Forgotten martyrdom

Success has many fathers and failure is like an orphan. This aphorism seems to be the irony of Jyotindra Nath Mukherjee — popularly known as Bagha Jatin — who attained martyrdom while fighting with the British police in an obscure village, Chasakhand, in Balasore district of Odisha and succumbed to death on September 10, 1915. It is unfortunate that the supreme sacrifice made by Bagha Jatin and his associates is little known outside Bengal and Odisha, although there is no dearth of well-documented historical records in this regard. Much before India attained independence in 1947, there was an attempt under the leadership of Bagha Jatin, Narendranath Bhattachrya (better known as MN Roy) et al in 1915 during the First World War to attain Independence through armed insurrection in cooperation with Germany. In fact, the incident can be considered as precursor of the later attempt by Subash Chandra Bose in 1945 under the aegis of the Indian National Army (INA) during the Second World War.

Born in 1879 in a village called Koya in Kushtia district of undivided Bengal (presently Bangladesh), Bagha Jatin joined the Khudiram Bose College in Calcutta in 1895 after completion of his school education. His bravery, valour and daredevil spirit can be gauged from the fact that once in 1904, he killed a tiger in a forest, which attacked one of his friends, with the help of a dagger, after struggling for over three hours. The incident earned him the epithet Bagha (tiger) Jatin.

Bagha Jatin was greatly influenced by ideals and ideas of Bhagvat Geeta and the writings of Bankim Chandra. He was also inspired by Aurobindo's Bhavani Mandir and Vivekananda's Present India. The clarion call of militant nationalism mesmerised the restless youth of the country — particularly after the partition of Bengal in 1905 — who were disillusioned with the slow and piecemeal pace of progress towards independence and were losing faith in the efficacy of constitutional agitation in the form of protest and petition. The organisation that galvanised the spirit of strident nationalism was Jugantar and its icon was Bagha Jatin.

Near about 1905, he organised an association called Chhatra Bhandar. Although it was ostensibly established as a student's cooperative store association, practically, it was an outfit of revolutionaries of Bengal. He inspired and mobilised large group of young revolutionaries. MN Roy of Communist International fame came to know him in the later part of 1906 and accepted him as his leader. Both worked together in tandem.

By early 1914, the country was agog with discontentment against British rule, and what added fuel to the fire was the promise of moral and material support to the revolutionaries in India from revolutionaries fighting for the cause of independence from abroad such as the Ghadar Movement in Canada and the USA. It was against this backdrop that the outbreak of First World War in 1914 ignited the militant nationalism in the country. The Indian revolutionaries in exile looked towards Germany as the land of hope. Lala Hardayal of the Hindustan Ghadar Party in America was also carrying on similar activities there. The legendary Rash Behari Bose went to Japan. By the end of the year, the news reached that Indian Revolutionary Committee in Berlin, under the leadership of the redoubtable Birendranath Chatterjee, had obtained from the German government the promise of arms and money required to declare the war of independence. Clandestine conferences led to the formation of a revolutionary outfit with Bagha Jatin as the Commander-in-Chief.

It was in this context that MN Roy left India in April 1915 and proceeded to Batavia (Jakarta) in Indonesia where he adopted the name CA Martin. Bagha Jatin, in the meanwhile, anticipating the arrival of the arms and ammunitions and in order to avoid being caught by the police, especially after the Garden Reach dacoity, had left for Balasore in Orissa, not very far from Calcutta, in the company of a few select followers in April, 1915 before MN Roy left for Batavia. There, he and his loyal followers sheltered themselves in a place called Kaptipada — 22 miles from Balasore. Earlier in Balasore, Saileswar Bose — an associate of Jatin Mukherjee — had set up in April 1915 a business called the Universal Emporium which ostensibly dealt with the repair of bicycles and the sale of gramophones and records.

Unfortunately, the entire strategy envisaged for the armed rebellion got leaked and the British army intelligence intercepted the ship, which was on its way to India. After knowing the activities of Bagha Jatin and his associates, the British administration and the police cordoned off the hideout of Bagha Jatin so as to prevent the escape of Bagha Jatin and his associates. There was exchange of firearms on September 9 at a place called Chasakhand in Balasore. One of the revolutionaries named Chittapriya Roy Choudhury died. Manoranjan Sen Gupta and Niren Das Gupta, two other associates of Jatin Mukherjee, were captured after their ammunitions were exhausted. Bagha Jatin was seriously wounded and was taken to the government hospital at Balasore for treatment, where he succumbed to injury the next day on September 10.

Although the armed uprising could not take off, it was a brilliant mastermind considering the prevalent world situation in which the stratagem was envisaged. No wonder, therefore, the rebel poet Kazi Nazrul Islam had described it as the 'Haldighat of New India', and had composed a beautiful poem in Bengali, portraying the indomitable spirit of Bagha Jatin and his comrades who laid their lives at the altar of freedom struggle. True, in the battle of Haldighat, Rana Pratap was militarily defeated but he ignited the flame of patriotism and nationalism. Much research needs to be done to unravel the mystery of the failure of the armed uprising and accord rightful place to the martyrs of the uprising. It is worthwhile to recall what MN Roy wrote about Bagha Jatin in this context. Roy wrote: "The time has changed; the man who earned fame as a great conspirator against the imperialist state and an extraordinarily bold terrorist, is now to be memorialised as a great man in the history of modern India. His birthday is celebrated, and biographies written. But since his time, the political stage of India has been crowded with people claiming niches in history, if not places of honour in the pantheon of the great. Judged by his actual feats, minus the legends woven around them, Jatinda's name may be crowded out of the list of the national heroes…" Mentioning about his heroic fight at Balasore, Roy wrote: "There is no doubt that the story of Balasore Jungle can be dramatised, and done by a master artist, it may attain the grandeur of an epic poem…". He wrote further: "By way of expressing admiration and respect, the imperialist policeman who had the party to surround Jatinda's hiding place, said, 'He was the first Indian to die fighting, arm in hand'".

In fact, the great French philosopher Raymond Aron who supervised the thesis of Prithwindra Mukherjee, the grandson of Bagha Jatin, on Sri Aurobindo at the Sorbonne University, is reported to have observed the story (of Bagha Jatin) to be not only the missing link in our official history but also, in the person of Bagha Jatin, he saw the 'thinker in action'.

Views expressed are personal