Beachcroft : Sir Charles Porten (1871-1927); son of an ICS man he entered Rugby School, Warwickshire. Founded in 1567, Rugby is one of the 10 original public schools & one of the most famous & expensive of the independent schools in Britain. In 1889-90, he was Head of the School, won a Major Leaving Exhibition & passed the same Open Examination for the ICS as did Sri Aurobindo – he standing 36th to the latter’s 11th of the 45 who passed. Both went up to Cambridge, he to Clare & Sri Aurobindo to King’s. Yet, said Sri Aurobindo, they “met only in the ICS classes & at the ICS examinations & never exchanged two words together”. Beachcroft began his ICS career in 1892 as Asst. Magistrate & Collector & was Puisne Judge when he retired in 1921. He was knighted in 1922. As Sessions Judge of the High Court of Calcutta; he presided over the Alipore Bomb Trial in which, of the 40 revolutionaries arraigned he acquitted 17.
... 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 Page 473 ... 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... 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 ...
... and months, on end. The case commenced in the Alipur Sessions Court on 19 October 1908. Mr. C. P. Beachcroft, the District and Sessions Judge, who tried the case, had been with Sri Aurobindo at Cambridge, and had stood second in Greek while the other - now the accused - had stood first. Beachcroft had now (he very unpleasant task of "trying" the caged Sri Aurobindo on a charge of waging war against... initially appeared to be a piece of damning evidence against Sri Aurobindo, Chittaranjan in his memorable peroration - delivered as if he was a man divinely possessed - made a unique appeal to Mr. Beachcroft the Judge and the two Assessors: My appeal to you is this, that long after the controversy will be hushed in silence, long after this turmoil, the agitation will have ceased, long after he... the two Assessors returned a unanimous verdict of "Not Guilty" about Page 328 Sri Aurobindo on 14 April 1909. Three weeks later, on 6 May, accepting the assessors' verdict, Mr. Beachcroft acquitted Sri Aurobindo. Of the rest, Barindra and Ullaskar received death sentences; some were exiled to the Andamans for life, some were sentenced to transportation or rigorous imprisonment ...
... scholarship at King's College, Cambridge. There he was a contemporary of Mr. Beachcroft I.C.S. who tried him at Alipore and who had been head of Rugby and had also won a scholarship at Cambridge. Both won honours at the University, and at the final examination for The Indian Civil Service Arabindo, the prisoner, beat Beachcroft the Judge in Greek!... "...to me it appeared a matter for regret... advocacy of Chittaranjan ( C.R . Das) raised the trial almost to an epic level. His famous appeal to the court still rings in the ears because it has proved to be true to the letter. He said to Mr. Beachcroft, who was the judge in the case, 'My appeal to you is this, that long after the controversy will be hushed in silence, long after this turmoil and the agitation will have ceased, long after he is... . 19.5.08" 159. In the second batch there were nine persons. The total number was, then, forty-two. Page 293 "The trial of both the batches commenced before Mr. C.P. Beachcroft, I.C.S., Additional Sessions Judge, Alipur, on 19th October, 1908. Various objections were taken to the form of the charges, the joint trial, admissibility of evidence and other matters. Charu ...
... should have come up for hearing in the court of Judge Beachcroft. He was a member of the ICS and had passed his preliminary examination in the same year as Sri Aurobindo, 1890. Sri Aurobindo had then secured a higher position than he in the examination. Thereafter both were scholars at Cambridge — Sri Aurobindo at King's College and Beachcroft at Clare College. Their paths must have met many times... including conspiracy and complicity in terrorist plots. The stage was now set for the main trial to commence before the District and Sessions Judge for 24-Paraganas and Hooghly, Mr. Charles Porten Beachcroft. As evidence 4000 documents, 300 to 400 exhibits including explosives, bombs and weapons were produced. Nearly 200 witnesses were examined. The case commenced on October 19, 1908, and went on... times, particularly when they were taking the intermediate and final examinations for the ICS. Certainly they knew each other but they were not close friends; otherwise, Beachcroft might well have declined to try the case. But the fact that he knew Sri Aurobindo and was fully familiar with his background must have led Beach-croft to follow the case with more than usual attention and care. And there can ...
