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The Life and Times of Anil Kumar Das

Introduction

In the annals of Indian history rarely is an individual known to have suffered as much for his fight for India’s Independence, nor is an entire family known to have borne such adversities as Shaheed Anil Das and his family underwent in the struggle for India’s Independence. Every Independence Day as we unfurl the Tricolour, perhaps it is apt to look over our shoulders into the lives of martyrs who had the courage to look the mighty British Empire in the eye and stand up to its inveterate injustice and inhumanity. One such live was that of Shaheed Anil Kumar Das of Dhaka, then a part of India. Anil Das was a brilliant student of Chemistry, a dedicated social worker and a par-time teacher for less privileged students in Dhaka. But apart from that, he was also a revolutionary and a fighter for India’s freedom, who refused to accept the plight of being a British subject. He just lived for 26 years and was martyred in Dhaka Jail, killed by the British police in their bid to silence a loud and brave voice of dissent.

Early Life

Anil Das was born on Harrison Street in Kolkata, now known as Mahatma Gandhi Road on June 18, 1906. He was born in the house of his maternal grandfather, Shri Nikhil Ranjan Roy, who was part of the Bengal Civil Service and rewarded by the British with the title of Rai Bahadur for his loyalty. It was a time of great ferment in Bengal. India’s first mass movement was underway in Bengal as an entire people stood up to the machinations of the British government to diabolically partition Bengal into Hindu and Muslim sub-parts. None other than leaders such as Rabindranath Tagore, Bipin Pal and Sri Aurobindo Ghose rallied the people in Bengal, while leaders such as Bal Gangadhar Tilak provided vociferous support from outside. Growing up in such tumultuous times, young Anil was imbued with the spirit of Independence at an early age. But his sensitivity veered not towards political confrontation, but towards helping the downtrodden and educating the masses. He would study hard and in his leisure time play cricket, but even while a teenager he started working for social causes, particularly educating poor students who could not afford tuitions, he would teach them gratis. It was in 1926 that Bengal was devastated by floods and he completely immersed himself in the work of flood relief. Day and night he worked relentlessly to house the dislocated and ensure relief supplies were reaching the needy. His selfless work was recognized by the great scientist Acharya Praffulla Ray, who formally praised Anil’s relentless efforts to help the flood victims. Anil Das’s father Shri Nibaran Chandra Das was a Sub-Registrar with the Bengal government. Not only was he incorruptible himself, he would not allow any sort of bribery in his department. It is believed he was feed contaminated food, which resulted in his illness and soon after, death, leaving behind young Anil and his siblings when they were still very young. This led the Das family return to their ancestral house in Dhaka, where Anil studied at the Pogose School and then did a BSc. and MSc. in Chemistry from Dhaka University.

Youth and Early Influences

India in general and Bengal in particular was seething with social and political rebelliousness in the 1920’s. A grand attempt at revolution had been made during the First World War, in the last decade, by thousands of revolutionaries, led by Rash Behari Bose and Bagha Jatin. While the movement had abated with the death of martyrdom of Mukherjee and escape of Bose to Japan, many revolutionaries deeply influenced the youth to continue to fight the colonial oppressors. One such leader was Hemchandra Ghosh, who influenced the youth of Dhaka. Under his influence, a revolutionary Anil Roy founded the Sri Sangha Revolutionary Party. Anil Das, though initially he steadfastly focused on social work, was gradually drawn to the conviction that without political power, radical change was not possible in India’s social circumstances. In the late ‘20’s he joined the Sri Sangha party. It was also a time when women were not only emerging from the purdah in Bengal, but started joining the revolutionary parties in Bengal, Punjab and other provinces. One such leader was Lila Nag, who had founded the Deepali Sangha in Dhaka to promote women’s education and emancipation, but she too veered towards taking up arms against the colonial government. Anil was a star student and this encouraged his family to hope that he would sit for the coveted Civil Service examination. Afterall his maternal grandfather had been a civil servant. When this discussion came up at a dinner table, initially he kept quiet and refused to engage. But when his grandfather was being insistent, Anil told him, he would appear for the Civil Service examination, provided his grandfather could say that as a Civil Servent he had never had to do anything against his conscience. His relatives were flabbergasted and did not have an answer. The subsequent silence decided Anil would never compete in the Civil Service exams. Whatever cause Anil espoused, he gave his heart and soul to it. As he rose in the ranks of the revolutionary party, India’s freedom from political yoke, freedom of the poor and a socialistic direction for India’s future was what Anil thoughts veered towards. At age 22, he is known to have written a book on Chemistry for students. His book did well, selling in the student market. Following Swami Vivekananda’s dictum, he studied hard, but also developed immense physical strength and gained expertise in stick fighting and sharp shooting. Intelligent, tall and well built he was an asset to the revolutionary movement.

