Bhupendranath Datta: Patriot, Revolutionary, and Scholar

Abstract

Dr Bhupendranath Datta, the youngest brother of Swami Vivekananda is a much less-known figure than his illustrious brother but had a life which was far from ordinary. He had been a revolutionary driven to long years in exile, an active participant in early years of the International Communist Movement, a worker for the cause of peasants and workers in India, and a scholar of considerable accomplishment. In this essay as we look at his life and contributions, we also get glimpses of the Bengal revolutionary movement, the efforts of the revolutionaries in exile during the First World War, the beginnings of Indian labour movement and Communism, and his brother Vivekananda through his eyes.

Early Life

Bhupendranath was born on 4th September, 1880 in Calcutta. His father, Biswanath Datta, was an attorney at the Calcutta High Court. He was youngest among his siblings (three brothers and four sisters) who reached adulthood – a few others passed away in infancy. The eldest Narendranath, who later became Swami Vivekananda, was seventeen years elder to him. The second brother Mahendranath was eleven years elder. The family along with many relatives of the extended family lived in a huge house, constructed more than a century before their time, in an area called Simulia (later called Simla) in North Calcutta.

Bhupen’s father, Biswanath Datta was a man of liberal temperament, a characteristic of the times when the educated classes in Bengal were under the sway of the new ideas propagated by the Brahmo and other social reform movements. He was a polyglot of sorts, and besides English and Bengali, was fairly well-versed in Sanskrit, Persian, Urdu, Hindi, and had familiarity with Arabic too. Besides languages, he was also interested in history and his library was well-stocked with works of literary gems of many languages as well scholarly works of history. He had also written a Bengali novel named ‘Sulochana’ but because of his need of money at that time sold the rights to another person who published that in his name. He also wrote a booklet called ‘Shishtachar Paddhati’ both in Bengali and Hindi. He liked to entertain friends at his home, and regaling them to fancy cuisines like the Mughlai by specially commissioned cooks was a common evening event at the house. Bhupen later said that his father ‘was a liberal Indian with a syncretic mind. That is the reason his offspring became ‘radicals’ in ways of thinking.’

The womenfolk were rooted in religious traditions but also had a fair bit of education. Bhupen’s grandmother had written an unpublished novel in Bengali (its manuscript was lost during the family’s transit to North and Central India) and his mother Bhubaneswari Devi too composed verses in that language. She also narrated stories from Ramayana, Mahabharata, and the Puranas to her children which she knew by heart. She also had a reasonably fair knowledge of English and the siblings in their childhood were tutored in English primers by her. Bhupen’s elder sisters too went to Bethune School and the Mission School.

His brother Narendranath in his youth grew into a full-blown personality. He had learnt wrestling at an akhara (traditional gymnasium), studied classical music from masters, could play a host of instruments with ease, and had an easy confidence often mistaken by others as arrogance. He had intellectual interests well beyond the curriculum and had correspondence with Herbert Spencer, the leading philosopher of the age. He was fascinated with Spepncer’s ideas of ‘Evolutionism.’ While still in college, he translated Spencer’s text ‘On Education’ in Bengali. He was first enrolled at the famed Presidency College but he fell ill with his attendance falling short. As a result he was not allowed to sit for examinations. He, therefore, had to move to the General Assembly’s Institution (now the Scottish Church College). After his graduation from the University in 1883, his father made Narendranath enter the firm of an Attorney-at-Law as an articled clerk to qualify himself for a later career as an attorney. There was also a plan that he would go to England for his law studies. His father also made him enter the Freemasonry as a member, thinking it would help him in his future.

But two major developments changed the course of the family. One was Narendranath’s visits to Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa beginning in 1881 that subsequently changed his life completely and Biswanath Datta’s untimely death in 1884. As soon as Biswanath passed away, all the rightful claims of Bhubaneswari Devi were dismissed by the relatives and she, in quite a helpless condition, had to move out with her children to her parents’ home at 7 Ramtanu Bose Lane. Narendranath tried to manage the basic needs of the family for a couple of years after father’s passing away, but his own inner yearnings which were an outcome of his discipleship of Sri Ramakrishna eventually led him to sever his ties with the family in pursuit of monastic life.

Bhupendranath (Bhupen) later remembered that ‘in this dark hour of life, our maternal grandmother proved to be our mainstay. We lived with her and she looked after us with all care till 1903.’

Bhupen attended the Metropolitan institution, the school run by no less a person than the redoubtable Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar.

Bhupen also came in touch with the Brahmo leader Shibnath Shastri who advocated wholesale social reforms that hugely impressed the young man. He also remembered that his boyhood was spent in an atmosphere marked by high communal amity. As a boy he participated in the Muharram celebration in Calcutta and played Lathis with fellow-Muslims. They would also give donations to wandering fakirs for the dargahs in the city.

When Bhupen was still in his teens, his eldest brother, now the renowned Swami Vivekananda, had created quite a stir, first in the West and then in India. The Swami had also formally established the Ramakrishna Order of monks with its chief base at a monastery called Belur Math, on the other side of Hooghly. During his last years, Vivekananda often shared in private conversations with close friends and disciples, his wish to retire to a small cottage with his mother, grandmother, and brothers. But a great blow struck when he passed away in 1902 at the age of 39. Bhupen described that event as follows:

‘Nadu (Haren), the personal brahmachari attendant of Swamiji, brought one morning the sad news of Swami Vivekananda’s death. The writer broke the mournful news to mother and grandmother. Mother enquired what caused the sudden death. I responded, “The same as was with father!” They were overpowered with grief and began to wail. A lady from the neighbourhood came to comfort them. I was asked by Nadu to inform the Mitras of the Simla Street. Later on, I went to my sister’s house, where my brother-in-law had already been informed by Nadu. Both of us started for Belur Math. On arriving there, we found the Sadhus of the Math, Atulchandra Ghose and Sister Nivedita to be there. Then I saw my mother arriving with her eldest grandson. She wept bitterly and at last the sadhus sent her home and asked the writer to accompany her in order to keep her quiet by scolding if necessary. But she was sent back with her grandson. Nivedita weeping bade her goodbye. Then, when the funeral pyre had been lighted, came Girishchandra Ghose, the dramatist. Swami Niranjananda with a sigh exclaimed to him, “Naren is gone.” Girishchandra answered, “not gone but left the body!” In the meantime, Niranjananda asked a brahmachari to take the impression of the feet of Swamiji with handkerchiefs dyed in red colour. It was done accordingly.’

Bhubaneswari Devi used to pay an annual subscription of Rs 10 for the birthday of Sri Ramakrishna birthday celebrations and after Vivekananda’s demise she also did the same for his birthday celebrations. She also contributed to the Janmashtami celebration at the Jogodyan (where Sri Ramakrishna’s ashes were kept) maintained by Shri Ramachandra Datta. Even after her passing away, Swamiji’s sister Swarnamayi Devi kept up the practice till the direct disciples of Sri Ramakrishna were there.

Bhupen’s second brother Mahendranath too was a fascinating character. Mahendranath went to London in 1896 when Swami Vivekananda was there. He had an adventurous streak and soon disappeared into continental Europe, first to France and then via Gibraltar to Morocco. He travelled large distances by foot and with hardly any money. He spent the next few years visiting and spending time in Tripoli, Alexandra, Cairo, Damascus, Jerusalem, Sofia, Constantinople, and crossed the Caucasian Mountains, travelling up to the Caspian Sea to visit Baku in Azerbaijan. He then visited the plains of Tigris-Euphrates, and travelled through Baghdad, Basra, Tehran, Isfahan, to Sind and Kashmir. He returned to Calcutta only after knowing of Vivekananda’s death, after a gap of six years. Besides Vivekananda, who had become a monk, the other two Datta brothers too remained lifelong bachelors.

