The Partition of Bengal: The role of Sri Aurobindo

© Aju Mukhopadhyay, Sri Aurobindo’s Action, September 2005

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Hindu Mela, founded by the elders of Tagore family, Debendranath Tagore with Rajnarain Bose and others, was still functioning. Swami Vivekananda’s lectures about Hindu sanatana dharma or eternal religion, his whipping criticism of his countrymen, his words of awakening were vibrant in the air. It was a period of Japan’s victory over Russia. A call for Asian freedom from colonial rules was heard. The great thinkers were dreaming of a united Asia. Kakujo Okakura, the artist and art critic, wrote, ‘Asia is one’ as the first words of his book- Ideals of the East.

Sister Nivedita, the Irish disciple of Swami Vivekananda, was a great force in thought and action. She had contacts with the secret societies. Sri Aurobindo in Baroda, Thakur Ram Singh and others in Maharashtra, P. Mitra and others in Bengal, Lala Lajpat Rai and others in Punjab and other places were secretly preparing their plans. Okakura, Havel, Nivedita and A. Coomarswamy revered the spiritual aspect of Indian art, which influenced Abanindranath Tagore much and he, through his art, brought the uniqueness of it. The Dawn Society was founded by Satish Chandra Mukerjee for the physical, mental and spiritual development of the youth. Though the great ideas of freedom from oppression and the ways of attaining it were engaging the minds of the educated people, it did not yet percolate to the mass-mind. The country was in the process of awakening.

Job Charnok’s choice of Calcutta (1690) as the place of their settlement decided its fate to be the capital of India. Gradually it became the centre of revolutionary activities, the crucible of revolutionary ideas. Calcutta being the capital of India had a distinct role to play. Bengalis comprised the vast majority of Bengal. Lord Curzon visited the Indian subcontinent four times before he became the viceroy of India. After he took charge in 1899, he found that Bengal was a vast province with Orissa, Bihar, Chhotanagpur, West and East Bengal and that Bengalis, irrespective of religious affiliations, were walking hand in hand. To safeguard the position of British monarchy, Curzon proposed through the Calcutta gazette of 3 December 1903, for the convenience of administration, to divide the province into two. One by joining North and East Bengal with Assam and the other by bringing Orissa and Bihar together with the rest of West Bengal. Let us hear now from a historian, the result of such a division-

‘Lord Curzon had written to the Secretary of State for India that he would dig the grave of the Indian National Congress before laying down his office, but in fact by partitioning Bengal he laid the foundation stone of the tomb of the British empire in India.’(R.C.Majumdar. History of Modern Bengal. Calcutta; 1981. Part-2, p.16)

Curzon visited East Bengal, conferred with Nawab Salimulla of Dacca, lend him a large sum at small interest and tempted him with the prospect of enhanced influence and prestige in the proposed province which would have a Muslim majority. This jesture of communal discrimination shown by Curzon became thenceforth a permanent strategy of the British Indian policy. Under the scheme Hindu Bengalis would be minority in both the provinces. It would split the Bengali speaking population and set the two religious communities against each other. Of the large number of meetings thereafter, more than 500 were held in East Bengal alone. Indian National Congress passed resolutions condemning the proposal in 1903 and 1904. Separating Bihar and Orissa from Bengal would solve the administrative problem, it was suggested.

On 11 January 1905, 300 representatives met in a conference under the chairmanship of Sir Henri Cotton, a friend of India and a retired chief commissioner of Assam. They proposed an alternative arrangement for the administrative convenience, which was to separate Bihar and Chhotanagpur from Bengal and to separate Sylhet and Coochbihar, two Bengali speaking areas, from Assam, to be tagged to Bengal. About 3000 meetings, with gathering between 500 and 50000, comprising of Hindus and Muslims at different places, condemned the Government actions and demanded the undoing of the proposed partition. The press, both English and regional language, condemned the action. Sakharam Ganesh Deuskar, a Marathi journalist and writer settled in Bengal, wrote Desher Katha, baring the selfish motives and actions of the English. Rabindranath Tagore vehemently opposed the partition, wrote many fiery articles and read them, delivered lectures in meetings.

