Emperor v. Aurobindo Ghosh and Others


Emperor v Aurobindo Ghosh and others, colloquially referred to as the Alipore Bomb Case, the Muraripukur conspiracy, or the Manicktolla bomb conspiracy, was a revolutionary activity held in India in 1908. The case saw the trial of a number of Indian nationalists of the Anushilan Samiti in Calcutta, on charges of "Waging war against the Government" of the British Raj. The trial was held at Alipore Sessions Court, Calcutta, between May 1908 and May 1909. The trial followed in the wake of the attempt on the life of Presidency Magistrate Douglas Kingsford in Muzaffarpur by Bengali nationalists Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki in April 1908, which was recognised by the Bengal police as linked to attacks against the Raj in the preceding years, including attempts to derail the train carrying Lieutenant-Governor Sir Andrew Fraser in December 1907.
Among the famous accused were Aurobindo Ghosh, his brother Barin Ghosh as well as 38 other Bengali nationalists of the Anushilan Samiti. Most of the accused were arrested from Barin Ghosh's Garden house at 36 Murarirupukur Road, in the Manicktolla suburb of Calcutta. They were held in the Presidency Jail in Alipore before the trial, where Narendranath Goswami, approver and crown-witness, was shot dead by two fellow accused Kanailal Dutta and Satyendranath Bose within the jail premises. Goswami's murder led to collapse of the case against Aurobindo. However, his brother Barin and a number of others were convicted of the charges and faced varying jail terms from life-imprisonment to shorter jail terms.
Aurobindo Ghosh retired from active nationalist politics after serving a prison sentence awarded in the trial, beginning his journey into spirituality and philosophy that he described as having started with revelations that occurred to him during his incarceration. He later moved to Pondicherry, establishing an Ashram. For Anushilan Samiti, the incarceration of many of its prominent leaders led to a decline in the influence and activity of the Manicktolla branch, and its activities were overtaken by what emerged to be called the Jugantar branch under the leadership of Bagha Jatin.

Background

Anushilan samiti

Political consciousness and opposition to British Raj] in Bengal had grown steadily over the last decades of the 1800s. By 1902, Calcutta had three secret societies working toward the violent overthrow of British rule in India. These included the Anushilan Samity, founded by a Calcutta student named Satish Chandra Basu with the patronage of the Calcutta barrister Pramatha Mitra, another led by a Bengalee lady by the name of Sarala Devi Chaudhurani, and a third one founded by Aurobindo Ghosh. Ghosh was one of the strongest proponents of militant nationalism at the time. Having forsaken a potential career in the Indian Civil Service, Ghosh had returned to India and taken up an academic post under the patronage of the Maharaja of Baroda. Here he came to develop a close relationship with Indian Maratha nationalist Bal Gangadhar Tilak, and through him the nationalist network in Maharashtra. Inspired by the histories of Italian and Irish nationalism, Aurobindo began preparing the grounds and network for an Indian nationalist revolution, in which he found support in Tilak. Aurobindo sought for source of military training to prepare for a revolution in the future. His younger brother Barin joined Aurobindo in Baroda. Baroda offered Barin to obtain training in military strategies and armed conflicts. In 1903, Aurobindo Ghosh sent his younger brother Barindra Kumar Ghosh to Calcutta to rally the nascent organisation. By 1905, the controversial 1905 partition of Bengal had a widespread political impact: it stimulated radical nationalist sentiments in the Bhadralok community in Bengal, and helped Anushilan acquire a support base among of educated, politically conscious and disaffected young in local youth societies throughout Bengal. The works of Aurobindo and his brother Barin Ghosh allowed Anushilan Samity to spread through Bengal. Anushilan began a program of slowly building a support base, preparing slowly and steadily for a nationalist uprising, on the lines of the Italian Carbonari.
Aurobindo returned to Bengal in 1906, and with the assistance of Subodh Mallik and Bipin Chandra Pal, founded in 1907 the radical Bengali nationalist publication of Jugantar and its English counterpart Bande Mataram. After a slow start, the journal gradually grew to acquire a mass appeal in Bengal through its radicalist approach and message of revolutionary programmes. Aurobindo, active in nationalist politics in the Congress, increasingly became the prominent voice of radical nationalists including Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Bipin Pal who advocated break-away from Britain and justified violent revolution as a means to this end. Nationalist writings and publications by Aurobindo and his brother Barin included Bande Mataram, Jugantar had a widespread impact among the youth of Bengal. By 1907 it was selling 7,000 copies, which later rose to 20,000. Its message, aimed at elite politically conscious readers was essentially critique and defiance of British rule in India, and justification of political violence. The publication inspired a proportion of the young men who joined Anushilan Samiti cited the influence of Jugantar in their decisions. In 1907, Bipin Chandra Pal and Aurobindo faced prosecution for the message emanating from Bande Mataram, with Pal being convicted. Meanwhile, Jugantar was also subject to close scrutiny.

