The Empire would give up its Indian colony, announced Clement Atlee, Prime Minister of Britain. The Great War had left Britain tottering on the brink of bankruptcy. The Red Fort Trials of three INA leaders for ‘waging war against the King-Emperor’ had resulted in the strangest verdict in military history: Guilty, but free to go. When the entire country had rallied to support the heroes of the liberation army of Subhash Chandra Bose, and cries of “Lal Qile se ek awaaz, Sahgal, Dhillon, Shahnawaz!” were echoing nationwide, the British couldn’t have dared to do otherwise. To add salt to the imperial wound, the Royal Indian Navy had revolted in February 1946 – and when the army was called in to suppress the mutiny, many soldiers had refused to shoot. And then, only days later, a mutiny at Jabalpur had involved 1,700 soldiers.
Nine Turbulent Decades: 1857- 1947
The 1857 War of Independence saw rebel soldiers capture and hold Delhi for months. The Rani of Jhansi died a martyr. Meerut, Kanpur, Lucknow and Gwalior were major action spots. But the rest of India was in ferment too. To cite an example from Kerala, Vanji Cudorat Kunji Mayan was arrested on 3September 1857 for propagating rebellion. William Logan’s famed Malabar Manual states he was, “using seditious and inflammatory language in the public streets of Telicherry and invoking the people in the name of God to rid the country of the Kafirs (Europeans). The country was then in a very disaffected state owing to scarcity of rice and the outbreak of the mutiny. The excitement caused by Mayan’s preaching was so great...”
In Odisha, the Sai brothers resisted the British unto their last breaths. In January 1858 Chaabilo Sai and 58 warriors fell in battle. Surendra Sai waged guerrilla warfare for years, eventually surrendering in 1860 with 40 men. Surendra Sai, Udanta Sai and Medini Sai all died in jail in the 1880s. In 1872, the Viceroy, Lord Mayo, was assassinated by Sher Ali Afridi, while visiting the Andamans. In 1879 Vasudev Phadke raised an armed force and attacked British installations in the Bombay presidency. Exiled to Aden, he undertook a fast unto death and died in 1883. In 1897 Pune Commissioner Rand and Lt Ayerst were assassinated by the Chapekar brothers.
The 1905 Partition of Bengal and the shifting of India’s capital from Calcutta to Delhi in 1911 were desperate attempts by the British to contain the influence of the revolutionaries. But Delhi was susceptible too. In 1912 the Viceroy narrowly escaped a bomb attack while riding a ceremonial elephant in Chandni Chowk. London wasn’t immune either. Madanlal Dhingra in 1909 and Udham Singh in 1940 shot dead William Curzon Wylie and Michael O’Dwyer respectively. And both went merrily to the gallows. The Lal-Bal-Pal triumvirate led the freedom struggle before Gandhi’s arrival in 1915 (Lala Lajpat Rai, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal). Once Gandhi had gained control of the Congress he made sure India was firmly on Britain’s side in the two World Wars. Countless Indian soldiers died on alien battlefields. World War I ended in 1918 and the Jallianwala Bagh massacre happened in 1919.
The death of Lala Lajpat Rai following a lathi charge in November 1928 triggered the Saunders killing (Lahore Conspiracy II). The hanging of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev in March 1931 set the country on fire. Retaliatory strikes by militant groups went on for the next few years. Every uprising was brutally suppressed – and indeed there were many.
Singapore Mutiny, 1915
In Singapore on 16 February 1915 half of the 850 soldiers of the 5th Light Infantry revolted. They had arrived from Madras in October 1914. When they heard that their next destination would be the Middle East (to fight the Ottomans), the Pathans and Punjabi Muslims were infuriated. Four companies revolted. They killed two British officers and the guards of the German prisoner of war camp, and went on a rampage, killing white-skinned civilians. After 5 days of chaos reinforcements arrived and the revolt was crushed. Reprisals followed: 47 executions, 64 transported for life, many others jailed.
The Singapore Mutiny was part of a larger conspiracy by the Ghadar Party, formed in 1913 in San Francisco by expatriate Indians, mostly Sikhs. Realizing that the war presented the perfect opportunity for India to break free, the Ghadarites made daring attempts to incite rebellions in army ranks, travelling as far as Hong Kong and the Middle East for this purpose. Between 1915 and 1917 there were three Mandalay Conspiracy cases involving the Ghadarites and many brave men went to the gallows and the Andamans. Over 400 Ghadarites were executed.
