Mother's Chronicles - Book Five

49

The Most Dangerous Man

Barin reports that he called Lele to Calcutta for his own sadhana, as well as for training and giving initiation to his boys. Lele came in February 1908 and put up at Sejda's Scott's Lane house. He even went one day to Belur Math and sat in meditation with Swami Brahmananda. He also met Baba Bharati. But it seems that Lele "knew the man by the dress" only ! Lele also used to think that the appearance has some value," Sri Aurobindo said. "Once I met X with him. He asked me , 'Why don't you bow down to him?' I replied that I didn't believe in the man. He said, 'But you must respect the yellow robe .' '' Sri Aurobindo was no respecter of sham.

Before leaving Calcutta in mid-March, Lele had met young people of the Secret Society. Barin had not told him that they were revolutionaries. Nor did he tell Lele what they were doing in the Maniktola Garden. Lele on his several visits met Upen, Prafulla Chaki, and other young men and boys. He understood. Upen says that Lele tried to wean them from their revolutionary activities. He also told them that India's independence would come inevitably and in a peaceful way.

Page 451

Unbelievable !A fairy tale, thought the sceptic boys. Recounts Sri Aurobindo, '' One day Barin took him into a garden where they were practising shooting. As soon as Lele saw it he understood the nature of the movement and asked Barin to give it up. Lele said that if Barin did not listen to him Barin would fall into a ditch -s-and he did fall.''

Barin, let us admit it, had never acquired the good habit of listening to any advice. He pursued his course. The consequences were not long in coming.

Remember Kingsford, the sadistic Presidency Magistrate of Calcutta, who delighted in imposing harsh sentences on Indians for the love of it? Well, fearing for his life, the Government had transferred him to Muzaffarpur in Bihar. Revolutionaries, not quite unnaturally, wanted to get him. Khudiram Bose of Midnapore and Prafulla Chaki of Rangpur drew the lot to carry out his liquidation. For several days the two kept watch on Kingsford's movements, then decided that the most suitable time would be in late evening when he habitually went to the Club in a victoria. So on 30 April 1908, around 9 P.M., the boys threw bombs on a carriage they presumed to be Kingsford's. But it was not. It is amazing how many of the most brutal of men seem to have a charmed life ... for a time. Mrs. Kennedy and her daughter were going to the Club in their own carriage, and both of them were killed. The next day, 1* May, Khudiram was arrested at a wayside station. Prafulla, resisting the attempt to arrest him, shot himself with his last bullet. For Khudiram, after a summary trial, it was a hangman's noose, on 11 August 1908.

Page 452

In the night of 1^st May police swooped down on 32 Muraripukur Road, otherwise the Maniktola Garden, and arrested all whom they could lay their hands on. In simultaneous searches that went on for hours, they arrested many more from all over the city; and on subsequent days from other parts of Bengal, and the whole country. On May 2 Aurobindo was arrested from his Grey Street quarters.

The first phase of the trial took place at the court of L. Birley, the District Magistrate of Alipore, and it lasted from 19 May to 19 August 1908. "He seemed to be a credit to his Scotch origin," Sri Aurobindo wrote in Karakahini, and went on to give a lively description of Birley. "Very fair, quite tall, extremely spare, the little head on the long body seemed like little Auchterlonie sitting on top of the sky-kissing Auchter-lonie monument, or as if a ripe coconut had been put on the crest of Cleopatra's obelisk !" The Auchterlonie monument at Calcutta is now called the Shahid Minar. "Sandy-haired, all the cold and ice of Scotland seemed to lie frozen on his face .So tall a person needed an intelligence to match, else one had to be sceptical about the economy of nature. But in this matter of the creation of Birley, probably the Creatrix had been slightly unmindful and inattentive .... Finding so little intelligence in such a tallish body one indeed felt pity." He then had a dig at the Administration. "Remembering how a few such administrators were governing thirty crores of Indians could not but rouse a deep devotion towards the majesty of the English masters and their methods of administration. "

The ubiquitous Eardley Norton led the Crown in the

Page 453

trial in all three Courts —the Magistrate's, the Session Judge's and the High Court. Describing the drama being played out in the Alipore Magistrate's Court, Sri Aurobindo said, "Looking at the amazing spectacle I often thought that instead of sitting in a British court of justice we were inside a stage in some world of fiction.... The star performer of the show was the government counsel, Mr. Norton. Not only the star performer, but he was also its composer, stage manager and prompter.... It gave me great happiness that Mr. Norton had chosen me as the protagonist of this play.... Of the national movement I was the alpha and omega, its creator and Saviour, engaged in undermining the British empire.... It is a pity I was not born as an Avatar; otherwise, thanks to his intense devotion and ceaseless contemplation of me for the nonce, he would surely have earned his mukti then and there and both the period of our detention and the government's expenses would have been curtailed." The government was paying Norton at the rate of Rs. 1000 a day. The entire trial lasted one full year.

