Mother's Chronicles - Book Five

29

"They Laugh at Death"

"Barin was preparing bombs at my place at Baroda," Sri Aurobindo said with a reminiscent smile, "but I didn't know it. He got the formula from Ullaskar Dutt who was a very good chemist. He, Upen and Debabrata were very good writers too. They wrote in the Yugantar."

Upen, or Upendranath Banerji (1879-1950), came from Chandernagore, then in French India. Throughout his life he was associated with a number of newspapers, including the Bande Mataram. He wrote profusely, except when he was put in prison by the British government.

Upen Banerji and Debabrata Bose "were masters of Bengali prose," Sri Aurobindo declared, "and it was their writings and Barin's that gained an unequalled popularity for the paper." Even petty shopkeepers, tea-stall owners read the Yugantar and were fired with patriotism.

The Yugantar, according to its promoters — among them Vivekananda's brother, Bhupendranath Dutt —"was dedicated to the service of the country and was the first newspaper of the revolutionary party." Again Maharaja Suryakanta Acharya helped them in financing the paper. The

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Barin the revolutionary

British Government naturally viewed the matter in quite a different light. "This journal," reported the Rowlatt Sedition Committee, "began to pour forth racial hatred in March 1906, attained a circulation of 7,000 and rapidly reached a still wider range before it ceased to appear in 1908 in consequence of newly passed Newspapers (Incitement to Offence) Act." The Committee also quotes a learned Chief Justice, Sir Lawrence Jenkins: "They exhibit a burning hatred of the British race, they breathe revolution in every line, they point out how revolution is to be effected. No calumny and no artifice is left out which is likely to instil the people of the country with the same idea or to catch the impressionable mind of youth."

The Sedition Committee goes on to add that "the Yugantar was by no means the only newspaper organ of the associates. There were others, such as the Sandhya, which proclaimed abroad: 'We want complete independence.... Swadeshi, boycott, all are meaningless to us, if they are not the means of retrieving our whole and complete independence.' " The editor of Sandhya was Brahmabandhab Upadhyay. According to the Rowlatt Committee both these vernacular newspapers expressed "virulent hatred."

Let us say at once that Sri Aurobindo "never brought any rancour into his politics. He never had any hatred for England or the English people; he based his claim for freedom of India on the inherent right to freedom."

Sri Aurobindo was of course behind the paper Yugantar. "At Barin's suggestion he agreed to the starting of a paper, Yugantar," he wrote while giving a general sketch of his political

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life, "which was to preach open revolt and the absolute denial of the British rule and include such items as a series of articles containing instructions for guerrilla warfare. Sri Aurobindo himself wrote some of the opening articles in the early numbers and he always exercised a general control; when a member of the sub-editorial staff, Swami Vivekananda's brother, presented himself on his own motion to the police in a search as the editor of the paper and was prosecuted, the Yugantar under Sri Aurobindo's orders adopted the policy of refusing to defend itself in a British Court on the ground that it did not recognise the foreign Government and this immensely increased the prestige and influence of the paper." Vivekananda's younger brother, Bhupendranath Dutta, was sentenced to one year's rigorous imprisonment on 24 July 1907 for 'seditious' matter that appeared in the Yugantar.

The fact is that the Government was scared stiff of the Yugantar. The Sedition Committee laid the blame squarely on the Ghose brothers, Barindra and Arabinda: "The brothers with their immediate followers started various newspapers the most popular of which, published in fluent vernacular Bengali, was the Jugantar." Lamented Sri Harvey Adams, "In spite of five prosecutions Yugantar still exists and is as violent as ever." When the Government's own violent repression failed to suppress the paper, it enacted a new 'Act' in 1908 against the Swadeshi press.

The revolutionary movement in Bengal was spearheaded by a band of young men under the leadership of Barin, who worked among schoolboys giving them religious, moral and

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political education. He taught the boys all about the state of the country and the necessity for independence, and told them that the only way left was to fight for independence and to start secret societies in different parts of the country in order to propagate revolutionary ideas. It was during his sojourn at Baroda with Sejda that Barin had imbibed these ideas, for, he read not only novels but studied history and political literature also. In 1902 he went to Bengal and made an extensive tour all over the province. After one year, in 1903, he returned to Baroda, quite disappointed with the response to his efforts at spreading revolutionary ideas. It was, however, this first tour which convinced him of the necessity of imparting spiritual training to the would-be revolutionaries so that they could face danger and death with equanimity. His training bore fruit as subsequent events were to prove. The young boys faced the gallows calm and smiling. In 1909, Barin and Ullaskar were sentenced to death by hanging in the Alipore Bomb Case.¹ After the verdict, when they returned to the prison from the court, a European warder seeing Ullaskar laughing called an Irish friend and pointing to him said, "Look, look, the man is going to be hanged and he laughs." The Irishman replied, "Yes, I know; they all laugh at death."

It was a sudden transformation of attitude, as Sri Aurobindo put it. "At one time, before the Swadeshi movement, our people were terribly afraid of these Europeans. But after

1. U. Dutt (1885-1965) came from Tripura. The sentence was changed on appeal to life imprisonment. Along with Barin and a few others he was deported to the Andamans where he remained a prisoner until 1920.