In the Bengal Revolutionary Movement

With the beginning of the twentieth century, Bengal was getting gripped by the fervour of revolutionary activities. The major network of revolutionary-minded youngmen was the Anushilan Samity which had founding figures like Pramatha Mitra, Satishchandra Basu and guided by persons like Aurobindo Ghose (who was then based in Baroda), Sister Nivedita, Saraladevi (niece of  Rabindranath), and Surendranath Tagore (the great poet’s nephew). The ideas given by Bankimchandra (and to some extent by Rajnarain Basu and Nabagopal Mitra) had already built an intellectual and inspirational base for nationalism in the later part of the nineteenth century. The lectures of Swami Vivekananda abroad had raised the prestige of Indian philosophical and spiritual traditions in the minds of people back home. Also, Vivekananda’s exhortations to his countrymen to awaken and rebuild a new India and his own efforts in humanitarian work and service of the poorest masses acted as a tonic to the minds hitherto in stupor. After his death in 1902, his Irish-born disciple Nivedita and others like Aurobindo Ghose quickened the sense of nationalism in minds of people by exposing them to great revolutionary efforts in the world like the Mazzini and Garibaldi in Italy, Sein Finn of Ireland, and also, to a lesser extent, the work of the Russian revolutionaries and anarchists like Kropotkin. Sister Nivedita gifted one hundred and fifty of her books to the centres of Anushilan Samity. She also lectured at the ‘Dawn Society’, founded by Satishchandra Mukherjee, where revolutionary-minded youths like Bhupen used to visit. Bhupen remembered one particular lecture that she delivered at the Town hall which was titled ‘The Dynamic religion’. It was so enlivening to the audience that at the end the nationalist leader Bipinchandra Pal  remarked that it was not just dynamic but ‘dynamite’. The first of the six volume set of Mazzini’s autobiography was typed into multiple copies and circulated throughout Bengal among revolutionary groups. The young Bengali minds got an additional impulse given by some world events like the victory of Japan over Russia in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05 which was seen as an Asiatic nation overpowering a great European power.

Bhupen writing in his memoirs later remarked that ‘it was a truism to say that there is a correlation between Swamiji’s appeals to the young countrymen and the intensity of revolutionary urge in the minds of succeeding generations. His works along with writings of Mazzini and Garibaldi, were the mainspring of inspiration to the youths of India. In every gymnasium of the Revolutionary networks, his work ‘Lectures from Colombo to Almora’ was read. The youths were profoundly inspired by his saying “One is nearer to God through football than through Gita. We want men with strong biceps.”‘ In this context Bhupen mentioned Romain Rolland’s (French Nobel Laureate and the biographer of Vivekananda) assertion that ‘the Indian Nationalist Movement smouldered for a long time until Vivekananda’s breath blew the ashes into flame, and erupted violently three years after his death in 1905.’

This eruption was of course the Swadeshi Movement, which started as a reaction to the Partition of Bengal brought about by Lord Curzon and Bhupen Datta was caught in its vortex.

Bhupen described the intellectual climate of the time, ‘The Bengali translations of Mazzini and Garibaldi by Jogendra Vidyabhushan and Bankim’s Anandamath ignited the Bengali minds. More advanced amongst us would study European political thought, socialism, and follow the efforts of the Russian Revolutionaries.’ There used to be classes by Sakharam Deuskar, the Maharashtrian scholar and revolutionary settled in Bengal, whose book in Bengali – ‘Desher Katha’ was popular among the revolutionary-minded people of the times. Deuskar used to teach the cadres, politics, economics, and contemporary intellectual ideas in the world. He insisted that his students study works on socialism from the Imperial Library. Bhupendranath too got a book by Hyndman, a pioneer of the British Social Democratic Party, despite the Librarian’s discouragement. The educated classes learnt a lot about the economic exploitation of India under the British Rule through the works of Dadabhai Naoroji, R.C. Dutt, and William Digby, and through the distilled summaries of these works made by Deuskar in his ‘Desher Katha’.

Jugantar Patrika

While the Anushilan Samiti in Calcutta was running gymnasiums and also conducting service programs like running night schools for labouring classes and helping in relief work when required, the more adventurous among the revolutionaries who wanted to take up direct attacks on the British machinery formed a sub-group called ‘Jugantar’ because of the name of journal they started publishing in Bengali in 1906. The key person in this group was Barindra Ghose, Aurobindo’s younger brother. Barindra started a revolutionary base at his family’s garden house in the north-eastern suburb of Maniktala where training in revolutionary methods and bomb-making was undertaken. It was a loose adaptation of Aurobindo’s ‘Bhavani Mandir’ Scheme which was envisaged as a monastery-like centre for self-sacrificing men devoted entirely to bring freedom to the country. The name of the ‘Jugantar’ journal was taken from a social novel of Brahmo leader Shibnath Shastri – it was proposed by Bhupen and accepted by others. It had the motto printed ‘The Atman cannot be gained by the weak’, clearly having the imprint of Vivekananda. Bhupen started playing a key role in editing and running the journal, while the other more ‘hands on’ revolutionary functions like planning of the violent campaigns, recruitment and training of the cadres, bomb-making, and, what were euphemistically called ‘Swadeshi Dacoity’ for ‘fund-raising’  were all looked after by Barindra and his associates out of the Maniktala Garden house. 

The Maniktala group had a considerable religious orientation in their activities, but not all revolutionaries were of that line. It had become a custom to take oath on Hindu scriptures and some people felt that it was acting as a barrier to inclusion of non-Hindus to the revolutionary fold. For his own oath, Bhupen asked for scriptures from different religious traditions.

The ‘Jugantar’ journal criticised passive resistance as inadequate and called for stronger measures. It also had articles of socio-economic import. Aurobindo also contributed some articles with high intellectual content and inspirational ring.

The ‘Jugantar’ gave clarion calls to overthrow the oppressive colonial rule: ‘The readers may think that they are weak and they lack the strength to fight the all powerful English. The answer is, do not be afraid. Italy has wiped off the stain of slavery with blood. Is it too much to ask for thousand young men of Bengal who are prepared to sacrifice their lives to free their motherland of stigma and slavery?’

The tone for violent uprising was hardly concealed: ‘Without bloodshed the worship of the Goddess will not be accomplished. And what is the number of English officials in each district? With a firm resolve you can bring the English Rule to an end in a single day.’ 

The sales of ‘Jugantar’ jumped from a few hundred to as many as twenty thousand. There were also other journals like ‘Bande Matraram’ (in English) edited first by Bipinchandra Pal and later by Aurobindo and ‘Sandhya’ edited by Brahmabandhab Upadhyay, which too were doing their bit. The Government sent a warning to these journals. But as the warning was hardly heeded to, Bhupen was arrested on 5th July 1907. He was charged with preaching sedition through inflammatory editorials and articles and more specifically on account of two articles ‘Bhoy Bhanga’ and ‘Lattha-Oushadhi’. On the day following Bhupen’s arrest, Aurobindo wrote in ‘Bandematram’ an article titled ‘Wanted More Repression’. He was stating that this kind of oppressive measures would only accelerate the awakening of the country.

