Jugantar or Yugantar ( ''Jugantor''; lit. ''New Era'' or ''Transition of an Epoch'') was one of the two main secret revolutionary trends operating in

Bengal Bengal ( ) is a Historical geography, historical geographical, ethnolinguistic and cultural term referring to a region in the Eastern South Asia, eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. The region of Benga ...

for Indian independence. This association, like

Anushilan Samiti () was an Indian fitness club, which was actually used as an underground society for anti-British revolutionaries. In the first quarter of the 20th century it supported revolutionary violence as the means for ending British rule in India. The ...

, started in the guise of a suburban health and fitness club while secretly nurturing revolutionaries. Several Jugantar members were arrested, hanged, or deported for life to the

Cellular Jail The Cellular Jail, also known as Kālā Pānī (), was a British colonial prison in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The prison was used by the colonial government of India for the purpose of exiling criminals and political prisoners. Many ...

Andaman Andaman may refer to: * Andaman Islands, an island group in the Bay of Bengal * Andaman Island, Penang, an artificial island in George Town, Penang * Andaman Sea, a sea of the eastern Indian Ocean * ''Andaman'' (1998 film), an Indian Kannada-lang ...

and many of them joined the

Communist Consolidation Communist Consolidation (19351938) was a radical communist organization, founded by the prisoners of the Cellular Jail who got influenced by the philosophy of Marxism. In the mid-1930s, it became the largest resistance group against British r ...

in the

Notable members

* Abinash Chandra Bhattacharya (1882-1962) *

Basanta Kumar Biswas Basanta Kumar Biswas (6 February 1895 – 11 May 1915) was an Indian pro-independence activist involved in the Jugantar group who, in December 1912, played a role in the bombing of the Charles Hardinge, 1st Baron Hardinge of Penshurst, Viceroy' ...

(1895-1915) *

Khudiram Bose Khudiram Bose (also spelled ''Khudiram Basu'') (3 December 1889 – 11 August 1908) was an Indian nationalist from Bengal Presidency who opposed British rule of India. For his role in the Muzaffarpur Conspiracy Case, along with Prafull ...

(1889-1908) *

Satyendranath Bosu Satyendra Nath Bosu (aka. Satyendranath Bose or Satyen Bose; 30 July 1882 – 21 November 1908) was an Indian Revolutionary movement for Indian independence, nationalist of the Anushilan Samiti. Bosu, while held in Alipore Jail hospital as a ...

(1882-1908) *

Prafulla Chaki Prafulla Chandra Chaki (, ''Prafulla Chaki'' alias Dinesh Chandra Roy) (10 December 1888 – 2 May 1908) was an Indian revolutionary associated with the Jugantar group of revolutionaries who carried out assassination attempt against British ...

(1888-1908) *

Ambika Chakrabarty Ambika Chakrabarty (January 1892 – 6 March 1962) was an Indian independence movement activist and revolutionary. Later, he was a leader of the Communist Party of India and a member of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly. Revolutionary activ ...

(1891-1962) *

Amarendra Chatterjee Amarendranath Chatterjee () (1 July 1880 – 4 September 1957) was an Indian independence movement activist. In charge of raising funds for the Jugantar movement, his activities largely covered revolutionary centres in Bihar, Odisha and the Un ...

(1880-1957) *

Taraknath Das Taraknath Das (or Tarak Nath Das; 15 June 1884 – 22 December 1958) was an Indian revolutionary and internationalist scholar. He was a pioneering immigrant in the west coast of North America and discussed his plans with Tolstoy, while organ ...

(1884-1958) *

Bhupendra Kumar Datta Bhupendra Kumar Dutta (; 8 October 1892 – 29 December 1979) was an Indian freedom fighter and a revolutionary who fought for Indian independence from British rule. In addition to his other specific contributions as a Jugantar leader, he ho ...

(1894-1979) * Kanailal Dutta (1888-1908) *

Ullaskar Dutta Ullaskar Dutta (16 April 1885 – 17 May 1965) was an Indian revolutionary associated with Anushilan Samiti and Jugantar of Bengal, and was a close associate of Barindra Ghosh. He was the principal bomb maker of the Jugantar group until Hemc ...

Bipin Behari Ganguli Bipin Behari Ganguly (5 November 1887 – 14 January 1954) was a member of Indian independence movement and a politician. He was born in Halisahar, Bengal Presidency (now in West Bengal), on 5 November 1887. His father's name was Akshaynath Gan ...

(1887-1954) *

Santi Ghose Santi Ghose (also known as Santi Ghosh; 22 November 1916 – 1989) was an Indian nationalist who, along with Suniti Choudhury, assassinated a British district magistrate when she was 16 years old and is known for her participation in an armed r ...

