How the case against Aurobindo Ghosh collapsed
Snitches get stitches
Calcutta, 1907. Hemachandra Das has just returned from Europe with a 70-page manual from the Russians that instructs one on how to make bombs. Barin Ghosh, who had attracted several young revolutionaries under the banner of Jugantar, was quite excited at Hem’s return, and immediately set him to work manufacturing bombs. Hem here worked with Ulhaskar Dutt to make bombs. Ulhaskar had learned to make bombs from Jagadish Chandra Bose’s lab at Presidency College, and his collaboration with Hem took it to the next level.
Their target became Magistrate Kingsford, who had sentenced the editors of the Jugantar magazine to several years of rigorous imprisonment and then sentenced a young man, Sushil Sen, to be whipped for protesting against the sentencing.
Barin Ghosh provided his secluded family home in Muraripukur to store chemicals and manufacture bombs. His brother, Aurobindo Ghosh, the smart, spiritual, bookish one, seems to have provided ideological and political leadership while Barin took care of the day-to-day. Aurobindo Ghosh had, at this point, purposely flunked out of the Indian Civil Service exams, taken up a teaching position in Baroda state, then risen to be Maharaja Saiyajirao’s speechwriter, after which he moved to Bengal and was a rising star in the Indian National Congress.
Hem and Ulhaskar prepared a grenade, which then was taken by Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki to Muzzafarpur, where Magistrate Kingsford had been transferred for his safety. When bombing his carriage, their aim fell short and the grenade exploded on another carriage carrying his wife and her friend. Prafulla Chaki was cornered and shot himself, while Khudiram Bose was captured, tried and hanged.
Following this, the British authorities activated their informers among the Jugantar and Anushilan Samiti, and got to know of the Muraripukur house and trained their sights on Aurobindo and Barin Ghosh. The revolutionaries decided their time was up and a handful, including Hem, Barin and Ulhaskar decided they would turn themselves in and take on all the blame so the others could go free.
Irrespective, everyone connected to the Ghosh brothers, Jugantar, or Anushilan Samiti was arrested and imprisoned in Alipore jail.
The British officials were looking to take down both Aurobindo and Barin Ghosh. But Aurobindo was supposed to be their man on the outside, with his connections stretching from the politicians in the Congress to the Maharaja of Baroda, and they couldn’t afford to have him getting the noose.
Besides, there was no concrete evidence against Aurobindo. Only a piece of paper with his name on it was found in the Muraripukur house. They had previously tried and failed to get him for sedition for publishing the Jugantar magazine, so no words of his could be used against him.
The only thing they could hold against Aurobindo was eyewitness testimony tying him to the conspiracy.
The Stool Pigeon
Narendranath Goswami seems to have been an impetuous member of Jugantar. One other reference I found to him was in the 1907 Surat session of the Indian National Congress. This was the session where the loyalist wing of the INC (Gopalkrishna Gokhale, Pherozeshah Mehta) staged a coup against the more popular nationalists (Lal-Bal-Pal, Aurobindo Ghosh, Babarao Savarkar, Ajit Singh), and installed one of their own as the Congress president. This led to flying objects and fisticuffs, and Aurobindo felt unsafe. His associates, including Naren Goswami, were escorting him out to safety, when Naren said “I have a gun in my pocket. Just say the word and I will use it.” Aurobindo was shocked and said “Do no such thing” and Naren obeyed.
In any case, for reasons that are yet unclear, Naren Goswami decided to turn approver. It’s possible he was an informant from much earlier on, because the British couldn’t have gotten to the Muraripukur house without inside information. It’s also possible the possibility of a death sentence, or worse, sazaa-e-kalapani, scared him into doing so. Plus, the British didn’t shy from using torture on prisoners. They had already put several into solitary confinement.