In his trial Bhupen said, ‘I am solely responsible for all the articles in question. I have done what I have considered in good faith to be my duty to my country. I do not wish the prosecution to be put to trouble and expense of proving what I have no intention to deny. I do not wish to make any other statement or to take any further action in the trial.’

Some newspapers declared that Bhupen’s stance was without a parallel in the country and the first case instance of non-cooperation with the Courts under the British Rule. Brahmabandhab Upadhyay wrote in ‘Sandhya’ on 22nd July that ‘this type of case would inflame the entire country.’

The Court sentenced him to one year rigorous imprisonment on 24th July 1907. On the afternoon of the judgment, there was a public meeting at the iconic venue of the College Square, where Bhupen’s heroism was eloquently praised. In his inimitable style Aurobindo wrote, ‘For the first time a man has been found who can say to the power of alien Imperialism, “With all thy pomp of empire and splendour and dominion, with all thy boast of invincibility and mastery irresistible, with all thy wealth of men and money and guns and cannon, with all thy strength of the law and strength of the sword, with all thy power to confine, to torture or to slay the body, yet for me, for the spirit, the real man in me, thou art not, thou art only a phase, a phenomenon, a passing illusion, and the only lasting realities are my Mother and my freedom.’

The Judge in this case was Douglous Kingsford, the Chief Presidency magistrate of Calcutta, who was much hated by the revolutionaries for his judgments like ordering the whipping of a 15 year old boy Sushil Sen. Kingsford, later survived many assassination plots – most famous being the bomb on the carriage outside the Muzaffarpur Club that killed the Kennedy ladies, and led to the hanging of Khudiram Bose and martyrdom of Prafulla Chaki, and subsequent to that the year-long sensational Alipore Conspiracy case which drew the attention of the entire nation.

At the time of his imprisonment Sister Nivedita presented Bhupen with Peter Kropotkin’s books ‘Career of a Revolutionary’ and ‘In Russian and French Prisons’ and also four volumes of Mazzini’s writings. Bhupen also requested Sister Nivedita to look after his mother in his absence. He later wrote that ‘my mother told me that Sister Nivedita had fully kept this request. Her words to my mother were, “Bhupen has asked me to look after you.”’

During his period of imprisonment about two hundred women in a meeting held in Calcutta at the residence of Dr. Nilratan Sarkar at 61, Harrison Road, congratulated his mother Bhubaneswari Devi for being the mother of a son so brave and self-sacrificing. “They presented her with an address printed on silk cloth placed on a silver tray. In her reply to this address Bhubaneswari Devi said, ‘Bhupen’s work has just begun. I have dedicated him to the country’s cause.’ A long poem eulogizing Bhupen’s heroic deeds was also read. Bhupen later told his mother jokingly, ‘You never got much recognition for being Vivekananda’s mother. But for being my mother you even got public recognition.’

Bhupen later wrote, ‘Mine was the first case of non-cooperation with the British Government in India. In jail I was made to grind at an oil-mill. Ill-treatment given to me was strongly commented on in the national press and I was transferred to the Bhagalpur Jail. But as the famous Alipore Conspiracy trial had begun by that time, I too began to get greater ill-treatment.’

The Newspapers (Incitement to Offences) Act of 1908, caused severe repression and by the end of the year, Jugantar, Bande Mataram, and Sandhya all had ceased publication.

Bhupen in his later reflections clearly articulated how the revolutionary movement in the phase (1901-1917) lacked contact with the masses. He wrote, “In Bengal many landlords and lawyers became our members.  Once I visited a village in Nadia for propaganda work where a Muslim peasant narrated his distressful condition. After listening to his account I asked him, “Have you realised who is causing you so much distress?” He answered ‘The Zamindar’. I uttered the oft-repeated nationalist line, ‘The poor Zamindars are not responsible, it is the British.’ The peasant stared at me in disbelief and left the place after time. I understood that the illiterate poor peasant would not take the utterances of a Calcutta Babu. Truly speaking’, Bhupen added, ‘we did not know what revolution means. The revolutionaries all hailed from bourgeois families.’

Bhupen highlighted the potential revolutionary capabilities of ‘the peasant’. He cited the example of peasant uprising against the zamindars in Pabna in East Bengal that had led to the enactment of the Bengal Tenancy Act in 1885. He thought the peasants’ power was hardly employed during that phase of the revolutionary movement.

In America

After his release in July 1908, just within a span of a few days, Bhupendranath was sent to America through the planned efforts of Sister Nivedita (who was already in the West then) and Sister Christine, a German-American disciple of Vivekananda working with Nivedita in Calcutta since 1903. They were worried that with a severe backlash on the revolutionaries that was going on as a result of the ongoing Alipore Bomb Conspiracy Case, Bhupen could be arrested any time again on any pretense, and have even worse fate like life transportation to the Cellular Jail in the Andamans. So in order to shield him, they thought he should go to the West and continue his education which had suffered due to his involvement with the revolutionary movement. Bhupen sailed away incognito and arrived in New York a month later. His stay had been arranged by Nivedita with the help of other prominent admirers and disciples of Vivekananda like Mrs. Ole Bull and Miss Josephine MacLeod.

Sister Nivedita was in New York in early 1909 and so was Nivedita’s close friend, the scientist J.C. Bose. The two selected suitable courses for Bhupen’s undergraduate studies at the New York University.  A couple of years later Nivedita who was again touring America to nurse Mrs Bull in her final days met him and told, “Bhupen, I consider you as consecrated to the country. Do not marry.” Bhupen later recounted that this “was not an unusual resolution for those in the revolutionary movement, who thought the hangman’s noose was constantly chasing them.”

In New York, Bhupen’s accommodation was arranged at the ‘India House’, established by Myon H. Phelps, an American lawyer, and a well-known champion for Indian cause.

Bhupen has described his American sojourn in his book ‘Amar Americar Abhijnata’. In addition to Myon H. Phelps, he came in touch with Rev. Jabez Thomas Sunderland, one of the earliest supporters of India’s independence in America, whose book ‘India in Bondage’, had created a sensation by its elaborate condemnation of the British misrule in India with authentic facts and figures. Bhupen also made an acquaintance of George Freeman, an assistant editor of ‘Gaelic-American’, an Irish revolutionary journal in America, also publishing articles exposing British exploitation of India. He met him many times and also corresponded with him. Freeman was strongly anti-Jew and anti-British, and held the view that Jewish capital was at the foundation of the British Empire in India.

Bhupen also came in contact with the progressive thought-currents in American intellectual life. For his post-graduate studies he enrolled at the Brown University. He was deeply impressed by Prof Lester F Ward, his professor of Sociology, whom he considered as his intellectual mentor. He also became a member of Bronx Park Socialist Club and attended lectures of American socialist leaders at the Rand School Social Sciences in New York. He received his Master’s from the Brown University in 1914. He remained indebted to these intellectuals who expanded his intellectual horizons.

The year 1911 brought Bhupen many personal blows. His mother passed away in Calcutta. And in the same year Mrs Bull, a key benefactor, passed away. A more unexpected blow was the death of Nivedita, at the age of 43, in October 1911. She had been a mentor to him over long years and he deeply respected her. After their departure, Vivekananda’s devoted friend and the great champion of the Ramakrishna Movement, Miss MacLeod remained Bhupen’s only guide and well-wisher.