(1916-1989) *

Surendra Mohan Ghose Surendra Mohan Ghose (22 April 1893 – 7 September 1976) was an Indian politician in the Jugantar Party during the time of Indian Independence, and a close associate of Sarat Chandra Basu and Maharaj Trailokyanath Chakraborty. He was electe ...

alias Madhu Ghosh (1893-1976) *

Aurobindo Ghosh Sri Aurobindo (born Aurobindo Ghose; 15 August 1872 – 5 December 1950) was an Indian yogi, maharishi, and Indian nationalist. He also edited the newspaper ''Bande Mataram''. Aurobindo studied for the Indian Civil Service at King' ...

(1872-1950) *

Barin Ghosh Barindra Kumar Ghosh or Barindra Ghosh, or popularly Barin Ghosh (5 January 1880 – 18 April 1959), was an Indian revolutionary and journalist. He was one of the founding members of Jugantar Bengali weekly, a revolutionary outfit in Bengal. G ...

(1880-1959) *

Ganesh Ghosh Ganesh Ghosh (22 June 1900 – 16 October 1994)Sangshad Bangali Charitabhidhan, Editor: Anjali Basu, 2nd part, 4th Edition, Sahitya Sangshad, 2019, Kolkata was an Indian independence activist, revolutionary and politician. Biography Ganesh Gh ...

(b. 1900 ) *

Arun Chandra Guha Arun Chandra Guha was an Indian politician. He was elected to the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Parliament of India from the Barasat constituency of West Bengal in 1952, 1957 and 1962 as a member of the Indian National Congress The ...

(b. 1892) *

Bagha Jatin Bagha Jatin (; ) or Baghajatin, born Jatindranath Mukherjee (); 7 December 1879 – 10 September 1915) was an Indian independence activist. He was one of the principal leaders of the Jugantar party that was the central association of revolu ...

alias Jatindra Nath Mukherjee (1879-1915) *

Hare Krishna Konar Hare Krishna Konar (ISO 15919, ISO: ''Harē Kr̥iṣṇā Kōṅār'', ; 5 August 191523 July 1974), also known as H. K. Konar, was an Indian Communist revolution, Marxist revolutionary, Agriculturist, agricultural theorist, peasant leader, and ...

(1915–1974) *

Hemchandra Kanungo Hemchandra Das Kanungo (4 August 1871 – 8 April 1951) was an Indian nationalist and a member of the Anushilan Samiti. Kanungo travelled to Paris in 1907, where he learnt the technique of assembling picric acid bombs from exiled Russian revolu ...

, alias Hem Das *

Bhavabhushan Mitra Bhavabhushan Mitra, or Bhaba Bhusan Mitter, alias Swami Satyananda Puri (1881– 27 January 1970), was a Bengali Indian freedom fighter and an influential social worker. He represented the link between two radical trends: the highly centrali ...

* Santosh Kumar Mitra (1901-1931) *

Satyendra Chandra Mitra Satyendra Chandra Mitra (23 December 1888 – 27 October 1942) was an Indian freedom fighter, who started his political career as a revolutionary aligning himself with the Jugantar Party. In 1916 he was arrested and interned at Janjira Cha ...

(1888-1942) *

Mohit Moitra Mohit Mohan Moitra was an Indian revolutionary and Indian independence movement fighter in the 1930s. Early life Mohan Moitra was born in British India at Natun Bharenga, Pabna to Hemchandra Moitra. Revolutionary activities Mohan Moitra be ...

Jadugopal Mukherjee Jadu Gopal Mukherjee (18 September 1886 – 30 August 1976) was a Bengali Indian revolutionary who, as the successor of Jatindranath Mukherjee or Bagha Jatin, led the Jugantar members to recognise and accept Gandhi's movement as the culminati ...

(1866-1976) *

Subodh Chandra Mullick Subodh Chandra Basu Mallik (9 February 1879 – 14 November 1920), commonly known as ''Raja'' Subodh Mallik, was a Bengali Indian industrialist, philanthropist and nationalist. Mallik is noted as a nationalist intellectual who was one of the c ...

Surya Sen Surya Sen, also known as Surya Kumar Sen (22 March 189412 January 1934), was an Indian revolutionary and played a significant role in the Indian independence movement against British rule. He is best known for leading the Chittagong Armoury ...

