Sushil Sen

Caning of Sushil Sen

On 27 August 1907, fourteen-year-old Sushil Sen, a student of the Bengal National School, was standing with others in an open courtyard outside the courtroom at Lal Bazar; the crowd had gathered in support of Bipin Chandra Pal, who was on trial for contempt of court (for refusing to testify against Sri Aurobindo in the Bande Mataram Sedition Case). The presiding judge, Douglas Kingsford, ordered that the compound be cleared of the boisterous throng. Helmeted policemen approached the crowd and drove them away with lathis. Young Sushil, struck by an English sub-inspector, returned the blow and a fight ensued. The incident was described in the newspaper Sandhya:

Everybody who saw Sushil's heroic conduct in the fracas at Lal Bazar was amazed. When Sushil saw a red-faced inspector assaulting a number of people without any provocation, he stepped into the fray and in so doing got assaulted himself... Sushil was a youth of fourteen, whereas the red-faced man was a huge and heavy fellow. But Sushil's zest was a thing to see.... The ruddy fellow was thoroughly worsted.

Sushil was immediately arrested and tried the next day for assaulting a police officer.' Kingsford ordered the boy to be given fifteen "stripes" - fifteen strokes on the bared buttocks with a rattan cane. This painful form of punish-ment, sometimes given to young offenders instead of jailing them, incensed the people of Calcutta. Even an English newspaper, The Nation, commented about this severe treatment of an adolescent: "The flogging of an educated man for a political offence is surely a novel infamy. The flogging of politicals is even rare in Russia.

Sushil bore his punishment resolutely, for, as the Bande Mataram noted, it would have been "derogatory to the national cause to show any sign of weakness". His courage in facing the police officer and stoic endurance of his caning drew widespread admiration. Sushil's school was closed in his honour the next day and he was taken in a carriage through the streets to College Square, where a crowd of thousands had gathered to congratulate him.

Maniktola Secret Society & Alipore Bomb Case

Towards the end of 1907 Sushil joined the secret society at Maniktola Garden. On 15 May 1908 he and his brothers Biren and Hem were arrested in their home village in Sylhet. When the police searched the house they found some homemade explosives. Biren had devised a method of chipping off the heads of matchsticks and packing them together to make small bombs. The brothers were taken to Calcutta and tried for conspiracy with the others accused in the Alipore Bomb Case. Sushil and Hem were acquitted. Sushil remained active in politics, but died tragically in a shooting accident at the age of twenty-three.

Biren was sentenced to transportation for life, but the sentence was reduced upon appeal to seven years. One of the youngest of the political prisoners in the Andamans, he was perhaps the most silent and unassuming among them. After his release, he went back to live in Sylhet. In the 1960s he came to Pondicherry and lived for several years in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram.