Bhavabhushan Mitra - Sedition

Sedition

In 1904-1905, Barin and his maternal uncle Manindra Basu had been members of the “Golden League” club which furthered “the boycott and Swadeshi movement.” The promoters were an Inspector of Schools named Baldeo Ram Jha and several local teachers, pleaders and other law-court officials. Among Barin’s other friends were Sarada Charan Datta alias Bandar Babu and Shivakali Shome. After the death of his illustrious grandfather, Rajnarain Basu, Barin opened a club for self-defence where recruits from Kolkata, Kushtia and Dhaka came and it was regularly attended by Satyen Chaudhuri, Jyoti Prasad Chaudhuri, Naren Chakravarti and the brothers Sailendra and Sushil Sen.

One of the strangers who visited the Sil’s Lodge “was dressed like a sadhu and it was given locally that he was ill (…) This man was taken periodically in a palki to Digripahar, a hill nearby, for open air treatment; under this cloak the party carried out their experiments with explosives in the jungles. Previous to the search at Sil’s Lodge one Bhaba Bhusan Mitra used to frequent Mani Basu’s akhara. He was known as the wanderer on account of his roving habits.” Nolinikanta Gupta, member of the expedition, has narrated the episode how, in January 1908, Prafulla Chakravarti, son of Ishan Chakravarti, the Rangpur leader, lost his life while trying a picric acid bomb. In the same month, Barin and a party of seven including Bhavabhushan and Bijoykumar Nag of Khulna committed a hold-up in Rampore Boalia, according to Indra Nandi’s statement. He mentioned, further: “There was a man called Jyotish in the garden who had been deputed by Bhaba Bhusan Mitra; he had in his possession a dynamite bomb which he took to throw at a padre somewhere in Jessore.”

Correspondence found at 134 Harrison Road, showed Prakash Chandra Basu (Barindra Kumar Ghose) renting the Sil’s Lodge at Rohini, via Baidyanath, Deoghar from its owner Devendranath Sil, in 1907. Also the Police seized in Deoghar and at the Muraripukur garden “sketches of relative positions of Baidyanath, Madhupur and Deoghar, one with a *mark near Deoghar, and in the corner white and very small pucca house.” Searched on 28 May 1908, Sil’s Lodge disclosed, among other materials, the presence of: (a) “9 small pieces of metal similar to a quantity found at the ‘garden’ and ready for melting.” (b) “A label of the London chemists, Hewlett & Sons, similar to others found in Calcutta.” This led Sealy to the conclusion: “Sil’s Lodge was therefore clearly connected with the conspiracy (…) where members were sent for instruction and where explosives were made.”

Among visitors to this centre were Sri Aurobindo alias Bara Karta, Subodh Chandra Mullick, V.B. Lele, Upen Banerjee, Ullaskar Dutta, Prafulla Chaki (the brave companion of Khudiram Bose in the Muzaffarpur expedition), three of Sri Aurobindo's cousins from Sagardari in Jessore (Birendra Nath,Sishir Kumar and Hemendra Prasad Ghose), Krishna Jiban Sanyal, Narendra Nath Bakshi, Sudhir Bagchi alias Sarkar (recruited by Sishir Kumar who learnt self-defence from Jatin Mukherjee alias Bagha Jatin). Sealy mentions also among Barin’s friends two brothers, Narendra (supra) and Phanindra Chakravarti, grandsons of Dwarkanath Vidyabhusan of Changripota, both of them educated at Deoghar also. In 1915, Phanindra will accompany Naren Bhattacharya alias M.N. Roy as Jatindranath Mukherjee’s emissaries to the Far East. As a link between Jatin and Barin, Bhavabhushan shuttled between Kushtia, Deoghar and Kolkata.