trouble, pp. 51-52.

33. Bartaman Rana Niti was written by Barin Ghose using notes from Major Bloch’s Modern Warfare which was published serially in The Review of Reviews. GOB pol. conf. 279/1910; Bengalee 4 April 1909; N. Gupta, p. 33.

34. Ker, Political Trouble, p. 50.

35. For example, ’General Principles of [the] Secret Society’, India Office Records (IOR) MSS Eur D 709, ’Nangla Dacoity Case Exhibits’, Ex 3g (hereafter ’General Principles’). This document is generally known through the summary published in para 90 of the Rowlatt Report.

36. GOI HP-A September 1910, nos. 33-40, p. 40.

37. Walter Laqueur, The Age of Terrorism, Boston, 1987, p. 93.

38. A. Guha, Aurobindo and Jugantar, Calcutta, n.d., pp. 32-34; P. Ghose, ’Organizational Structure of a Revolutionary Secret Society: Anushilan Samity, 1901-1918’. Bengal Past and Present XCVII, part II.(1978): 144.

39. N. Gupta, pp. 32-33; U. Banerjee, p. 11.

40. This actual twofold division corresponds also to the theoretical division in the ’General Principles’ manuscript (p. 20) into ’general’ and ’special’ branches, the former being concerned with organisation, propaganda and agitation, the latter having seven sections, one of which is the ’terroristic department’.

41. GOB pol. conf. 194/1909 (9).  

42. Laquour, pp. 93-96.

43. Nolini Gupta wrote that he spoke once to Aurobindo Ghose about the hierarchical structure described in a book he had read, almost certainly Thomas Frost’s The Secret Societies of the European Revolution 1776-1876, 2 vols. London, 1876; N. Gupta, pp. 33-34. See also the Rowlatt Report, para 14, where it is noted that Ganesh Savarkar possessed a ’much scored’ copy of Frost. The authors suggest that the structure of the Abhinav Bharat Society was modelled on certain Russian groups spoken of in the book.  

44. Laqueur, pp. 93-96. For factionalism in the Dacca Anushilan see P. Das, Amar Jiban Kahini, Calcutta, 1987, pp. 81, 84 and P.K. Ghose, ’Organizational Structure’, p. 143. Ghose notes that Pulin Das made operations of one group at the expense of others part of the samiti’s general strategy.

45. The story of these schisms is told in overabundant detail in B. Ghose, Agniyug; N. Banerjee, Nirbasiter A;tmakatha H. Kanungo, Banglay Biplab P;racheshta etc.

46. B. Ghose, Wounded Humanity, p. 5 1; B. Ghose, ’Sri Aurobindo As I Understand Him’ (unpublished manuscript, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives), p. 37.

47. Interview with A.B. Purani in A.B. Purani, Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo, Pondicherry, 1982, p. 17.

48. U. Bannerjee, p. 87; cf. N. Gupta, p. 35.

49. C.P. Beachcroft, judgment in Alipore Bomb Case.

50. Kanungo [Das], chapter 14.

51. C.C. Dutt, Purano Katha-Upasanhar, Calcutta, 1359 Bengali era, p. 18.

52. Kanungo [Das], pp. 10-13, 30-32.

53. M.N. Roy, q. L. Gordon, ’Portrait of a Bengal Revolutionary’. Journal of Asian Studies 28 (1968); 206. Bakunin’s ’World Revolutionary Union’ was fictitious, as was Nechaev’s Narodnaya Rasprava, for whose non-existent members the famous Revolutionary Catechism was written. The ’European Revolutionary Committee’ of Ishutin was another ’international organization’ with no membership. Laqueur, pp. 31-32.

54. B. Ghose, letter of 1955 in National Archives of India, History of the Freedom Movement file IV & V 41/2.

55. Morley papers (IOR MSS Eur 573), letters Morley to Minto 7 May 1908 and Minto to Morley 8 July 1908.

56. Alipore Bomb Trial proceedings reported in Englishman, 15 September 1909; GOI HDA May 1908, nos. 112-50, p. 6.

57. GOI HP-A September 1910, nos. 33-40, p. 40.

58. GOI HP-D August 1911, no. 9, pp. 13-14.

59. Ker, p. 387.  

60. Ibid., p. 364.  

61. Kanungo [Das], chapter 13.

62. Bunde Mataram weekly edition, 16 August 1908, p. 13.

63. Ker, pp. 139, 329-30, 402; see also B. Majumdar, Militant Nationalism in India, Calcutta, 1966, pp. 104-5.

64. B. Ghose, ’Sri Aurobindo as I Understand Him’, p. 37.

65. N. Gupta, pp. 36-37. Cf., for rites of passage, Laqueur, p. 25.

66. GOI HP-A May 1908, nos. 112-50, p. 36.

67. Note on the Chandernagore Gang (WBSA), p. 4.

68. GOI HP-A December 1909, nos. 15-16, p. 10.

69. Note on the Growth of the Revolutionary Movement in Bengal (hereafter Daly note) (WBSA), p. 8.

70. GOI HP-A May 1908, nos. 112-50: 11, 19-20.

71. Laqueur, p. 143; D. Rapoport, ’Fear and Trembling: Terrorism in Three Religious Traditions’. Am. Pol. Sci. Rev. 78 (1984): 660, 666. See Caroline Cahm, Kropotkin and the Rise of Revolutionary Anarchism, Cambridge, 1989, pp. 76ff, for a discussion of ’propaganda by deed’ in nineteenth-century Europe.

72. Laqueur, p. 105.

73. Kanungo [Das], chapter 9.

74. GOI HP-D August 1911, no. 9: 13; Daly note p. 14.

75. GOI HP-A May 1908, nos. 112-50, p. 19; Minto papers (National Library of Scotland), Telegram Minto to Morley, 16 May 1908.

