Where the sun of revolution
seared the British

by Mubin S Khan

For most of us today, the city of Chittagong is a picturesque, sleepy town, with beautiful sights such as the Patenga Beach, Foy’s Lake, and the War Cemetery, etc. The people of the city are generally labelled ‘conservative’, their food and hospitality acclaimed by visitors, their language unintelligible. There is usually some intense activity in the city during election time while the port, being the major one of the country, is a hotbed of business activity. Otherwise, in modern times, the city is, for all practical purposes, sleeping.
   Both my parents originally hail from Chittagong, and as such, I usually make at least two trips to the town in a year. The famous sights did hold my fascination as a child but have faded somewhat since. However, the waters of Patenga and Foy’s lake is always a fresh break from the looming, overbearing structures of Dhaka, while the drive along the Hathahazari road past the cantonment with its beautiful range of hills and sparkling lakes and fresh air, is one of the longest and finest stretch of landscape you will find in this country.
   So imagine my shock when I found out that one of the hills along that range, namely the Jalalabad hill, was the sight of the lone frontal battle ever fought between Indian liberation forces and the British Imperial forces, prior to the independence of the subcontinent and since the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857.
   That areas in the town such as Kotwali, Pahartali, Double Mooring and Sadar Ghat as well as the village areas of Patiya, Anwara, Hathhazari and Raozan, were places where one of the most successful battles of the liberation forces against the British Raj were fought. Where the historical figures of Surya Sen, Kalapana Dutta and Pritilata Sen fought their battles, hid underground and were also arrested in the end.
   Pritilata and Kalpana, Indian national heroes, went to the same Dr Khastagir Girls School where both my mother and my grandmother studied. Pritilata was the headmistress of the girls’ school, Nandan Kanan, near my house. And the idle Patenga was the site where revolutionaries target-practised, and where the famous Ananta Singh, who could shoot perfectly with both hands, spent much time.
   Chittagong, from 1930 to 1934, was the focal point of the Indian national liberation from the day Surya Sen and his comrades raided the British armouries on April 18, 1930, till his hanging on January 12, 1934. For four years, some of the most intense battles were fought between the two forces, the most audacious guerrilla operations undertaken, the revolutionaries chased in the dense forests along the hills of Chittagong, the top British officials wounded and killed. For four years of that period of history, Chittagong was the biggest headache of the most powerful colonial masters of the time, where they called in the police, military, air force as well as a naval presence to contain the rebels and protect their citizenry. Chittagong, in those days, rocked Kolkata, Delhi, Paris and London, right up to the Westminster. Who would believe it today?
   
   Emulating the Irish
   The story of Surya Sen remains a legend till this day, the man who is said to have liberated Chittagong from the clutches of the British for three days, the only instance in the 200 years rule of British where they lost control of territory until they finally gave it up in 1947. While that claim is a bit exaggerated, what Surya Sen did and achieved in the end is no less astonishing.
   Taking over the city of Chittagong was, however, the original plan.
   Six committed revolutionaries, members of the radical Hindu nationalists Jugantor as well as the Congress Party in Chittagong — namely, Ananta Singh, Ganesh Ghosh, Lokenath Bal, Ambika Chakrabarti, Nirmal Sen and the legendary Surya Sen — who had been involved with the Indian national struggle for more than a decade and had all spent a few years in prison, mostly together, chalked out an elaborate plan and decided to pull off the audacious feat of capturing Chittagong, disconnecting themselves from other national movements after years of disappointment.
   Surya Sen, or Master Da, as he was popularly known for his stint as a teacher at Umatara Higher English School, was the unanimously acclaimed leader of the group and the man who planned everything. After years of disappointment and movements destroyed by leaks and disunity amongst the ranks, the six comrades-in-arm decided to keep things amongst themselves and pull off something like the Easter Rising of Dublin in 1916. In that year a band of Irish revolutionaries liberated Dublin and held it in their possession for seven days. After the British brutally crushed the rebellion, the rising created a chain reaction all over the country, threatening British rule to the core. Master Da, who till his death held the inspiring words of Irish revolutionaries close to his heart, planned to emulate exactly that.
