Ullaskar Dutt (1885-1965), one of the two explosives experts of the Maniktola secret society, was born in Kalilachcha, Tripura. He was raised in an Anglicised environment, for his father had studied in England and adopted English ways. After graduating from Comilla Zilla School, he attended Presidency College in Calcutta for two years and then studied for a year and a half at the Victoria Technical Institute in Bombay.
Profoundly affected by the Partition of Bengal, Ullaskar took an active part in the agitation against it. At that time his philosophy professor at Presidency College, Mr. Russell, made some disparaging remarks agains Bengalis; Ullaskar became so incensed that the nex morning he beat him with a slipper. Sometime later probably in 1906, he resolved to learn how to make bombs. In a laboratory at his father's house in Shibpur, he succeeded in preparing nitroglycerine, picric acid and other volatile compounds. By the end of 1907, the year in which he joined Barin's secret society, Ullaskar was manufacturing reliable explosives. In December 1907 one of his devices, a mine containing six pounds of dynamite, almost derailed the train carrying Sir Andrew Fraser, Lieutenant Governor of Bengal. The blast blew a hole six feet wide and deep in the bed of the track. This was the first bomb used in Bengal for revolutionary purposes. In April 1908 a cricket-ball-sized bomb made by Ullaskar and Hem Chandra Das blew up a carriage thought to be carrying Justice Douglas Kingsford; the explosion tragically killed two Englishwomen, Mrs. Kennedy and her daughter, in Muzaffarpur. [Muzzafarpur Bombing]
In May 1908 Ullaskar was arrested along with other members of the Maniktola secret society and tried for conspiracy [Alipore Bomb Case]. During the year-long stay in Alipore Jail, his bubbling enthusiasm was an elixir for his fellow-revolutionaries. A born comedian and superb singer, he led the songs, shouts and merry-making of the Swadeshi prisoners. He, along with Barin, was given the death penalty, but this sentence was later reduced to transportation for life.
Shipped to the jail in the Andamans, Ullaskar worked for two years at the oil mill and then for a while in the brick-making factory. In July 1912 he refused to do some work unjustly allotted to him. As punishment he was fettered with bars on his wrists and ankles to the wall of his cell. While bound in this way he developed a high fever, became delirious and lost his mental balance. He was never the same again. The valiant spirit of a revolutionary had been broken. Shortly afterwards he was removed to an asylum in Madras, where he remained until his release in 1920. In that year or the next he visited Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry, Ullaskar settled in Bengal for thirty years and then moved to Assam where he passed away in 1965.
At a time like this [in 1905, after the Partition of Bengal], when the sky was getting red and the air was hot, with so much agitation in the minds of men and the young hearts, one of the Englishmen in our college, Russell, our professor of logic and philosophy, got it into his head to come out with something tactless against the Bengalis. It was like a spark in a powder dump. There was much excitement and agitation among the students. Could this not be avenged? Should the white man be allowed to escape scot-free, just like that? The day of reckoning came at last, like a bolt from the blue. How did it all happen? One of our classes was just over and we were going to the next class along the corridor, when all of a sudden there rang out all over the place from a hundred lusty throats shouts of "Bande Mataram' that tore the air with its mighty cry. Everybody ran helter-skelter. "What is the matter? What happened?" "Russell has been thrashed with a shoe!" "Who thrashed him? Who?"...
But who was the culprit? It was Ullaskar Datta, one of our class-fellows. He was a boarder at the Eden Hindu Hostel. He had come to college with a slipper wrapped up in a newspaper sheet and had made good use of it as soon as he got a chance.
*
Ullaskar - "one who abounds in energy" - fully lived up to his name: he was indeed an inexhaustible fount of energy and enthusiasm. When they used to escort us in a prison van from the jail to the court room, we rent the air all the way with our shouts and songs as we drove along. It was Ullaskar's idea, he led the chorus and the rest of us followed. Some of the old refrains still ring in my ears, I can still recall the words of songs like "Deep from the heart of Bengal today", "The soil, the rivers of Bengal' and "My golden Hindusthan".
I have heard that Ullas is still alive, though almost half-dead, they say. Ten or twelve years of jail in the Anda-mans deranged him in body and mind. But this after all was part of the ritual of sacrifice. As Barin used to say, "Such indeed was the vow in this kind of marriage".
A year's trial came to a close and we got our sentences. Ullas and Barin were to be hanged. ... Ullas was apparently delighted. He came back with a flicker of a clear smile on his face and said, "Thank God, this damned show is ended after all." The remark made a European warder say to his fellow warder, "Look here, the man's going to be hanged, and he laughs." The companion, who was an Irishman, replied, "Yes, I know; they all laugh at death."
Ullaskar is one of the noblest boys I have ever seen, but he is too idealistic.
"We refuse to obey the prison rules!" - that was Ullas-da's battle-cry. For his defiance the wardens would string him up on the wall, handcuffed and fettered, and leave him hanging there for eight hours a day. But nothing could break Ullas-da's indomitable spirit. True to his name he seemed to derive an intense joy from his punishments. Rhythmically he would beat against the wall with his bar-fetters as on the tabla. And to the accompaniment of banging fetters and clanging chains he would sway and sing strange songs. Ullasda's pet dictum was: "Man does not die. We merely go back to the bosom of our cosmic Mother who upholds the universe. And lured by the thought of playing another game, we will return again to this earth in a new body." Who else could be called a realised being, if not Ullas-da?
Ullaskar was given brick laying to do in the sun. The Junior Medical Officer of the hospital recommended that Ullaskar was not fit to bear the heat of the sun. But why should the white overseer take into consideration the advice of a mere Bengali officer? So Ullaskar had to do the same work as before. Naturally he refused it and returned to the prison, saying that it was belittling to one's manhood to work simply out of the fear of punishment; at least he is not the man to do such a thing. So it was ordered that he should be given handcuffs and barfetters for seven days. But those seven days did not pass. On the very first day the Petty Officer on going to take off the handcuffs at 4.30, saw that Ullaskar was senseless with fever and was hanging by the handeuffs. He was immediately sent to the Hospital. His temperature rose to 105 degrees in the night. On the next morning it was found that the fever had entirely gone down but Ullaskar was no more Ullaskar. The man who was ever at peace even in the midst of the utmost danger, who never ceased smiling even when he suffered most, was today insane!
Home
Seekers
Revolutionaries
Share your feedback. Help us improve. Or ask a question.