Archival Notes
The Bande Mataram Sedition Trial
In our last issue we published several documents relating to the journal Bande Mataram. The name of this daily newspaper, which means literally "Hail Mother (India)!", was at once a mantra, a patriotic slogan and a battle-cry, and to utter it was a punishable offence in certain parts of British India. Soon after its inception in August 1906, the Bande Mataram shot into the limelight not only in Calcutta and Bengal, but across India, as the most courageous proponent of the ideals of the Nationalist party. In the words of the historian R.C. Majumdar: "Arabinda's articles in the Bande Mataram put the Extremist Party on a high pedestal all over India. He expounded the high philosophy and national spirit which animated the Party, and also laid down its programme of action." 1 Proclaiming nothing less than complete independence (svaraj) as the goal of the national movement, the Bande Mataram "was almost unique in journalistic history in the influence it exercised in converting the mind of the people and preparing it for revolution."2 No wonder the British government was eager to suppress it.
There existed a sedition law (Section 124a of the Indian Penal Code) providing punishment for anyone who "brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards His Majesty or the Government established by law in British India".3 But although, as a British editor complained, "the paper reeked with sedition patently visible between every line," the Bande Mataram "was so skilfully written that no legal action could be taken."4
Bande Mataram was not the only vehicle of Sri Aurobindo's nationalist propaganda. Early in 1906 he had, at the suggestion of his younger brother Barindra, "agreed to the starting of a paper, Yugantar, which was to preach open revolt and the absolute denial of the British rule." 5 The first issue of Yugantar (or, transliterating according to the Bengali pronunciation, Jugantar) came out in March 1906. "Sri Aurobindo himself wrote some of the opening articles in the early numbers" 6 of the journal, that is, before his tour of East Bengal in April 1906 and his subsequent brief return to Baroda. When he finally came back to Bengal in June, his work for the National College and the Bande Mataram prevented him from contributing further to Yugantar, although he always "exercised a general control"7 over it.
In order to get an idea of the differences in approach and tone of Yugantar and Bande Mataram, the reader may compare passages of similar intent from the two journals. In the Bande Mataram's issue of 17 April 1907, Sri Aurobindo, contrasting the situation of contemporary Indians to that of the more organised American colonists at the time of their revolution from Britain, wrote that when they
1 R.C. Majumdar, History of the Freedom Movement in India, Vol. II (Calcutta: Firma K.L. Mukhopadhyay. 1975), pp. 191-92.
2 Sri Aurobindo, On Himself (1972), p. 30.
3 Quoted in Manoj Das, Sri Aurobindo in the First Decade of the Century (Pondicherry : Sri Aurobindo Ashram. 1972), p. 156.
4 Sri Aurobindo, On Himself (1972). p. 30.
5 Ibid., p. 24.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
Plate 1 Sri Aurobindo after his acquittal (September 1907)
Plate 3 Report in Bande Mataram about search of Bande Mataram Office
Plate 4 Rabindranath Tagore's poem to Sri Aurobindo
offered the ultimatum to the mother country, they were prepared to follow it up, if necessary, and did finally follow it up by a declaration of independence, supported by armed revolt. Here again there is a material difference from Indian conditions. An ultimatum should never be presented unless one is prepared to follow it up to its last consequences. Moreover, in a vast country like India, any such general conflict with dominant authority as is involved in a no-taxes policy, needs for its success a close organisation linking province to province and district to district and a powerful central authority representing the single will of the whole nation which could alone fight on equal terms the final struggle of defensive resistance with bureaucratic repression. Such an organisation and authority has not yet been developed.8
The idea of armed insurrection as a legitimate means of redressing political grievances is here presented, but in the guise of an innocent historical observation. Similarly, the need for a close organisation among the revolting parties is covertly underscored.
In the Yugantar, which was to openly popularise the idea of "violent revolt . . . and include such items as a series of articles containing instructions for guerilla warfare",9 a more direct appeal was made. The fact that the journal was written in the "vernacular", as the British called Bengali and the other local languages of India, made direct presentation more feasible, for the contents of its articles could only be understood by the authorities through translations made by natives employed by them. Such translations, rather crude and lacking the stylistic excellence of the originals, are unfortunately the only record we have of all but a handful of Yugantar articles. So ruthlessly was the paper ultimately repressed that no single copy of any issue exists today. Still, some idea of the Yugantar's editorial audacity can be gleaned from the following government translation of an article of 26 August 1906 on a subject similar to one dealt with in the above Bande Mataram article — the need of an organised network of revolutionary workers:
If a thousand persons out of eight crores of men in this province of Bengal cherish the desire for independence in their hearts, then these one thousand being impelled by the same determination, can, by changing the thought and effort of the whole country of Bengal, direct them to one great goal. But first of all, these one thousand men must form themselves into a band.
After declaring that the aim of district bands is "to direct local thought and effort towards independence," the article goes on to discuss the "means":
It is necessary for those who go to any place to organise a band to bear in mind one matter very particularly — [that] any sort of ado and unnecessary self-revelation — ... must be shunned as a danger. There shall be no ado of any sort about the meeting of the band, and no one shall know of its notice other than the members of the band themselves. The public at large should only feel the influence of the public acts of the band, but the more it remains unknown and unfelt that those acts have been done by any particular organised band, the better and more creditable for the bands.