Here is the description of the prison in Aurobindo’s own words:
My prison-cell was nine feet long and about five or six feet wide. This windowless cage, fronted by a large iron barred-door, was assigned to me as my abode. The cell opened into a very small courtyard, paved with stones and surrounded by a high brick wall. A wooden door led outside. The door had a small peep-hole at eye-level, for sentries to keep a periodic watch on the convicts when the door was closed. The door to the courtyard of my cell was generally kept open. {..}
There were varying degrees of severity even in solitary confinement though. The first degree of severity consisted of keeping the courtyard doors shut to deprive the prisoner of all human contact. The tenuous link with the outside world was then preserved through the eyes of the vigilant sentries and the visits of fellow-convicts, who came twice a day to deliver meals. It appears that Hemachandra Das was a notch higher than me on the scale of the CID's (Criminal Investigation Department) affections, as evidenced by him being singled out to undergo this form of punishment.
A still higher degree of severity consisted of having a prisoner's hands bound in handcuffs and feet in shackles. One might assume that prescription of such a severe form of punishment would require a suitably grave offense like physical violence or disrupting the peace in jail. But that assumption would be incorrect. Even slackness in prison labour or repetition of mistakes in one's assigned work would often be adequate cause to invite such harsh punishment.
The legal system disallowed under-trial prisoners to be subjected to solitary confinement or to be held under such torturous conditions. But such niceties of law were dispensed with when dealing with those accused in affairs related to the Swadeshi movement or 'Bande Mataram' and hence arrangements were promptly made for them as desired by the police.
Naren Goswami was isolated from his colleagues in the European ward of the hospital wing in the prison (side note: there were European and Indian wards of hospitals, even in prisons, wtf).
Betrayal Breeds Retaliation
The imprisoned members of Jugantar realized that Naren Goswami had likely turned approver. Naren’s testimony would squarely implicate Aurobindo as a leader in the conspiracy. A decision was taken to silence him.
Barin Ghosh had already been planning an escape, with guns and acid to overwhelm the guards and break out. He had received a gun, but Satyen Bose, his relative (technically his maternal uncle, but a decade younger than him), said it was too big, and they waited until they were able to smuggle smaller guns into the prison.
Then Kanailal Dutt along with Satyen Bose, feigned illness and got sent to the hospital. From there, he sent word to Naren Goswami that he too wished to turn approver. Naren Goswami, with the help of the officials, decided to meet with Kanailal and Satyen, in the hopes of extracting a confession.
Naren Goswami came down the stairs of the ward to meet Dutt and Bose, accompanied by a European convict-overseer named Higgins. The moment they saw him, they both shot at him.
Higgins tried to catch and apprehend Dutt, but was shot through the wrist. Naren was now shot in several places, but managed to escape and run away, as did Higgins. Other prisoners and warders ran after them, but Kanai shot back at them and they ran away to the entrance to call for reinforcements. Naren and Higgins ran into another convict overseer Linton, who then tried to spirit them away to safety, but Kanai and Satyen were in hot pursuit. Linton caught hold of Satyen and grappled with him, but Kanai fired a shot close to him, which disoriented and distracted Linton. Seizing the opportunity, Satyen shot Naren in the back, and he collapsed into a drain. Linton managed to get the guns away from Satyen and Kanai, and they were apprehended by other prisoners, but Naren was delirious and dying, and couldn’t be revived.
No more eyewitness testimony, no more case
With Naren Goswami gone, there was no one else to give testimony against Aurobindo Ghose.
Letters between Aurobindo and his wife Mrinalini that were used as evidence were now spun as evidence of Aurobindo’s peaceful nature by his lawyer Chittaranjan Dass.
The verdicts of death for Khudiram Bose had met with virulent protests, which made the court have strict security for the delivery of the verdict against the Alipore conspirators.
Ulhaskar and Barin were sentenced to death, which was later commuted to life imprisonment. Hemachandra got life, and in the words of the DIG in charge of the case, “Hem Das for the first time looked seriously depressed. I think he was disappointed at not being sentenced to death.”
In the case of Aurobindo, the judge, who had ranked lower than Aurobindo in the ICS exams the same year as him, said
The point is whether his writings & speeches, which in themselves seem to advocate nothing more than the regeneration of his country, taken with the facts proved against him in this case are sufficient to show that he was a member of the conspiracy. And taking all the evidence together I am of the opinion that it falls short of such proof as would justify me in finding him guilty of such a serious charge."