Miss MacLeod tried to find a suitable job in academic arena for Bhupen in India. She knew Rabindranath Tagore, and wrote to him with the request to have Bhupen placed at Santiniketan. Tagore, who was then in Urbana in Illinois, where his son Rathindranath was pursuing a degree in Agriculture Sciences, replied to her regretting his inability to recruit Bhupen because of the possible troubles that could follow to his institution because of the latter’s revolutionary background. He mentioned that his institution had to bear the wrath of the authorities in the past in a similar case.

Bhupendranath in Berlin

Towards the end of the first decade of the new century, continental Europe had started to act as a base for the Indian revolutionaries. Madam Cama and later Shyamji Krishna Varma were operating from Europe. Their presence attracted many younger revolutionaries too. With conditions of a major War building up, these Indians began to think of ways to use this situation for India’s freedom. Germany was becoming the epicentre of these affairs. The German dispensation too wanted to build links with the Indian revolutionaries in order to dent Britain’s resources and military might. The Kaiser himself had sanctioned this. The German Office came in contact with Indian revolutionaries in Europe like Virendranath Chattopadhyay, Abinash Chandra Bhattacharya, and Chempakaraman Pillai. From the German side primary liaisoning was done by Max von Oppenheim.

A very prominent role in these developments in Berlin was played by Virendranath Chattopadhyay (normally called just ‘Chatto’). He belonged to a very distinguished family. His father, Aghorenath Chattopadhay, was a mathematician, the first Indian D.Sc. (a distinction he secured from Zurich), and the Founder-Principal of the Nizam College in Hyderabad. Chatto had illustrious siblings who would become accomplished and famous later – sister Sarojini (Naidu), the first Indian woman to become Congress President and an acclaimed poetess in English, and a versatile younger brother Harindranath – a poet, playwright, songwriter-composer, actor, a pioneering writer of nursery rhymes in Hindi, and the member of the first Lok Sabha to boot (he won as a communist-supported independent candidate from Vijayawada). 

Chatto had arrived in London in 1902 and after some attempts at ICS he enrolled for law. He lodged at the ‘India House’ founded by Shyamji Krishna Varma. The ‘India House’ was ostensibly a boarders’ hostel for Indian students but in reality acted as the epicentre of revolutionary indoctrination and training in London. It had as its boarders persons like V.D. Savarkar. V.V.S. Aiyer, M.P.T. Acharya, and Madanlal Dhingra, who created huge waves after assassinating W.H. Curzon Wylie, the ADC to the them Secretary of State, which eventually led to his hanging in London and the closure of the ‘India House.’ Chatto moved out to Paris and associated with Madam Cama, writing for revolutionary journals ‘Bande Mataram’ (which derived its name from the Pal-Aurobindo Calcutta journal after the latter’s closure) and ‘Talwar’ (originally called ‘Madan’s Talwar’ in memory of Dhingra). Just before the war broke out, Chatto left Paris for Germany, seemingly to enroll for a doctoral program, but really to pursue a different line of revolutionary action. He along with Abinash Chandra Bhattacharya, a Chemistry researcher working in a German University, met the German Foreign Office officials that led to the formation of an organization – ‘Deutscher Verein der Freunde Indien’ (The Society of Friends of India). Later, the Germans were dropped from the Society and it transformed entirely into an Indian forum, renamed as Indian Independence League, and popularly called the ‘Berlin Committee’.

The major tasks envisaged by the Berlin Committee included propaganda among the Indian prisoners of war in Germany, inciting rebellion in the British Indian Troops in Egypt and the Arab region, and last but not the least, to send arms and funds to the revolution in India.

Bhupen, then in America, had just enrolled for a doctorate at the University of Minnesota. But the changing developments gripped his mind and he met the German Consul in New York, offering to raise a volunteer corps with the Indians abroad. He also contacted the Ghadar Party which mostly had Punjabi immigrants in the United States and Canada organizing themselves both for the redressal of their local woes as well as for the larger goal of Indian independence. It had gained momentum under the leadership of Lala Hardayal and published its mouthpieces Ghadar (meaning Mutiny) in Urdu, Gurumukhi, Marathi, Gujarati, Hindi, and sporadically in English and Gorkhali. Bhupen discussed with them the possibility of fighting the British Forces on side of the Germany Army. However, Bhupen’s proposal did not get much traction with the Ghadarites at that time.

Meanwhile, the Berlin Committee had sent Dhirendra Kumar Sarkar and Narain S. Marathe to contact the Ghadarities in America. Following this, Lala Hardayal, Taraknath Das, Birendranath Dasgupta, Jitendranath Lahiri and some others came to Berlin.  Bhupen, who had come in touch with them, too arrived in Berlin. He became a ‘full-timer’ in the Berlin Committee, and in due course officiated as its Secretary.

While all this was going on in the West, the complexion of things in India was very different. The severe backlash on the revolutionaries of the first decade resulted in the life-transportation (to the Cellular Jail in the Andamans) of a large number of revolutionaries like Barindra Ghosh, Hemchandra Kanungo, and Ullaskar Datta. The fiery Aurobindo Ghosh had also gone into permanent retirement in Pondicherry to pursuit a life of spiritual and Yogic practice. The hardliners in the National Congress had also been sidelined with their foremost leader B.G. Tilak been incarcerated for six years in Mandalay. All this had created a vacuum of sorts in the revolutionary movement. It was this vacuum which was then, to some extent, filled by the dynamic leadership of the heroic and charismatic Jatindranath Mukherjee (called Bagha Jatin – the prefix ‘Bagha’ was attached to his name after he killed a tiger in a free fight in 1906). 

The Berlin Committee had established contact with revolutionaries in India by sending emissaries like Satyen Sen, Vishnu Ganesh Pingle and Kartar Singh. Pingle, an engineering graduate from the United States, also established contact with the Varanasi group of revolutionaries and met Rashbehari Bose and Sachindranath Sanyal. The plan was to invade India through the west from Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan and also from the east through the Burmese frontier.

The efforts of the Berlin Committee and the international situation led to a much greater coordination among the scattered revolutionary groups in India, with Jatin in Bengal, and Sachindranath Sanyal and Rashbehari Bose in Upper India emerging as the key leaders. They also aimed at bringing about a rebellion among the Indians in the British Indian Army, coordinate plots for shipping arms from Germany into India, and continue to strengthen and widen the revolutionary network across the length and breadth of India. Thousands of Ghadarites from North America returned to India in anticipation of a major campaign.

There was a plan of an uprising in February 1915 across military cantonments throughout the British India and other locations like Singapore. However, the plan failed due to leakage of plans by informers. The only place where it did trigger was Singapore and many Indian soldiers got martyred. Bagha Jatin was shot at on the banks of the river Budhabalanga near Balasore where he and his associates were waiting to receive an arm consignment; he passed away a few days later in a hospital, and has remained deeply etched in public memory as a heroic figure, particularly in Bengal. Many other revolutionaries from different parts of India in this saga of what came to be known as the Hindu-German Conspiracy were caught and hanged. They included Pingle then 27, and Kartar Singh who was only 19.

The Berlin Committee had sent missions to the Suez Canal area, Baghdad, Persia, and Afghanistan. Virendranath, Bhupen, Birendra Dasgupta went to Istanbul and from there they went to meet the Indian sepoys and officers imprisoned in the military camps. They had devised pans of founding a national liberation army. But these efforts were not successful.