   Surya Sen even named his organisation after the Irish — Indian Republican Army (IRA) Chittagong Branch, after the Irish Republican Army.
   The plan was simple enough. In the first phase, the revolutionaries would simultaneously take over the armouries of the police and auxiliary forces to secure heavy weaponry, destroy the telegraph office and rail-tracks so that no immediate reinforcement could be called in, and attack the European Club to destroy the ranks of senior British officials.
   In the second phase, the revolutionaries would take over a few more governmental establishments as well as a local weapons shop and hold the town until the British destroyed them. ‘Do or die’ was a popular slogan among the Indian freedom-fighters. For the Chittagong revolutionaries it was ‘do and die’. Their plan was to rock the British to the core and walk to their deaths.
   Executing the plan was, however, much more difficult.
   Sans a few revolvers and handmade bombs, the revolutionaries had no ammunition. They did not have the manpower or the money to pull off the mission either. And they were planning to take on the imperial forces.
   But Master Da, who had been planning this a for long time, had worked out everything. Instead of recruiting persons aged 20 or 30 somethings, the usual age of activists, for this mission, the Chittagong group opted for teenagers who had not tasted the comforts of middle-age and would more willingly walk to their death. Under the leadership of the bold, flamboyant Ananta Singh and his partner Ganesh Ghosh, who were tactical and military heads of this mission, young lads, some as young as 14 and 15, were recruited and trained at physical culture clubs for the mission. They were trained in the use of weapons, bomb-making and physical combat.
   Secondly, the actual plan was known only by the six leaders and never revealed to others. The recruits were told about a great mission without being given details, and they were recruited in small groups, with most members of the mission not knowing each other.
   The plan was airtight.
   To avoid arousing the suspicion of the police, the revolutionaries, who were already under constant surveillance of the police for their past records, avoided any hold-ups or dacoities and instead arranged money by motivating the recruits. Recruits stole money and in some cases revolvers from their parents, at times coaxed it out of them, and in the end there was enough to procure weapons, uniforms and a car. One more car was hijacked hours before the raid. The recruits trained in the usual congress uniform and wore something similar to the police uniform on the day.
   Surya Sen and his comrades had prepared for the most audacious attack on the British rulers since 1857, right under their watchful eyes.
   
   The armoury raids
   The mission also started off successfully.
   A total of 64 members in their ranks were divided and led by the senior leaders into each mission.
   Ambika Chakrabarti, with six men, secured the telegraph office at the centre of the town in a matter of few minutes, holding the guards and the lone operator at gunpoint, destroying the switchboard and setting the office on fire. It was 9:50pm on the night of April 18, 1930.
   Ananta Singh and Ganesh Ghosh, with 22 boys, raided the police lines near the Waterworks, shot dead the lone guard, and successfully took possession of the armoury, securing most of the guards at gunpoint.
   Meanwhile, two smaller groups were dispersed earlier to destroy the rail-tracks and distribute leaflets declaring the independence of Chittagong, both of which were completed successfully.
   Attack on the remaining two targets did not, however, go off smoothly.
   A group of six young boys was sent to secure the European Club, close to the police lines, and though they returned safe and sound they had not found any Europeans there. Inspired by the Easter uprising, Master Da had chosen Easter as the day to attack, but in his ignorance of British customs did not realise that in such a solemn day the Britons would not be going to the club.
   However, the biggest failure was the attack on the AFI armoury in Pahartali, were the heavy weapons of the military were kept, close to the British quarters.
   Nirmal Sen and Lokenath Bal had successfully secured the place, holding up the guards, and then found specialised weapons such as Lewis guns, but they were shocked to find not a single piece of ammunition in the ammunition boxes. They were ignorant of a simple rule of military strategy — that the ammunition and weapons were never stored together.
   A shoot-out further ensued at the AFI armoury when the British realised what was going on and tried to defend the armoury. A British officer was shot dead and many others injured. The armoury was then set on fire.
   Things only got worse thereafter.
   The young leaders, all now stationed at the police lines who were only moments back jubilating, lost their nerve and went into a stupor. They realised that without ammunition, the heavy weapons were useless. The police muskets could never hold off the army.