After thus presenting as openly as possible the idea of a secret revolutionary society, and then discussing several practical considerations, the writer of the article closes with the words:
8 Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram; Early Political Writings (1972), p. 106.
9 Sri Aurobindo, On Himself (1972). p. 24.
After the formation of a band, if we [the Yugantar staff] are informed, we shall try to the best of our power to give counsel, and to connect it with other bands. Much inconvenience may be felt if any letter containing the information [arrives] along with other letters, therefore it would be greatly convenient if such letter reach the office with the aid of some persons.10
The editors of the Yugantar were, in fact, the leaders of the first revolutionary group in India to attempt organised armed resistance to the British — a fact which finally came out into the open at the Alipore Bomb Trial in 1908, although it had been audaciously announced in this article almost two years earlier. And even this was not the limit of the Yugantar's daring or of the openness of its revolutionary message. On 3 March 1907, the paper declared:
The number of Englishmen in the entire country is not more than a lakh and a half. And what is the number of English officials in each district? With a firm resolve you can bring English rule to an end in a single day. The time has come to make the Englishman understand that enjoying the sweets of dominion in another's country after wrongfully taking possession of it, will not be permitted to continue for ever. Let him now realise full well that the life of a thief who steals other's property is no longer an easy one in this country. Begin yielding up a life after taking a life. Dedicate your life as an offering at the temple of liberty. Without bloodshed, the worship of the goddess will not be accomplished.11
Little wonder the British took objection to the Yugantar. On 7 June 1907 the journal was warned for its use of inflammatory language. The next day, 8 June, the Bande Mataram received a similar warning. (See Document 2 under that date.) On 3 July the office of the more offensive Yugantar was searched and Bhupendranath Dutt, who came forward as the journal's editor, was arrested. About this, see On Himself, SABCL Volume 26, pages 24 and 41-42. Bhupendranath wanted to defend himself, but Sri Aurobindo, seeing an opportunity to apply one of the tenets of his doctrine of passive resistance — viz. the non-recognition of British courts of justice — ordered the Yugantar to adopt "the policy of refusing to defend itself".12 Dutt, a dispensable member of the sub-editorial staff, was tried and convicted on 24 July. "The prestige and influence of the paper" was "immensely increased"13 by this bold stand. Dutt, for his "bravado", got one year's rigorous imprisonment, as well as a small niche in the history of the period.
Meanwhile, the government was looking for an opportunity to prosecute the Bande Mataram. On 30 July two warrants were issued — one for the search of the Bande Mataram office and another for the arrest of Aurobindo Ghose, its editor (Plate 2). The search warrant was served that same day. "The wolf has come at last", cried the Bande Mataram in its daily issue of the thirty-first, and again in its weekly issue of 4 August (Plate 3). "Police carried away many papers and books", noted Hemendra Prasad Ghose (Document 2). It was just a matter of time now
10 Government translation quoted in Slate Committee for a History of the Freedom Movement in Bengal, File No. 104. West Bengal State Archives, Calcutta.
11 Report on Native Papers in Bengal, week ending the 9th March 1907. West Bengal State Archives. Calcutta.
12 Sri Aurobindo, On Himself (1972), p. 24.
13 Ibid.
before the journal's editor was arrested. Hemendra Prasad's entries for 2 June and 2 August 1907 make it very clear that it was no secret who the editor was; but there were technical difficulties -— the paper had no declared editor — and the axe did not fall. Finally on 16 August, the day after his thirty-fifth birthday, Sri Aurobindo was arrested. The original body-warrant (Plate 2) gives his offence as "reproducing in the issue of the Bande Mataram of the 26th July/07 certain seditious articles from 'Jugantar' and editing and publishing in the aforesaid paper dak Edition of the 28th June/07 an article headed 'India for the Indian'." The latter article was actually headed "Politics for Indians", a fact noted in the second paragraph of Chief Presidency Magistrate Kingsford's judgment of the case (Document 3). The Bande Mataram was thus not prosecuted for "articles expressing its essential policy" as was the Yugantar; rather a watch had been kept "to find the paper tripping over some trifle, for which it [could] be hauled up and got into trouble on a side issue." The translations from the Yugantar printed in the Bande Mataram were "issued as part of a case in the law courts and reproduced as such" on the second day after the judgment in the Yugantar trial. "Politics for Indians" was "an insignificant correspondence which does not even profess to give voice to the policy of the paper". But the government wanted to silence Sri Aurobindo, and if they could do so "partly for a technical offence and partly on a side issue" 14 it was all the same to them.
Hemendra Prasad's diary entries provide a running commentary to the Bande Mataram trial. But his brief remark of 30 August, "Bande Mataram case talk of the town", gives a poor idea of the immediate fame Sri Aurobindo gained all over India as a result of his prosecution. The most enduring testimony to the esteem in which his countrymen held him is Rabindranath Tagore's well-known poem "Aurobindo, Rabindrer laho namaskar" (Aurobindo, Rabindranath bows to thee), written on 24 August 1907 (7 Bhadra 1314), and published in the daily Bande Mataram on 7 September, and in the weekly edition on Sunday, September 8 (Plate 4).
