Mokshadacharan Samadhyayi - Revolutionary Contacts

Revolutionary Contacts

Already in September 1905, inspired by Sri Aurobindo, the ministers of Hindu religion were to spread the anti-Partition agitation. A.C. Banerji, Barrister-at-Law from Santipur in Nadia and a friend of Jatindranath Mukherjee, obtained the aid of the Nabadwip Pundits and Goswamis : their influence, throughout India, roused the religious scruples of both Hindus and Muslims concerning the impurity in the manufacture of salt and sugar, as much as their boycott of foreign goods. As it will be presently seen, Mokhoda was a close collaborator of Kartik Datta of Santipur.

Under Mokhoda’s leadership, the Bhatpara Pundits in the 24 Parganas sent out missionaries in Upper India. At Puri in Orissa, one hundred itinerant monks had vowed to preach the Swadeshi. On 28 September 1905, fifty thousand people before the Kolkata Kali temple took the vow of abstaining from purchasing foreign goods. The Ramakrishna Mission and the Arya Samaj considerably helped spreading this doctrine.

Admitting that Mokhoda studied Sanskrit for many years at Benares and earned the Pandit title of Samadhyayi, Denham informed that he was posted at the Uttarpara College in the Hooghly district. Mokhoda, in company of Professor Charu Chandra Ray, Preonath Karar (Sri Yukteswar Giri) and Satish Sen, animated the clubs and associations in the region covering Chinsura, Serampore, Chandernagore with the teachings of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (who had lived there), Yogendra Vidyabhushan and other thought leaders of the epoch. He frequented the revolutionary monk Tarakshepa who, sermoning on the Bhagavad Gita, preached sedition overtly. Informed about a dynamic batch of students in the neighbouring 24 Parganas, Mokhoda went to Chingripota, Harinabhi, Kodalia, where Harikumar Chakravarti, Naren Bhattacharya alias M.N. Roy, Saileshwar Bose, Satkari Banerji had started a powerful association. Harikumar was in touch with his cousins, Naren and Phani Chakravarti, who had been to school with Barin Ghosh at Deoghar and worked in Barin's bomb factory there. At Serampore, Brahmabandhab Upadhyay was attracted by Mokhoda's learning and his ideas on politics, while accepting him as disciple to run the 'Brahmacharya Ashram'. One of Barin's cousins, the famous journalist Hemendraprasad Ghosh, wrote that Mokhoda had a room also at the 'Field and Academy' founded by Upadhyay, by the side of the Kolkata Anushilan Samiti : here he knew eminent future citizens like Benoykumar Sarkar and Radhakumud Mukherjee. Mokhoda arranged and shared his room with Naren Bhattacharya and Harikumar, before they found shelter at the Anushilan building itself, at 49 Cornwallis Street, while Naren’s cousin Abi Bhattacharya with Barin and some other like-minded friends were moving to a centre of their own.