CHAPTER
IX. Revolutionary Efforts in the United Provinces.
120. The United Provinces before the Benares
conspiracy
121. The Benares Conspiracy Case.
Chapter X: The connection
between the Central Provinces and the Revolutionary Movement.
CHAPTER IX. Revolutionary Efforts in the United Provinces.
120. The United Provinces before the Benares conspiracy
The United Provinces of Agra and Oudh are separated from Bengal by Bihar and Orissa, and are geographically the heart of Upper India. They contain the cities of Benares and Allahabad, sacred in the eyes of, all Hindus, Agra once the center of the old Moghul Empire, and Lucknow formerly the capital of a Moslem kingdom. They were the main battle-field of 1857.
The first determined and persistent impulse towards a revolutionary movement in these now peaceful Provinces came from the establishment of the Swarajya (self-government) newspaper in Allahabad in November 1907, by a certain Shanti Narain, a native of the United Provinces, who had formerly been sub-editor of a Punjab newspaper and desired to commemorate the release of Lajput Rai and Ajit Singh, the Punjab deportees. (See paragraph 128) The tone of this paper was hostile to Government from the first and gradually intensified in virulence. Finally, Shanti Narain was condemned to a long term of imprisonment for objectionable articles in the Muzaffarpur murders. The Swarajya, however, proceeded on its way under eight successive editors, three of whom were prosecuted and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment for objectionable publications. Seven of these editors came from the Punjab. The paper was only suppressed when the new Indian Press Act of 1910 came into force. Of its offending articles one was a panegyric on Khudiram Basu, the Muzaffarpur murderer, others related to such subjects as “Bomb or Boycott”, “Tyrant and oppressor”. Notwithstanding the perseverance with which the paper waged war on the Government, it produced no visible effect in The Provinces. The Karmayogin, a paper of similar tendencies published late in 1909, also at Allahabad, and suppressed in 1910, was equally ineffective.
In 1908 a certain Hoti Lal Varma, a Jat who had dabbled in Punjab journalism and was then correspondent at Aligarh of the Calcutta paper Bande Mataram, edited by Arabinda Ghosh and some associates, distinguished himself by revolutionary propagandism and was sentenced to ten years’ transportation. He had travelled in the Far East and in Europe, and had come under pernicious influences. He was found in possession of portions of a bombing manual exactly similar to that compiled by the Calcutta Anusilan Samiti and had endeavored to preach sedition to the youth of Aligarh, an important educational center, but had attained no success. His trial attracted no local interest.
121. The Benares Conspiracy Case.
We now come to the story of the Benares conspiracy case. The famous city of Benares possesses many schools and two important colleges. A large proportion of its standing population is Bengali; and Bengalis frequently resort there, as do Hindu pilgrims from all parts of India. It was inevitable that sooner or later the poisonous influences potent elsewhere should penetrate in some measure to Benares.
In the year 1908 a young Bengali named Sachindra Nath Sanyal, then studying in the highest class of the Bengalitola High School, together with other youths, started a club called the Anusilan Samiti. The title was borrowed from the then flourishing Dacca Anusilan Samiti. But when that association became the object of criminal proceedings, the Benares Samiti assumed the title of “Young Men’s Association”. It is remarkable that to this body belonged all but one of the residents of Benares, subsequently accused in the conspiracy case, and the one exception was a member of a kindred organization, the “Students’ Union League”. The ostensible object of the original samiti was the moral, intellectual and physical improvement of its members, but in the words of the Commissioners who tried the Benares conspiracy case, “There is no doubt that Sachindra aimed at making the society an instrument for the spread of sedition. As Deb Narayan Mukharji, a former member, has told us, the members used to express themselves vehemently against the action of the Government. According to Bibhuti the society contained an inner circle consisting of those who were fully initiated into its real objects, and the teaching of sedition was mainly effected through a so-called moral class at which Bhagavad Gita was so interpreted as to form a justification even for assassination. At the performance of the annual Kali puja the sacrifice of a white pumpkin — a usual accompaniment of the ceremony which has in itself no sinister significance — was made to symbolize the white race for whose expulsion a special prayer was offered.” (See Judgement, Benares Conspiracy Case)
There is evidence that, before the formation of this Anusilan Samiti, Benares had been visited by persons concerned in the Bengal revolutionary movement; and it is certain that Sachindra and his associates, who were then mere boys, and mainly Bengalis, were instigated by one or other of these persons. The club continued to exist from 1909 to 1913, but not without dissension. First it lost some members who revolted from its political activities and from its hostility to Government. Then it lost its most violent members, including Sachindra himself. These were bitten by a desire to turn theory into practice, talk into action. They formed a new party which wished to work in close concert with the Bengal samitis. According to an approver who gave evidence at the subsequent trial, Sachindra visited Calcutta from time to time, was introduced to Sasanka Mohan Hazra alias Amrita Hazra, of Raja Bazar celebrity, (Evidence of approver Bibhuti. See too paragraph 61. Amrita Hazra was convicted in the Raja Bazar case.) and obtained both funds and bombs. In the autumn of 1913, his associates distributed a number of seditious leaflets among Benares schools and colleges, and disseminated other leaflets by post. According to Bibhuti, the approver, they also used to make excursions into the country and give lectures to villagers. “The subject of the lecture,” said this witness, “would be turning out the Europeans or to improve our condition. We openly preached the turning out of the Europeans and improving our condition in that way.”