An Indian provisional government in Exile was established in Kabul on Dec 1st 1915 with the representatives of the Berlin Committee and under the leadership of Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh and Moulana Barkatullah. They too aimed at organizing an uprising with armed assistance from the Germans and Afghans, but the plans did not come through. Both these gentlemen had very interesting lives. Mahenda Pratap, described by Nehru in his autobiogaphy as ‘a Don Quixote who strayed into the twentieth century’, became a Member of Parliament four decades later (in 1957) from Mathura, defeating a young candidate from Jan Sangh, Atal Behari Vajpayee. Barkatullah had lived as an international vagabond – born in the Nawabi city of Bhopal, he had lived in England, served as a Professor in Tokyo, spent many years in Europe, and died in San Francisco. The Bhopal University is named after him though few know about the adventurous life of this man.

The Berlin Committee also ventured into publication work and brought out books and pamphlets to educate the intellectual opinion in Europe and elsewhere with regard to the British Rule in India. Bhupen and Chatto played a significant role in authoring these works. Some of these titles were : ‘Is India Loyal?’, ‘British Rule in India condemned by British themselves’, ‘True Verdict of India’, ‘A History of Ten Years Fight for Freedom’, ‘How England acquired India’, ‘India’s Demand for Freedom’, and the ‘Socialist Conference on British Rule in India’.

An agreed aim of the Berlin Committee was also to create a Socialist Republic of India following the freedom from the British Rule. Around the middle of 1917, Bhupen and Chatto relocated to Stockholm as it was a neutral place. They also established contacts with the Russian Bolsheviks. With the defeat of Germany in the War, the Berlin Committee was formally dissolved. The Kaiser’s Rule had been brought down in Germany which passed on to a phase of turbulence witnessing assassinations of Communist leaders like Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. The new dispensation was no longer interested in the Indian question.

After a hiatus, Bhupen returned to Germany and enrolled for a doctorate in anthropology at Hamburg University. He also became a member of the Berlin Ethnological Society. Along with some former members of the Berlin Committee had started in Berlin an entity called the ‘India News and Information Bureau’ in 1921. It worked towards helping Indian students studying or wanting to study in Germany and did some publishing work. A small organization named ‘Hindustan Association of Central Europe’ was floated with these Indian students in Germany. It had a library and a meeting place. Once Jinnah, then a Congress nationalist, addressed the students there.

But in parallel, some very exciting developments brought him in touch with the thick of the International Communist Movement which gave him an insider’s view of the same.

In the International Communist Movement

Like countless others around the world, the October Revolution of 1917 and formation of the Soviet Union, kindled hopes in Bhupen too. He felt that under the prevailing situation only socialists and communists could extend support to the cause of Indian independence. At a conference in Stockholm which Bhupen and Chatto attended along with many other Indian revolutionaries in exile, it was resolved that those who were nationalists should remain so and work for the country’s independence forming their own association, while those of Marxist persuasion should form another entity with the same goal. Here the seeds of the communist movement in India were also sown and lines between the nationalists and communists got clearly marked. The chief actor among those who wished to take the communist line was another maverick intellectual and organiser Narendranath Bhattacharya, who had taken the name Manabendra Nath (M.N.) Roy. He had earlier been an activist of Bagha Jatin’s group and had since then lived in the United States and Mexico – he helped found the Communist Party in Mexico. He had got closely involved in Comintern and had subsequently moved to Tashkent. Upon submitting a thesis and roadmap for Indian Communism, he got recognition of his group (consisting of Evelyn Trent (his wife), Abani Mukherjee and Shaukat Usmani) as the émigré Communist Party of India.

In early 1921, Bhupen went to Moscow as a member of the delegation of Indian revolutionaries at the invitation of Soviet leaders. The delegation consisted of persons like Chatto, P.S. Khankhoje, Barkatullah, and Biren Dasgupta. Disagreeing with Roy’s thesis, both Bhupen as well as Chatto submitted their respective theses to the Comintern officials. Bhupen significantly disagreed with Roy as the latter did not wish to work with Nationalists (dismissing them as bourgeois protecting their own class interests), while Bhupen knew that for building and sustaining a mass movement in India one could not turn away from the Nationalists. He had been observing with considerable interest the non-cooperation movement then in full swing in India, and could not deny that under Gandhi’s leadership the national movement had acquired a different character, had significantly expanded its base, and brought the ordinary masses into its fold. In fact, in 1920, Bhupen had sent a memorandum to the Nagpur session of the Indian National Congress where he urged the Congress workers to organize the peasants and workers and bring them into the National Movement. This is an indicator that even while being influenced by Marxist ideas, Bhupen never underestimated the potency of the National Movement under Gandhi and that of the National Congress as a mass platform. His primary and abiding aim was to bring the interests of the poor masses into the centrestage of the National Movement.

Bhupen sent his thesis to Lenin, who within a few days, responded to him in a letter dated August 26, 1921 – this letter appears in the Volume 45 of ‘The Complete Works of V.I. Lenin’. He advised the Indian revolutionaries to collect facts about peasants and work among them. Lenin drew their attention to his own thesis on the colonized countries and advised to proceed as per lines suggested there. Elsewhere, Lenin had also criticized M.N. Roy for his failure to understand and appreciate the role of National Bourgeois in the Indian Freedom Movement. However, he advised the Indian revolutionaries to work among the peasants and preach class struggle.

Chatto stayed back and remained involved in the Comintern for many years before he met his unfortunate end – he was executed at Stalin’s orders in the ‘Great Purge’ of 1937. Meanwhile, Roys’s group started propaganda work in India for which the Soviet government provided the resources. Roy later returned to India and in the evening of his life he disavowed communism and worked on his own political theory called ‘Radical Humanism’.

Also in 1922, a group called India Independence league was formed in Berlin with Barkatullah as its President and Bhupen as Secretary. However, the German Foreign Office threatened to extern those involved with any revolutionary activity and so the organization had to close down. It published its journal with several articles highlighting developments in Soviet Union and World Communism.

Armed with the new exposure he got as a result of his brush with International Communism, Bhupen began disseminating his ideas in some Indian journals. Having obtained his Ph.D. he now felt it was time to return to India and work among the toiling masses. He was convinced that until the poor labouring masses were empowered there could be no true liberation of India. That the consciousness of the masses would have to be aroused was something about which he now had little doubt.

Back in India

After more than sixteen years in exile, Bhupendranath returned to India in 1924. Upon his arrival, Bhupendranath, now Dr. Datta, immediately took up the work of forming peasants’ and workers’ organizations. The Communist Party of India (not the émigré group of M.N. Roy, but the one later founded in India in 1925) had leaders like Muzaffar Ahmed and Abdul Halim working in Bengal. Dr. Datta did not officially become a member of the Communist Party but acted as a bridge between the Communists and the National Congress. He devoted his efforts to strengthen the peasants’ and workers’ interest groups in the National Congress and imparting a socialist focus to the National Movement. He was also elected to All India Congress Committee in 1929.