   In the midst of all this, one youth, Himangshu Sen, who was soaking the walls with petrol to set the armoury on fire, accidentally set himself on fire. He was rushed inside a vehicle with two of his mates as well as Ganesh Ghosh and Ananta Singh, who drove off. Suddenly, the entire group was without their military commanders who had left without a word.
   After hours of quiet waiting and no sign of their return, Ambika Chakrabarti led the remainder of the group and started walking towards the hills.
   The British, meanwhile, who were shocked by the sudden attacks, gathered the entire European population in town and took them to a stationed vessel on the port from which they sent urgent messages to Kolkata and informed the higher-ups of what was going on. Meanwhile, a group of British officials and soldiers launched an attack on the retreating revolutionaries, which shocked them further.
   The group of four who had left with Himangshu returned to the police lines, expecting the main group to launch an attack on the city by then, only to realise they had disappeared without a trace. After extensive searching they went into hiding themselves.
   The rest of the revolutionaries, who now numbered 59, wandered in the forest along the hilly terrain of Chittagong for four days, the leaders unsure of what step to take next in the absence of their military heads, while the young boys, facing such conditions for the first time in their lives, got increasingly tired and impatient.
   The British, meanwhile, did not dare to enter the town in fear of the revolutionaries until reinforcements arrived from Dhaka, and stayed on the ship.
   The legend goes that Chittagong was under the command of Surya Sen for three days. Until reinforcements arrived on April 20, Chittagong, in reality, was virtually without a ruler for three days.
   
   The Battle of Jalalabad
   When reinforcements arrived along with two contingents of the feared Gurkha battalion, the British launched a strong offensive to trace and catch the rebels. Informers were sent all across in search of them. The air force went on reconnaissance missions over the forested hills. By then, finding the abandoned vehicles, the British had identified the leaders of the mission — the six persons they had kept under their watch round-the-clock — but were unsure about the size and identity of the entire contingent.
   On April 22, at around the same time that Surya Sen and the rebels had also decided to come down to town to fight the British, the Special Forces were hot on their trail. In the evening that day, when the revolutionaries were stationed inside the dense forests of Jalalabad hill, a youth amongst them spotted the glittering bayonets of the Gurkha soldiers walking up the hills. The youths were immediately ordered to take up their positions.
   The Chittagong revolutionaries had received mock training for months in the use of weapons and had, for the first time, fired a round in their air after securing the weapons in the armoury to declare victory, but never before had they used weapons in combat. Suddenly they were face-to-face with a few contingents of the British imperial forces.
   But they fought like lions. For three hours the British forces, using modern weaponry, were held back by police muskets that were getting jammed in inexperienced hands. Surya Sen went around cleaning the weapons one by one in the midst of the battle.
   Two rounds of battle ensued and the revolutionaries not only held on, but held on without any casualty. But then they made a fatal mistake.
   When the British were preparing to retreat, the revolutionaries started chanting victory chants like ‘Vande Mataram’. Jalalabad is actually a low peak surrounded by higher peaks all around and as such the British machine gun artillery, who were stationed above, managed to identify them in the dark and started firing with Lewis guns. A Lewis gun can fire up to 350 bullets in one round, and the bullets hit the revolutionaries.
   Tegra, Lokenath Bal’s younger brother, was the first to fall. Nine more followed him. Three others, including Ambika Chakrabarti, were severely injured. Two of the injured died later in town in the custody of the British while Ambika made his way to a hide-out. The rest of the revolutionaries, only 44 in number now, with two having been sent earlier into the town to gather information, made their way down the hill while the British also withdrew for the day.
   In the dark of the night the group lost its way and were divided, one group finding their way out with Surya Sen and Nirmal Sen, while the other group was led by Lokenath Bal.
   One of the youths sent that day to gather information in the town by Surya Sen, Amarendra Nandi, was later discovered by the police and was shot dead, when he was trapped inside a culvert, by a British officer.
   
   Going underground
   The British had, curiously, retreated that night without rounding up the rest of the rebels. It was a decision they would be made to pay for in the next three years.
   Surya Sen and Nirmal Sen went into hiding immediately, moving from one village to the other, sending the boys whom the British did not know back to their homes while the rest they kept with themselves.
