Mother's Chronicles - Book Five

51

The High Court of History

When Sri Aurobindo was imprisoned and it became apparent that it would be a long-drawn-out case, K. K. Mitra persuaded his niece to make a public appeal for her brother's defence. Saro's appeal was as a sister for the defence of her brother to every brother and sister in the country. Her brother was a sannyasin who was a devoted servant of the Motherland, he was the brother of all Bengalis, the brother of all Indians. Small contributions helped fill the kitty, coming as often from remote villages or poor labourers as from the educated elite. Swarnakumari Devi, well-known litterateur and Rabindranath's elder sister, gave Rs. 100. The Basumati reported on 18 July about the touching contribution of one rupee from a blind beggar, and related the story of a poor schoolboy. "The boy used to spend two pice every day for his lunch and he has been denying himself this daily necessity and paying the amount to the Aurobindo Defence Fund." The collection on that date amounted to Rs. 13,000/-.

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Some defence counsels withdrew when they could not be sufficiently paid. Some simply did not dare to take up the defence of the accused. Because the charges framed against the prisoners were serious enough in all conscience. It was a charge of "waging war against His Majesty the King-Emperor of India;" it was to conspire "to deprive His Majesty the King-Emperor of India of the Sovereignty of British India or a part thereof ..."; it was "to overawe by criminal force the Government of India or the Local Government of Bengal," etc.

But all men are not alike. There were those who had courage. Among them was Bejoy Krishna Bose, who appeared for the accused from the very beginning to the end of the trial in all the Courts and "was possessed of all the materials." He brought out a narrative of the trial in The Alipore Bomb Trial (Law Publishers, 1922). He says in the Preface: "The Alipore Bomb Trial was the first State Trial of any magnitude in India, because it was held at a time when discontent reached its highest point in Bengal and it concerned people who were gentlemen belonging to the best society, cultured, educated and highly intelligent." The book tells us that the mass of documents filed, if counted individually, amounted to over 4000 pages, and the exhibits—bombs, revolvers and what not —numbered over 300. The Prosecution witnesses examined were 222 in the Magistrate's Court and 206 in the Sessions Court. The committal proceedings in the Magistrate's Court began on 18 May 1908 and ended on 15 August. On that day Sri Aurobindo was thirty-six. On 19 August, Mr. Birley, I.C.S., the committing Magistrate, committed the accused to Sessions Court.

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It was very dull going for the prisoners, and tiring besides. They were supposed to keep standing all day long, and day after day. How could they? If bored with the farce of a case some started talking among themselves, Birley would at once order all the prisoners to 'stand up'! Like a schoolmaster! Let us remind the Reader that most of the accused were very young, their age ranging from fifteen to the mid-twenties. Barin, the leader, was twenty-eight years old. A few senior leaders, like Sri Aurobindo, had crossed the threshold of thirty. They were a jolly lot. "I greatly enjoyed the laughter and the pleasantries of the accused lads," said Sri Aurobindo. He himself was once found by his brother to be ... napping I

inside the court room____ All the golmal [hubbub] in the

room—even on the veranda —was at once hushed into perfect silence. Even the European sergeants ... adopted the posture of attention and began to listen with undivided attention." It was Ullaskar singing a patriotic song by Rabindranath.

Sri Aurobindo had left standing instructions with Barin and his group that they were not to admit anything immediately if they were caught by the police, reminisced Nolini, one of the arrested young men. But Barin, Upen, Ullaskar, and some other senior members of the group made a full confession after

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their arrest, which was taken down by L. Birley. In fact Barin's statement is quite a document. Chivalrous Barin, as the leader, sought in his confession to bear the whole blame on himself and exonerate his colleagues. The others, however, kept their mouths shut. They made their statements through their lawyers. We are coming soon to Sri Aurobindo's own statement at the Sessions Court through his counsel C.R. Das. But let us pass a brief glance at the period before the proceedings started at Judge Beach croft's court.

