However, the manual was in Russian and none of them could read the script. The tailor then introduced them to two young Russian ladies, one of whom had completed her MA and the other her MBBS. The latter, Miss Amaya, was studying in Berlin and asked them to come there so that she could assist them in translating the text. Bapat and the others hid the photographed manual, escaped two custom checks in Belgium and Holland, reached Berlin where they kept shifting homes to avoid police scrutiny, and finally reached Amaya. She took a long time to translate the manual, and eventually a translated copy was printed and brought back to London. Another version of this story is that the manual was translated by Bapat’s German girlfriend, Anna Klauss, who lived in Berlin and was well versed in Russian. 33
Bapat mentions in the interview that he met Vinayak and expressed a desire to bomb the British Parliament, but the latter dissuaded him and asked him to instead go with copies of the manual to India where it could be put to good use. The copies were smuggled into India in boxes with false bottoms to escape customs.
Bapat reached Bombay on 26 March 1908 and met several Abhinav Bharat members in Maharashtra. Thousands of cyclostyled copies of the manual were distributed to Abhinav Bharat cells in Bombay, Poona, Nashik, Kolhapur, Aundh, Satara, Gwalior, Baroda, Amravati, Yavatmal, Nagpur and other places. Hemchandra returned to Calcutta to his comrades Barin Ghose and Aurobindo Ghose, and began utilizing the manual for manufacturing bombs across Bengal. Their activity led to the famous Alipore Bomb Case, or the ‘Maniktala Bomb Conspiracy’. This was the famous trial conducted against Bengali revolutionaries for throwing bombs in Muzaffarpur. Executed by Prafulla Chaki and Khudiram Bose on 30 April 1908, it was masterminded by Aurobindo Ghose, his brother Barin Ghose and many young revolutionaries of the secret society Anushilan Samiti. A nineteen-year-old Bengali member of the society, Khudiram threw a bomb into a carriage carrying two Englishwomen, mistaking it to be that of Calcutta magistrate Douglas Kingsford. While Chaki committed suicide when cornered by the police, Khudiram was later hanged. In a harsh and swift reaction, the Government of India enacted the Explosive Substances Act and the Newspaper (Incitement to Offences) Act in June 1908. District magistrates were empowered to seize newspapers and presses deemed to be of seditious nature. Incidentally, for defending Prafulla Chaki and Khudiram Bose in the Kesari , Tilak was charged with sedition, tried and sentenced to six years’ imprisonment in the prison in Mandalay, Burma. It is said that a copy of the ‘Bomb Manual’ also reached Tilak. 34 Thus, the activities originating from India House sparked off explosions literally all across British India.
In his newsletter dated 19 July 1907, Vinayak theorized the action of armed struggle, making a case against the ‘passive resistance’ that Tilak and later Gandhi postulated. He argued that the French had tried innumerable political experiments and various models of governance—uncontrolled monarchy, controlled monarchy to anarchy, monarchy appointed by the people and democracy. They had even toyed with the idea of passive resistance. Through passive resistance, the French intended to bring the government to its knees by not cooperating with it at all levels. Such an experiment was conducted by some farmers, protesting against government taxes, in a vineyard of southern France. Large groups congregated and the passive resistance began meticulously with the chiming of church bells across Narbonne. From students, workers, municipal councillors, to representatives of local councils, soldiers and even members of Parliament participated. But in no time the government clamped it down with martial law and excessive use of force and arms. The balance was to tilt, invariably, in favour of the one who had more arms. Thus, passive resistance, argued Vinayak, was futile without the backing of arms. He wrote:
When attempting passive resistance, it is assumed that all the human beings are noble. It is presumed that all government employees will leave their jobs—that is the beginning. But poverty stricken people do not have the strength to live without government service; howsoever they may like to do that. Moreover, it is assumed that the rulers are also noble. It is assumed that they will not break existing laws and will not promulgate new ones—that is the theory. But this is impossible. Rulers who are prepared to go against public opinion are also capable of making new laws and implementing old ones that were not used for years. 35
Even as he was managing and coordinating the logistics involved in procurement and shipment of arms to India, Vinayak was also building a strong intellectual case for the same, with references from various episodes in world history.