Early in 1914 the notorious Rash Behari Basu, of the Delhi and Lahore conspiracy cases, arrived in Benares and practically took charge of the movement. Although a reward had been offered for his arrest, and his photograph had been widely circulated, he succeeded in residing in Benares throughout the greater part of the year 1914, apparently without the knowledge of the police. Benares is a cosmopolitan city, and the various communities told to lead separate lives in the densely crowded streets of particular quarters. Bengalitola, the Bengali special quarter, is largely self-contained. Thus, it is very difficult for up-country police, who do not speak Bengali, to keep in touch with doings and arrivals in that neighborhood. Rash Behari lived near Bengalitola and generally took outdoor exercise at night. He was visited by various members of the Sachindra gang, and on one occasion gave a demonstration of the use of bombs and revolvers. While he was examining two bomb caps on the night of November the 18th, 1914, they exploded and injured both him and Sachindra. After that, he shifted his residence to a house in Bengalitola. There he was visited by a young Maratha named Vishnu Ganesh Pingley, who belonged to the Poona district of Bombay. Pingley had been in America and had returned to India in November 1914, in the company of some Sikhs of the Ghadr party. (See paragraph 132 – 138) He said that four thousand men had come from America for the purpose of rebellion and that there were twenty thousand more there who would come when the rebellion broke out. He said that there were fifteen thousand men at Calcutta who would come when rebellion broke out. Rash Behari had dispatched Sachindra to the Punjab to see what could be done there. Sachindra performed his mission, informed certain of the Ghadr revolutionaries there who desired instruction in making bombs that this instruction was easily available, and promised Bengali assistance.
In January 1915, Sachindra returned to Benares with Pingley and after their arrival, Rash Behari, who had again shifted his residence held in their presence an important meeting of the gang. He announced that a general rebellion was impending, and informed his audience that they must be prepared to die for their country. A schoolmaster named Damodar Sarup was to be leader at Allahabad. Rash Behari himself was going to Lahore with Sachindra and Pingley. Two men were assigned to bring bombs and arms from Bengal, and two others, one a Maratha named Vinayak Rao Kapile, (lately murdered at Lucknow) to convey bombs to the Punjab. Another couple, Bibhuti and Priya Nath, were to seduce the troops at Benares, while a Bengali named Nalini was to do the same at Jabalpur in the Central Provinces. Arrangements were made for executing these plans; Rash Behari and Sachindra departed for Lahore and Delhi, but Sachindra returned directly to take command at Benares. On February the 14th Mani Lal, afterwards an approver, and Vinayak Rao Kapile, both natives of Western India, left Benares for Lahore with a parcel containing material for eighteen bombs. In order to protect the parcel from accidental contact, as the train was crowded, they travelled intermediate from Lucknow and paid excess fares, both at Lucknow and Moradabad. They had originally taken third class fares. On arrival at Lahore, Mani Lal was informed by Rash Behari that the date for simultaneous armed rebellion would be on the 21st of the month. Intimation of this date was conveyed to Benares; but afterwards it was changed because the Lahore plotters had reason to suspect that one of their number had informed the police. The conspirators, however, left behind at Benares under Sachindra never learnt of the change, and waited on the parade ground on the evening of the 21st expecting a rising. In the meantime, events at Lahore had exploded the conspiracy, and many arrests had been made. Rash Behari and Pingley returned to Benares, but only for some days, and the latter took bombs with him to Meerut, where he was arrested on the 23rd of March, in the lines of the 12th Indian Cavalry with a box in his possession containing ten bombs, “sufficient to annihilate half a regiment:” he was afterwards convicted of participation in the Lahore conspiracy and sentenced to death. The bombs which were found in his possession had, according to the approver Bibhuti, been brought to Benares from Calcutta and left in store there. When discovered with Pingley they were in a tin trunk. Five had their caps on, and there were two separate caps with guncotton inside.