Government’s divide and rule policy and curtailment of education policy continued. Lord Macaulay got his University Bill passed, which made the college education dearer. But the true education continued in full force, as supported by Sir Ashutosh Mookerjee, the Vice Chancellor of the Calcutta University. By another scheme of reform of education, the Government on 11 March 1904, announced the plan of formulating and teaching of languages according to different dialects. Bengali language was divided into four, Bihari into three. Poet Rabindranath Tagore wrote and read out essays pointing out the motives behind such moves.

Krishna Kumar Mitra, uncle of Aurobindo Ghose and editor of Sanjibani, urged in his paper on 13 July 1905, to boycott British goods and Government employees. In a public meeting at Bagerhat on 16 July, such proposal and more were accepted. On 7 August 1905 there was a historic meeting in the Town Hall of Calcutta attended by intellectuals, leaders and students- all the rank and file. 5000 strong student body marched wearing black badges to the hall, shouting slogans. The hall was overcrowded, the gathering outside was overwhelming. The partition was called unfair and illegitimate. Resolution was made to continue the struggle until the partition was annulled, while unanimously accepting the proposal to boycott the British goods. This was the day when Bande Mataram became the symbol and slogan of the movement. Later it became the slogan in the mouths of all the revolutionaries throughout the country, It became the national anthem of free India. People died in the field uttering this mantra.

Boycott spread to other parts of India. People, aggrieved with the colonisers’ attitude of oppression, joined the army of agitators, which included the zamindars and some notable Muslim leaders like Abdul Rasul, Abdul Halim Guznavi, Yusuf Khan Bahadur, Muhammad Ismail Chowdhury and Liaquat Hossain Khan. National education became a part of their programme. Poets like Rabindranath Tagore, Dwijendralal Roy, Rajanikanta Sen wrote patriotic songs. Volumes of swadeshi literature were created to become a part of Bengali literary treasure.

But Gokhale was not exactly in favour of boycott. Besides him other great Congress leaders like Surendranath Banerjee, Bipin Chandra Paul and many others led the movement. Most of them, except Bipin Chandra Paul, were later known as the moderate leaders. Though Tagore was not in favour of appeal, of mendicant policies, as Sri Aurobindo used the term to mark the moderates in the pages of Induprakash, he was a poet, not a radical political leader and activist. The nationalists, also known as extremists, emerged after the break up of Congress at Surat in 1907. They gradually influenced the Congress more and took the leadership in their hands. The movement grew to heights, covering the entire India under their leadership, to be termed as swadeshi movement.

Bipin Chandra gave a series of lectures in Madras in 1907. ‘Our swaraj will not be Hindu or Mohammedan; it will be Indian swaraj.’ He said there. Brahmabandhab Upadhyay, editor of Sandhya, too wrote fiery articles, spoke in favour of the movement. Militancy spread abroad. Shyamaji Krishna Verma founded Home Rule Society and India House in London in 1905 and started campaign against Curzon. Madam Cama began to edit Bande Mataram from Paris, propagating revolutionary ideas. Chempakraman Pillai started Indian National Party in Barlin. Virendranath Chattopadhyay, Dr. Abdul Hufiz and others joined it. Gadar party was formed by Hardyal and Sohan Singh Bhakna in San Francisco, U S A. Gadar movement spread to Canada.

While a leader of the secret revolutionary societies at Baroda, he encouraged his followers in Bengal to fight tooth and nail against the proposal for partition. He gave a clarion call to all revolutionaries to dedicate their lives for the freedom of their motherland through a booklet, Bhavani Mandir. He wrote a daring pamphlet from Baroda, titled No Compromise, when the Government announced the programme of the partition of Bengal. No press in Calcutta was ready to publish it. Abinash Bhattacharjee and others made arrangement with one Kulkarni, a Maharashtrian revolutionary, who composed it overnight. It was published anonymously and distributed in thousands.