... continued intermittently for a Page 84 whole year. Mr. Beachcroft, the magistrate, had been with Sri Aurobindo in Cambridge.... The case in due course went up to the Sessions Court and the trial commenced there in October 1908. [ Sri Aurobindo indicated that the last sentence should be placed before "Mr. Beachcroft", changed "magistrate" to "Judge in the Sessions Court", and wrote:... wrote: ] The preliminary trial (a very long one) took place before Birley, a young man unknown to Sri Aurobindo. Beachcroft was not "magistrate" but Judge in the Sessions Court. In his dignified statement to the court, Sri Aurobindo pointed out that it was perfectly true that he had taught the people of India the meaning and the message of national independence.... Sri Aurobindo never made a ...
... it became known, was “the first state trial of any magnitude in India.”’ 11 The judge was C.E. Beachcroft, ICS, a classmate of Aurobindo’s at Cambridge. (In the entrance examination of their ICS class Beachcroft had come second to Aurobindo in Greek; ironically, in the final examination, Beachcroft had done better than Aurobindo in Bengali.) After some early experiences Aurobindo’s spiritual ...
... life, while two are hopelessly condemned to the brutal and brutifying punishments by which European society avenges itself on the breakers of its laws,—we refer to the Kabiraj brothers found by Mr. Beachcroft to be innocent of conspiracy and therefore presumably innocent tools of conspirators. There is an uneasy sense that some at least have been added to the list by the judgment in appeal. Even if it ...
... he went through a year's undertrial detention in jail and C.R. Das, the future leader of Bengal, appeared as his counsel and, by a curious stroke of fate, the judge at his trial was one Mr. Beachcroft whom he had beaten to second place in Greek and Latin in the I.C.S. competition, Rabindranath Tagore addressed to him a long stirring poem opening, "Aurobindo, Rabindranath bows to you." During ...
... Gokhale's panegyric Lord Morley mocked at Mr. Mackarness and his supporters as more Indian than the Indians. We may well quote him again and apply the same ridicule, the ridicule of the autocrat, to Mr. Beachcroft, the Alipur judge, who acquitted an avowed apostle of the ideal of Page 120 independence. Mr. Gokhale, at least, has become more English than the English. A British judge, certainly not ...
... curtailed. Since the Sessions Court declared me innocent of the charges, Norton's plot was sadly shorn of its glory and elegance. By leaving the Prince of Denmark out of Hamlet the humourless judge, Beachcroft, damaged the greatest poem of the twentieth century.... Norton's other agony was that some of * the witnesses too seemed so cussed that they had wholly refused to bear evidence in keeping with his ...
... followed and to plant this seed in the national consciousness. The Government were in a quandary how to deal with. Sri Aurobindo. They considered appealing to the High Court against the judgment of Beachcroft. After careful consideration, however, they dropped the idea as the appeal was not likely to succeed. A strong section of the bureaucrats was in favour of deportation but the Viceroy was against ...
... over all manner of subjects: religion and spirituality, literature and science, our work and our future, all this came within our purview. Our discussions sometimes grew so loud and hot that Judge Beachcroft – he had been contemporaneous with Sri Aurobindo at Cambridge – would shout at us like a schoolmaster, "Less noise there, less noise there!" If that did not stop all the noise, then he had to make ...
... NIRODBARAN: Dutt is afraid to come here lest he shouldn't be able to go back. SRI AUROBINDO: It would be his last journey? NIRODBARAN: Was he a great friend of yours? SRI AUROBINDO: Yes. Beachcroft, who was my schoolmate, somehow couldn't believe that I was a revolutionary. Another intimate English friend of mine, Ferrer, came to see me in the court when the trial was going on. We, the accused ...
... 14, 190, 205, 220, 226, 269ff, 349 Baptista, Joseph, 521, 523, 531,727 Basanti Devi, 48 Bases of Yoga, 598 Basu, Arabinda, 752 Baudisch, A., 753 Beachcroft, C.P., 325,328,329 Bengalee, The, 34,183, 281, 312, 332, 335, 338 Bentinck, Lord William, 13 Bergson, Henri, 441 Besant, Annie, 266, 272, 412, 521 Bhagavad ...