32 Muraripukur Garden House

By 1907, Barin Ghosh had begun gathering around groups of young men attracted to the Jugantar message. This was at a time that the Dhaka Anushilan Samiti under Pulin Das was becoming active in seeking to target British administrative officers and interests as targets. Police searches and surveillance of Jugantar became routine, and the younger Ghosh cut his ties with the paper. A close group of approximately a dozen young men gathered around Barin, some of whom lived in his garden house in 36 Muraripukur lane, in the Manicktolla suburb of Calcutta. The house was intended by Barin to be organised along the lines of an ashram or hermitage along the lines of Aurobindo's message in Bhawani mandir, away from the public eye, where revolutionaries could live in strict discipline and prepare for a future revolution. Barin's group had been experimenting with production of explosives from 1906. In 1907, they were joined by Ullaskar Dutt, a self-taught chemist from the Howrah suburb of Calcutta who was attracted to the Jugantar message. The group had targeted the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal since 1906. In autumn 1906, Charu Chandra Dutt and Prafulla Chaki had made a failed attempt to assassinate the governor at Darjeeling. With Dutta's expertise, the plans were revisited. By October that year, Dutta was in a position to manufacture a bomb powerful enough to blow up a train. With dynamite obtained by Barin's group, Dutt produced a bomb with a detonator of his own manufacturing. The intended target was the train carrying the lieutenant governor of Bengal, Andrew Fraser. Through November 1907, two attempts were made to target the train carrying the lieutenant governor, which were unsuccessful. However, the group was at last successful on 5 December when Bibhutibhushan sarkar and Prafulla Chaki successfully detonated Dutt's bomb under the Governor's train at Narayangarh, near Midnapore. The Governor escaped unhurt, but security was tightened around him in the investigation that followed. In January 1908, Dutt successfully produced a more powerful picric acid bomb that was tested in Deoghar. Accidentally, a young revolutionary of Rangpur, Prafulla Kumar Chakraborty, died that time. However, by this time Bengal police had infiltrated the Medinapore branch of the Samiti through an infiltrator, who was able to pass on information on the Manisktolla ashram, which he obtained from Satyendranth Bose. This included the names of Barin Ghosh and Aurobindo, and both were soon the subject of surveillance by Calcutta police. However, the Government desisted from acting against Ghosh's group, fearful they would melt away to regroup in secret.

Muzaffarpur bombings and aftermath

The plot of killing Kingsford

In 1907, Hem Chandra Kanungo, left Calcutta for Paris to learn the art of bomb-making from Nicholas Safranski, a Russian revolutionary in exile in the French Capital. Returning to Bengal, Hem began working with Barin Ghosh again. With Fraser alerted, a new target was selected in Douglas Kingsford. Kingsford was the Chief Magistrate of the Presidency court of Alipore, and had overseen the trials of Bhupendranath Dutta and other editors of Jugantar, sentencing them to rigorous imprisonment. Jugantar itself responded with defiant editorials. The defiance of Jugantar saw it face five more prosecutions that left it in financial ruins by 1908. These prosecutions brought the paper more publicity, and helped disseminate the Samiti's ideology of revolutionary nationalism. Shukla Sanyal notes in 2014 that revolutionary terrorism as an ideology began to win support amongst a significant populace in Bengal, tacitly even if not overt. Kingsford also earned notoriety among nationalists when he ordered the whipping of a young Bengali boy by the name of Sushil Sen for participating in the protests that followed the Jugantar trial. The first attempt to kill Kingsford was in the form of a book bomb that Hem constructed. An empty tin of Cadbury's cocoa was packed with a pound of picric acid and three detonators. This was packed into a hollowed section of Herbert Broom's Commentaries on the Common Law and delivered wrapped in brown paper to Kingsford's house by a young revolutionary named Paresh Mallick. Kingsford placed the unopened package in his shelf to examine it later. By March 1908, fearful of the judge's safety, he was promoted to District Judge and transferred by the government to Muzaffarpur in the northern part of Bihar. With him went his furniture, library and the book bomb made by Hem Chandra.