He virtually gave up his lucrative job of a Vice Principle of the Baroda College to join as the first Principal of the first national college at Calcutta under National Education council, at much less a remuneration. He took long leave from 18 June 1906 and never rejoined the Baroda College. The idea was to get full opportunity to fight against the partition and to lead the country toward full freedom from foreign rules. He began writing fiery articles in Bengali advocating armed revolt in Jugantar, which ran as per his guidance. In the English language paper Bande Mataram, de facto edited by him without his name anywhere, he wrote as a political thinker, a spokesperson of the nationalist group. From time to time he raised the problem of partition and advocated to his countrymen against any prayer and petition for its revocation. He challenged the British and wrote in Bande Mataram on 4 September 1906,

‘The present movement has welded the masses and the classes together; and it is therefore not likely to be cowed down by any threat of violence from any quarter. And all these tend to show that both the evils which the Partition was designed to work, have no chance of being realized, whether the Partition is kept up or it is evoked or modified. But still we want the revocation of this Partition, because such a revocation will prove the helplessness of the Government in the face of the present agitation, and a practical confession of the defeat.’

In Bande Mataram he wrote elaborately about the passive resistance, advocated the policy of non-cooperation, boycott, national education, national arbitration and swadeshi. He was behind the demand of swaraj in the Calcutta Congress in 1906 and persistently gave the call of Purna swaraj, full freedom from foreign rule through Bande Mataram in 1907 and after. He advocated both passive resistance and violence, to be used as weapons, as per the need of the hour. ‘It is the nature of the pressure which determines the nature of the resistance’, he wrote. Even after his jail term for a year in 1908-09, he led the country in revolutionary paths through his papers, Dharma and Karmayogin.

The followers of his great revolutionary ideas were Kshudiram Bose, Bagha Jatin, Bhagat Singh, Chandrasekhar Azad, Rashbehari Basu, Subhas Chandra Bose and such others. Mahatma Gandhi followed his ideals of passive resistance and non-cooperation. Gandhi advocated non-violent methods but the freedom struggle proceeded through both violent and non-violent methods. While Sri Aurobindo retired from active politics 1910, the country achieved freedom in 1947, mainly by following the paths shown by him. During the last seven years before the independence, all the then big leaders, including M. K. Gandhi, were in jail. The country moved forward through freedom struggle, mostly violent in nature. AT last the leaders, including Gandhi, agreed to and advocated for the partition of the country. The price of freedom was the partition of the country.

The partition of Bengal was annulled on 7 August 1911...Aurobindo Ghose, the former revolutionary, wrote a letter from Pondicherry soon after the incident, probably in January 1913, to his disciple Motilal Roy at Chandernagore. He mentioned among other things, ‘About the Tantrik yoga; your experiment in the smashana was a daring one- but it seems to have been efficiently and skillfully carried out, and the success is highly gratifying’( Pondicherry; SABCL. Vol-26. p.428). This was written in coded language, signed Kali, a pseudonym. Tankrit Yoga stood for revolutionary activity and smashana stood for Delhi, as explained by Arun Chandra dutta, in his Light to Superlight (Calcutta; Prabartak Publishers. 1972).

Aurobindo Ghose still had contacts with some of the revolutionaries but Sri Aurobindo the yogi, who was regularly doing sadhana to develop different yogic faculties, was engaged in helping the injured Lord Hardinge to recover through is silent yogic actions. These he did not write in any letter but were discovered from his jottings about his progresses in yoga, kept here and there. Portions from two such entries may be quoted to clear the point.

• 31.12.1912: ‘The Viceroy’s health is following exactly the movement of the Will which was that the pain should be relieved within December 31st and the healing of the wounds fulfilled in January. This morning’s news is that there is no longer any discomfort from the wounds, although the healing will take some weeks.’ (Sri Aurobindo Archives and Research. Pondicherry; Sri Aurobindo Ashram. April 1987. p.52)
• 15.1.1913: ‘The Viceroy’s health has almost answered to the Aishwarya as within the first fortnight . . . . the trikaldrishti is fulfilled in both the favourable and the adverse movements. . . .’ (ibid. p.82)

Both Motilal Roy and Rashbehari Basu were from the then French enclave, Chandernagore. Both of them were behind the bomb throwing action. None of their actions were inspired by hate but as duty of the warriors in the field of revolution.