A forgotten tiger

“Dadu, dadu ekti golpo shonau” (Gradpa please tell me a story), the little boy would insist on a breezy summer night, and dadu would say, “aage aakashe joto tara ache gune bolo, taar pore golpo shonabo” (first, count the number of stars in the sky and tell me and then I would tell you a story.). The boy uninhibited by the challenge would start counting the stars and after 100 would stop as he couldn’t count beyond. This happened every time a request for a story was hurled towards dadu.
One day dadu was moved by this little boys unshakable faith that he could count all the stars in the sky, and said in a heavy voice, ajge ekti bagher golpo shono (today I will tell you a story about a tiger). The boy would leave his pillow and lie beside his dadu on his arms in anticipation of a captivating tale. Dadu’s story about “ram aar lokhon” (Ram and Lakshman) were blockbuster hits with the little boy and the story about “Korno” (Karna) use to make the little boy feel sorry about the epic Mahabharta character. But, today was different, the breeze suddenly stood still the stars glimmered brighter against the night sky as the whole universe wanted to hear the saga of this tiger.
Dadu starts with a shivering voice almost overtaken by pride, “Bagha Joteen holo ekti beer purush er naam” (Bagha Joteen is the name of a brave man).

So who was Bagha Joteen?

He was a revolutionary philosopher. He was the principal leader of the yugantar party that was the central association of revolutionaries in Bengal. Having personally met the German Crown-Prince in Calcutta shortly before the World War I, he obtained the promise of arms and ammunition from Germany; as such, he was responsible for the planned German plot during world war 1. Another of his contributions was the indoctrination of the Indian soldiers in various regiments in favor of an insurrection.
Jatin once learned about the disturbing presence of a leopard in the vicinity; while in the nearby jungle, he came across a Royal Bengal tiger and fought hand-to-hand with it. Mortally wounded, he managed to plunge a Darjeeling dagger in the tiger's neck, killing it instantly. The famous surgeon of Calcutta, Lt-Colonel Suresh Sarbadhikari, "took upon himself the responsibility for curing the fatally wounded patient whose whole body had been poisoned by the tiger's nails." Impressed by Jatin's exemplary heroism, Dr Sarbadhikari published an article about Jatin in the English press. The Government of Bengal awarded him a silver shield with the scene of him killing the tiger engraved on it.
And hence the name “bagha”.

In 1905, during a procession to celebrate the visit of the Prince of Wales at Calcutta, Jatin decides to draw the attention of the future Emperor on the behavior of HM’s English officers. Not far from the royal coach, he singles out a cabriolet on a side-lane, with a group of English military men sitting on its roof, their booted legs dangling against the windows, seriously disturbing the livid faces of a few native ladies. Stopping beside the cab, Jatin asks the fellows to leave the ladies alone. In response to their cheeky provocation, Jatin rushes up to the roof and fells them with pure Bengali slaps till they drop on the ground. The show is not innocent. Jatin is well aware that John Morley, the Secretary of State, receives regularly complaints about the English attitude towards Indian citizens, "The use of rough language and pretty free use of whips and sticks, and brutalities of that sort…" He will be further intimated that the Prince of Wales, "on his return from the Indian tour had a long conversation with Morley. He spoke of the ungracious bearing of Europeans to Indians.
In April 1908, in Siliguri railway station, Jatin got involved in a fight with a group of English military officers headed by Captain Murphy and Lt Somerville, leading to legal proceedings, widely covered by the press. On observing the gleeful animosity created by the news of a few Englishmen thrashed single-handed by an Indian, Wheeler advised the officers to withdraw the case. Warned by the Magistrate to behave properly in the future, Jatin regretted that he would not refrain from taking similar action in self-defense or in the vindication of the rights of his countrymen. One day, in a pleasant mood, Wheeler asked Jatin : "With how many can you fight all alone ?" The prompt reply was : "Not a single one, if it is a question of honest people; otherwise, as many as you can imagine!"