Revolutionary Explosion

In the late 1920’s Bengal was a powder keg which exploded with multiple attacks on the British government establishment. The biggest and best known of such attacks on the colonial government was the Chittagong Armoury Raid, led by Surya Sen. At around the same time, another noteworthy incident took place in Dhaka, which changed the course of Anil Das’s life forever. The Inspector General of Dhaka Police, Mr Lowman was known for his cruelty to the revolutionary prisoners in Bengal and was known to take pleasure in devising new ways to torture political prisoners. On August 29, 1930 he was visiting the Mitford Medical College, where a medical student and a revolutionary, Benoy Bose decided to teach him a lesson. While Lowman was visiting along with his entourage, Benoy walked up to him and shot him and the Superintendent of Dhaka police, Hodgson. Both died soon after. The British administration went into a state of shock. Even in Ireland, the British had not witnessed a situation such as this where the Inspector General of Police and the Superintendent of Police of a prominent city are shot dead simultaneously. As a result, the British Police in Dhaka went completely berserk and let loose a reign of terror on suspected revolutionaries and their families. That very night, a large contingent of British and Indian policemen came to Anil Das’s house and ransacked the entire house. They shouted and abused in the filthiest of language and destroyed what they could, broke glasses, pictures and earthen pots and dragged Anil’s younger brother Parimal to jail. The police knew Anil was close to Benoy Bose and suspected that he had helped with providing support to the revolutionary. But whatever the case, that night Anil went underground, never to return to a normal life. With the police in no mood to relent, Bengal became too hot for Anil Das. As revolutionary activity was conducted in utmost secrecy, not much evidence is available as to where Anil Das went into hiding, however, he is known to have escaped to Benaras, where he met up-country revolutionaries and tried to develop a strong network of freedom fighters to plan a combined insurrection across India. Being an expert in chemistry, he is also known to have set up a bomb factory in Monghyr in Bihar. After about a year of being underground he did visit home, in the dead of night. His mother Kironbala Das, and aunt Hironmoyi Das would cook for him and then wash the utensils and keep them the way they were, as if no had used them at all, so that the servants of the house, who were often on police payrolls, would not have get suspicious. According to a Bengal CID report, published in 1937, Anil Das and some of his associates were seen near Maulvi Bazar in Dhaka and escaped the police attempt to arrest him after an exchange of fire. Needless to say, the same report lists Anil Das as a very dangerous ‘terrorist’, as the British were wont to call Indian freedom fighters.

The Dhaka Train Robbery Incident

If the revolutionary party was to grow, it needed funds. Sri Sangha too needed funds for recruitment, training, travel, sustain and nurture the underground network. Anil Das was against individual encounters with the armed police and worked towards generating a larger awareness among the people of India and widespread insurrection. But in the immediate term, the Party needed funds. So, he meticulously planned, what came to be known as the Dhaka Train Robbery Case. Trains passed by Dhaka with large cargoes of jute and cash. Anil and his associates decided to raid one such train, when they had confirmed information of significant cash being carried in one of them. In April 1932, a well-armed group of revolutionaries led by Anil Das stopped a train in broad daylight and decamped with at least Rs 31,000. They could have shot the armed guards, both Indian and British, if they had chosen to do so, but that was not what they believed in. They disappeared in a taxi driven by a Muslim driver. This was yet another slap on the face of the British Police in Bengal. The Superintendent of Dhaka Police, Charles Grasby was a brutal officer who did not leave any stone unturned to find the mastermind of the raid, Anil Das. Soon after, one of his associates Jyotindra Nath Sen was arrested. Once in custody he was mercilessly beaten to make him spill all information he had. But Jyotindranath held his ground. However, the police was tipped off by a mole in the party and on the 7th of June, 1932 when Anil Das was travelling on steamer in Munshiganj port in Dhaka district, the police arrested him, before he could resist. Anil Das was kept in custody and subjected to torture. After years of being on the run, his health had taken a hit. But it was nothing compared to what the police let loose on him. He was kept without food, he was not allowed to sleep and savagely kicked and beaten. When he was produced in court four days later on June 11, 1932, a hush fell upon the court as he could barely stand on his feet, nor could his eyes focus properly. His paternal uncle and guardian, a senior advocate of the Dhaka Bar Association, Shri Prabodh Chandra Das, stated that Anil was being tortured in custody and the judge should grant him bail. He stated Anil Das was not safe in the hands of the police. But Bengal was at the time governed by the Bengal Ordinance Act, which allowed political prisoners to be kept in jail without any charge at all. So, the police got his remand extended.

