THE DAILY PROVINCE
JULY 6, 1909

THE DAILY PROVINCE, VANCOUVER,
BRITISH COLUMBIA. TUESDAY, JULY 6,
1909.
THE EMPIRE OF INDIA
II.—Anarchy and Assassination.
Calcutta, India, June 11.—While the leaders of the political revolution
in India publicly deplore the rise of anarchy, they privately declare that
violence is always to be expected from the more emotional sections of any
people thoroughly stirred and aroused to unanimous discontent with their
government. The anarchy in India is not to be taken as a measure of the
unrest and discontent of the people, for it is quite insignificant in
comparison(?). Taken as the manifestation of the emotions of the extremists,
and as a promise of what may follow, the anarchistic demonstrations assume
great importance.
Then, as the British police officer who has had the measures of
repression in hand remarked, it must be remembered that the Bengalese, who
have been mostly concerned in the anarhcy, have been always a peace-loving,
inoffensive people. The last two years records the only instances of political
violence among Bangalese civilians in the two centuries of British occupation.
The Mutiny of 1857 was a movement among the mercenary soldiers who
formed the bulk of the British army, and it was fanned into flame by a tactless
disregard for the Oriental religious prejudices of the rank and file of the native
troops.
The present outbreak is entirely different. It is among educated
civilians who have absorbed western ideas of government and who demand
western privileges. The Sepoy Mutiny was a violent reaction toward
Orientalism. The anarchy in India today is the result of a reckless attempt to

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JULY 6, 1909
advance toward the full possession of the vices and virtues of the Occident.
Bombs and bomb-throwing are Occidental in origin, and the inspiration of the
Indian anarchists is found in Europe, and, so the police say, in America.
It is impossible to give a complete history of the outrages which have
been perpetrated in India in the past two years, but the case of the Calcutta
anarchists may be taken as a fair sample. At first the assassinations and
attempted assassinations were confined to the interior and small magistrates
who had been severe in political cases were the victims. Late in 1907 the
aspect of the affair was changed by three successive attempts to wreck the
train carrying Sir Andrew Fraser, then lieutenant-governor of Bengal. Once
the train was actually wrecked, but Sir Andrew and his party escaped injury.
The regulation forbidding public meetings was then enforced with
renewed vigor. A few miles south of Calcutta is the small French town of
Chandergore, one of the small remaining bits of the once great French Indian
empire. Some Hindu students sought to hold a meeting there, on French
territory and beyond the jurisdiction of the British. The French mayor
forbade the assemblage. Within a few weeks two bombs were thrown into his
carriage, one near which came perilously near to accomplishing its objective.
Early in 1908 a bomb was thrown at the carriage of Judge Kingsport of
Mozufferpore, an interior city. The judge had ordered the whipping of several
members of one political union, and had decreed the deportations of an
agitator. The anarchists were waiting for his carriage, and when they saw it,
cast the bomb without waiting to see if the judge was in it. He was not, but the
bomb exploded and killed Mrs. And Miss Kennedy, guests of Judge Kingsport.
One of the men who threw the bomb committed suicide, the other was
hanged.
There was some evidence that the two men were sent out from Calcutta
under orders to assassinate Judge Kingsport, and to take the consequences.
There was no attempt to escape, as the murderers believed they had killed
their man. The man who was hanged shouted, “Bandemataram,” the
forbidden nation al anthem, on the scaffold.