(1894-1934)

The beginning

The Jugantar party was established in April 1906 by leaders like

, his brother

, and Upen Banerjee. Along with 21 revolutionaries, they started to collect arms, explosives and manufactured bombs. The headquarters of Jugantar were located at 27 Kanai Dhar Lane then 41 Champatola 1st Lane in

Kolkata Kolkata, also known as Calcutta ( its official name until 2001), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of West Bengal. It lies on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River, west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary ...

Activities

Jugantar Possessed Cast Iron Bomb Shells - 1930 CE - Kolkata 2017-02-05 5145

Some senior members of the group were sent abroad. One of the first batches included Surendra Mohan Bose,

Tarak Nath Das Taraknath Das (or Tarak Nath Das; 15 June 1884 – 22 December 1958) was an Indian revolutionary and internationalist scholar. He was a pioneering immigrant in the west coast of North America and discussed his plans with Tolstoy, while organ ...

and Guran Ditt Kumar, who, since 1907, were extremely active among the Hindu and Sikh immigrants on the Western coast of North America. These units were to compose the future

Ghadar Party The Ghadar Movement or Ghadar Party was an early 20th-century, international political movement founded by expatriate Panjabi s to overthrow British rule in India. Many of the Ghadar Party founders and leaders, including Sohan Singh Bhakna, ...

. In Paris

alias Hem Das, along with Pandurang M. Bapat, obtained training in explosives from the Russian anarchist Nicholas Safranski. After returning to Kolkata, he joined the combined school of 'self-culture' (''anushilan'') and bomb factory run by Barin Ghosh at a garden house in

Maniktala Maniktala is a residential area of North Kolkata, in Kolkata district, West Bengal, India. Etymology The tomb of Manik Pir is located in lane near Maniktala crossing, therefore some locals suggest the neighbourhood is named after him. Other ...

, a suburb of Calcutta. However, the attempted murder of Kingsford, the-then district Judge of

Muzaffarpur Muzaffarpur () is a city located in Muzaffarpur district on the banks of Burhi Gandak River, Burhi Gandak river in the Tirhut division of the Indian state of Bihar. It serves as the headquarters of the Tirhut division, the Muzaffarpur distri ...

and

(30 April 1908) initiated a police investigation that led to the arrest of many of the revolutionaries. The prisoners were tried in the famous Alipore bomb conspiracy case in which several activists were deported for life to the

in Andaman. In 1908, as a next step, Jugantar chose to censure persons connected with the arrest and trial of revolutionaries involved in the Alipore Bomb Case. On 10 February 1909, Ashutosh Biswas, who conducted the prosecution of Kanai and Satyen for the murder of Naren Gosain (a revolutionary turned approver), was shot dead by Charu Basu in the Calcutta High Court premises. Samsul Alam, Deputy Superintendent of Police, who conducted the Alipore Case was shot and killed by Biren Dutta Gupta on the stairs of Calcutta High Court building on 24 January 1910. Charu Basu and Biren Dutta Gupta were later hanged. Several including

Jatindra Nath Mukherjee Bagha Jatin (; ) or Baghajatin, born Jatindranath Mukherjee (); 7 December 1879 – 10 September 1915) was an List of Indian independence activists, Indian independence activist. He was one of the principal leaders of the Jugantar party that ...

were arrested in connection with the murder of Police inspector Samsul Alam on 24 January 1910 in

Calcutta Kolkata, also known as Calcutta (List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, its official name until 2001), is the capital and largest city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal. It lies on the eastern ba ...

and other charges. Thus started the Howrah-Sibpur Conspiracy case that tried the prisoners for treason, waging war against the Crown and tampering with the loyalty of Indian soldiers, such as those belonging to the

Jat Regiment The Jat Regiment also known as The Royal Jats is an infantry regiment of the Indian Army, of which it is one of the longest-serving and most decorated regiments.

posted in Fort William, and soldiers in Upper Indian Cantonments.

The German plot

''Nixon's Report'' corroborates that Jugantar under

counted a good deal on the ensuing

World War A world war is an international War, conflict that involves most or all of the world's major powers. Conventionally, the term is reserved for two major international conflicts that occurred during the first half of the 20th century, World War I ...

to organise an armed uprising with the Indian soldiers in various regiments. During

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

the Jugantar Party arranged importation of German arms and ammunitions (notably the 32 bore German automatic pistols) via

Virendranath Chattopadhyay Virendranath Chattopadhyaya (31 October 1880 – 2 September 1937), also known by his pseudonym Chatto, was a prominent Indian revolutionary who worked to overthrow the British Raj in India using armed force. He created alliances with the German ...

alias Chatto and other revolutionaries residing in Germany. They had contacted Indian revolutionaries active in the United States, as well as Jugantar leaders in Kolkata. Jatindra Nath Mukherjee informed

