Christmas Day Plot
Anushilan Samiti |
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Influence |
Anushilan Samiti |
Notable events |
Related topics |
The first Christmas Day plot was a conspiracy made by the
The second Christmas Day plot was to initiate an insurrection in
Background
The growth of the Indian middle class during the 19th century, amidst competition among regional powers and the ascendancy of the British
Anushilan, notably from early on, established links with foreign movements and Indian nationalism abroad. In 1907, Barin Ghosh arranged to send to Paris one of his associates by the name of
Jatindra Nath Mukherjee escaped arrest in the Alipore case, and took over the leadership of the secret society, to be known as the Jugantar Party. He revitalised the links between the central organisation in Calcutta and its several branches spread all over Bengal,
Pre-war developments
While incarcerated during the Howrah-Sibpur conspiracy trial, a nucleus emerged within the party comprising the most militant of the nationalists. These developed from early ideas initially mooted by Barin Ghosh. This nucleus foresaw the possibilities of an Anglo-German war in the near-future, and around this the revolutionaries intended to launch a guerilla war with assistance from Germany.[13] The trial brought to attention the direction the group headed, moving away from the efforts of the early revolutionaries which aimed to merely terrorise the British administration. The nucleus that arose during the trial held deeper political motives and aspirations, and built on this nucleus to develop an organisational network throughout Bengal and other parts of India.
The Howrah conspirators were released after about a year when the Howrah-Sibpur case collapsed due to lack of evidence.
Meanwhile, in 1912, Jatin met in the company of Naren Bhattacharya the Crown Prince of Germany during the latter's visit to Calcutta in 1912, and obtained an assurance that arms and ammunition would be supplied to them.
World War I
In response to Britain's entry to the war on the side of France, Germany had begun actively considering efforts to weaken the British war efforts by targeting her
At the time the war broke out, Jugantar, in a convened meeting, elected Jatin Mukherjee the supreme commander. The German consulate in Calcutta was at this time able to establish contacts with Jatin who, encouraged by Sir Ashutosh, had met D. Thibault, the Registrar of
Ghadar
Jatin's cousin
However, Rash Behari's plans for mutiny failed when, in February 1915, in a situation simmering in Punjab, Ghadar rose prematurely even before Papen had arranged to ship his arsenal. Set for 21 February 1915, details of the date and places found their way to Punjab CID through a spy, Kirpal Singh, recruited at the last minute. Sensing infiltration, a desperate Rash Behari brought forward the D-Day to the 19th, but incautiousness allowed Kirpal to report back to Punjab police in the nick of time. Jatin Mukherjee and the rest of the Bengal cell went underground.
Autumn 1915
In the aftermath of the failed February mutiny, concerted efforts attempted to destroy the Indian revolutionary movement. Preoccupied by the increasing police activities to prevent any uprising, eminent Jugantar members suggested that Jatin move to a safer place.
Christmas Day plot
German agents in Thailand and Burma included Emil and Theodor Helferrich— brothers of the German Finance minister Karl Helfferich. Through a Jugantar member named Jitendranath Lahiri, the Helferrichs had been able to establish links with Jatin Mukherjee in March 1915.[36] In April Jatin sent to Batavia Jitendra Nath and Narendranath Bhattacharya, the latter by then his chief lieutenant. Through the German Consul, Narendranath met with the Helfferich brothers in Batavia and was informed of the expected arrival of the Maverick with arms. The duo were to guide the Maverick, when she arrived, to the coast of the Bay of Bengal. In April, 1915, following instructions from Chatto passed on through, in order to make a deal with the German authorities concerning financial aid and the supply of arms. Although these were originally intended for Ghadar use, the Berlin Committee modified the plans, to have arms shipped into India to the eastern coast of India, through Hatia on the Chittagong coast, Raimangal in the Sundarbans and Balasore in Orissa, instead of Karachi as had been originally decided.[35] From the coast of the Bay of Bengal, these were to be collected by Jatin's group. For this purpose, Ashwini Lal Roy was sent to Raimangal to receive the maverick.[37] Jugantar also received funds (estimated to be Rs 33,000 between June and August 1915) from The Helfferich brothers through Harry & sons in Calcutta.[38]
Bengal
The date of insurrection was fixed for
Burma
To provide the Bengal group enough time to capture Calcutta and to prevent reinforcements from being rushed in, mutiny was planned for Burma with arms smuggled in from Neutral Thailand.