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that movement the fear has gone and it has not come back."

Barin and his group dreamed of a far-off revolution. To that end they collected arms, learned to prepare explosives, and formed secret societies. These young men came mostly from educated class, but were not necessarily rich. In fact these revolutionaries could not afford metal containers for their gunpowder. So what to do? Why, there's coconut shells, and in abundance too! So coconut shells became the bombs of the first batch of Indian revolutionaries.

But money was badly needed to keep the revolutionary party's activities running; and money does not come out of thin air. So? So after a great deal of heart-searching it was decided to take recourse to ... dacoity. A few ground rules were adopted —such as, no woman of the house raided must be touched, and this was strictly adhered to. Another resolution adopted was: We shall keep a correct account of the money collected by dacoity and when independence will have been achieved all these amounts will be repaid. There were, in fact, a few instances when the owner of the house raided received in writing that such-and-such an amount of money had been credited to his account as loan taken and it would be paid back to him on the attainment of Independence.

It may be noted that the secret societies did not include terrorism in their programme, but this element grew up in Bengal as a result of the Government's strong repression and the reaction to it.

Although Sri Aurobindo was the Nationalist party's principal leader in action in Bengal and the organizer there of

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its policy and strategy, he had left Barin with his boys to train them as he liked, and had no direct contact with the young men.

"I? Good Lord! I had nothing to do with them," Sri Aurobindo exclaimed, amazed at an account brought to him. "It was all Barin's work. I never knew who these boys were and never saw them. Only once Barin brought a troop of them to my house but they were all waiting below. It is true that Barin used to consult me or Mullick for any advice. But the whole movement was in his hands. I had no time for it. I was more busy with Congress politics and Bande Mataram. My part has been most undramatic in it."

Perhaps. But did he not admit that he had "changed cowards into heroes— not by yoga shakti —merely by an inner force"?

Barin may have consulted Sejda or Subodh Mullick from time to time, but he was a most careless person. "If I had been the head, I would have been more cautious," Sri Aurobindo said. "Barin was very reckless. On the eve of the search he brought two bombs to my house. I told him, 'Take them away. Don't you know that the house is going to be searched ? And remove the things from Manicktola.' He took the bombs away but didn't do anything at Manicktola." Actually, the police arrived before Barin and his band of young men could remove or destroy all the incriminating articles.

Those were tumultuous days. The first revolutionaries were all very young —school-going boys or college students. Not only were they green in age, but they were all totally

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inexperienced. They were, all of them, sublimely unaware of danger. Listen how they acted when they put a bomb together for the first time. Remember Rohini village where Swarnalata, Barin's mother, lived? These boys chose a little, single-storeyed house about two kilometres from Rohini, and some eight kilometres from Deoghar. A desolate place. The house was set in open fields —amid the red and barren moorlands of Bihar. There they set up their laboratory, under the tutelage of Ullaskar Dutt. He had four assistants: Barin, Prafulla Chakravarti,¹ Bibhuti Bhusan Sarkar² and Nolini Kanto Gupta. So when a real live bomb was ready, they went to the top of the Dighariya hill for testing it. The five chose an afternoon for their purpose, so as to have a witness-free demonstration!

"On an afternoon," narrates Nolini in his Reminiscences, "the five of us made for the hill. It fell to my lot to carry the bomb. 1 carried it along with due care no doubt, but I had no idea of the risks 1 carried. We were quite ignorant and inexperienced at the time." In a few moments they were to gain experience ... a bitter one. "We broke through the thickets and chose a spot right on top of the hill. There we came across a huge boulder rising steep and straight on one side about breast-high and on the other sloping gradually to a distance of some ten or twelve yards. The plan was that Prafulla would take his shelter behind the steep and abrupt side as he threw the bomb at the

1.P. Chakravarti was the elder brother of Suresh Chakravarti (Moni).

2.B. B. Sarkar (1890-1942), of Bankura in East Bengal. He had formed a secret society in a village there. He was one of the first batch of deportees taken to the Andamans.

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sloping rock." Ullas was to stand by Prafulla to oversee the operation and both were to duck behind the slab right after the throw; the bomb was supposed to explode after hitting the hard ground. The other three took up their positions; Nolini shinned up a tree to have a clear view of the whole scene. "As we lay in wait, — my eyes were glued to the boulder, — suddenly I saw a spark of fire flash out over there with a puff of smoke and such a terrific noise! The whole sky seemed to be getting broken up into bits, and waves of sound went echoing forth from one end to the other as if in a hundred simultaneous claps of thunder." With what excitement and joy he climbed down the tree, and ran towards the boulder shouting at the top of his voice, "Successful, successful!"

But as he reached the boulder his joy turned to grief. The explosive was so powerful that it had exploded in mid-air. "What a gruesome spectacle! Prafulla lay limp on Ullas's chest. Ullas held him in his arms. Slowly the body was laid down. One side of the forehead was broken through and a portion of the brain coming out. It was an unbearable sight. We sat around and no one spoke a word. At last Barin said, 'It's all over, there is not a hope.' The body lay motionless, showed no signs of life. The eyes were closed, the face looked serene."

Thus Prafulla Chakravarti became the first martyr in India's Freedom movement of the twentieth century.

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