In 1908 Jatin was not one of over thirty revolutionaries accused in the Alipore bomb case following the incident at Muzzafarpur. Hence, during the Alipore trial, Jatin took over the leadership of the secret society to be known as the jugantar Party, and revitalizes the links between the central organization in Calcutta and its several branches spread all over Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and several places in U.P. Through Justice Sarada Charan Mitra, Jatin leases from Sir Daniel Hamilton lands in the Sundarbans to shelter revolutionaries not yet arrested. They are engaged in night schools for adults, homeopathic dispensaries, workshops to encourage small scale cottage industries, experiments in agriculture. Since 1906, with the help of Sir Daniel, Jatin had been sending meritorious students abroad for higher studies as well as for learning military craft.
Shortly after when World War I broke out, in September 1914, an International Pro-India Committee was formed at Zurich. Very soon it merges into a bigger body, to form the Berlin committee , or the Indian Independence Party, led by V. Chattopadhaya alias Chatto : it gained the support of the German government and had as members prominent Indian revolutionaries abroad, including leaders of the Ghadar paty. Militants of the Gadhar party started leaving for India, to join the proposed uprising inside India during World War I, with the help of arms, ammunition, and funds promised by the German government. Advised by Berlin, Ambassador Bernstorff in Washington arranged with Von Papen, his Military attaché, to send cargo consignments from California to the coast of the Bay of Bengal, via Far East.
These efforts were directly connected with the Jugantar, under Jatin's leadership, in its planning and organizing an armed revolt. Rasbehari Bose assumed the task of carrying out the plan in Uttar Pradesh and the Punjab. This international chain work conceived by Jatin came to be known as the German Plot, the Indo-German Conspiracy , or the Zimmermann Plan. Jugantar started to collect funds by organising a series of dacoities (armed robberies) known as "Taxicab dacoities" and "Boat dacoities". Charles Tegart, in his "Report No. V" on the seditious organizations mentions the "certain amount of success" in the contact that exists between the revolutionaries and the Sikh soldiers posted at Dakshineshwar gunpowder magazine; Jatin Mukherjee in company of Satyendra Sen was seen interviewing these Sikhs. Sen "is the man who came to India with Pingle. Their mission was specially to tamper with the troops. Pingle was captured in the Punjab with bombs and was hanged, while Satyen was interned under Regulation III in the Presidency Jail." [37] With Jatin's written instructions, Pingle and Kartar Sing Sarabha met Rasbehari in North India.[38]
Preoccupied by the increasing police activities to prevent any uprising, eminent Jugantar members suggested that Jatin should move to a safer place. Balasore on the Orissa coast was selected as a suitable place, being very near the spot where German arms are to be landed for the Indian rising. To facilitate transmission of information to Jatin, a business house under the name "Universal Emporium" was set up, as a branch of Harry & Sons in Calcutta, which had been created for keeping contacts with revolutionaries abroad. Jatin therefore moved to a hideout outside Kaptipada village in the native state of Mayurbhanj , more than thirty miles away from Balasore.
On reaching Orissa, in April, 1915, Jatin sent one of his close associates, Naren Bhattacharya (future M.N. Roy) to Batavia, following instructions from Chatto, in order to make a deal with the German authorities concerning financial aid and the supply of arms. Through the German Consul, Naren met Theodore, brother of Karl Helfferich, who assured him that a cargo of arms and ammunition was already on its way, "to assist the Indians in a revolution."
The plot leaked out through Czech revolutionaries who were in touch with their counterparts in the United States. In the beginning of World War I, in 1915, Emanuel Viktor Voska organised the minority of Czech patriots in USA into a network of counter-espionage, putting up to date the spying activity of the German and Austrian diplomats against USA and the allied powers. (He described these events later in his book Spy and Counter-Spy.) American publicist of Czech origin Ross Hedvíček claims that had E. V. Voska not interfered in this history, today nobody would have heard about Mahatma Gandhi and the father of the Indian nation would have been Bagha Jatin. B. Jatin wanted to free India from the British hold but he had the idea of allying against them with the Germans from whom he expected to receive arms and other helps. Voska learnt it through his network and, as pro-American, pro-British and anti-German, he spoke of it to T. G. Masaryk. This latter rushed to keep the institutions informed about it. Thus, Voska transmitted it to Masaryk, Masaryk to the Americans, the Americans to the British. T. G. Masaryk mentions all these facts in the English version of the Making of a State.
