Days of Glory

By Birendra Bhattacharjee

In the early twentieth century, the British Empire was at its zenith- the sun never set on the empire, which spread all over the globe. Birendra lost faith in endless street agitations, conferences, meetings, the boycotting of British made goods and patriotic songs. He did not think these could ever achieve Independence. Birendra wanted to hit the mighty empire directly and did so independently with his faithful brave associates.

"Days of Glory" is a Memoir of Birendra Bhattacharjee who played a prominent role in the revolutionary cadres of the time in Bengal. Seeking more action and impact, he formed his own small organization with some faithful associates and went on to strike out at the British Empire. Providence, however, did not grant him much time. His one act of insurrection became a prominent and celebrated case, but he was betrayed and turned over to the authorities, arrested, tortured and imprisoned.

There is considerable debate about how exactly India gained its freedom. In the late 1940s and 50s it was taught and widely accepted that it was Gandhi who gained independence. It was said that the British were afraid of the damage that would be caused to their reputations by the sight of non-violent Indians being willingly beaten by stick-wielding policemen in the Raj's employment.

Over time this belief has changed based on new facts and attitudes. Although this will be criticized as an unpatriotic stance, Independence did not turn out to be a matter of gaining glorious freedom but was rather a transfer of power, leaving everything intact from the British administration and transferring the levers of power to the new rulers. This included placing Indian Governors / Rashtrapati in the Vice-regal palace.

At the outset, there was only an administration that was selected by the preferences of a single man Gandhi, who won the hearts of millions of Indians. He preferred a simple agrarian life, cleaning latrines and spinning cloth and viewed all industrial progress with suspicion.

It all started with great enthusiasm. Mahatma Gandhi started the full independence movement in 1921 but after the violence in Chourichoura he abandoned the movement altogether. Bengal had steered its own course in the early part of the century. In 1905, it was Curzon, a staunch imperialist who undertook the division of Bengal. With the acquiescence of the Nawab of Dhaka, who was himself suspicious of the Hindu population and the prospect of a loss of power should the British leave. Curzon divided Bengal into the Muslim dominant east and the Hindu majority west. 1908 saw Arabinda and Barin Ghosh convicted in the Alipore bombing case. That was the year when Khudiram Bose was hanged for another bomb-throwing case.

The Bengali youth lost confidence in Gandhi's approach. His approach of non-violence with its attendant motivations to embarrass the British, were not making sufficient progress in their eyes. The Bengali youth wanted action.

Birendra was born with the surname Bhattacharjee. His ancestors were all Gangopadhyay, but in native Bramhanbaria they took the title of Bhattacharjee. His was a lower middle-class family from an obscure village and the family income came from what little land they owned, supplemented by his father Mahendra Chandra's salary from a Dhaka landlord's office. The family was always financially constrained. Mahendra would disembark from the train several stops before his destination and walk up to twenty miles to save a few annas. Birendra was the great hope for the family. From a young age his intelligence, charm and charisma were remarked upon. But he left his family, his home and a comfortable professional path for a life of ideology, action, danger and ultimately arrest, torture and imprisonment. This sacrifice is impossible to understand in today's world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sushanta Bhattacharjee
• Release date: Mar 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9788192006314

Book preview

Dedicated to my late father and in memory of those who sacrificed their best years of lives in return for nothing.

Edited By: Tapan Kumar Bhattacharyya

Copyright © 2020 by Tapan Kumar Bhattacharyya

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ISBN 978-81-920063-1-4

In the early twentieth century the British Empire was at its zenith- the sun never set on the empire, which spread all over the globe from Australia, New Zealand to Malay, Burma and India, to Yemen, Transjordan, Egypt, Africa, Guyana and on to Canada. Birendra lost faith in endless street agitations, conferences, meetings, the boycotting of British made goods and patriotic songs. He did not think these could ever achieve independence. Birendra wanted to hit the mighty empire directly and did so independently with his faithful brave associates.

Birendra in his youth

Introduction

THERE IS CONSIDERABLE debate about how exactly India gained its freedom. In the late 1940’s and 50’s it was taught and widely accepted that it was Gandhi who gained the independence. It was said that the British were afraid of the damage that would be caused to their reputations by the sight of non-violent Indians being willingly beaten by stick-wielding policemen in the Raj’s employment.