Hemendra Prasad mentions on 19 September that "opinion is divided on the point of his [Sri Aurobindo's] having entered into defence after having made Bhupendra of Jugantar do what he did" (Document 2). Sri Aurobindo never wrote the "defence" mentioned by Hemendra, but a comment made in an article written by Sri Aurobindo after his acquittal makes the situation clear.
Bhupendrenath and Basanta the printer and publisher of Yugantar] deliberately exposed themselves to the worst effects of bureaucratic wrath in order to give an example to the country of heroic self-sacrifice and a living demonstration of the spirit of Swarajism; but they did it in the full confidence that the Yugantar would continue undaunted and unchanged in the course it conceived to be its duty to the nation. Had they exposed themselves with the knowledge that their disappearance would have meant the death of the paper, their action would have been heroic but foolish, an outburst of patriotic sentiment but not an act of patriotic wisdom. To allow the voice of Nationalism to be silenced would be to play into the hands of the adversary to whom we owe no duty. The gospel of Nationalism has to be preached with unflinching candour, but Nationalist organs will be perfectly within their rights if they protect their writers so long as it is
14 Bande Mataram, 25 September 1907. Reprinted in SABCL Vol. I, p. 544.
humanly possible to protect them and so prolong their own career of propagandist usefulness.15
Sri Aurobindo was too indispensable to be allowed to go to jail. His pleader drew up a statement for him that lists various points contradicting the evidence accumulated by the prosecution (Document 1). The tenth and eleventh points are the most important. Sri Aurobindo is made to affirm "That I am not now and have never been the Editor of the Bande Mataram Newspaper and I have never edited the same." His statement claims rather that he was merely "a Contributor to the Editorial Columns of the said Newspaper" and that he had nothing to do with "correspondence, telegram, reports, re-prints &c." — in other words, nothing to do with the publication of the Yugantar reprints or of the letter "Politics for Indians". It is possible that he did have nothing to do with them. He to be sure did not write the letter, as had been suggested by the prosecution, for, as he commented after the trial, if "the real writer were a journalist on the staff, he must have been someone other than Aurobindo Ghose to whom no one in his senses would attribute such a half-baked effusion" 16 — as the letter undoubtedly was. The fact does remain, however, that Sri Aurobindo was "in full control of the policy"17 of the Bande Mataram —-that is, was its editor. But it was on a technicality that the British had tried to convict him, and technically, as the paper had no declared editor, Sri Aurobindo had to be acquitted. He was, on 23 September 1907. Excerpts from Magistrate Kingsford's judgment are reproduced as Document 3. The manager of Bande Mataram, Hemendra Nath Bagchi, was also let off, but the printer, Apurba Krishna Bose, who was statutorily liable, was convicted and sentenced to three months' rigorous imprisonment. Much clamour was made in the Nationalist press about this imprisonment of a seemingly innocent man, "an unfortunate Printer who knew no English and had no notion what all the pother was about," 18 as Sri Aurobindo himself put it. But this clamour was largely to gain a political advantage. Document 4, a note written by Sri Aurobindo in the 1940s apropos of a biography submitted to him, suggests that Apurba was quite aware of what he was doing when he signed the Press Act declaration.
Sri Aurobindo always "preferred to remain and act and even to lead from behind the scenes", but "the Government's action in prosecuting him as editor of the Bande Mataram ... forced him into public view." 19 After his acquittal he "became the recognised leader of Nationalism in Bengal"20 and soon thereafter one of the three or four principal Nationalist leaders in the country.21 More than ever the British feared him and looked anxiously for an opportunity to silence him, even as they were silencing other "seditious" papers in various parts of India. One of these papers, the Sandhya of Calcutta, was being tried in Kingsford's court the same day that Sri Aurobindo was acquitted. It was during the period of this trial
15 Bande Mataram, 26 September 1907. Reprinted SABCL Vol.1, pp. 548-49
16 Ibid., 28 September 1907. Reprinted SABCL Vol. I. p. 554.
17 Sri Aurobindo, On Himself (1972). p. 43.
18 Bande Mataram. 25 September 1907. Reprinted SABCL Vol. I, p. 546
19 Sri Aurobindo. On Himself (1972), pp. 25-26.
20 Ibid., p 32.
21 A photograph taken of Sri Aurobindo apparently after his acquittal, and printed on the cover of the weekly Bande Mataram on 29 September 1907, is reproduced as Plate 1. It shows him seated, holding a copy of Bande Mataram.
that Sandhya's editor, Brahmabandhab Upadhyaya, died: a further grievance against Kingsford, already a most unpopular magistrate. It was such continued governmental repression of the Nationalist party after the Bande Mataram trial that opened the way 10 the growth of terrorism — the road to Muzaffarpur, the attempt on Kingford's life, and a far more famous trial — the Alipore Bomb Case.