As soon as the information reached the British authorities, they alerted the police, particularly in the delta region of the Ganges and sealed off all the sea approaches on the eastern coast from the Noakhali –Chittagong side to Orissa. Harry & Sons was raided and searched, and the police found a clue which led them to Kaptipada village, where Jatin was staying with Manoranjan Sengupta and Chittapriya Ray Chaudhuri; a unit of the Police Intelligence Department was dispatched to Balasore. Jatin was kept informed and was requested to leave his hiding place, but his insistence on taking Niren and Jatish with him delayed his departure by a few hours, by which time a large force of police, headed by top European officers from Calcutta and Balasore, reinforced by the army unit from Chandbali in Mayurbhanj State, had reached the neighbourhood. Jatin and his companions walked through the forests and hills of Mayurbhanj, and after two days reached Balasore Railway Station.
The police had announced a reward for the capture of five fleeing "bandits", so the local villagers were also in pursuit. With occasional skirmishes, the revolutionaries, running through jungles and marshy land in torrential rain, finally took up position on 9 September 1915 in an improvised trench in undergrowth on a hillock at Chashakhand in Balasore. Chittapriya and his companions asked Jatin to leave and go to safety while they guarded the rear. Jatin, however refused to leave them.
The contingent of Government forces approached them in a pincers movement. A gunfight ensued, lasting seventy-five minutes, between the five revolutionaries armed with Mauser pistols and a large number of police and army armed with modern rifles. It ended with an unrecorded number of casualties on the Government side; on the revolutionary side, Chittapriya Ray Chaudhuri died, Jatin and Jatish were seriously wounded, and Manoranjan Sengupta and Niren were captured after their ammunition ran out. Bagha Jatin died in Balasore hospital on 10 September 1915.And, observes Ross Hedvíček[41] in the article already mentioned : "India had to wait for another thirty years to have her democracy... Mahatma Gandhi was as yet in South Africa." During a conversation with Charles Tegart on 25 June 1925, Gandhiji qualified Jatin Mukherjee as "a divine man." And the author of the article (son of an officer in the Special Police created by Tegart)adds that Gandhiji did not know what Tegart told his colleagues : "Had Jatin Mukherjee been an Englishman, the English would have erected his statue at Trafalgar Square, by the side of Nelson's." .
Inspired by Swami Vivekananda, Jatin expressed his ideals in simple words: "Amra morbo, jat jagbe" — "We shall die to awaken the nation". It is corroborated in the tribute paid to Jatin by Charles Tegart the Intelligence Chief and Police Commissioner of Bengal : "Though I had to do my duty, I have a great admiration for him. He died in an open fight." Later in life, Tegart admitted : "Their driving power immense: if the army could be raised or the arms could reach an Indian port, the British would lose the War". Professor Tripathi analysed the added dimensions revealed by the Howrah Case proceedings: acquire arms locally and abroad; raise a guerrilla; create a rising with Indian soldiers; Jatin Mukherjee's action helped improve (especially economically) the people's status. "He had indeed an ambitious dream."
So dadu finishes the story with an almighty glare in his eyes as a witness to India’s independence struggle suddenly freshened up in his memory. With a steely voice he asks the kid “Kee bujhle dadubhai” (What do you make of it my little one), and the little boy remarks, “aami o bodo hoe baghar motto hobo” (When I grow up, I will like to be like Bagha Jatin), little did the kid realise, that when he grows up he will be working in the country of the British with and the same people who ruled his beloved motherland for 250 years. But little boy did remember the spirit and the story of bagha ….a forgotten Tiger!!