   Ananta Singh and Ganesh Ghosh and the others, at around the same time, decided to make their way to Kolkata. On their way there by train they were confronted by police officials at Feni and a shoot-out ensued in which the rebels successfully escaped though they were separated. Months later, they met up at Kolkata.
   Lokenath’s Bal’s troops were, however, not satisfied with the happenings and decided to have one more go at the British. Six young guerrillas in his group decided to launch an attack at the European Club at Ballantyne Ghat near the Karnaphuli River on May 6.
   The club was, however, too well fortified and the mission ended in failure. The guerrillas were chased from the spot by the police. The pursuit ended in the capture of two while four others, surrounded by the British at Jalda, shot each other dead without surrendering.
   The trail appears to have grown cold after that.
   The British raided homes all across Chittagong district, ransacking the Hindu homes in particular, launched air reconnaissance missions, engaged in a lengthy enquiry into how it all had happened and kept the city of Chittagong under virtual curfew. But they could find no trace of one more revolutionary.
   A reward of Rs 5,000 was offered for information on the top leaders but the severe manhunt proved futile.
   It was later acknowledged, in the words of Surya Sen himself, that time and again during his four years in hiding, he had not once been given away by the Muslims, the majority in the district, despite the efforts of the British, who even tried to engineer a riot in vain, to divide the two groups.
   
   Pritilata, Kalpana and avoiding death
   If Surya Sen and his comrades were inhumanly heroic in their success, they were tragically comic in their faults.
   Just when the revolutionary fervour was picking up, with Surya and Nirmal leading guerrilla attacks in Chittagong while Ganesh, Ananta and Lokenath Bal, by now in Kolkata, planning something equally daring there, Ananta Singh one day walked up to the police and surrendered himself.
   Till this day the surrender remains an enigma. Ananta Singh, the man who could break iron chains and bend iron rods with his bare hands, the inspiration for every single recruit and their unanimous hero, had a ‘strange’ side to him. He later explained that a certain friend of his, thought to be his childhood friend and comrade-in-arms Ganesh Ghosh, did not understand or appreciate his sacrifices for, and contribution to, the mission. Soon, however, united in jail, they seem to have made up.
   A month later, Ganesh Ghosh and Lokenath Bal with two more associates were traced to Chandarnagore, a French enclave in India. The British officers arrested them after a shoot-out, and later many angry words were exchanged by London and Paris over the violation of boundaries.
   Kalpana Dutta and the tragic heroine Pritilata Waddedar enter right at this moment.
   Being friends at school and inspired by stories of the Rani of Jhansi, Kalpana and Pritilata, both brilliant students, entered the revolutionary circle as intermediaries between the groups in jail and Surya Sen and his troops. At first, Master Da was against the use of women in revolutionary missions but later gave in, realising their usefulness at the time.
   Kalpana and Pritilata not only worked as in-betweens but later took active part in a mission to blow up the jail.
   Master Da had taken up a new mission this time — to free his comrades from jail. Kalpana, a chemistry student, filled cans with gunpowder which would later be used to blow up one of the walls of Chittagong Jail, after which the revolutionaries would be rowed across the Karnaphuli in a sampan. Gunpowder and other ammunition were smuggled into the jail by bribing the guards.
   The plan backfired when one of the guards, after a skirmish with one of the revolutionaries in jail, gave away their secret to the jailor. Soon the plot was uncovered and the ammunition seized.
   Surya and Nirmal meanwhile were still planning newer attacks with explosives. The latest plan was to use dynamite to blow up the major parts of the town around the court buildings, which were frequented by the British. This time also, the British got lucky when one of the guerrillas was accidentally intercepted by the police with explosives on him and, under police interrogation and possibly torture, he was forced to give away the entire plot.
   In the meantime, the infamous police officer Ahsanullah was transferred from Barisal to Chittagong to help contain the guerrillas. A few days after his transfer, on his way to his car after watching a cricket match, he was shot dead by a fifteen-year-old youth.
   That day and a few days afterwards the British tried to engineer a riot using Muslims, mostly called in from villages, against Hindus, attacking the offices, houses and shops of the minority community. In the end, however, an enquiry uncovered the role of the British in instigating the riot and punished seven British officers. One officer, being humiliated by the ignominy of the sentence, committed suicide.
