Reminiscences

IlI

MURARIPUKUR (2)

Now I come to the last phase of our life at Manicktolla Gardens, that is when we turned towards terroristic activities like the manufacture of bombs, collecting pistols and rifles and making good use of them. The first chapter had already begun with the Yugantar newspaper.

As we took up these revolutionary activities, we discovered that it was not easy to carry on this kind of secret work unless there was, common in the country as a whole, a keen desire and hope for freedom. What was needed was a favourable atmosphere from which the revolutionaries could get the desired sympathy and support. One could not expect anything but opposition from a people cowed down by fear, shut up within its narrow selfishnesses and wholly preoccupied with its dull routine. That is why Sri Aurobindo started his daily newspaper, Bandemataram, which was the first to declare in clear language that what we wanted was the freedom of India, a total freedom, a freedom untrammelled by any kind of domination by the British. Its aim was to carry into the ears and hearts of our people a message of hope and faith and enthusiasm, a message that spoke of independence full and absolute, not the kind of freedom that looked to England for protection and help, and such independence too not as a distant possibility of the remote future, but an immediate gain of the morrow.

Even so, Bandemataram had to keep within the letter of the law; its advocacy of freedom had to follow as far as possible the lines of peace, its path had to be that of Passive Resistance. But Yugantar shed off all the masks. It was the first to declare openly for an armed revolt and spoke in terms of regular warfare. It wrote out its message in words of fire and spread it to the four corners of the land. Balthazar the king of Babylon had once seen similar writings on the wall of his hall of feasting, words that spoke of the imminent doom of his empire. To the country and its youth the Ygantar gave

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its initiation of fire for nearly a couple of years. It was only after the Yugantar group had decided that the time had now come for action and not propaganda alone that there came to be established the centre at Manicktolla Gardens in Muraripukur. The section entrusted with real work and the people concerned with propaganda were to form two distinct groups; one was to work in secret, the other out in the open. Hence the work of Yugantar was entrusted to the propaganda group. The gentleman who took charge was named Taranath Roy. Those who had hitherto been on the staff of the paper left it and joined the Manicktolla Gardens for intensive training and work. It was however agreed that here too there would be two groups, one for regular work and the other for propaganda. Only, the propaganda here would be of a different kind, for here it would not be possible to speak openly of armed revolt as that would be to draw attention of the authorities to the regular workers. It was therefore decided to have a paper in Bengali with a policy analogous to that of Bandemataram. A paper named Nava-shakti was already there, owned and conducted by Sri Manoranjan Guhathakurta. It had a house rented in Grey Street (North Calcutta). An understanding was reached between the parties so that the spirit and letter of Yugantar could continue in and through Navashakti. The house was built more or less on the pattern of the one we had later at Shyamapukur. There were two flats. The one in front was used as the Navashakti office; Sri Aurobindo occupied the other with his wife, Mrinalini.

A word about Manoranjan Guhathakurta will not be out of place here. In that epoch Aswinikumar Dutt and Manoranjan Guhathakurta of Barisal were two of the mighty pillars of nationalism. But whatever their achievements as political leaders and selfless patriots, as writers and orators, it was their greatness of character that mattered more. By a great character I mean one in whom there has awakened in a certain measure and manifested to some extent the inner being and the indwelling spirit; this is what Vivekananda used to call the awakening of the Brahman in the individual.

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I had come to know Sri Manoranjan Guhathakurta personally and I had been to his house in Giridih and stayed with him more than once. Giridih being not very far from Deo-ghar, he was aware that we dabbled in the bomb. He was not only aware of it, he also gave us all his help and sympathy. It had even been suggested that a factory for the making of bombs might be tried somewhere around the mica pits he owned in that region. His eldest son Satyendra had been a schoolmate and friend of Barin and the two were practically co-workers. This family had helped Barin a good deal by their offers of money and advice. But what I had in mind was not these external things but an inner life. Manoranjan Guhathakurta had an inner life, a life of sādhana. His wife in particular was known for her sādhana. In his eyes the service of the country was an occasion and a means for the service of God. But his saintliness or sādhana did not stand in the way of his strength of character. In him there was a fine blend of strength and sweetness.

Manoranjan's son Chittaranjan became for a time a centre of great excitement and violent agitation in those days. There was a session of the Bengal Provincial Conference at Barisal which was attended by all the leaders like Sri Aurobindo and Bepin Pal. But there came a clash with the Government, the police raided the pavilion and attacked the procession with lathis. The boy Chittaranjan went on shouting "Bandemataram" as the police beat him mercilessly. He fell down wounded and covered with blood but he did not cease his "Bandemataram". This raised a furious storm of protest throughout the country, which gave an opening to the terrorists too.