He travelled widely to different parts of undivided Bengal and addressed meetings and conferences of youths, peasants and workers. When not travelling, he held an open house in his receiving room at their family house – 3 Gourmohan Mukherjee Lane – the rightful part of which Mahendranath had managed to win through long litigations, an address now famous as a vast monument and splendid museum called ‘Swami Vivekananda’s Birth Place and Ancestral House’. In an adjacent room his elder brother Mahendranath held a similar open court where he narrated his experiences to his admirers who often recorded them to publish later as books. In addition to the associates in his social and political work, Dr. Datta would have many visitors who came to seek his guidance. Most among them were youths and students.  He also took classes and conducted study circles where he taught socialist theory based on Marxist texts. He discussed Indian culture and history and always emphasised upon his listeners the importance to closely know the lives of those they were working for. He taught them to apply Marxist tools of analysis in Indian soil. He also asked them to be respectful of the research of non-Marxists scholars and not make the mistake of dismissing that as ‘bourgeois scholarship’. He would go any length to help and teach those who he thought could become workers for the cause of the disenfranchised masses. He was, however, not much inclined to spend too much of his time with those who wanted to pursue dry scholarship merely for advancing their careers. Everyone was charmed by his deeply congenial and  empathetic disposition. Even those who did not agree with his socio-political views deeply respected him.

Many youngmen who were inspired by him to work for the poor and marginalized like Satyanarayan Majumdar, Somnath Lahiri, Bankim Mukherjee and Saroj Mukherje later became tall communist leaders.  Leaders of the time like Dr. Ronen Sen and Abdul Halim have remarked on Dr. Datta’s undeniable influence among youths of his time.

From the late 1920s Dr. Datta had occasions to work with Jawaharlal Nehru, who after his visit to Europe had taken a marked interest in scientific socialism. Nehru was involving himself in a more vigorous manner in the causes of peasants and workers. In the Socialist Youth Congress held in Calcutta in 1927, of which Dr. Datta was a key organizer, Nehru had been the President. Dr. Datta made a major contribution in de-cluttering the socialist movement from the romantic mazes of the early revolutionary period of the first decade in which he himself was a key actor. It was a considerable ground that he had covered from Mazzini to Marx and further to the ground realities of India.

Imparting Socialist Focus to the Mainstream Politics

The years 1927-28 were marked with labour unrest in different places like the Bombay textile mills, railways, Jamshedpur, and Bengal Jute mills. This led to repression by the British Government aimed at attacking the organized labour movement. A large number of arrests of leaders of the budding communist and labour movement were made. This whole episode and the trial that went for more than four years came to be known as the ‘Meerut Trial’. Among those who were arrested were pioneering names in Indian labour and communist movements like Muzaffar Ahmed, P.C. Joshi, S.A. Dange, S.V. Ghate, and Englishmen Philip Spratt (who continued to live in India and took Indian citizenship) and H.L. Hutchison (who later became a prominent British labour politician). Following these arrests Dr Datta sent a personal appeal to Nehru, who was then the General Secretary of the Congress Working Committee, requesting the Congress for organizing legal help for those arrested. Nehru wrote back expressing solidarity with those under trial and suggested some possible means in which legal help could be given. Later a Defence Committee was formed with Motilal Nehru as its chairman. Dr. Datta helped in the defence of the under-trials through the Meerut Defence Fund which was specially created for this purpose.

Dr Datta supported the Civil Disobedience Movement and participated in the Salt Law violations and other mass-mobilizations that had erupted throughout the country during that time. He was also arrested during this period. Historian Panchanan Saha, in his biography of Dr. Datta, refers to a note in the Special Branch Office, Calcutta which throws light on many activities Dr. Datta and his associates had planned to undertake during the Civil Disobedience Movement. Some of them as highlighted in the note were:

• To organize a general strike by industrial and transport workers.
• Refusal to handle salt and finally all British goods by Dock and transport workers.
• To organize peasants into unions and start Satyagraha by them against Union Board taxation.

Few know the contribution made by Dr. Datta towards Karachi Congress of 1931 which was famous for its Resolution on Fundamental Rights. He and his associates had prepared a draft and given it to Nehru. It was a key input draft, also shown and commented upon by Gandhi, leading to the final Resolution passed in that session.  The Final Resolution had some key points which were submitted by Dr. Datta’s group.

• Right of labour to protect their interests with suitable machinery for settlement of disputes by arbitration.
• A living wage for industrial workers, limited hours of work, protection against economic consequences of old age, sickness, and unemployment.
• Labour to be freed from serfdom or conditions bordering on serfdom.
• Protection of women workers, and especially adequate provisions for leave during maternity period.
• Prohibition against employment of children of school going age in factories.

In the draft submitted by Dr. Datta and his associates the ‘right to strike’ had been mentioned. However, Dr. Datta wrote in his memoirs that it was not accepted and instead the point about arbitration brought in, presumably at Gandhi’s behest. Also, the point on ‘State Ownership of key industries’ was changed to ‘State Control’. Nehru in his Autobiography mentions how the resolution was adopted at the Karachi Congress, but Dr. Datta in his memoirs later expressed his disappointment that no acknowledgement of its authors was made by Nehru. Subhas Bose, too, had later commented that the points pertaining to labour in the Karachi Congress were ‘included in order to placate the leftists in the Congress’.

In Workers’ Forums and Trade Unions

Dr Datta presided over the Annual Conferences of the Bengal Provincial Kisan (Krishak) Sabha for four years in succession from 1937 to 1940. He also tried to help young activists working for the poor masses whenever they got into trouble. He stood up as surety in many cases when activists were rounded up in strikes or peasants’ / workers’ campaigns.

Dr. Datta was one of the founders of the Calcutta Tramway Workers’ Union in 1927 and acted as its President for many years. At that time the Calcutta Tramway was a British owned entity. Under his leadership the Tramway Union was considered a very advanced trade union and participated in many campaigns, not just against its own foreign masters, but other campaigns against the British in general. He was also the President of the Carter’s Union and was always interested in safeguarding the interest of poor carters and hawkers including street-side vendors. In the famous Railway Strike of the British-owned Bengal Nagpur Railway (BNR) at Kharagpur in 1927 under the leadership of V.V. Giri (who four decades later became the President of India), Dr. Datta personally camped in Kharagpur and helped lift the morale of the workers. He also organized the trade unions in the industrial belt of Jamshedpur. Dr. Datta also served as one of its Vice-Presidents of the All India Trade union Congress for two successive years in the late twenties, with Nehru as the President in the first year and Subhas Bose in the second. He was the treasurer of the Red Trade Union Congress, which had split from the All India Trade Union Congress.  He also helped the Red Aid Society which stood for the defence of the accused within the labour movement.

It was in the 1930s that the May Day meetings and processions began to become a regular calendar event in Bengal and, to a lesser extent, outside too. Dr. Datta was always a speaker at these events and often presided over the Public Meetings.

Towards Independence

Dr. Datta was the first President of the ‘Friends of Soviet Union’ which was founded just after the attack on Soviet Union on 22 June 1941.  He had noted the rapid positive changes in the Central Asian constituents of the Soviet Union, like the significant improvement in education, which brought him great hope. In his speeches of the period Dr. Datta tried to disseminate these positive social achievements of the Soviet Union, so that the country could also learn from the Soviet example.

Dr. Datta was very much interested in the development of what was called the People’s Literature. He had been writing about it well before the formation of the Progressive Writers’ Association in 1936. He was quite regular in the circles of Progressive Writers’ Association and Anti Fascists’ Writers’ and Artists’ Association. He wanted literary figures to create a new literature for the Modern Age which would be ennobling and, at the same time, serve as a reflection of the lives of the toiling masses. He also highlighted it as a duty of the People’s Literature Movement to bring the world’s best literary treasures to the doorsteps of the common man in the form of high-quality translation in all Indian languages. One of his pupils, Rebati Burman, later became a noted Marxist scholar, and founded the Burman Publishing House, a precursor to later Marxist Publishers like the ‘National Book Agency’ and ‘People’s Publishing House’ (PPH).