Andaman
At the same time that Jatin's group was to strike in Bengal, a German raid was planned for the penal colony in the Andaman islands. This was to be carried out with a German volunteer force raised from East Indies which would release the political prisoners to raise an expeditionary Indian force that would threaten the Indian coast.[38] The plan was proposed by Vincent Kraft, a German planter in Batavia who had been wounded fighting in France. It was approved by the foreign office on 14 May 1915, after consultation with the Indian committee, and raid was planned for Christmas Day 1915 by a force of nearly one hundred Germans led by a former naval officer von Müller was raised. Knipping made plans for shipping arms to the Andaman islands. However, Vincent Kraft was a double agent, and leaked details of Knippings plans to British intelligence. His own bogus plans for the raid were in the meantime revealed to Beckett by "Oren", but given the successive failures of the Indo-German plans, the plans for the operations were abandoned on the recommendations of both the Berlin Committee and Knipping.[46]
Culmination
The Christmas Day plot was ultimately leaked out through a number of sources. The earliest information was received on the details of the cargo being carried by the Maverick and of Jugantar's plans that were leaked to Beckett, the British Consul at Batavia, by a defecting Baltic-German agent under the alias "Oren". The Maverick was seized and alerts were sounded to British Indian police. Another source was the German double agent Vincent Kraft, a planter from Batavia, who passed information about arms shipments from Shanghai to British agents after being captured. Maps of the Bengal coast were found on Kraft when he was initially arrested and he volunteered the information that these were the intended landing sites for German arms.
Jatin Mukherjee's death
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 refused to leave them, however.
The contingent of Government forces approached them in a pincer movement. A gunfight ensued, lasting seventy-five minutes, between the five revolutionaries armed with Mauser pistols and the 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, killed by police bullets, in Balasore hospital on 10 September 1915.
Siam Burma plan
In the meantime, the Thai Police high command, which was largely British, discovered the plans for the Burmese insurrection, and Indian police infiltrated the plot through an Indian secret agent who was revealed the details by the Austrian chargé d'affaires. Thailand, although officially neutral, was allied closely with Britain and British India. On 21 July, the newly arrived British Minister Herbert Dering presented Foreign Minister Prince Devawongse with the request for arrest and extradition of Ghadarites identified by the Indian agent, ultimately resulting in the arrest of leading Ghadarites in August. Only a single raid into Burma was launched by six Ghadarites, who were captured and later hanged.[41][45][48]
Footnotes
- ^ Mukherjee 2010, p. 160
- ^ Majumdar 1975, p. 281
- ^ a b Hopkirk 2001, p. 179
- ^ Mitra 2006, p. 63
- ^ Desai 2005, p. 30
- ^ a b Acharya 1992, p. 6
- ^ a b Sen 2010, p. 244 In Bengal, militant nationalism took an organised form at the beginning of the twentieth century. The chief apostle of militant nationalism in Bengal was Aurobindo Ghose. In 1902, there were three secret societies in Calcutta – Anushilan Samiti, founded by Pramatha Mitra, a barrister of the High Court of Calcutta; a society sponsored by Aurobindo Ghosh and a society started by Sarala Devi ... government found it difficult to suppress revolutionary activities in Bengal owing to ... leaders like Jatindranath Mukherjee, Rashbehari Bose and Jadugopal Mukherjee.
- ^ a b Popplewell 1995, p. 104
- ^ a b Roy 1997, pp. 5–6 The first such dacoity was committed by Naren ... Around this time, revolutionaries threw a bomb at the carriage of Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy ... in Muzaffarpur, under the mistaken notion that the 'notorious' Magistrate Kingsford was in the carriage ... Nandalal Banerjee, an officer in the Intelligence Branch of the Bengal Police was shot dead by Naren.