This shining example of non-violent resistance occurred long before the Gandhian era. To us who were in favour of armed resistance this kind of forbearance seemed intolerable. When, after this incident, the journalists and the poets began to sing in chorus, of "Barisal of glorious virtue", we could not help adding with a little sting, "thanks to those beatings".

I have said that Sri Aurobindo came to occupy with Mrinalini a portion of the house in Grey Street. It was

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here that they arrested him later. The Navashakti too did not last long. In the course of their search, the police discovered in one of the rooms occupied by Sri Aurobindo a lump of clay, which Mrinalini had brought from Dakshi-neswara as a sacred relic. But the suspicions of the police were not to be allayed so easily. They thought it might as well be some kind of raw material for the manufacture of bombs, so they had it sent to their chemical laboratories for a chemical analysis!

Now let me come to the story of this final rounding up. For some time past almost all of us had been noticing one thing. Whenever we went out on whatever business, for shopping or to visit people, somebody seemed to be following us, from a little distance no doubt but it was clear enough that we were being watched. When we stopped, he too would stop; if we tarried a little, he too kept himself occupied on some pretext or other. We talked about this among ourselves and made the great discovery that this must be what they called spying, and that we must henceforth take extra precautions. So far, we had never had this kind of trouble. Ours had been a secret society only in name, for the whole thing was out in the open. Anybody could enter the Gardens from anywhere at any time and move about the place, for it was all open compound without any fencing or walls. That is why on the morning of our arrest, a couple of boys from the neighbourhood also found themselves under arrest along with us. In piteous tones they implored the policemen, "We are innocent, sirs; we came here only for a morning stroll". The poor innocents!

The evening before our arrest, it was already getting dark and we were thinking of retiring for the night, when some voices came to our ears in a rather peculiar way, and lanterns were seen moving about in the dark. "Who are you? What do you do here?" the voices said. We did our best to give evasive replies. "Very well, then, we come again tomorrow morning and will know more about it." With these words, the strangers seemed to make their exit. Were these warning voices? In spite of our dull wits, we could

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understand at least this much that things were now getting rather serious and that we must take our precautions. The first thing we decided upon was that we should leave the place before daybreak and disperse. Upen told us later that he had wanted us to disperse immediately and make no further delay. But that was obviously not to be, for it was destined that we should pass through the experience of jail. Nevertheless, we did start doing something at once; that was to remove all traces, by burning or hiding away or whatever other means, of anything that might raise a suspicion against us. The very first thing that came to our heads was this. There were two or three rifles in the house where Sri Aurobindo lived. They were in the custody of Abinash (Abinash Bhattacharya) who lived with him and looked after Sri Aurobindo's affairs. Those rifles must be removed at once, they could on no account be left there. Had the police found them on Sri Aurobindo's premises, it might have been more difficult to secure his release. The rifles were brought back, they were packed in two boxes bound with iron hoops, together with the few revolvers we had and all the materials for the making of bombs, and hidden away underground. Next, getting hold of all our papers that might contain names and addresses and plans, we set fire to them. This went on far into the night. We could not however burn up everything. A number of names were still left intact and with the help of these clues, the police subsequently searched a number of other places and made several arrests. Had I been able to make good my escape then, it would not have been difficult for the police to trace me through my address; there was the Imperial Library card issued in my name and it gave the address of my Calcutta Mess, 44/3 Harrison Road.

We went to bed after doing away with all we could, in the hope that we might run away by daybreak. But the running away did not materialise. In the early hours of the morning,—it was not yet light,—we were awakened by an eerie sort of noise. We sat up in bed. But what was all this going on? Shadowy forms were moving about the place,

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there was a clatter and a creaking of boots. Suddenly out of the dark silence, a conversation arose:

"You are under arrest. Your name?"

"Barindra Kumar Ghose."

"Arabinda Ghose?"

"No, Barindra Kumar Ghose."

"Well, we'll see."

The next thing I knew was a hand clapping on my shoulders. "Come," said a voice.

Several people have expressed great surprise at this facile surrender on our part, as though we were goody-goody boys, innocent as lambs. Why, it has been asked, did we not give them fight and take a few lives before we surrendered? But our aims were of another kind, our path, our very policy was of another character. Our goal was not to die a martyr's death. We wanted to be soldiers. The martyr is happy if he can give up his life. But the duty of the soldier is not to give his life but to take the lives of others. The soldier seeks the maximum protection for himself, he goes under cover, and he seeks to kill as many of the enemy as he can. He does not think it enough that he should only sacrifice himself. No doubt there comes a time when it is no longer possible to find a shelter or go under cover, it may not even be desirable. Then one throws off one's masks, one comes out in the open and acts in the way so vividly described in these lines of Rabindranath:

There began a scramble

As to who should be the first to give up his life;

That was the only hurry.