Over time this belief has changed based on new facts and attitudes. Although this will be criticised as an unpatriotic stance, Independence did not turn out to be a matter of gaining a glorious freedom but was rather a transfer of power, leaving everything intact from the British administration and transferring the levers of power to the new rulers. This included placing Indian Governors / Rashtrapati in the Vice-regal palace.

At the outset there was only an administration that was selected by the preferences of a single man Gandhi, who won the hearts of millions of Indians. He preferred a simple agrarian life, cleaning latrines and spinning cloth and viewed all industrial progress with suspicion.

There were whispers that the incidence of the INA and naval revolt in Bombay harbour, might excite further mutiny across the Raj. After all, the Raj had always depended on its military force, over centuries, winning battle after battle against squabbling Indian Raja’s and Nawabs. Their motivations were commercial and far from patriotic. However, it was claimed that thousands of INA soldiers were shot dead at the dead of night in internment camps by the British. Others were termed traitors, and many forfeited their pensions.

Another belief which probably better evidenced, is that the British lost their capacity to maintain their Indian Empire after the Second World War. Britain lacked the will, the manpower and resources. Instead her efforts were directed towards internal rebuilding after the war and towards the Common European project. Churchill, a staunch supporter of the British Empire, lost the election immediately after war and this too helped India to gain its freedom in the form of a transfer of power, from a rapidly retreating British administration to the Indian Congress - the only Indian party at that time, which wanted power as soon as possible. The massive slaughter on religious lines and the ethnic cleansing which was waiting to happen was not on the minds of the new rulers. They did not do anything to prevent it nor did they take any measures beforehand to avoid it. Millions lost everything- their lives; their relations; their assets; ancestral homes of a thousand years; culture and freedom.

Now what was the role of Bengali revolutionaries during these times?

Bengal suddenly came into the fore with the British conquering the region in the battle of Plassey. To what extent Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah the last ruler of Bengal and a descendent of an Afghan mercenary was a Bengali, is a point of debate, although he is remembered as a patriotic figure. Prior to that, Pratapaditya, one of twelve Bengali landlords during the time of Akbar, tried to establish a free Bengal but then was defeated by another Hindu Indian general of Rajput descent working as Akbar’s general. Pratapaditya met a tragic end and it is widely believed he died in the iron cage where he was kept on his way to Delhi to show the prize catch to Mughal emperor in his Aam Darbar. But the emperor only saw the severed head soaked in oil which was brought to him. With Job Charnok came the new town or a city later in British India, Calcutta.

For Bengalis, education was paramount and there were many pundits in Sanskrit and several others learned Farsi and held posts in the courts of Nawabs and later in the British Court. In due course English education was introduced. The British correctly anticipated that with English education, western philosophy and ideologies would come to Bengali minds. True enough, this new wave of modern thought brought the change that had swept across the West, to Bengal. Bengal too enjoyed its own renaissance with Raja Ram Mohan, Vidyasagar, Bankim Chandra with his story of the Sanyasi revolt, Anandamath and the song Bande Mataram that revived the Bengali spirit for social change and inspired a new hunger for freedom. Even Dirozio supported the teaching of independent thought, which was at odds with Bengali culture, which itself forbade the questioning of seniors, cultural norms or religious rules.

There were even some British who sided with Bengalis to encourage them to enter the modern world. The French Revolution and the storming of the Bastille, where anyone would be imprisoned on the whim of the elite, were often cited and the idea of independence grew. The Congress party, which was first formed by a British man, played a major role in spreading the idea of independence.

It all started with great enthusiasm. Mahatma Gandhi started the full independence movement in 1921 but after the violence in Chourichoura he abandoned the movement altogether. Bengal had steered its own course in the early part of the century. In 1905, it was Curzon, a staunch imperialist who undertook the division of Bengal. With the acquiescence of the Nawab of Dhaka, who was himself suspicious of the Hindu population and the prospect of a loss of power should the British leave. Curzon divided Bengal into the Muslim dominant east and the Hindu majority west. 1908 saw Arabinda and Barin Ghosh convicted in the Alipore bombing case. That was the year when Khudiram Bose was hanged for another bomb-throwing case and his associate Prafulla Chaki took his own life.

The Bengali youth lost confidence in Gandhi’s approach. His approach of non-violence with its attendant motivations to embarrass the British, were not making sufficient progress in their eyes. The Bengali youth wanted action. Though the region had many Gandhians, the Bengali revolutionaries stole the limelight with their deeds and their adventures will be celebrated for years to come. Moreover, these were anonymous figures from remote areas, but they succeeded in unsettling an empire.

