Bagha Jatin
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Date of Birth |
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Dec 7, 1879 |
Date of Death |
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Sep 10, 1915 |
Place of Birth |
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Nadia district |
Bagha Jatin, born Jatindranath Mukherjee was a Bengali Indian
revolutionary activist against British rule. He was one of the leaders
of the Yugantar party that was the main association of revolutionaries
in Bengal, and was responsible for the planned German Plot during World
War I. Jatin was born in Kayagram, a village in the Kushtia subdivision
of Nadia district in what is now Bangladesh. His parents were
Umeshchandra Mukherjee and Sharatshashi; he grew up in his ancestral
home at Jhenaidah till his father's death when Jatin was five years old.
His mother settled in her parents' home in Kayagram with him and his
elder sister Benodebala. As he grew older, Jatin gained a reputation for
physical bravery and great strength; the name by which he came to be
known ("Bagha Jatin" - Tiger Jatin) derived from an incident in which he
killed a tiger with nothing but a knife.
After passing the Entrance examination in 1895, he
joined the Calcutta Central College (now Maulana Azad College), for his
First Arts. Soon he started visiting Swami Vivekananda, whose social
thought, and especially his vision of a politically independent India,
had a great influence on him. In 1900, Jatin married Indubala Banerjee
of the Kumarkhali upazila in Kushtia; they had four children: Atindra
(1903-1906), Ashalata (1907-1976), Tejendra (1909-1989) and Birendra
(1913-1991). Jatin, together with Barindra Ghosh, set up a terrorist
bomb factory near Deoghar, while Barin did the same at Maniktala in
Calcutta; the aim, aside from the general production of terror, was the
elimination of certain British officers. In 1908 Jatin was not one of
over thirty revolutionaries accused in the Alipore bomb case following
the Muzaffarpur bombing. During the Alipore Bomb Case, Jatin took over
the leadership of the Yugantar Party, and revitalised the links between
the central organization in Calcutta and its several branches spread all
over Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and several places in U.P. On 24 January
1910, as part of a Yugantar campaign against those who had been
responsible for the arrests and trials in the Alipore bomb case, Samsul
Alam, the Deputy Superintendent of Police, was shot and killed by Biren
Dutta Gupta on the stairs of the Calcutta High Court building. Jatin was
arrested in connection with this murder, but was released and
immediately re-arrested along with forty-six others in connection with
the Howrah conspiracy case. While held in Howrah jail, awaiting trial,
Jatin made contact with many fellow prisoners, prominent revolutionaries
belonging to various groups operating in different parts of Bengal, who
were all accused in the case. He was also informed by his emissaries
abroad that very soon Germany was to declare war against England. He
counted heavily on this war to organise an armed uprising among the
Indian soldiers in various regiments. The Howrah conspiracy case failed
due to lack of proper evidence ,and Jatin was acquitted in 1911 and
released. He lost his government job, and started a contract business
constructing the Jessore-Jhenaidah railway line. He went on a
pilgrimage, and at Hardwar visited Bholananda Giri who had given him
spiritual instruction in 1906. Jatin went on to Brindavan where he met
Swami Niralamba (who, before becoming a sanyasi, had been Jateendra Nath
Bannerjee), a renowned revolutionary who followed Sri Aurobindo's
teachings. Niralamba gave Jatin information about and links to the units
set up by him in Uttar Pradesh and the Punjab, revolutionary activities
in these regions being led by Lala Hardayal and Rash Behari Bose. On
return from his pilgrimage, Jatin started reorganising Yugantar. During
the flooding of Hughli and Midnapore, relief work brought together the
leaders of various of these groups, and they chose Jatin and Rashbehari
Bose as leaders in Bengal and northern India respectively. There were
also attempts to organise expatriate Indian revolutionaries; a Yugantar
Ashram was set up in San Francisco, California, and the Sikh community
also became involved. When World War I broke out, European-based Indian
revolutionaries met in Berlin in order to form the Indian Independence
Party, and gained the support of the German government. In September
1914, the International Pro-India Committee was formed at Zurich by
Champakaraman Pillai, who also became its president. Later it was merged
into a bigger body, the Berlin Committee, led by Chatto, alias
Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, which had as members almost all the
prominent Indian revolutionaries abroad, including the leaders of the
Ghadar Party. Many members of the Gadhar party arrived in India, and
helped the revolutionaries in their attempts to create an uprising
inside India during World War I, with the help of arms, ammunition, and
funds supplied by the German government. Yugantar, under Jatin's
leadership, had been planning and organising an armed revolt. Rash
Behari Bose accepted the task of carrying out the plan in Uttar Pradesh
and the Punjab. This plan came to be known as the the German Plot, the
Indo-German Conspiracy, or the Zimmermann Plan. Yugantar started to
collect funds by organising a series of dacoities (armed robberies)
known as "Taxicab dacoities" and "Boat dacoities". As the police
activities to prevent any uprising increased, eminent members of
Yugantar suggested that Jatin should move to a safer place. Balasore on
the Orissa coast was selected as a suitable place, as it was very near
the spot where German arms were to be landed for the Indian rising. To
facilitate transmission of information to Jatin, a business house under
the name "Universal Emporium" was set up, as a branch of Harry &
Sons in Calcutta, which had been created in order to keep contacts with
revolutionaries abroad. Jatin therefore moved to a hideout outside
Kaptipada village in the native state of Mayurbhanj, more than thirty
miles away from Balasore. Jatin was alerted and advised 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
the fleeing revolutionaries, 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 September 9, 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
surrounded them. A gunfight ensued, lasting seventy-five minutes,
between the five revolutionaries armed with Mauser pistols and a 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. Jatin died in Balasore hospital on 10
September 1915.