Mother's Chronicles - Book Five

38

The Confounded British Government

"And the second fact is," wrote Sri Aurobindo to Dilip on 2 October 1934, giving his reasons for declining a request from Dr. Radha krishna for a philosophical contribution. "And the second fact is that I do not care a button about having my name in any blessed place. I was never ardent about fame even in my political days; I preferred to remain behind the curtain, push people without their knowing it and getting things done. It was the confounded British Government that spoiled my game by prosecuting me and forcing me to be publicly known as a 'leader.'"

That was the Bande Mataram Sedition Case.

In 1907 the Government began 'seditious' proceedings against the Press, targetting in the main the three extremist newspapers running in Bengal: Yugantar, Sandhya,¹ an eveninger,

1. Sandhya, a Bengali daily, made its debut in 1904, that is two years before

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and the Bande Mataram. Between them they practically revolutionized the political attitude of Bengal.

Press prosecutions were also directed against other vernacular papers, including Sanjibani, Sonar Bangla, Barisal Hitabadi, etc.

On 30 July 1907 the Bande Mataram premises at 2/1 Creek Row, were searched. The Office was situated at the back of 12 Wellington Square, the house of Subodh Mullick. The next day the Bande Mataram described the raid in its columns. "The wolf has come at last.... Inspector Lahiri with the Casabianca like devotion to duty ransacked every creek and corner of the Manager's office and caught hold of everything that bore the semblance of paper.... They spent nearly two hours in the Office of the Joint Stock Company and went on with the

Yugantar and Bande Mataram. Its articles were written in a language easily understandable by ordinary citizens-tram conductors, shopkeepers, stall owners. It prepared the common man for uncommon ideas by speaking out against the ineptitudes of the Congress Moderates and by exposing the foreign government's misdeeds .

Sri Aurobindo said about its editor Brahma Bandhab Upadhyay, that he "was another great man." Upadhyay was arrested on 31 August 1907. He accepted full responsibility for the paper; then added, "But I don't want to take any part in the trial, because I do not believe that in carrying out my humble share of this God-appointed mission of 'Swaraj,' I am in any way accountable to the alien people who happen to rule over us and whose interest is, and must necessarily be, in the way of our National development." He also boasted, "No foreign government can imprison me." True to his word he died on 27 October 1907 at Campbell Medical Hospital while the Sandhya

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same monotonous investigation and after a laborious search Lahiri afterwards stepped out of the room and paced the corridor heroically, carrying in both of his hands a cart load of booty. Lahiri seems to be the presiding genius of the Detective Department. Nothing escapes his vigilance; he suspects sedition bacillus in every bit of paper, closely eyes it, devours its contents and includes it into his trophy. Then they turned-towards the editorial room where the whole staff offered to

sweeten their labour by jovial talk, evil retorts and repartees----

Here ends the much expected search and the sequel will be felt in due time."

On 15 August Sri Aurobindo was thirty-five.

On 16 August "the police arrested many young men including Sri Aurobindo," wrote Jyotishchandra Ghose, "whom they considered to be the brain, the motor-power behind the whole organisation and the ring-leader of the Conspiracy."¹

The Government was not wide of the mark, of course! It had kept tabs on the participants of the various sessions of the Congress. The role of Sri Aurobindo in shaping the new Indian politics was causing alarm to the rulers. Already, the Intelligence Bureau was categorical that Arabindo Ghose was "the chief of the Yugantar band, who has exercised a greater influence over the revolutionary movement in India than perhaps any other man."²

1.Life-Work of Sri Aurobindo.

2.West Bengal govt.'s I. B. Records (L.N.54A). From Haridas and Uma Mukherji's Sri Aurobindo ba Banglar Biplabbad.

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We have further details from Professors Haridas and Uma Mukherjee.¹ "Aurobindo was arrested on August 16 and the Manager and the Printer on August 19 and August 21 respectively. From the reports of the Bengalee we learn that at about 11 A.M. on August 16 a Detective Officer went to the Bande Mataram office and informed it that a warrant had been issued for the arrest of Aurobindo Ghose. On receiving the information at his residence, Aurobindo voluntarily presented himself before the Detective Police Office at Royd Street at about 9-30 P.M. He was at once arrested by Inspector Puma Chandra Lahiri." Sri Aurobindo was taken to Padmapukur police station and then released on bail the next morning. "Principal Girish Chandra Bose and Sj. Nirode Chandra Mallick stood sureties for him Rs. 2500 each." The two Professors also say that "the chief object of the bureaucracy in undertaking this case was to silence the voice of Aurobindo, the real controlling spirit behind Bande Mataram, and to remove the man who had been preaching discontent and sedition against the Government with unflinching candour, from the political arena."

The Press was playing its role.

It was high time to crack down on these radical papers and stop their incitement to revolution.