At the Presidency Jail Sri Aurobindo and two or three others were lodged for a month in solitary cells — nicknamed the 'six decrees.' Afterwards they were transferred to a large section of the jail where they lived in a huge room. It was then that Sri Aurobindo made the acquaintance of most of his fellow accused. One of them, Narendranath Goswamy, unable to bear the rigours of imprisonment, was an easy prey for the police, who offered to drop charges against him if he would only denounce Sri Aurobindo as the real chief of the bomb makers. But before he could record his approver's 'confession,' he was shot dead in the jail hospital. After his assassination, all the prisoners were confined in contiguous but separate cells. The assailants were Satyen and Kanai. Satyen Bose missed, but Kanailal Dutt's bullet found its mark. It was 31 August 1908. Kanai, waiting in the death cell, gained sixteen pounds. His fearless, serene and smiling face utterly confused the prison officials. Kanailal, just turned twenty, was hanged on 10 November. The Government got such a fright at the huge funeral procession and the mad crowd at the burning ghat that when Satyen, then twenty-six,

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was hanged to death on 21 November, his relatives were not allowed to perform the last rites, nor even his friends ; in fact, the jail precincts were guarded by a strong force of armed police. Even his ashes were not allowed to be immersed in the Ganga.

The assassination of the approver was why the accused were placed behind a network of wire —'a large prisoners' cage' — at the Sessions Court, and police with fixed bayonets stood on guard throughout the room. "I had," said Norton, "a five-chambered loaded revolver lying on my brief throughout the trial."

The Sessions Court trial began on 20 October 1908. After the preliminaries were over, Norton opened the case for the Crown, and took six days doing it. Then he called evidence. On 4 March 1909 the Crown counsel closed the evidence. The Judge then examined the accused to explain the evidence against them. Almost all the accused merely stated that the lawyers on their behalf had their full instructions to argue and explain the evidence. After this Norton began his argument which he finished on the 20^th March. The various defence counsels and pleaders then addressed the Court. Chittaranjan Das was among them. He took eight days of counter-arguments to defend Sri Aurobindo. The court was occupied with these up to 13 April 1909.

Charles Portent Beachcroft was the District and Sessions Judge for 24-Parganas and Hooghly at the time of the Alipore Bomb Case trial. A good cricketer, he had been a scholar at Clare College, Cambridge, during the same two years that Sri Aurobindo was a fellow at King's College of the same university. Both A.A. Ghose and CP. Beachcroft had passed the Open

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Competitive Examination for the I.C.S. held in 1890. Ironically, Sri Aurobindo in the dock had stool eleventh while Beachcroft on the bench had stood thirty-sixth. Amusingly, the results of the final examination reveal that the Englishman beat the Bengali —in Bengali I

The two students were not close acquaintances. Years later, Sri Aurobindo recalled, "I met him only in the I.C.S. classes and at the I.C.S. examinations and we never exchanged two words together." Still the young Ara must have left some impression on Beachcroft, who "couldn't somehow believe I could be a revolutionary."

Coming back to the progress of the trial, two days before his own arrest, on 11 December 1908, K. K. Mitra had requested C. R. Das to take up the defence of his nephew Ara. K. K. Mitra was suddenly arrested along with several other prominent men — Ashwini Kumar Dutt, Shyam Sundar Chakraborty, Subodh Mullick, Manoranjan Guha Thakurta were among them; they were unceremoniously packed off to distant jails or even overseas, and kept imprisoned without trial for more than one year. There's British justice for you!

Chittaranjan Das (1870-1925) —later known as Deshban-dhu (Friend of the Country)—was then thirty-eight years old, and a rising barrister. He was the son of Attorney Bhuban Mohan Das, who was a close friend of K. K. Mitra's. At the time there remained only Rs. 3000 in the defence Fund. C.R. Das accepted the job. With some initial hesitation though. For he had a large family to support. But his mother urged him to take

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Chittaranjan Das

up his friend's defence even at the cost of all his practice. When he was first approached by others, he was in his own house. He was silent a long time, looking out of the window at a tree across the road. Then turning to the waiting gentlemen he said, "Yes, I know. I have already been told to take up the defence of Sri Aurobindo. Brahma Bandhav Upadhyay came three times to tell me." That was through planchette, for Upadhyay had died one year earlier.