Peshawar Riot, Chittagong Armoury Raid: 1930
In 1930 there were riots in Peshawar involving ‘Redshirt’ demonstrators of the Frontier Congress. When two platoons of the Royal Garhwal Rifles refused to undertake anti-riot duty the British reacted with vengeance, imprisoning the officers and discharging the riflemen. Describing the incident, a British civil servant wrote, "Hardly any regiment of the Indian Army won greater glory in the Great War (World War I) than the Garhwal Rifles, and the defection of part of the regiment sent shock waves through India, of apprehension to some, of exultation to others."
In March 1930 the Mahatma commenced his Dandi March and on April 6 grabbed handfuls of salt in a symbolic gesture of defiance. The Chittagong Armoury Raid took place on April 18. It was masterminded by ‘Masterda’ Surya Sen and involved 64 young men. A few days later the tragic Battle of Jalalabad Hill claimed the lives of 12 revolutionaries and 80 soldiers. Those who escaped were hunted down and killed. Surjya Sen and Tarkeshwar Dastidar were hanged on 12 January 1934 and their bodies dumped in the Bay of Bengal.
Freedom and Thereafter
75 years ago on this day (26th January 1943), 600 Indians in Berlin celebrated ‘Indian Independence Day’ and toasted Subhash Chandra Bose. That Netaji was preparing to leave for south-east Asia in a German submarine was a secret known only to one man – ACN Nambiar. Abid Hassan, Netaji’s co-voyager, learned of the plan only after reaching the Baltic Sea coast. In Singapore, Mohan Singh, Rash Behari Bose and the INA waited. The Battle of Imphal and Kohima, the Japanese surrender and the mysterious Formosa plane crash were still far away.
When freedom came in 1947, the contributions of the Ghadar Party, the Berlin Committee, and the Indian Legion, the HSRA and the NJBS, Jugantar and Anushilan, IRA and INA, the RIN rebels, the communists, and innumerable others were forgotten. Public memory is short. That’s why we need history books.
A tale of two heroes
The martyrs India forgot are so numerous that listing their sacrifices would take years of research and fill thousands of pages. I have chosen at a random two lesser known heroes –Bagha’ Jatin and ‘Jai Hind’ Chempakaraman Pillai – to briefly illustrate their role in our freedom struggle. Jatindranath Mukherjee became Bagha (Tiger) Jatin when he killed a tiger with only a dagger. He had much to do with founding and sustaining the Anushilan Samiti and the Jugantar Party, both highly secretive militant organizations. He was jailed in the Howrah-Sibpur Conspiracy Case. Setting up a bomb factory, inciting army units to rebellion, thrashing three British officers at Siliguri railway station, and masterminding taxi-cab dacoities and assassinations were only a few of Jatin’s exploits.
When Germany’s Crown Prince visited Calcutta shortly before World War I, Jatin met him and requested armament supplies. (This was part of the larger ‘Hindu- German Conspiracy’ in which the Ghadarites later went on trial in California.) Balasore on the Odisha coast was selected as a secret landing place for the arms. Jatin moved to a hideout outside Kaptipada village in April 1915 and sent Naren Bhattacharya (M N Roy) to Batavia to finalize the deal. When British intelligence got wind of their plans, Jatin and his comrades went into hiding. After a few months on the run they were surrounded and a prolonged gun battle culminated in the death of Chittapriya Ray Chaudhuri and the capture of two others. Bagha Jatin succumbed to his wounds on 10 September, 1915.
Chempakaraman Pillai’s ashes were immersed in the Karama River at Trivandrum, three decades after his mysterious death in Berlin in 1934. When Hitler in a media interview made a derogatory remark about India, Pillai wrote a letter to the Reich Chancellor demanding an explanation. This soured his relations with the Fuhrer and probably caused his tragic death. Born in Trivandrum on 15 September 1891 to Chinnaswamy Pillai and Nagammal, he was nicknamed Jai Hind Chempakaraman because he greeted friends in Maharaja’s College with a slogan he had coined: ‘Jai Hind!’ In 1908 he left for Europe, studied in Italy, Switzerland and Germany, obtained doctorates in economics and engineering, and associated with Subhash Chandra Bose, MN Roy, Virendranath Chattopadhyay(Chatto), Suhasini Nambiar and others. Pillai was a key member of the Berlin Committee. He is believed to have sailed on the German warship Emden that terrorized Madras during World War I and contributed a new word in the Tamil and Malayalam lexicon (yemandan). Tamilnadu erected a statue at Fort St. George to honour him. Chempakaraman’s brother, Padmanabhan Pillai, who was also in Zurich, disappeared without leaving a trace.
(The author is an IT professional, travel enthusiast and history buff)