Rash Behari left the country after a final interview with a few of his Benares disciples at Calcutta, in the course of which he informed them that he was going to “some hills” and would not be back for two years. They were, however, to continue organization and distribution of seditious literature during his absence under the leadership of Sachindra and Nagendra Nath Datta alias Girija Babu, of Eastern Bengal, a veteran associate of the Dacca Anusilan Samiti whose name appears in a note-book belonging to Abani Mukharji, a Bengali arrested at Singapore, in connection with the Bengal-German gun-running plot (See paragraph 111). Sachindra, Girija Babu, and other members of the gang were subsequently arrested and tried by a Court constituted under the Defense of India Act. Several turned approvers; ten were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment, and Sachindra Nath Sanyal was transported for life. Evidence given at the trial established charges of various attempts to tamper with troops and distribution of seditious leaflets, as well as the incidents above narrated.
During the police investigation Bibhuti, one of the informers alleged that he and his accomplices had stopped at the house of one Suresh Babu in Chandernagore. This house was promptly raided; and an armory of weapons was discovered, a 450 six-chambered revolver, a tin of cartridges for the same, a breech-loading rifle, a double-barreled 500 Express rifle, a double-barreled gun, seventeen daggers, a number of cartridges, and a packet of gunpowder, several Swadhin Bharat and Liberty leaflets. The house had not previously come under suspicion. In the possession of Sachindra Nath Sanyal were found copies of the old Jugantar and photographs of political murderers. At the very moment of his arrest, he was preparing seditious leaflets for the post; and in the house of the accused Bankim Chandra of Patna was discovered a Life of Mazzini annotated by Sachindra and bearing his name.
(Judgement, Benares Conspiracy Case) “On page 34 there were underlined sentences, with a pencil note on the margin ‘Education through writings.’” The underlined sentences were “Its writings, smuggled into every corner of the land, moved many a young thinker to a passionate resolve that bore fruit in after time.” Another underlined sentence was “Here are we,” said Jacopo Ruffini to his fellow-conspirators at Genoa, “five very young men, with but limited means, and we are called on to do nothing less than overthrow an established government.”
Of the Benares convicts only one belonged by race to the United Provinces. Most were Bengalis and all were Hindus. Reviewing the whole circumstances of the case, it may be said that the associates, receiving their original inspiration from Bengal, gradually became corrupted until, under the direction of Rash Behari, they formed an important link in the chain of a big revolutionary plot which came within an ace of causing widespread bloodshed at a highly critical time.
122. The case of Harnam Singh
Shortly after the failure of the great Ghadr plot, including the Banaras Conspiracy, Harnam Singh, a Jat Sikh from the Punjab, once a havildar in the 9th Bhopal Infantry and subsequently “Chaudhry” of the regimental bazar, was arrested at Fyzabad in Oudh on a charge of complicity in the plans of the conspirators. It was proved that he had been corrupted by revolutionary pamphlets received from a student of Ludhiana in the Punjab named Sucha Singh, an emissary from Rash Behari; that he had afterwards visited the Punjab, and had distributed leaflets; that he had taken over a revolutionary flag and a copy of the Ailan-i-Jang (an appeal to the peoples of India to rise and murder or drive out all the Europeans in the country). This book was found in his house. His operations, however, were ineffective. He was convicted and sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment.
123. “Jugantar” Leaflets.
In November 1916 two Bengali youths were convicted by the District Magistrate of Benares of posting up Jugantar leaflets of the usual type in the city. One Narayan Chandra De, was aged only twenty-four, but had already been active in corrupting youth, and had thrown a bomb at a train in Bengal. He had been a master at a Benares school called the Oriental Seminary, and a teacher by profession. The other was a youth of nineteen, who was already serving a term of imprisonment, having been convicted of coining for political purposes. In this nefarious pastime he had been working under a certain Surnath Bhaduri, a Benares Bengali of notorious antecedents.