C.R. Das, who had known Ara from their Cambridge days, and who was one of his Nationalist collaborators, put aside his large practice and devoted himself for months to the defence of his friend, "who left the case entirely to him and troubled no more about it; for he had been assured from within and knew that he would be acquitted," wrote Sri Aurobindo. When he spoke at Uttarpara just after his release from Alipore jail, Sri Aurobindo was more explicit. It is a very important document, this Uttarpara speech, for here he speaks for the first time about his spiritual experiences in the Alipore Jail. He says, "When the trial opened in the Sessions Court, I began to write many instructions for my Counsel as to what was false in the evidence against me and on what points the witnesses might be cross-examined. Then something happened which I had not expected. The arrangements which had been made for my defence were suddenly changed and another Counsel stood there to defend me. He came unexpectedly,—a friend of mine, but I did not know he was coming. You have all heard the name of the man who put away from him all other thoughts and abandoned all his practice, who sat up half

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the night day after day for months and broke his health to save me, —Srijut Chittaranjan Das. When I saw him, I was satisfied, but I still thought it necessary to write instructions. Then all that was put away from me and I had the message from within, 'This is the man who will save you from the snares put around your feet. Put aside those papers. It is not you who will instruct him. I will instruct him.' From that time I did not of myself speak a word to my Counsel about the case or give a single instruction, and if ever I was asked a question, I always found that my answer did not help the case. I had left it to him and he took it entirely into his hands, with what result you know."

Sri Aurobindo, through the mouth of his Counsel, persistently used the word 'freedom.' "What he said for me —and it was said not only on my behalf, but on behalf of all who cherish this ideal —was this: If to aspire to independence and preach freedom is a crime, you may cast me into jail and there bind me with chains. If to preach freedom is a crime, then I am a criminal and let me be punished."

Here are extracts from Sri Aurobindo's statement read out —and, as likely as not, prepared —by C. R. Das before Judge Beachcroft.

"The whole of my case before you is this. If it is suggested that I preached the ideal of freedom to my country which is against the law, I plead guilty to the charge.... If it is an offence to preach the ideal of freedom, I admit having done it — I have never disputed it. It is for that that I have given up all the prospects of my life. It is for that that I came to Calcutta to live for it and to labour for it. It has been the one thought of my

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waking hours, the dream of my sleep. If that is my offence, there is no necessity to bring witness into the box to depose to different things in connection with that. Here am I and I admit it. My whole submission before the Court is this. Let not the scene enacted in connection with the sedition trial of the Bande Mataram be enacted over again, and let the whole trial go into a side issue. If that is my offence let it be so stated and I am cheerful to bear any punishment. It pains me to think that crimes I could never have thought of or deeds repellent to me, and against which my whole nature revolts, should be attributed to me and that on the strength, not only of evidence on which the slightest reliance cannot be placed, but on my writings which breathe and breathe only of that high ideal which I felt I was called upon to preach.... I have adopted the principles of the political philosophy of the West and I have assimilated that to the immortal teachings of Vedantism. I felt I was called upon to preach to my country to make them realise that India had a mission to perform in the committee of nations. If that is my fault you can chain me, imprison me, but you will never get out of me a denial of that charge."

Concluding his argument, Deshban-dhu spoke. "My appeal to you is this: that long after this controversy is hushed in silence, long after this turmoil, this agitation ceases, long after he is dead and gone, he will be looked upon as the poet of patriotism, as the prophet of nationalism and the lover of humanity. Long after he is dead and gone his words will be echoed and re-echoed not only in India, but across distant seas and lands. Therefore I say that the man in his position is not

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only standing before the bar of this Court but before the bar of the High Court of History."

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Beachcroft delivered his judgment on 6 May 1909 at 11 o'clock. Barin and Ullaskar were sentenced to death, but could appeal within one week. The Appellate Court delivered its judgement on 23 November 1909, commuting their death sentences to life transportation. Their destination was the Andamans where they went with ten others who too had been sentenced to life transportation. After the First World War, all the prisoners were released by a Royal Proclamation of 24 December 1919. That is how Barin "fell into a ditch."

Seven others were awarded different jail terms. The other seventeen were acquitted.

"I now come to the case of Arabinda Ghose," pronounced the judge, "the most important accused in the case. He is the accused, whom more than any other the prosecution are anxious to have convicted and but for his presence in the dock there is no doubt that the case would have finished long ago." Much to the chagrin of Prosecutor Norton, and the British Indian Government, Judge Beachcroft proceeded to acquit Sri Aurobindo.

Here is an extract from the report of a dashed F. C. Dally, Deputy Inspector General, Special Branch, to the Chief Secretary of the Government of Bengal, F. W. Duke, on the moment all had been expecting for the past twelve months: "The sentences were received in silence —that is, silence compared to the

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turmoil that there has usually been in the Dock. Arabindo, as usual, looked stoically indifferent, but seemed well pleased with himself when he was allowed to walk out and leave the Court. The accused all embraced Barin in turn. Hem Das for the first time looked seriously depressed. I think he was disappointed at not being sentenced to death."

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