In the terrible Bengal famine of 1943, Dr. Datta tried his best to mobilize relief workers to collect aid and help the starving people by running community kitchens, distributing essential provisions and other items of immediate relief. Dr. Datta strongly opposed the Communist Party’s policy of opposing the ‘Quit India Movement’, which came about after Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union. Under the advisory from the CPGB and Comintern, the Party changed its perspective and position with regard to the war, from the earlier position of maintaining equidistance in the war between fascists and imperialists, to the new position of viewing it as the People’s War. Later he was also in complete disagreement with the stand of some sections in the Party who called the independence as sham with their slogan ‘Ye Azadi Jhoothi hai’. He did consider the government under Nehru as the National government and wanted everyone to work together towards the betterment of the poorest and disenfranchised in Free India. He probably had greater sympathy with the P.C. Joshi line than the Ranadive line which had emerged as the dominant Party line. As often happens with the reconcilers, Dr. Datta was often viewed by Congressmen as an unbending leftist and by orthodox communists as a soft centrist.

Scholarship

Dr. Datta authored a large number of books and academic papers. We get a significant details about the history of the revolutionary movement, particularly the activities of the revolutionaries during the Swadeshi Movement and the Berlin Committee through Dr. Datta’s two works in Bengali – ‘Bharater Dwitiya Swadhinata Sangram’ (‘The Second Freedom Struggle of India) and ‘Aprakashito Rajnitik Itihas’ (Unpublished Political history). These books have been an important resource for later scholars and Dr. R.C. Majumdar in his highly regarded 3-volume ‘History of the Indian Freedom Movement’ mentions these two works as the most clear source of information of the revolutionary history of that period, much in contrast to the rather hazy and often contradictory stories otherwise in currency. Historian Sumit Sarkar too in his ‘Swadeshi Movement in Bengal’ refers to Dr. Datta’s works as an important source.

Dr. Datta also published vastly on Indian society, history, arts and culture from a Marxist perspective. His major works include ‘Studies in Indian Social Polity’, ‘Dialectics of Hindu Ritualism’, ‘Dialectics of Land Economics of India’, and ‘Indian Art in relation to Culture’. He also wrote memoirs of his American sojourn  – ‘Amar Americar Abhijnata’ (My Experience of America). Dr. Datta also translated into Bengali Fredrich Engels’s ‘The Socialism : Utopian and Scientific’.

Dr Datta also published academic papers in German in journals like ‘German Encyclopaedia of Science’ and ‘Anthropos’. He wrote regularly for the pioneering Anthropology journal in India ‘Man in India’.

A very important work of Dr. Datta which will surely remain  a significant work for a long time is his study of Vivekananda – ‘Swami Vivekananda, Patriot-Prophet – a subject on which he was eminently suited to write.

It would not be wrong to say that in later-day academic circles the scholarship of Dr. Datta has not got the due it deserved. He was one of the pioneering scholars who studied the Indian society and culture employing the Marxist framework of analysis, well before illustrious scholars like D.D. Kosambi arrived on the scene. Similarly, his work on caste was not insignificant and he had presented ideas of fluidity of caste dynamic much before the formidable scholarship of M.N. Srinivas in the area.

Views on Swami Vivekananda

Dr. Datta had first brought out a booklet on Vivekananda in 1928 which was a compilation of his quotes. It was titled ‘Vivekananda the Socialist’ and had been written at the request of his young comrades in the youth movement. He later remarked that ‘the name of the book provided ridicule amongst some of the old folks who regarded Swamiji as only a mystic and a Hindu Revivalist of the orthodox pattern. Only it created a furor amongst the youthful workers in the field of mass movement. They found a support in him in their work as the national revolutionaries drew their inspiration from him in the former decades.’ But Dr. Datta’s comprehensive work on his illustrious brother came out in 1953, more than five decades after the latter’s death. This was titled ‘Swami Vivekananda: Patriot Prophet’. It is a thorough study of the historical and social forces that led to the making of the Vivekananda phenomenon and the potency of his ideas.

Dr. Datta begins the books by analysing the ushering of the Indian society into modernity based on Dialectical Materialism. He looks at historical developments like contributions of Ram Mohan Roy and the Brahmo movement, and the later phase of social reform in nineteenth century Bengal. He sees Vivekananda as a phenomenon thrown up by historical necessity and views him as a tremendous force in the march of Indian history. He details out and examines Vivekananda’s family pedigree and social environment (being his brother he was eminently suited to know the intricate details of the larger family environment and its history), larger sociological factors that went into making of Vivekananda, and finally proceeds to study his contribution from various angles like Vivekananda’s offering of new national ideals, his sociological and religious views, and most importantly his markedly egalitarian perspective.

Dr. Datta highlighted why he thought the country needed to seriously draw from the ideas Vivekananda had put forth. ‘India today is an independent democratic republic. India that is Bharat, is now a secular state and as such, is making its mark in world politics. But inside Bharat there is confusion in the matter of National Ideal. Everyone is at a loss to give a clear conception of New Bharat that is in making. Again in the name of democracy, Bourgeois-democracy is established which again in practical field is evolving into Plutocracy, i.e. rule of the capitalist class. Here, his vision of a future new India is put before the workers to inspire them in the matter of nation-building. It is hoped that irrespective of dogmas and creeds imported from outside, his advice will clear the blurring vision of new Bharat.’

Dr. Datta was certain that in Vivekananda India could find an ideal which in essence would be most liberal, rational, egalitarian, and vigorous. ‘It is high time that a conscious and united effort was made to fix our national ideal so that she (India) can make her mark on the history of the present-day world. This ideal was offered by Swamiji long ago. Our youth need not run hither and thither in search of an ideal suited to India’s needs. To run after foreign ideologies which would never strike roots in our soil would be like chasing a chimera. The proper ideal to be pursued is near at hand and of indigenous growth. Our young men must wean their minds away from the hypnotic spell cast on them by foreign ideals. Independent Bharat must shake off the spirit of slave mentality.’

Dr. Datta says that in Vivekananda the pent-up energy of the long inward-looking nation found an outward expression and he wanted India to have an assertive engagement with the world. Vivekananda had said in his famed Madras lectures, ‘The whole of Western world is on a volcano which may burst tomorrow, go to pieces tomorrow. They have searched every corner of the world and have found no respite. Now is the time to work so that India’s spiritual ideas may penetrate deep into the west. We must go out, we must conquer the world through our spirituality and philosophy. The only condition of national life, of awakened and vigorous national life, is the conquest of the world by Indian thought.’

Nearly five decades after Vivekananda spoke this Dr. Datta too felt that “Independent India has got a mission to give to the world. She is on the threshold of a tremendous epoch. Hers is not going to be a vegetative civilization any longer. She must remember what once the greatest of the Indians, the Buddha said, when he sent out the young Indians who had renounced the world, “Go out, o Bhikshus, preach the glorious doctrine : For the welfare of many, for the happiness of many.”