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JULY 6, 1909
Soon after this the Calcutta police found their quarry. They made a raid
on a house in Muraripooker Garden in Calcutta. In this and subsequent raids
thirty-six men were arrested. In the garden was found a completely equipped
factory for making bombs with a large stock of explosives and arms. The
trunk of a huge tree was filled with bullets, the result of frequent target
practice. Many seditious documents were found and others were luckily
“discovered” by an overzealous police force.
The men were all taken before a magistrate, and after an examination
which lasted fifty days, were committed to be tried before a higher court on
the charge of conspiracy to wage war against the King. The court before
which they were taken is a curious example of the combination of judicial and
executive functions in the Indian Government. An English judge tried the case
assisted by two native tax assessors. The two assessors occupied the bench
with the judge, and at the end of the trial, which lasted for 128 days, gave their
verdict. The judge as usual paid no attention to the two native tax assessors,
but gave his judgment as he pleased, overruling his nominal associates. Then
the whole case went to the high court, where it is pending.
One of the accused promptly “turned approver,”(?) as they say in India,
or turned state’s evidence. Upon his testimony the crown relied to convict the
whole lot. But Gossain, the approver, was afraid of assassination, and he
asked the crown authorities to keep him in jail until the trial was over. He was
permitted to stay in the same prison where his fellow-conspirators were
confined. One morning two of the accused came to him in a corridor. The
first, Kanal Lall Datta, had a pistol in each hand. The other man had one pistol.
Datta called out: “Gossain. I hate to kill you, but I must. You die because you
are a traitor to the motherland.” With that he shot Gossain twice and killed
him.
Both Datta and the other man who carried a pistol were immediately
tried, convicted and hanged for murder. No one has been able to find out how
they got the pistols. An Arms act is in force in India, and every fire-arm in the
country is supposed to be numbered and registered with the police. A sale or
transfer of possession must be reported to the police. There is only one

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JULY 6, 1909
explanation for the murder in Alipore jail(?), and that is that the anarchists
have their friends among the police. Datta, who shot Gossain, went to the
gallows with his head in the air and smiling. He shouted: “Bandemataram!”
with his last breath, and boasted that he gave his life for his country.
Chief among the accused in this case is Arabindo Ghosh. He is a man
about 33 years old, who is universally accorded the rank of genius. He was
educated at Oxford, and has the degree of Master of Arts from that premier
British institution of learning. He is the author of several books in English,
Bengali and Sanskrit. The crown sought to prove that he was the editorial
chief of several journals which were suppressed for sedition—the
Bandemataram, which was printed in English, and the Yurantur(?), the
Nava(?) Sakti and the Sandhva, all printed in the Bengali vernacular. But these
journals had carefully protected themselves, and vicarious editors who could
hardly write their names, confessed and claimed the authorship of the
offending articles.
In the famous garden(?) the police found a formal opinion of a
prominent native lawyer, explaining the laws on sedition and advising editors
how far they might go without danger of arrest or deportation. But the crown
was unable to fix any one overt act of treason upon the head of Arabindo
Ghosh. All of the other accused seemed to be willing to sacrifice themselves in
his behalf.
The long trial of these men wore on the nerves of the public of Calcutta,
both natives and British. The trial was held in a dingy little room in the court
compound at Alipore, a suburb of Calcutta. The thirty odd prisoners were
forced to stand up during all the 128 days of the procedure—prisoners never
being given a seat in this country.
But the prisoners laughed and chatted among themselves seemingly,
careless of the future. Outside the coop their counsel fought valiantly pointing
out the insufficiency of the testimony, appealing on the score of the youth of
their clients, most of the prisoners being under 21, and, finally breaking over
the rules of discretion, boldly excusing the crimes of revolution. Counsel for

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JULY 6, 1909
the defence quoted Patrick Henry, and all the time the two native assessors
stalled approval and the British judge scowled. The case was political through
and through.
It was hard for a foreigner to realize the station in life of the miserable
prisoners standing in the high, chicken-coop deck. Unshaven and long-haired,
wearing little clothing, and wholly at ease, it was impossible to recognize in
Arabindo Ghosh a man who had won high honors at Oxford, who was a master
of a dozen languages and the author of several serious books. His bare arms
and legs, his naked chest, his unkempt hair suggested only the savage. But
that is the mistake that one must not make in India. Arabindo Ghosh knows
how to wear the clothes, eat the food, and ape the fashions of the west. He has
competed with European young men in college, and has won honors. He has
challenged attention and admiration from the tits of London and Paris. He
knows the world both east and west. And it is such as he who will awaken the
east from its long slumber.
Copyright, 1909, by Frederic J. Haskin.)