Aurobindo Ghosh was free!
The Attitude toward Approvers
In the case of Abhinav Bharat as well as Anushilan Samiti/Jugantar, the British succeeded as much as they did due to turning conspirators into approvers. Savarkar went down because his close associate Chaturbhuj Amin turned approver, as did Harishchandra Koregaonkar, who had shepherded Madanlal Dhingra into successfully assassinating Lord Curzon Wyllie. In the case of Abhinav Bharat, the top leadership was already arrested and sentenced and several of the associates and underlings were also arrested, so they couldn’t do anything to the approvers. And even so, Ganu Vaidya, the armorer of Nashik who turned approver in the case of the Rand assassination, was done away with.
But with Anushilan Samiti and the case of Aurobindo Ghosh, a few things were in their favor - the British then hadn’t dealt with such a case, so they didn’t know what to expect, and hence this plan worked out. They were far more secretive in Savarkar’s case about who the approvers were.
The question arises: should we, with the benefit of hindsight, applaud the killings of approvers?
Death is never something to be celebrated, and this is also the attitude that the revolutionaries carried. They didn’t hold anything against the British as a race or as individuals. They also were very particular to not inconvenience the general public or the less fortunate. When they attempted assassinations, they made them quite targeted. They gave themselves up to the authorities and went to prison and faced trial and gallows willingly. The deterrent to doing this, however, tended to be the illegal torture they would face in prison, which motivated some like Vanchinathan and Prafulla Chaki to shoot themselves rather than be captured alive.
In light of this, the death of an approver was a means to an end, nothing more or less. It’s unlikely that having to end a colleague gave them any more pleasure or relief than knowing that they were betrayed.
Aftermath
Satyen Bose and Kanai Dutt were tried and sentenced to death.
Aurobindo Ghosh had a vision of the Goddess while in prison and felt a calling. He knew he would be persecuted if he stayed in Calcutta after his release, so he went to the French territory of Chandernagore, and then to Pondicherry. Initially, he tapped into his connections with Maharaja Saiyajirao and worked with other revolutionary exiles in Pondicherry, like Savarkar’s associate VVS Aiyar, to keep the movement going. But over time, he focused more on spirituality, became known as Sri Aurobindo, and had a massive impact on many. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize twice.
Wikipedia says that Barin Ghosh escaped from Kalapani in 1915, but was then recaptured and sent back, but I can’t find any evidence of this anywhere, including in Barin Ghosh’s account of his time in prison. He was very influenced by his brother and stayed with him in Pondicherry for a while before returning to Bengal and working as a journalist and writer.
There is a memoir by Hemachandra Das, but it is in Bengali, and I haven’t managed to find anyone to translate it for me yet. If you can, please let me know, I would like nothing better than to understand his account of how he learned to make bombs from the Russians.
Ulhaskar Dutt was tortured very badly in prison and almost lost his mind, but kept it together by thinking of his former fiancee Lila, who was the daughter of Congressman Bipin Pal. The book Revolutionaries by Sanjeev Sanyal quotes Bibek Debroy on what happened afterwards: After his release, he went looking for her, but she was married to someone else, and he went back to revolutionary work and was imprisoned again in the 1930s. But after independence, Ulhaskar had become a recluse living in a village in East Bengal. But in a heart-wrenching twist, he got to know that Lila was widowed and paralyzed in Bombay, and he brought her to live with him in Silchar, and looked after her in her final years.
It is amazing to me that both Sri Aurobindo and Savarkar, who kicked off the violent struggle for independence in the 20th century, both made it to see the British leave India. I do find it appalling that neither was leading the people of a free India then, and not for lack of trying. Maybe it is for the best that Sri Aurobindo stayed away from politics, because at least he didn’t have to be tormented and mistreated in false cases like Savarkar was. I suppose therein lies the tragedy that these were the options for these great men.