124. Other Incidents.
These incidents show clearly that so far, the revolutionary movement has not taken hold of any section of the people of the United Provinces, but that the position and circumstances of Benares will always render that city a point of peculiar peril. They prove that when contagion permeated, it spread gradually and secretly, through poisonous literature and teaching among uncritical and impressionable youths; that within these narrow limits it worked unchecked for years, and finally developed a conspiracy which almost achieved a horrible tragedy. Since judgement was passed on the Benares convicts, Jugantar leaflets have been posted up in public places of that city, and Bengal suspects have been arrested there. On three occasions students admitted to colleges in the United Provinces have been found either to have met, or to be in cipher correspondence with, Bengal revolutionaries; and on the night of February the 9th, 1918, Vinayak Rao Kapile, absconder in the Benares conspiracy case, was shot dead in Lucknow, it is believed, by some of his fellow-revolutionaries. He was certainly killed by a Mauser pistol bullet. During the subsequent police investigation, a Bengali suspect was arrested in a house in which were discovered two 0.450 revolvers and 219 rounds of Mauser pistol ammunition belonging apparently to the stolen Rodda consignment. Formula were also found for preparation of the tobacco tin bomb, together with picric acid and gun-cotton. After these discoveries leaflets of the usual type were posted in various towns of the provinces, apparently in order to frighten the authorities. These postings were probably the work of “post-box” youths.
Chapter X: The connection between the Central Provinces and the Revolutionary Movement.
125. Nagpur in 1907-08
Two resolutions passed at the Calcutta sessions of the Indian National Congress in December 1906 composed, for a short space, the differences between Moderates and Extremists. The first of these was “having regard to the fact that the people of this country have little or no voice in its administration and that their representations to the (Government do not receive due consideration), this Congress is of opinion that the boycott movement inaugurated in Bengal by way of protest against the partition of that province was and is legitimate.”
The second ran as follows, that “this Congress is of opinion that the system of government obtaining in the self-governing British colonies should be extended to India; and as steps leading to it, urges that the following reforms should be immediately carried out.”
The proposed reforms were detailed, and at the close of the Congress proceedings, it was announced that the Congress of 1907 would be held at Nagpur, the capital of the Central Provinces, once the seat of a Maratha kingdom.
Throughout 1907, however, there was continual friction between the Moderates and Extremists of Nagpur. The tone of the local Extremist press became more and more hostile to Government and its influence on schoolboys and students grew more pronounced. A new journal, the Hindi Kesari appeared on the 1st of May with the object of spreading among Hindi-speaking people, as well as among Marathas, the views expressed by Tilak’s Marathi Kesari published at Poona. In the first nine months of circulation, the issues of the Hindi Kesari reached a weekly figure of 3,000, and its articles were considered so pernicious that circulation of the paper among soldiers was prohibited by the military authorities. Another prominent journal of the same character was the Desha Sevak, to which we shall refer later on.
But the tactics of the Nagpur Extremists were stoutly opposed by the Moderates, and so sharp was the contention that Surat in the Bombay Presidency was substituted for Nagpur as a place for the December sessions of the Congress. How seriously the latter city had been affected by the Extremist campaign is apparent from the following passages in a letter from the Chief Commissioner to the Inspector-General of. Police, dated the 22nd of October 1907: —
“I am not satisfied,” wrote Mr. Craddock, “with the manner in which the police are dealing with student rowdiness in Nagpur. If things go on as they are going, all our respectable public men will be frightened away from Nagpur. For the future I am determined that rowdiness shall be put down… I have asked the Commissioner to convene a meeting of Principals and Head Masters to discuss the question of enforcing discipline, but the police must catch the rowdy students before we can deal with them properly. Nagpur is being disgraced in the public press by continued incidents of this kind, and they must cease… It is time that Nagpur ceased to be a bear-garden of students moved by seditious agitators.”
Remedial measures were adopted, but things were not improved by visit from Arabinda Ghosh, of Bengal notoriety, who arrived on the 22nd of December on his way to the Surat Congress, and lectured in support of boycott and swadeshi. On his way home after the Congress, he halted at Nagpur and lectured again on the same subject. He also vindicated the conduct and policy of Tilak and the Extremists at Surat. Bengalis and Marathas, he said, were children of the same parents and should continue to share each other’s sorrow and joy. Swadeshi and boycott flourished nowhere as they did in Bengal. No one in India had suffered as bravely for his country as the latter-day Bengalis, for instance the editor of the Jugantar.