Thus the second year of the paper, the first out-and-out Nationalist daily in the English tongue published in India, began with a prosecution for sedition.

1. 'The Story of Bande Mataram Sedition Trial' (The Modern Review, October 1959)

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Sri Aurobindo, like Tilak, was thrice prosecuted. Both were prosecuted for sedition, for certain of their writings in their respective newspapers: the Bande Mataram and the Kesari.

For Sri Aurobindo this was the first prosecution.

The prosecution, in the court of the Chief Presidency Magistrate of Calcutta, D. H. Kingsford, began with a great flourish. An official translation from the Yugantar had been printed in the pages of the Bande Mataram. "The whole tone of this article is of a seditious character," asserted Mr. Gregory, Standing Counsel for the Government. Mind you, it was not for any editorials that the Government ventured to attack the paper.

"It is rather surprising," wrote the Punjabi, "that out of the hundreds of articles published in the Bande Mataram animated by the 'New Spirit' and which have almost revolutionised native-Indian journalism, the Government could fasten upon only one single piece.... This is perhaps an indication that the Government have got a rather tough customer to deal with, if indeed they have not caught a Tartar. Mr. Aravinda will be found a foeman fully worthy of the sharpest steel........The ability with which the Bande Mataram is conducted is now known up to the highest quarters in England The fact is such ability is not to be found in the whole of the Anglo-Indian Press, and is rare even in the British Press It is a pity that our Government has to follow with the rack and the thumbscrew such talented men, who would form an ornament to any nation.... Strange that such men, endowed with the highest qualities of both head and heart, cannot be made to reconcile themselves to the current policy of British rule!"

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The case opened on 26 August. Next day the public read in the pages of the Bande Mataram: "Yesterday on the opening of the Bande Mataram Case the students mustered strong in the Court premises and its neighbour hood. They were there to pay their tribute of respect to Srijut Arabindo Ghose.... Students were assaulted by the police." That was the occasion when the fifteen-year-old boy Sushil Kumar was given fifteen stripes¹ by the order of Kingsford, order carried out then and there in front of him —was he not a civilized Englishman?

And, Bepin Pal was subpoenaed by the government as one of its witnesses. What a dilemma! If he refuses, he will be charged with contempt of court; if he says the truth he will implicate his young friend, harm the paper, and hurt the new Nationalist Party. People were in a dither to hear this witness. "I honestly believe," said Pal refusing to testify, "that prosecutions like that of the Bande Mataram are unjust and injurious; unjust because they are subversive of the rights of the people, and injurious because they are calculated to stifle freedom of thought and speech —nor are they justified in the interest of public peace. I have accordingly conscientious objection to take any part in that prosecution. I therefore refuse to be sworn or affirmed in that case."

Through his refusal, Bepin Chandra Pal became the first exponent of Passive Resistance.

1. When, tired, the flogger stopped after fourteen lashes, the bleeding Sushil piped up reminding him, 'One more.'

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Judge Kingsford sentenced him to six months' imprisonment. Pal was sent to Buxar jail.

It was on 23 September that the judge delivered his verdict. The prosecutor had completely failed to prove its case. Kingsford was forced to admit that "the general tone of the Bande Mataram is not seditious." Nor could the prosecution prove that Sri Aurobindo was the editor of the Bande Mataram. He was acquitted. As was the publisher of the paper, Hemendra Nath Bagchi. To save the face of the Government, the printer Apurba Krishna Bose was sentenced to three months' rigorous imprisonment.

Here are a few extracts from the columns of the paper dated 25 September 1907, written of course by Sri Aurobindo himself, but still under the cover of a nameless editor.

"The prosecution of the Bande Mataram, the most important of the numerous Press prosecutions recently instituted by the bureaucracy, commenced with a flourish of trumpets, eagerly watched by a hopeful Anglo-Indian Press, has ended in the most complete and dismal fiasco such as no Indian Government has ever had to experience before in a sedition case. The failure has not been the result of any lukewarm ness or half-heartedness in the conduct of the prosecution or any unwillingness to convict on the part of the trying Magistrate. The Police left no stone unturned to get a particular man convicted, the Standing Counsel did not hesitate to press every possible point and make the most of every stray scrap or faint shadow of evidence against the accused, the Magistrate was a Civilian Magistrate whose leanings have never been concealed, the same

