Bagha Jatin

Jatindranath Mukherjee earned the name “Bagha”, the Tiger, after he killed a tiger with a dagger.

He went on to plan a German arms landing in the First World War. This lesson covers his life, the Indo-German plot, the Battle of Balasore and the exam traps.

1Who was Bagha Jatin?

He was a quiet, disciplined man who became a revolutionary leader.

• His birth name was Jatindranath Mukherjee.
• He was born on 7 December 1879 at Kaya village, Kushtia. That was then in Nadia district.
• His father died when he was young. His mother raised him.
• He trained as a stenographer in Calcutta.
• As a young man he visited Swami Vivekananda often.
• He married Indubala Banerjee in 1900.
• They had four children. The first son died young.
• In March 1906 a tiger attacked him near his village.
• He killed the Royal Bengal tiger with a dagger.
• The Bengal government gave him a silver shield for it.
• The title “Bagha” (Tiger) stayed with him.

2How did he build his network?

He joined the early revolutionary groups of Bengal.

• He was among the early organisers of the Anushilan Samiti, from around 1902.
• He met Sri Aurobindo in 1903. They began working together.
• He and Barindra Kumar Ghosh recruited young men across Bengal.
• That network became known as the Maniktala group.
• He became one of the principal leaders of Jugantar.
• In 1908 the Alipore Bomb Case hit the Bengal revolutionaries. Barindra and Aurobindo were among the accused.
• In 1910 Jatin himself was arrested in the Howrah-Sibpur conspiracy case.
• He was released in 1911 and went back to his work.
• The police respected his discipline and his hold over his followers.
• The party journal Yugantar was started by Barindra Kumar Ghosh.
• Its pages urged armed resistance to British rule.
• Early Jugantar work relied on homemade bombs and assassination plots.
• By 1915 the party had scaled up to an international arms plan during a world war.
• Money came partly from “taxicab dacoities” and boat robberies in 1915.
• For Barindra’s story, see Barindra Kumar Ghosh.

3What was the Indo-German plan?

The plan was to arm a Bengal uprising during the war.

• Britain was at war with Germany from August 1914.
• German agents in Southeast Asia, the Helfferich brothers, met Jugantar in March 1915.
• Jatin’s aide Narendranath Bhattacharya heard of the shipment in April.
• The Berlin Committee coordinated German help for Indian revolutionaries.
• It first planned to land arms near Karachi. Later the landing moved to India’s east coast.
• The German ship SS Maverick was to bring the cargo.
• The estimate was about 30,000 rifles, plus ammunition and money.
• The landing point was near Balasore, on the Odisha coast.
• Jatin chose Balasore partly to cut the rail line to Madras.
• He also hoped to win over the 14th Rajput Regiment in Calcutta once the arms arrived.

4What happened at Balasore?

The plot leaked, and Jatin made his last stand.

• A Baltic-German agent called “Oren” defected and leaked the plan.
• He told Beckett, the British consul at Batavia (now Jakarta).
• The British seized the Maverick before it reached India.
• Police in Calcutta broke up the underground network there.
• Jatin did not know. He still went to the Balasore coast.
• Police and soldiers tracked his group to a hillock at Chasakhand.
• Five revolutionaries dug in there with Mauser pistols.
• The police and soldiers carried modern rifles. The group had only pistols.
• A gun battle lasted about 75 minutes on 9 September 1915.
• Chittapriya Ray Chaudhuri died in the fight. Jatin and Jatish Pal were badly wounded.
• Manoranjan Sengupta and Niren Dasgupta were captured when their ammunition ran out.
• Jatin died at Balasore district hospital on 10 September 1915, aged 35.
• Kolkata remembers him with a statue on Beadon Street. A south Kolkata locality, Baghajatin, carries his name.

5What are the exam traps?

Exams mix up the 1915 plots and the places.

• Two plots were linked to the First World War in 1915.
• The Bengal and Odisha plot was Jatin’s. It centred on Balasore.
• The Punjab plot was the Ghadar mutiny plan. Kartar Singh Sarabha was part of it.
• For that plot, see Kartar Singh Sarabha.
• Do not mix up Bagha Jatin with Jatin Das. Jatin Das died on hunger strike in 1929.
• Do not say Jatin died on 9 September. The battle was 9 September. He died the next day.
• Remember the journals. Yugantar was Barindra’s. Sandhya was Brahmabandhab Upadhyay’s.
• Do not call the plot a success. The ship was seized and the rising never began.
• Remember the ship: SS Maverick. It never landed its cargo.