Under such influences the tone of the Nagpur Extremist press intensified in the bitterest hostility to Government. Soon after the Muzaffarpur bomb outrages, the Desha Sevak of the 11th of May 1908 indulged in the following remarkable passages. It stated that among many shameful defects that had crept into the Indian nation through contact with the English was ignorance of bomb-making. Properly speaking, every respectable citizen ought to possess a good knowledge of the use of« weapons, the preparation of bombs, etc. “The contact of the English,” it went on, “has rendered the condition of India so pitiful that people are wonderstruck at the most ordinary insignificant deeds. The whole place from Simla to Ceylon is filled with amazement at the taking of two or three lives by young Bengalis by means of a bomb. But the making of a bomb is such an easy matter that none should be surprised at all. It is a natural right of man to use weapons or to make bombs. If human laws prohibit this it is meet for us to submit, but this should not fill us with surprise for bombs… If the fact that these bombs were actually prepared at Calcutta is true, then we are greatly delighted. It is best that none should, commit crime, but if the people are prompted to do wicked deeds, they should be such as would become a man. To rob ornaments by deceit, to forge documents, to take false oaths or to burn people’s houses at night are mean and feminine crimes. We think the action of Khudiram Basu in attempting to take the life of Mr. Kingsford is certainly very mean, and none should follow his example. We therefore egress our loudest protest against such crimes and the making of bombs at Calcutta for this purpose. True that we should know how to make bombs, but we must ask and get this right from Government. To prepare bombs by breaking the laws is detestable. To murder the bureaucrats is not the way to regenerate the nation and it is not necessary to subvert the British Government for this purpose. To gain complete and unqualified independence, which is the ultimate object of our nation, this is not essential. We feel indignant at our Bengali brethren for not keeping this in mind. We must also congratulate Mr. Kingsford for escaping from Khudiram Basu’s aim. Mr. Kingsford’s doings as Presidency Magistrate, Calcutta, were both outrageous and satanic.” (Mr. Kingsford had tried and convicted persons connected with seditious newspapers. He had also sentenced a boy named Sushil to receive fifteen stripes for resisting a police search of the Bande Mataram press.)
The Hindi Kesari of the 16th of May 1908 observed that, although the present editor of the Jugantar was undergoing trial, and in spite of the Maniktala arrests, the Jugantar was still appearing. Referring to the bomb conspiracy, the Jugantar stated that it was an attempt to become independent. The English are not the King of India. To wage war against dacoits, thieves and rascals could not be called conspiracy.
But in spite of these inflammatory utterances, the Maniktala (a Nagpur college student was among the Alipore accused) trial, the arrest of Tilak, and the firm attitude of the local Government induced sober reflection. Demonstrations which were held on Tilak’s birthday, July the 18th, passed off quietly, and were shunned by Muhammadans, although a Mr. Haidar Raza arrived from Delhi and spoke of Tilak as the political guru or preceptor of the whole of India. Efforts were made to start riots on the conviction of Tilak; but these were quickly suppressed, and a meeting called to express sympathy with Tilak was prohibited. Some half a dozen persons were convicted of rioting and sentenced to be imprisoned or pay fines; seditious editors of newspapers were prosecuted and punished; and instructions were issued by the local Government for the taking of security under the Criminal Procedure Code from itinerant seditious orators for abstinence from action likely to disturb the public tranquility. During the later months of 1908 seditious activity confined its energies to the tarring and mutilation of a statue of Queen Victoria. On November the 26th local “acts of violence” were ascribed by a leading Extremist politician in conversation with the Inspector-General of Police as due simply to “wrong individual impulse”. He considered the Jugantar the only paper, “likely to develop such wrong individual impulses”. In fact, the movement had spent its force, and a state of affairs which had once seemed likely to result in revolutionary developments completely subsided.
126. Incidents of 1915.
The Central Provinces did not, so far as we are aware, again come into contact with dangerous movements until in February 1916 Nalini Mohan Mukharji, one of the Benares conspirators, was deputed by Rash Behari to induce the troops at Jabalpur to join the rising planned by the Ghadr party for that month. Nalini failed to achieve success and was afterwards tried and convicted in the Benares conspiracy case. Subsequently Nalini Kanta Ghosh of the Dacca Anusilan Samiti, who is by reputation connected with various Bengal outrages and has recently been arrested at Gauhati, Assam, in sensational circumstances, was found to have been touring through the Central Provinces; and at the end of 1915 an absconding Benares conspirator, Vinayak Rao Kapile paid visits to Jabalpur in order to provide a refuge and establish a connection. He formed a knot of seven persons, namely, two students, two masters at a high school, a pleader, a clerk and a tailor. The tailor and one of the students were found to be mere post-boxes, and, though arrested, were discharged. The other five were interned and Vinayak’s organization was nipped in the bud. He himself disappeared from the province and has since been murdered. (See paragraph 124.)
The incident is a neat illustration of the way in which, a revolutionary from outside sows evil seed in a place free from indigenous disaffection and also of the way in which, by firm action taken in time, mischief can be arrested.
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