Barindra Kumar Ghosh

Barindra Kumar Ghosh was Sri Aurobindo’s younger brother and the founder of Jugantar.

His bomb workshop in a Calcutta garden led to the Alipore Bomb Case. This lesson covers his life, the trial, his years in the Andamans and the exam traps.

1Who was Barindra Kumar Ghosh?

He came from a well-known Bengali family with a very mixed upbringing.

• He was born on 5 January 1880 at Croydon, England.
• He was the younger brother of Sri Aurobindo.
• His father, Krishnadhan Ghose, was a physician.
• His mother, Swarnalata, was the daughter of the reformist writer Rajnarayan Basu.
• His elder brother Manmohan Ghose taught English literature.
• He taught at Presidency College and later at Dhaka University.
• Barindra grew up mostly in India. He studied at a school in Deoghar.
• He then joined Patna College, around 1901.
• He is also said to have gone to Baroda, where Aurobindo served the Gaekwad’s state.
• That stay is where his interest in armed resistance is said to have grown.

2How did he build Jugantar?

He turned scattered youth groups into a party with its own newspaper.

• He moved to Bengal around 1902 and began organising revolutionary groups.
• Young men were drawn in through gyms, study circles and secret societies.
• In 1906 he founded the Bengali weekly Yugantar.
• The paper urged armed resistance to British rule.
• The revolutionary party took the same name, Jugantar.
• He worked with Bagha Jatin to recruit young Bengalis.
• Their network became known as the Maniktala group.
• He personally brought Prafulla Chaki to Calcutta.
• He enlisted Chaki into Jugantar.
• The group ran a bomb workshop from a garden house at Maniktala in Calcutta.
• The workshop made explosives and stored arms.
• Its chief bomb maker was Ullaskar Dutta. See Ullaskar Dutta.

3What was the Alipore Bomb Case?

The Muzaffarpur bomb led police straight to his door.

• After the Muzaffarpur bombing of 30 April 1908, police traced the plot to Calcutta.
• They raided the Maniktala garden on 2 May 1908.
• Barindra and Sri Aurobindo were both arrested.
• Ullaskar Dutta was arrested with them.
• The trial was held at Alipore, in Calcutta. It became the Alipore Bomb Case.
• Many Jugantar members stood accused together.
• An accused turned approver, Narendranath Goswami.
• Two young revolutionaries shot him dead inside Alipore jail in 1908.
• They were Kanailal Dutta and Satyendranath Bose.
• Kanailal Dutta was hanged later that year.
• The lawyer Chittaranjan Das defended Sri Aurobindo.
• He argued that Aurobindo’s writings were philosophy, not sedition.
• On 6 May 1909 the judge, Beachcroft, acquitted Aurobindo.
• Barindra and Ullaskar Dutta were sentenced to death.
• On appeal, the sentences became transportation for life.

4What happened in the Andamans?

He spent about twelve years in the penal colony.

• He was sent to the Cellular Jail in the Andaman Islands in 1909.
• The jail stood at Port Blair.
• The Andamans were widely feared as Kala Pani, the black water.
• Ullaskar Dutta was sent there too.
• Convicts there faced hard labour, harsh food and cruel punishment.
• He wrote later of those years in a memoir.
• The English title is The Tale of My Exile.
• It was published in 1922.
• He was released in 1920.
• The release came under a general amnesty linked to the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms.

5What did he do later?

He left armed politics and turned to writing and a quieter life.

• After release he took up journalism.
• He wrote for Bengali papers, including the daily Basumati.
• He also spent time at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, from 1923.
• His life took a spiritual turn, like his elder brother’s.
• Aurobindo had already left politics for Pondicherry by 1910.
• He died on 18 April 1959 in Calcutta.
• He outlived Jatin and Chaki by decades.
• Many of the young men he had recruited died young.

6What are the exam traps?

Exams mix up the brothers, the journals and the parties.

• Aurobindo was acquitted. Barindra was convicted.
• Barindra’s death sentence was reduced to transportation for life.
• Yugantar was Barindra’s paper. Sandhya was Brahmabandhab Upadhyay’s.
• Barindra was not part of the Ghadar Party. His work was in Bengal.
• Do not mix him up with Rash Behari Bose, who planned the 1915 Ghadar mutiny.
• Barindra is the younger brother. Manmohan is the elder brother.
• The trial was held at Alipore, in Calcutta.
• The raid was at Maniktala. The trial was at Alipore.
• He was released in 1920, not in 1909.