76. See note 11 above.

77. HD-A May 1908, nos, 112-50, pp. 6, 16, 19; ABT, pp. 82, 84, 85.

78. Laqueur, p. 105n.

79. GOI HP-B March 1909, nos. 181-82, pp. 1-5.

80. GOI HP-A May 1908, nos. 112-50, p. 15.

81. Quoted in Laqueur, pp. 57-58.

82. ’General Principles’, p. 2.

83. GOB History Sheet 709, p. 4.

84. Daly note, p. 7; Narendra Nath Goswami confession reported in Bande Mataram weekly 28 June 1908; A. Bhattacharya, ’Aurobindo’, pp. 195, 196.

85. A. Bhattacharya, ’Aurobindo’ p. 191; Daly note, p. 7.

86. In Wounded Humanity (pp. 46-47) Barin wrote that ’political leaders’ made assassination ’a condition for providing necessary funds ... [saying] we must kill such and such officials and judges.’ In his Bengali memoirs he specified that one unnamed leader gave him a thousand rupees to kill Bampfylde Fuller (B. Ghose, Atmakahini, Calcutta, 1379 Bengali era, p. 58). Hem Chandra Kanungo [Das] made an almost identical assertion, mentioning the same official and the same amount, in his Bengali memoirs (Kanungo [Das], p. 118, see also p. 98). These statements are corroborated by Upendranath Banerjee, who told police in Port Blair in 1911 that Nirode Mullick gave ’Rs 1000 when Hem Das, Barindra and Mani Lahiri of Rungpore went over to Shillong to kill Sir Bampfylde Fuller’. Upendranath also stated that C.C. Dutt ’induced Suren Tagore to pay Rs 1000 to Barindra if the L.G. [Andrew Fraser] or Mr Kingsford could be killed’ (GOI HP-D September 1911, no. 9, p. 13). While doubtless induced by an offer of favourable treatment, the remarkably detailed holographic statement in which Upendranath revealed these and other party secrets is quite credible. Nothing he said was to my knowledge a deliberate lie. Some of his information dealt with matters the police knew nothing about, for example the book-bomb used in an attempt on Kingsford’s life, which subsequently was found in Kingsford’s house in Muzaffarpur.

87. GOI HP-A September 1910, nos. 33-40, p. 18.

88. Rowlatt Report, para 77.

89. Laqueur, p. 112.

90. Recently operations involving the killing of or threat of death to innocent people, for example, plane hijackings or bomb-blasts in public places, have replaced assassinations as the terrorist tactic of choice. Turn-of-the-century Bengalis did not as a rule engage in indiscriminate terror of this sort. However there were scattered cases of inferior bombs left in public places (for example, the Grey Street tram-line and Lower Circular Road church bombs that followed the Maniktala arrests) or thrown randomly (for example, the bomb thrown from one running train to another on 5 April 1909 that injured five Bengali passengers). Ker, pp. 415, 420.

91. Laqueur, p. 112.

92. IOR MSS Eur D709. ’Nangla Dacoity Case Exhibits’, Ex 3j, p. 18.

93. Gordon, ’Portrait’, p. 202.

94. A. Guha, First Spark of Revolution, Bombay, 1971, pp. 384, 392.

95. Nixon Report, p. 7; Kanungo [Das], p. 164; B. Ghose, Wounded Humanity, p. 50.

96. Gordon, ’Portrait’, p. 205.

97. GOB pol. conf. 266/1908, ’Brief accounts’, R.N. Mukerjee file, p. 2.

98. Kanungo [Das], p. 166; N. Gupta, p. 37.

99. Ker, pp. 415 ff.

100. Ker, pp. 423-41. The Bengal enumeration does not include murders committed during robberies.

101. Nixon Report, p. 9; Ker, pp. 140-54, 414 ff.

102. Satyen took the infiltrator Abdur Rahman into confidence and sent him to Calcutta with a letter of recommendation that allowed Rahman to make a full report on the workings of the society (Note on the Midnapore Revolutionary Conspiracy (WBSA), pp. 7-28). Abinash spoke about the Muzaffarpur attempt to an informer named Rajanikant, who gave information confirming Rahman’s to the CID. (A. Bhattacharya, ’Purano Katha’, Dainik Basumati 28 Baishash 1359 Bengali era.)

103. See references in note 12 above.

104. A Marxist definition of ’terrorism’ is ’violence by individual groupings, which have lost touch with the masses, and are currently in opposition to the popular masses’ (V. Vituik, Left Terrorism, Moscow, 1985, p. 74). It would appear to be a definition of this sort that Bipan Chandra had in mind when he wrote that ’the Extremist leadership ... failed to provide a positive outlet for the [terrorists’] revolutionary energies and to educate them on the difference between revolution based on the activity of the masses and a revolutionary action based on individual action, however heroic. (B. Chandra et al., India’s Struggle for Independence, New Delhi, 1989, p. 144). Sumit Sarkar seems to have had been working from similar assumptions when he wrote: ’Lacking a peasant base, the revolutionaries could never rise to the level of real guerilla action or set up "liberated areas" in the countryside.’ (Sarkar, Swadeshi Movement, p. 491.)

105. See Laqueur, p. 147, for the distinction between terrorism and guerilla warfare. The ’essence’ of the latter, according to this scholar, is ’to establish liberated areas in the countryside ....’

106. Laqueur, p. 303; for publicity see note 71 above.

107. Morley papers, Minto to Morley 17 December 1908.

108. Morley papers, Morley to Minto 21 May 1908.

109. GOI HP-A July 1909, nos. 40-41, p. 3.

110. Morley papers, Morley to Minto 10 August 1908.

111. Notes on Andaman Enquiry (August 1913) (WBSA), p. 8.
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