In Custody

The Police took him away from Dhaka Jail to Lalbagh Jail on the outskirts of Dhaka, where the loudest of cries for help could not be heard. It was here that thousands of sepoys had been brought by the British after the Rebellion of 1857 and systematically killed. Now there was no stopping the police. Under the direction of Grasby, the police beat Anil Das into pulp, but according to Ashok Mitra, the former Finance Minister of Bengal, and a family friend of the Das’, no matter what form the torture took, no information could be extracted from Anil Das. As the Police kept beating him, the only words that escaped his lips was ‘Bande Mataram’. The police were aware that Anil’s uncle, Shri Probodh Chandra Das, a top Dhaka lawyer, was trying tooth and nail to get bail and had stated that Anil was not fit to withstand imprisonment. A plea, which they suspected could possibly have an impact. Also, that Anil was the grandson of a respected Civil Servant, was not lost on Grasby. In a bizarre and an amazing display of inhumanity on the night of June 17, 1932, a few policemen entered Anil’s cell, kept hitting him, then they huddled him in a jute sack and hit his head with heavy bamboo sticks. According to Ganesh Ghosh, famed revolutionary of the Chittagong group, and who was in the neighbouring cell, in the dead of night he heard’s Anil’s piercing cry of pain rent the silence of the night. His cries rose to a pitch and then the jail fell silent. Some men hurriedly walked out of Anil’s cell at about 3 am. Next morning, on June 18, 1932, his 26th birthday, Anil’s lifeless body, covered in white was brought in a police van and laid outside his house in Dhaka. A stunned family woke up to an unimaginable truth, the eldest son of the family, Borda (eldest brother) to his siblings, Anil Das was no more. He had died of concussion of the brain in custody. The horrific end of Anil Das stirred the conscience of the nation. Letters poured in from many parts of the country. Dhaka was on the boil and demonstrations against the government had to be lathi-charged by the police. And one of his indigent students, Benoy Roy, a teenager, decided to repay Grasby in his own coin. On August 22, 1932, armed with a bomb and a gun, he downed the shutters at a railway crossing and shot Grasby. But Grasby escaped with a graze and Benoy Roy was sent to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands for 13 years. Protests Against the Killing of Anil Das Anil’s paternal uncle, Shri Prabodh Chandra Das was bed ridden for a few days after the incident, totally shaken by what happened. But he decided not to rest till the world got to know, what the British Police had done. He reached out to none other than Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, the future founder of Jana Sangh, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s original party. Dr Mukherjee was not a revolutionary but was known to support just causes. A Legislator of great repute he raised the question of Anil Das’s death in the Bengal Legislature. He was immediately censured and threatened with disciplinary action if he implied the Police had killed Anil Das. To that he replied, “The only person who could have put paid to the lie was young Anil and today he is no more.” Such a statement in the Legislative Assembly put the Bengal Police on guard. But more was to come.

The nationalist media too played a pivotal role. Shocked and dismayed by the brazen killing, the Amrita Bazar Patrika, Ananda Bazar, Liberty, Daily Basumati, East Bengal Times, Banglar Bani and many others gave extensive coverage to the custodial killing of Anil Das. Fearing the storm, the Government took the unprecedented step of publishing a counter article in the then Anglo Indian newspaper The Statesman. The news spread across India. Among others, The Mayor of Mumbai, Mr Jayakar sent his condolences to Anil’s mother.

A member of the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi raised a similar query, as to how a healthy young man can die of ill-health within 10 days of his arrest. The Government held on their statement that Anil Das died of natural causes. In September 1932, through the offices of a former student of Anil Das, Mr Mustafi, a British Labour MP, raised the question of Anil Das’ custodial death in the British Parliament. The British authorities repeatedly lied under oath on the platform of the august houses of the Central Legilative Assembly and the British Parliament that Anil Das had died naturally and he had not been tortured. However, a discussion in the British Parliament about the custodial death of a 25 year Indian revolutionary was very bad publicity for the British government, which had positioned itself as a champion of democracy and freedom in Europe. What it was doing in Bengal, was largely hidden from Europe. It now had to take some face saving measures, lest they get more adverse publicity on this sordid case.

The then Secretary of State, Sir Samuel Hoare is known to have given instructions to close the Dhaka Train Robbery case and release the under-trials in the case. Grasby too was transferred to another district.

Meanwhile, Anil’s family continued to be victimized by the British government. Anil’s brother Sunil Das, two years younger to him, and a brilliant scholar, whose research papers were published by the American Journal of Physical Chemistry in the United States, was also taken prisoner and remained in prison for almost 13 years, due to suspected complicity in another case, which was really a cover for victimization. In independent India, he was elected a Member of the Bengal Legislative Assembly as a member of the Praja Socialist Party and later he was the President of the Bengal unit of the Janata Party. Anil Das’ youngest brother Parimal, was too young to be arrested, but relentlessly followed by the British CID. A year after Anil Das’ death; in a bid to shake off the police who were trailing him, Parimal fell on a railway track and was run over by a train. His only sister Latika, was an eminent social worker and relentlessly worked for the rehabilitation of the refugees from Eastern Bengal after India’s Partition. While leading a women’s demonstration of the Communist Party of India in 1948, the police fired on an unarmed demonstration by women, Latika and three others who were leading from the front were killed in the firing. This is a story which is largely forgotten today. But it is stories like these which give our Independence Day celebrations meaning and reminds our young generation the worth of this Independence.