What fascinated Dr Datta most and what he thought had been woefully neglected even by Vivekananda’s followers was the latter’s radical egalitarianism. Vivekananda had been more direct than anyone else before or since his times, in highlighting the exploitation of the toiling classes of India. Dr. Datta puts before us Vivekananda with all the force of the latter’s indignation: ‘You the upper classes of India – do you think you are alive? You are but mummies, ten thousand years old. It is among those whom your ancestors despised as walking carrions that the little of vitality there is still in India is to be found; and it is you who are the walking corpses…You are the void, the unsubstantial nonentities of the future. Denizens of the dreamland, why are you loitering any longer? Fleshless and bloodless, that you are – why do not quickly reduce yourselves into dust and disappear in the air?  Ay, on your bony fingers are some priceless rings of jewel, treasured up by your ancestors, and within the embrace of your stinking corpses are preserved a good many ancient treasure-chests. Up to now you have not had the opportunity to hand them over. In these days of free education and enlightenment, pass them on to your heirs, aye, do it as quickly as you can. You merge yourself in the void and disappear.’

Vivekananda held the toiling classes in genuine admiration for their innate strength to suffer and survive, ‘Ye ever-trampled labouring masses of India! I bow to you,’ he had said. He knew the time was coming when with all their might the eternal sufferers will stand and shake the world: ‘These common people have suffered oppression for thousands of years — suffered it without murmur, and as a result have got wonderful fortitude. They have suffered eternal misery, which has given them unflinching vitality. Living on a handful of grain, they can convulse the world; give them only half a piece of bread, and the whole world will not be big enough to contain their energy; they are endowed with the inexhaustible vitality of a Raktabija.’

According to Dr. Datta, Swami Vivekananda was one of the pioneers in world-history in envisaging a civilization with the working classes at the centre. Dr. Datta writes: ‘The civilization evolved by toiling masses has been the prophetic clairvoyance of Swami Vivekananda before 1900. Did Plekhanov and Ulianov-Lenin dream of a Proletarian State with a civilization of its own then? Did Sun Yat Sen ever dream of it? Trotsky says that Lenin in 1905 advanced the idea of ‘democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’.’ Vivekananda had even prophesied that it will be Russia and China where the uprising of the working classes will happen.

Dr. Datta writes, ‘He (Vivekananda) had prophesied that, ‘A time will come when there will be rising of the Sudra class, with their Sudrahood will gain absolute supremacy in every society.’ And so Dr. Datta says ‘he had anticipated the ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat’ long before it became the slogan of the Bolshevists.’

But Dr. Datta also regretfully reflected that ‘all these exhortations were wasted on deaf ears. ‘The Indian intelligentsia, still enmeshed in the stranglehold of feudal civilization, could not come out of the class-incrustation and envisage the possibility of a new social order.’ In a lamenting tone he remarked that “Swami Vivekananda came too early in the benighted country called India.’ And ‘It seems that we are between the Scylla of American and foreign economic stranglehold on one hand, and Charybdis of attempt on the part of affinity to Soviet Russia on the other.’ But he thought in Vivekananda one could find a much greater resource for resolving this dilemma. To be sure, Dr. Datta says, ‘Swami Vivekananda was neither a Marxist nor an economist. But with his prophetic instinct he adumbrated the stage which will bring the resurrection of the Indian people – casteless and classless society based on the new culture of the Indian masses. It is this new India that should bring the synthesis between the East and the West as was desired by him. It is a pious wish as yet, but why should it not fructify in India? India has shown her race-capacity in the past and the present. Therein lays our hope, our future growth and prosperity. The nation must ponder about the program of Swami Vivekananda in the perspective of an independent India, and work out its future advancement.’

Last years

Dr. Datta and his elder brother Mahendranath (who was eleven years elder to him) lived in the same ancestral house with a few other tenant families. Their meals too generally came from the tenants. Dr. Datta had turned down the freedom fighter pension offered by the Government. With the same virtues of austerity, service-mindedness and sacrifice that were common to the three brothers, he too never craved for any creature comforts or lure of recognition; much less any position of power or prestige. In times of distress like illness, the admirers of the two brothers extended their helping hand. Mahendranath passed away in 1956 at the age of 87, with Dr. Bidhanchandra Roy, the Chief Minister, of the first ‘Bharat Ratna’ awardees, and a nationally renowned physician himself visiting and checking on his health. Bhupendranath, the youngest of the Datta brothers of Simulia, passed away in 1961. Much like Vivekananda, he too in his humble way, had been an interpreter and reconciler, and did not take easy intellectual positions just owing to preset ideological persuasions. Like his eldest brother, he too had genuine pride for whatever was historically great in the Indian civilization but that did make him brush away what he thought were its lapses ad which needed course-correction. And of course like Vivekananda he kept the toiling masses at the centre of his imagination, and hoped to see a time when they would get a fairer deal and not the short shrift they have historically been recipients of. Patriot he surely was, but his patriotism, which was always of the probing kind, was centred on the People.

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References and Suggested Bibliography

• Bhupendranath Datta, Swami Vivekananda – Patriot-Prophet (Rundransh Prakashan, Gurgaon)
• Bhupendranath Datta, Bharater Dwitiya Swadhinata Sangram
• Bhupendranath Datta, Aprakashit Rajnitik Itihas
• The Life of Swami Vivekananda, by his Eastern and Western Disciples (Advaita Ashrama, Kolkata)
• Panchanan Saha, Dr Bhupendranath Datta Revolutionary Patriot, (Biswbiksha, Kolkata)
• Sumit Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal (People’s Publising House, New Delhi)
• R.C. Majumdar, History of the Freedom Movement in India (Firma KLM Pvt Ltd, Calcutta)
• Kama Maclean, A Revolutionary History of Inter-War India (Penguin India, New Delhi)
• Uma Mukherjee, Two Great Indian Revolutionaries Rashbehari bose and Jyotindranath Mukherjee (Dey’s Publishing, Kolkata)
• Prithwindra Mukherjee, Bagha Jatin : Life and Times of Jatindranah Mukherjee (National Book Trust, New Delhi)
• Prithwindra Mukerjee, The Intellectual Roots of India’s Freedom Strugle (Manohar Publishers, New Delhi)
• Mohit Sen, An Autobiography (National Book Trust, New Delhi)
• Jawaharlal Nehru, Autobiography (Pengui India, New Delhi)
• Pravrajika Atmaprana, Sister Nivedita (Sister Nivedita Girls’ School, Calcutta)
• Peter Hees, The Lives of Sri Aurobindo (Columbia University Press)
• Rishabhchand Samsukha Sri Aurobindo: His Life Unique (Available freely at https://auromaa.org/category/sri-aurobindo-his-life-unique/)
• Bipan Chandra, PC Joshi, A Political Journey (Mainstream Weekly, 2007 Vol XVI.)
• Abhijit Guha, A Revolutionary Anthropologist : Far Away from Establishment (Frontier Weekly, June 2020, also available at academia.edu)
• Abhijit Guha, Bhupendranath Datta, An Unnoticed Indian Anthropologist (Bulletin of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture December 2019)
• Ramkrishna Bhattacharya, Bhupendranath Datta, From National Revolutionary to Marxist (from academia.edu)
• Shankar, Narendanather Bhai Mahendranath, Anandabazaar Patrika ( freely available at https://www.anandabazar.com/amp/supplementary/rabibashoriyo/the-life-of-mahendranath-datta-brother-of-swami-vivekananda-1.944401)