The fact of the matter was that Norton's sentiment was fully shared by the Administration. The Bureaucracy was dead certain that 'Arabinda Ghose' was at the centre of the mighty rebellion. The highest-ranking officials gave him full credit for being 'extraordinarily sharp, intelligent and powerful.' And to crown it all, a bold bad man!

In fact, the Government — used to the amazing timidity of Congress Moderates—must have assumed that Indians were a nation of cowards and old women, and were taken unawares at the rapid rise of the Nationalist Movement. "The Government,"

Page 454

recalled Sri Aurobindo, "were absolutely taken by surprise when our Movement was launched. They never expected that Indians could start revolutionary activities." He reflected a moment. "The Movement and the Secret Society became so formidable that in any other country with a political past they would have led to something like the French Revolution. The sympathy of the whole nation was on our side."

The Movement could no longer be dismissed. Nationalism had become "a force which has shaken the whole of India, trampled the traditions of a century into a refuse of irrecoverable fragments and set the mightiest of modern empires groping in a panic for weapons strong enough to meet a new and surprising danger...." The bureaucrats were certain that 'Aurobindo Ghose' was the prime mover of the Movement. It should not therefore cause us surprise to learn that that frail young man was giving sleepless nights to government functionaries. "Lord Minto said that he could not rest his head on his pillow until he had crushed Aurobindo Ghose," said Sri Aurobindo with a laugh.

The straight of it is that from the Governor-General of India to the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal and down to the village Inspector of police, all, all without exception suffered from Aurobindo-phobia. "The police seem to be suffering from Aravinda-phobia," wrote the Nakya of Calcutta sarcastically in its paper dated 24 June 1909. "Whenever there is a talk of Aravinda Babu's going anywhere, the police of that place are panic-stricken, thinking perhaps that the people of the places visited by Aravinda Babu will at once declare their independence."

Here was 'Aravinda Babu,' a man who never feared to

Page 455

speak unvarnished truth. A spade was a spade. And freedom was freedom. And he said so. "There are some who fear to use the word 'freedom,' but I have always used the word because it has been the mantra of my life to aspire towards the freedom of my nation."

Obviously, the man was dangerous! Lord Minto, the Viceroy of India, obsessively used that term: "Arabindo was the most dangerous man with whom we had to deal." "He is the most dangerous man ... and he has great influence with the student class." "... He is the most dangerous man we now have to reckon with." And so on.

Lord Morley, the Secretary of State for India, used another adjective: "the redoubtable Arabinda."

Sir Edward Baker, the Governor of Bengal, regarded Sri Aurobindo as "one of the most dangerous factors in the present situation...." When Minto transmitted the opinion of the Secretary of State to Sir Edward, he protested, saying that there was no reason to show any favour to "our most conspicuous and most dangerous opponent." Was not Aurobindo "preaching sedition almost without disguise"? Again it was Baker who, writing in great detail to the Viceroy, gave it as his strong belief that "he is not a mere blind and unreasoning tool, but an active generator of revolutionary sentiment.... I attribute the spread of seditious doctrines to him personally in a greater degree than to any other single individual in Bengal, or possibly in India."

In a confidential note of 19 May 1908, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, Sir Andrew Fraser, said that the public

Page 456

records which he had collected, "make him the undisputed leader of the Bengal revolutionaries."

The Movement must be throttled.

The 'most dangerous man' must be severely dealt with.

It was Judge Beachcroft who put his finger on the hub. "His ideal is independence," he wrote about Sri Aurobindo in his judgment, and described him as "a man who seems to have an extraordinary hold over the affections of his countrymen."

The Government was afraid of that hold.

The Bureaucracy was afraid of the power of the words penned or pronounced by Sri Aurobindo.

Recently, reading his speeches and writings of that period, it came to me that here was the Trident of Mahadeva.

One prong jabbed the Bureaucracy.

One prong jabbed the Moderates.

One prong, Nationalism, jabbed the Indian people.

The trident's handle was the Mother. "We recognise no political object of worship except the divinity in our Motherland."

Page 457