Rash Behari Bose Rash Behari Bose (; 25 May 1886 – 21 January 1945) was an Indian revolutionary leader and freedom fighter who fought against the British Empire. He was one of the key organisers of the Ghadar Mutiny and founded the Indian Independence Lea ...

to take charge of Upper India, aiming at an All-Indian Insurrection with the collaboration of native soldiers in different cantonments. History refers to it as the Hindu German Conspiracy. To raise fund, the Jugantar party organized a series of dacoities which came to be known as ''Taxicab dacoities'' and ''Boat dacoities'', in order to procure funds to prepare the ground for working out the ''Indo-German Conspiracy''. The first of the Taxicab dacoities took place at

Garden Reach Garden Reach is a neighbourhood of Kolkata in West Bengal, India. It is situated in the south-western part of Kolkata on the eastern banks of the Hooghly River. Localities within Garden Reach include Metiabruz, South Eastern Railway Colony, BNR C ...

on 12 February 1915, by a group of armed revolutionaries under the leadership of Narendra Bhattacharya under the direct supervision of Jatindranath Mukherjee. Similar dacoities were organized on different occasions and in various parts of Calcutta. Dacoities were accompanied by political murders in which the victims were mostly zealous police officers investigating into the cases, or approvers who helped the police.

Failure of the German plot

On receiving instructions from Berlin, Jatindra Nath Mukherjee selected Naren Bhattacharya (alias M. N. Roy) and Phani Chakravarti (alias Pyne) to meet the German legation at Batavia. The Berlin committee had decided that the German arms were to be delivered at two or three places like Hatia on

Chittagong Chittagong ( ), officially Chattogram, (, ) (, or ) is the second-largest city in Bangladesh. Home to the Port of Chittagong, it is the busiest port in Bangladesh and the Bay of Bengal. The city is also the business capital of Bangladesh. It ...

coast, Raimangal in the

Sunderbans Sundarbans (; pronounced ) is a mangrove forest area in the Ganges Delta formed by the confluence of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna Rivers in the Bay of Bengal. It spans the area from the Hooghly River in India's state of West Bengal ...

and

Balasore Balasore, also known as Baleswar, is a city in the state of Odisha, about from the state capital Bhubaneswar and from Kolkata, in eastern India. It is the administrative headquarters of Balasore district and the largest city as well as heal ...

Orissa Odisha (), formerly Orissa ( the official name until 2011), is a state located in Eastern India. It is the eighth-largest state by area, and the eleventh-largest by population, with over 41 million inhabitants. The state also has the thir ...

. The plan was to organize a

guerrilla Guerrilla warfare is a form of unconventional warfare in which small groups of irregular military, such as rebels, Partisan (military), partisans, paramilitary personnel or armed civilians, which may include Children in the military, recruite ...

force to start an uprising in the country, backed by a mutiny among the Indian Armed Force. The whole plot leaked out locally owing to a native traitor and, internationally, through

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus *Czech (surnam ...

revolutionaries in the United States. As soon as the information reached the British authorities, they alerted the police, particularly in the delta region of the

Ganges The Ganges ( ; in India: Ganga, ; in Bangladesh: Padma, ). "The Ganges Basin, known in India as the Ganga and in Bangladesh as the Padma, is an international which goes through India, Bangladesh, Nepal and China." is a trans-boundary rive ...

, and sealed all the sea approaches on the eastern coast from

Noakhali Noakhali District (), historically known as Bhulua (), is a Districts of Bangladesh, district in southeastern Bangladesh, located in Chattogram Division. It was established as a district in 1821, and officially named Noakhali in 1868. The distr ...

side to Orissa. Sramajibi Samabaya and Harry & Sons of Calcutta, the two business concerns run respectively by

and Harikumar Chakrabarti which were taking an active part in the Indo-German Conspiracy were searched. The police learned that Bagha Jatin was in Balasore awaiting a German arms delivery. Police went on to find out the hiding places of Bagha Jatin and associates and after a gun-fight, the revolutionaries were either killed or arrested. The German plot thus failed.

Unification and failure

Following these major setbacks, and in the new circumstances of the colonial powers practising their divide and rule policy, there was an attempt to unify the revolutionary factions in Bengal. Anushilan Samiti and Jugantar were brought close by the joint leadership of Narendra Mohan Sen of Anushilan, and

of Jugantar. However, this merger failed to revive the revolutionary activities up to the expected level.

References

{{West Bengal Hindu–German Conspiracy Revolutionary movement for Indian independence Bengali nationalism Bengal Presidency Organisations of Indian independence movement