... years later, in Baroda. The course of study provided at Cambridge was a very poor one. Poorer still was their teacher! "Of course," said Sri Aurobindo, "we started learning it in Cambridge, the judge Beachcroft was Page 210 one of us, under an Anglo-Indian pundit ('Pundit Towers,' the students called him). He used to teach us Vidyasagar. 1 One day we hit upon a sentence of Bankim's and ...
... record Page 36 marks, though I do not find these trifles in place here; the note would read much better with the omission of the part between the vertical lines. 1 (But what is Beachcroft doing here? He butts in in such a vast and spreading parenthesis that he seems to be one of "these ancient languages" and in him too, perhaps, I got record marks! Besides, any ingenious reader would ...
... about the Tripos and the record marks, though I do not find these trifles in place here; the note would read much better with the omission of the part between the vertical lines. (But what is Beachcroft doing here? He butts in in such a vast and spreading parenthesis that he seems to be one of "these ancient languages" and in him too, perhaps, I got record marks! Besides, any ingenious reader would ...
... India as Crown Prosecutor, Chitt-aranjan Das shielding Sri Aurobindo by a case for defence worked out through feverish months at the cost of his own health and the loss of a lucrative practice, Mr. Beachcroft sitting in judgment over a man who had been with him at Cambridge and had beaten him there to second place in Greek and Latin - through all the dramatic vicissitudes of those eight years ran not ...
... have finished reading all the writings of Bankim or perhaps I wrote the articles during the first enthusiasm of my learning the language. Of course we started learning it [at] Cambridge—the judge, Beachcroft, was one of us—under an Anglo-Indian pundit. He used to teach us Vidyasagar. One day we hit upon a sentence of Bankim's and showed it to him. He began to shake his head and said, "This can't be Bengali ...
... unpardonable offence. Afterwards, during the Alipore Bomb case, this was cited against me on behalf of the prosecution in order to prove that I was an old offender. But the judge of the Alipore court, Beachcroft, had rather taken a fancy to me. He did not take any note of this point and dismissed it as school-boy bravado. Nevertheless, that confession of mine had been dubbed by many at the time an act of ...
... than was any guide to my Sadhana. I sometimes turned to the Gita for light when there was a question or a difficulty and usually received help or an answer from it. . . ."¹ On 6 May 1909 Mr. Beachcroft delivered his judgment. Sri Aurobindo and most of the others were acquitted. After they had been released, according to S. R. Das, cousin of C. R. Das, "Those who were acquitted came straight to ...
... country, he was also the FIRST Indian to send forth a cry for the independence of India. Another point. He had "an extraordinary hold over the affection of his countrymen," as observed Justice Beachcroft, when he acquitted Sri Aurobindo in the Alipore Bomb Case in 1909. This fact was frightening indeed to the British Government. Thus, according to Sir Baker, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, Sri ...
... it is natural growth." Sri Aurobindo explained what he meant by 'following my ear.' Alluding to the Alipore Bomb Case when he was undergoing trial, and on whose bench was his former friend Beachcroft, Sri Aurobindo said, "Another intimate English friend of mine, Ferrers, came to see me in the court when the trial was going on. We, the accused, were put into a cage for fear we should jump out ...
... 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 ...
... acquitted in the Alipore bomb case," wrote the Daily Hitavadi, a Calcutta journal, in its edition dated May 9, 1909, "and it is not unlikely that one or two more will be acquitted on appeal. Mr. Beachcroft, the Judge, has openly said that but for Aravinda's complicity in the case, it would not have taken such a long time to come to an end. This means that the case was dragged on for such a long time ...
... and expose to the public the underlying scheme so as to offset their plans. Therefore the urgent question before the British bureaucrats was: how to get rid of this 'dangerous' obstacle? Judge Beachcroft had dismissed the sedition case against this 'most dangerous man' to use the words of the Viceroy. Dare the government go on an appeal against that verdict? Did they have enough judicially sustainable ...
... unbearable that Ullaskar Dutt went mad. (The jail in Port Blair is now a national monument.) Aurobindo had been warned by Sister Nivedita that the government intended to deport him or to appeal Judge Beachcroft’s verdict. To remain a step ahead of the British and prevent himself from being deported, he published in the Karmayogin ‘An Open Letter to My Countrymen,’ informing the public at large of the ...
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