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who gave two years to the Yugantar Printer, who sent Bepin Pal before a subservient Bengali Magistrate with a plain hint to give him a heavy punishment, who sentenced Sushil Kumar to fifteen stripes, who brushed aside the evidence of barristers in favour of Police testimony, and every paragraph of whose judgement in the present case shows that he would readily have dealt out a handsome term of hard labour if the evidence had afforded him the slightest justification for a conviction. All the winning cards in the game are in the hands of the bureaucracy

in such a trial----They have their own servants sitting on the

bench to try a case in which they are deeply interested, there is no trouble about juries who might be unwilling to convict, the Police have unlimited powers of search and can even turn the Post Office into a branch of the detective department; their methods of discovering witnesses are various and effective; yet with all this they were unable to bring forward a single scrap of convincing evidence to prove that the particular man they were bent on running down was the Editor. The Magistrate in his judgment and the affectionate Friend of India [ The Statesman] in Chowringhee in his comments have drawn from this failure the lesson that the laws against the freedom of the Press should be made more stringent.¹ An ordinary unilluminated intelligence would have come rather to the conclusion that the executive authorities would do well to reform their method of instituting proceedings in a political trial....

1, Kingsford: "The case affords a curious instance of the inadequacy of the existing law to deal with sedition."

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"What has been the whole meaning and aim of this prosecution ? ... It has been an obvious attempt to crush a particular paper and a particular individual. The bureaucracy has sought to cripple or silence the Bande Mataram because it has been preaching with extraordinary success a political creed which was dangerous to the continuance of bureaucratic absolutism and was threatening to become a centre of strength round which many Nationalistic forces might gather. It has sought to single out and silence a particular individual because it chose to think that he was, as the Friend of India expresses it, the master mind behind the policy of the paper. If we are challenged to justify this assertion, it will be sufficient to point to the conduct of this case from its very inception. The Bande Mataram ... has not minced matters or sought to conceal revolutionary aspirations under the veil of moderate professions or ambiguous phraseology. It has not concealed its opinion that the bureaucracy cannot be expected to transform itself, that the people of India, and not the people of England must save India, and that we cannot hope for any boons but must wrest what we desire by strong national combination from unwilling hands. Hundreds of articles have appeared in the paper in this vein and the bureaucrats had only to pick and choose. But they have not attacked one of these articles, nor did their counsel venture to cite even a single one of them to prove seditious intention. The fact is that, however dangerous such a propaganda may be to an absolutist handful desiring to perpetuate their irresponsible rule, no government pretending to call itself civilised can prosecute it as seditious without forfeiting all claim to the last vestige

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of the world's respect.... What is the matter for which the Bande Mataram was prosecuted? A reprint of the official translation of certain articles from a vernacular paper, translations issued as part of a case in the law courts and reproduced as such,—that is one count; and an insignificant correspondence which does not even profess to give voice to the policy of the paper,—that is the second and third; and there is no other. The Yugantar was prosecuted on articles expressing its essential policy; the Sandhya has been proceeded against on articles expressing its views on important matters; but it was sought to crush the Bande Mataram partly for a technical offence and partly on a side issue.... Sanction is given to prosecute a nameless Editor and the Police at once proceed to ask for a warrant against Aurobindo Ghose. It is in evidence that they had nothing better to go on than hearsay. But they had no hesitation in immediately pouncing on one particular writer of the Bande Mataram without possessing the least scrap of evidence against him. Obviously they cannot have done this without instructions. It was popularly believed that Srijut Aurobindo Ghose was all in all on the Bande Mataram staff, that all the best articles were written by him, that he gave the tone of the paper and that it could not last without him. Why did the Police take a body-warrant against Aurobindo Ghose to the office and why, having taken it, did they not arrest him ? Obviously they took it because they thought that they would find plenty of evidence against him in the search, and they did not execute it because they found that not a scrap of proof rewarded their efforts. After that there was a pause till

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Anukul¹ Mukherjee's testimony was secured, and on that flimsy evidence the trial was started. Had it been honestly intended to deal only with the Editor, whoever he might turn out to be, the proceedings against Aurobindo Ghose would have been given up, but the Police made no secret of the fact that it was this one man who was wanted and that no other, whatever the evidence against him, would be thought worth capture. Even when the case for the prosecution was complete without any evidence fit to raise more than a flimsy presumption, the Standing Counsel would not give up, but in an outrageous address in which he rode roughshod over the higher traditions of his office, pressed weak points and wrested ambiguous evidence to get the charge framed. And after Anukul had broken down in cross-examination and made admissions fatal to their case, still the prosecution struggled for a verdict. And with what result? Even a Civilian Magistrate willing to support the prestige of the Government had more sense of law and justice than the bureaucracy and its advisers and was able to see that a man could not be sent to two years' rigorous imprisonment without any shadow of evidence. Their prey escaped them; the Manager who seems to have been arrested on spec and tried without even any pretence that there was any evidence against him was acquitted, and only an unfortunate Printer who knew no English and had no notion what all the pother was about, was sent to prison for a few months to vindicate the much-damaged majesty of the almighty bureaucracy."

1. He was a proof-reader.

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Sri Aurobindo photographed after his acquittal

in the Bande Mataram Sedition Case