Birendra was born with the surname Bhattacharjee. His ancestors were all Gangopadhyay, but in native Bramhanbaria they took the title of Bhattacharjee. His was a lower middle-class family from an obscure village and the family income came from what little land they owned, supplemented by his father Mahendra Chandra’s salary from a Dhaka landlord’s office. The family was always financially constrained. Mahendra would disembark from the train several stops before his destination and walk up to twenty miles to save a few annas. Birendra was the great hope for the family. From a young age his intelligence, charm and charisma were remarked upon. But he left his family, his home and a comfortable professional path for a life of ideology, action, danger and ultimately arrest, torture and imprisonment. This sacrifice is impossible to understand in today’s world.

He played a prominent role in the revolutionary cadres of the time in Bengal but, seeking more action and impact, he formed his own small organisation with some faithful associates and went on to strike out at the British Empire. Providence however did not grant him much time. His one act of insurrection became a prominent and celebrated case, but he was betrayed and turned over to the authorities, arrested, tortured and imprisoned. More gravely still, after Independence, he and his fellows from Bengal were side-lined by the Congress party and airbrushed from the history of the Independence movement of India.

Many freedom fighters died of starvation and poverty after being displaced from East Pakistan after the Bengal Partition. And it was only in the 1960s and 1970s that the government arranged the most meagre pension for those who were still alive. It amounted to little more than a few tens of rupees. In sharp contrast, the new democratic rulers of India continued to live in a style that could only be described as imperial.

Birendra himself confessed that at the time of his activities he did not map out the likely path of the future. In 1975 I recall him reminiscing with a former comrade involved in the Steven’s assassination. They had been assured by the senior members of their organisations that India, once free, would provide a brighter, equitable future for all its citizens but that was clearly not the case. They wondered if it had been worth making the extreme sacrifices, they made for the status quo they now saw about them. The personal cost to them was everything they had and the societal cost, through the passage of history and political mismanagement, led to the death and displacement of millions and the continued disenfranchisement of so many.

After being released from prison, he joined the Marxist party, which was then illegal and was jailed once more. After that he returned home after many years, his father now dead and his mother very old. With a sense of guilt at her despair, noting too how he had not attained the more secure future they had hoped he would give he had been at Dhaka Medical School, he promised her to follow a more conventional path and embark on a family life. But finding conventional work was not easy. I still remember how despite a grave fever, he embarked on a perilous journey to a remote hill station tea garden. He loved a challenge and it took him beyond transportation, to a place where he had to wade across the river with his luggage and papers held aloft. In the absolute darkness he finally discerned a dim light and there found, within a small hut, a man from a local tribe who took him in. Rather than be unnerved at such a journey and the remoteness, he felt remarkably at home. 

His sacrifices cost him dear but also impacted his family. Working in remote places and being absent from home meant that the burden of raising the family in the most challenging circumstances fell squarely on his wife, Suhashini. She had also been imprisoned by the British. She had been a teacher and left that profession to raise her family. Though he lived until 87 and worked hard into his 70s, he could never catch up commercially with the counterfactual life he had given up. His selfless attitude to his fellow workers made him a wonderful colleague but hardly a successful capitalist. This too took its toll on the family. However, today his children and grandchildren live around the world, secure in reputable professionals. Importantly they each look back at Birendra and Suhashini with respect, admiration and affection. 

Birendra spoke little of his revolutionary activities. Perhaps he felt guilty about the huge toll it had taken on his family. Perhaps he was too pained to see the way India had evolved. However, he wrote it all down, in confidence. This manuscript was only discovered after his death. Moreover, with the overlooking of the Bengali movement since 1947, he assumed there would be little interest in his activities.

A few years ago, I had an email forwarded to me from family members from the USA vis Australia about a documentary Ye Mothers, which described the Comilla incident. I tracked down the producer and it turned out that the team behind the film travelled to Calcutta and Calcutta Police HQ to find the old papers about this case untouched and accumulating dust. I was surprised by their interest but saw a glimmer of hope that interests were growing.

For this work I am indebted to several of my family members. My nephew Sushanta and his wife Flavia have been instrumental in creating this e-book, something which was well beyond my capacities. My nephew Sudip was instrumental