Or else, the way the Light Brigade of England acted at Balaclava in the Crimean War:

Into the jaws of Death,

Into the mouth of Hell,

Rode the six hundred.

The Japanese soldiers too in one of their encounters with

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the Russians in the Russo-Japanese War did not wait to build a bridge over the ramparts of a ditch; they made a solid bridge with the pile of their dead as they jumped in' one after the other and let the army march over their bodies. To save oneself does not mean that one should, like Nandalal of the comic skit, take a vow to "keep oneself alive at any cost, for the good of the country and all", or live by the bourgeois doctrine that one should always save oneself anyhow, even by the sacrifice of one's wife, ātmānam satatam rakset darairapi dhānairapi.

That is why we used to tease Paresh Mallick and called him a descendant of Nandalal. Have I told you the story? He was once deputed to present Kingsford, the Presidency Magistrate, with a live bomb packed in the form of a book; the bomb was to explode as soon as the book was opened. Paresh went in the garb of an Englishman's bearer. We looked out every day for an account in the papers of some serious accident to Kingsford. But nothing happened. He seemed to be attending court regularly and was apparently quite safe and sound. So we had to ask Paresh at last if he had in fact reached the bomb to its destination or whether he had thrown it away somewhere to save his own skin. However, the bomb was found later among a pile of books belonging to the Magistrate. It had been lying there safely and caused no harm. The people were demanding vengeance upon Kingsford because he had sentenced a young student, Sushil, to flogging, simply because the boy was involved in a tussle with the police. That was an occasion for us terrorists. Sushil later on joined the revolutionary group at Manicktolla.

The police had on more than one occasion suggested to Sri Aurobindo, in order that he might feel flattered or perhaps even get excited and be moved to act according to their wishes, that a strong and truthful and straightforward man like him could certainly not adopt a false pose or act in secret; that he had the courage to do openly whatever he considered to be his duty or the right thing to do; that he would never care to run away and hide himself; and that whatever

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he did he would frankly acknowledge and say without hesitation, "Yes, it is I who have done it". But Sri Aurobindo was not to be trapped like that. He held that far more important than any question of personal honour or indignities, or a parading of one's capacity or virtue, was the work to be done and its success. He would cite the example of Sri Krishna in the Mahabharata story; Sri Krishna had no intention of being caught by Jarasandha and he fled to Dwarka in order to make ready for the adversary. That is why Sri Aurobindo did not consider a retreat to be a bad thing always. "We live to fight another day": this should be the motto of the soldier. That is why he left standing instructions with Barin and his group that they were not to admit anything immediately they were caught by the police. They should keep their mouths shut and make whatever statements were necessary only when the time came at a later stage. It is however true that Barin and some of the senior members of the group did make a full confession soon after their arrest. But they did that purposely, with a view to save the party by the sacrifice of some of its members. They had hoped that by taking on themselves all the responsibility, the others might be proved to have been innocent, so that instead of all of us dying together, some might still live on to carry the work forward.

Nevertheless, we were all arrested in a body. The police made us stand in a line under the strict watch of an armed guard. They kept us standing the whole day with hardly anything to eat. Only towards the evening, some of them were kind enough to get us some fried stuff from the market. Our throats were so dry by the time that we would have gladly taken a sip out of that famous pond of ours. In the evening, the order came, "Follow us". But follow where? I somehow had the feeling that here was the end—"Remember, O soul, the day of the Great Departure." I could not conceive at the moment that a case would have to be framed against us, that there must take place a trial and there might be a counsel to defend us. I thought on the contrary that they would take us straight to Fort William and finish us off with

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a firing squad! I was in fact getting myself ready for that. But things turned out rather differently. The British Government could not be so heartless after all. We were taken to the lock-up at the Lai Bazar police station. There, they kept us for nearly two days and nights. This was perhaps the most trying time of all. We had no bath, no food, not even a wink of sleep. The whole lot of us were herded together like beasts and shut up in a cell. The police showed by their manner how rude and bitter they could be. Then, after having been through all this, we were taken to Alipore Jail one evening. There we were received with great kindness and courtesy by the gentleman in charge. He said, "Now there will be no more of that harassment by the police. You will find it quite comfortable here." And he had us served immediately with hot cooked rice. This was our first meal in three days, and it tasted so nice and sweet that we felt as if we were in heaven.

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