   Ananta Singh, Ganesh Ghosh and Lokenath Bal were put on trial for raiding the Chittagong Armoury. In October that year Ambika Chakrabarti was arrested from a village in Patiya. The British, troubled by the discovery of dynamite and their role in engineering a riot, feared the worst in handing a death sentence to the accused since Masterda and Nirmal were still at large, and offered a secret compromise to the revolutionaries. On condition that they ceased terrorist activities, the death sentence would be lifted. On the instructions of Master Da, the offer was accepted.
   On September 1 March, 1932, the judges acquitted 16 persons, sentenced 14 to rigorous imprisonment for various terms, and 12 were given transportation for life. Amongst those transported were Ananta, Ganesh and Lokenath Bal.
   
   The last days
   The curtain was slowly dropping on the legend.
   At Dhalghat, where Surya Sen was hiding in a widow’s house along with Nirmal Sen and where Pritilata was visiting, the police tracked them down and surrounded the house. A fight ensued from which Surya Sen and Pritilata emerged alive while Nirmal Sen and another activist died, along with a senior British officer.
   Nirmal Sen’s death was deeply resented by the members of the IRA, who planned to exact revenge. On September 24, 1932, Pritilata with a few other activists attacked the European Institute at Pahartali, which was bustling with the European community of Chittagong. They threw bombs in the midst of the noise and then started firing from three entrances of the institute.
   An Anglo-Indian woman died on the spot while 11 other people were injured. Pritilata, on her escape route chose to take her life by swallowing cyanide though she was clearly out of the range of the pursuing police, leaving behind an example of how women could give up their lives for the independence movement.
   Things happened quickly after that.
   The British forces cracked down on Hindus in Chittagong, destroying their livelihood and harassing anyone who had any relationship with the rebels. New laws were put into place to intensify the raids and harassment. Kalpana, whose link with the rebels had been discovered by then, went into hiding along with Surya Sen and Tarakeshwar Dastidar. They moved around from village to village, in some cases changing places in hours, as the police were closing in on them.
   On the night of February 16, 1933, when they were stationed at a shelter at Gairala, three miles away from Dhalghat, the police received information that they would be found there and cordoned off the house.
   Surya Sen, on his way out, practically walked into the cordon while the others managed to escape, leaving their beloved Master Da in the hands of the enemy.
   A certain Netra Sen was said to have informed the police, and a few months later he was beheaded, and his body and severed head were discovered beside his dinner plate.
   Kalpana and Tarakeshwar remained in hiding for three more months until they were chased to a house at Gohira village in Anwara in the early hours of May 19.
   In the trial of The Emperor vs Surya Kumar Sen, Tarakeshwar Dastidar and Kalpana Dutta, a special tribunal announced its judgement on August 14, 1933. Surya Sen and Tarakeshwar Dastidar were sentenced to death by hanging while Kalpana was let off in consideration of her age, which was only 19, and her sex. She was sentenced to deportation for life.
   Ironically, though the prosecutors failed to find direct links between the armoury raids and Surya Sen, most of the evidence was gathered and presented from his diary.
   Tarakeshwar is said to have asked Kalpana to wait for him in the advent of his sentence being revoked. It was never revoked.
   On midnight January 12, 1934, Surya Sen and Tarakeshwar Dastidar were hanged secretly in Chittagong Jail. Their bodies were never cremated or returned and their families were informed only days after. Their corpses were taken away on a British war cruiser and thrown into the Bay of Bengal.
   The brilliant saga of Surya Sen and the Indian Republic Army versus the Imperial Forces, in the now sleepy town of Chittagong, finally came to an end.
   Most of the surviving participants of the Chittagong raids settled in Kolkata after the completion of their sentences, and especially after the partition of 1947. With them they took away the history of one of the most glorious episodes in the history of Chittagong.
   Much has happened since. Chittagong has survived British rule to become a part of Pakistan and now Bangladesh. In subsequent movements the city played an important part. However, its crowning moment seems to have faded after Surya Sen’s revolutionaries left the town. That Chittagong, and for that matter many parts of Bangladesh, used to be the hotbed of activity against 200 years of British rule, seems to have been forgotten — seems to have taken a backseat to subsequent events.