- ^ a b c Roy 1997, p. 6 Aurobihdo's retirement from active politics after his acquittal ... Two centres were established, one was the Sramajibi Samabaya ... and the other in the name of S.D. Harry and Sons... Naren committed several dacoities to raise funds, for political activities.
- ^ M.N. Roy's Memoirs. Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1984 p. 3
- ^ Roy 1997, pp. 6–7 Shamsul Alam, an Intelligence officer who was then preparing to arrest all the revolutionaries ... was murdered by Biren Datta Gupta, one of Jatin Mukherjee's associates. This led to the arrests in the Howrah Conspiracy case.
- ^ a b Roy 1997, p. 7 The earlier revolutionaries did not concern themselves with anything beyond terrorising British administrators. The Howrah conspirators were not content with mere terrorism and held much deeper political motives and aspirations. The Howrah case revealed that the groups were actively planning an insurrection against the government through building a nucleus of organisational networks throughout Bengal and maintaining links with other parts of the country;
- ^ Roy 1997, pp. 7–8 Jatindranath Banerjee became a sanyasi in 1906 and went to the United Provinces (UP) and Punjab to preach revolution. Banerjee was able to convert Ajit Sirigh and his brother Kissen Singh (father of Bhagat Singh), Lala Hardayal, on his return to India in 1908, also became interested in the programme of the Bengal revolutionaries through Kissen Singh.
- ^ Desai 2005, p. 320
- ^ Popplewell 1995, p. 167
- ^ Terrorism in Bengal, Compiled and Edited by A.K. Samanta, Government of West Bengal, 1995, Vol. II, p625.
- ^ Hughes 2002, p. 450
- ^ a b Hughes 2002, p. 452
- ^ a b Hoover 1985, p. 251
- ^ Strachan 2001, p. 798
- ^ Hoover 1985, p. 252
- ^ Brown 1948, p. 300
- ^ a b c Roy 1997, p. 8 Satyen Sen joined the group in San Francisco at that time. Sen was sent to America by Jatin Mukherjee to establish contacts with the Ghadr Party. In November 1914 Satyen Sen returned to Calcutta with information about support from the Sikh community in the USA and Canada and introduced their leader Kartar Singh to Naren and Jatin Mukherjee in Calcutta... The German Consul General contacted the Bengal revolutionaries through D. Thibault, then Registrar of Calcutta University and Naren went to talk to him. After discussions with-the German diplomat, Naren requested Jatin Mukherjee, who was engaged in business in Jessore, to come to Calcutta. The German Consul General reported to Berlin that 'the activities of the secret revolutionary societies [were] very significant, especially those of Bengal' and recommended that his 'Government should avail itself of this opportunity of undermining British power and should help these revolutionaries actively'... Jatin Mukherjee had in the meanwhile been elected supreme commander in a hurriedly convened, meeting of different groups and leaders of Bengal.
- ^ Majumdar 1966, p. 167
- ^ Fraser 1977, p. 261
- ^ Gupta 1997, p. 12
- ^ Radhan 2002, p. 247
- ^ a b Strachan 2001, p. 796
- ^ Gupta 1997, p. 3
- ^ Wilma D (18 May 2006). "U.S. Customs at Grays Harbor seizes the schooner Annie Larsen loaded with arms and ammunition on June 29, 1915". HistoryLink.org. Retrieved 22 September 2007.
- ^ Hoover 1985, p. 256
- ^ Hopkirk 2001, p. 183
- ^ Fraser 1977, p. 263
- ^ a b c Strachan 2001, p. 800
- ^ Roy 1997, p. 11
- ^ Portrait of a Bengali Revolutionary": A Rejoinder. Samaren Roy.The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Feb. 1969), pp. 367-372. p371
- ^ a b Fraser 1977, p. 264
- ^ Hopkirk 2001, p. 189
- ^ Majumdar 1971, p. 382
- ^ a b Strachan 2001, p. 802
- ^ Deepak 1999, p. 442
- ^ Puri 1980, p. 60
- ^ Deepak 1999, p. 443
- ^ a b Fraser 1977, p. 266
- ^ Fraser 1977, p. 265
- ^ Hopkirk 2001, p. 182
- ^ Fraser 1977, p. 267
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