That the British considered Vinayak and his associates at India House a major threat is confirmed by the enormous amounts of money and time that Scotland Yard invested in gathering intelligence about its activities. There was always some Scotland Yard policeman hanging about on the street outside India House. 36 The quantum of correspondence between various colonial policemen and officials of the intelligence branch and India Office reveal the extent of this surveillance. 37
But what exactly was the architecture of this British surveillance on India House and Indian students? What one often calls Scotland Yard was the Special Branch of the Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard, a group that was tasked with maintaining a keen watch over ‘anarchists in London’. 38 By the turn of the century, this Special Branch had merely twenty-five detectives.
The counterpart of this Special Branch in India, at Simla (Shimla) and Calcutta, was the Department of Criminal Intelligence (DCI), 39 which worked closely with the home department and also local governments to gather intelligence. It was after the spurt of revolutionary activities in India, following the Partition of Bengal in 1905, that Lord Morley and Lord Minto were convinced of the need to further activate the DCI that was established in 1903. In 1907, H.A. Stuart, the director of the DCI, expressed the reasons for the creation of such a department:
The formation of the Criminal Intelligence Department in 1903 was justified by the fact that the operations of the modern criminal in India extend over several provinces and cannot be traced by the local police . . . The operations of the professional sedition-mongers are far more widespread, far better organized, and far more advanced than those of any professional criminals . . . The range of their activities includes England, America, Egypt and Turkey, and they have no hesitation in allying themselves with our enemies and rivals in any part of the world. 40
The director of DCI was a figure of importance within the Indian government and provided weekly reports to the home department and local governments on the emergent political situation. But his initial fund outlay was Rs 12,000 with a nominal staff of twenty-six that made surveillance a difficult task. 41
Stuart advocated the creation of a branch within the department that focused specifically on ‘sedition’. An act or word that was spoken or printed and which was deemed offensive or threatening to the security of the Crown was deemed as sedition. Closely linked with it was the idea of conspiracy, where an individual joins a group to politically harm the state. The British government was deeply aware of the nature of activities the revolutionaries were carrying out. Stuart’s deputy, who later became the director, C.J. Stevenson-Moore, writes:
The chief centres of the Indian political movement are Calcutta, Lahore, Poona, New York, London, Paris, and perhaps Japan. The chief agitators in these places are in close connection with each other, and the necessity for secret agents in America and London has recently been brought to notice in letters from London and Dublin. From Calcutta in the old province, the agitation in the new province has been engineered. The Punjab sends money down to Calcutta, which is probably distributed to the lead agitators in Eastern Bengal and Assam. An outbreak of disturbances in Bengal is reflected in an outbreak of disturbances in Madras. Lahore and Rawalpindi in the Punjab send money to Peshawar in the NWFP, which is again used for stirring up the Frontier Tribes over the border. Political Sadhus or missionaries tour all over India, New York, and Paris; send out letters which are used for disaffection in the Army and among the civil population; and Shyam
ji Krishna Varma from London offers prizes and other attractions to those who will devote themselves to preaching the subversion of our rule in India. 42
Despite all this knowledge of ‘subversive’ activities across continents, the two organizations—the Special Branch in London and the DCI in India—hardly interacted across the seas. It was only by 1909 that Scotland Yard began sending weekly reports on Indian agitators to the DCI. On its part, the DCI often scoffed at the alleged incompetence of the London Special Branch. This was an open secret, and was discussed at the highest level between Secretary of State Lord Morley and Viceroy Lord Minto:
Experts from the Home Office and Scotland Yard pointed out that their men are wholly useless in the case of Indian conspirators. They have no sort of agency able to distinguish Hindu from Mahomedan, or Verma from Varma. The whole Indian field is absolutely unfamiliar, in language, habits, and everything else. In short, both you and I can easily understand that the ordinary square-toed English constable, even in the detective branch, would be rather clumsy in tracing your wily Asiatics. 43
Initially, white policemen were used to shadow the revolutionaries. But police detective Harold Brust found out to his peril when Indians whom he was shadowing in Oxford, Cambridge and London beat him up. He later reminisced that most members of the Special Branch ‘held a sneaking admiration for the ardour of these lads who mistakenly believed themselves the appointed “saviours” of their “downtrodden country”’. 44
The first of the preliminary attempts at surveillance was in May 1907 when a member of the Scotland Yard infiltrated into an India House meeting and reported that ‘seditious pamphlets were distributed’. 45 M.P. Tirumala Acharya writes that within a few days of his arrival at India House (possibly in 1907), he found that ‘all the inmates had detectives shadowing’ 46 them wherever they went. The place was considered as the ‘hot-bed of sedition’. 47 He describes the barrier that existed between the India House residents and all other students. ‘It was like a lepers’ home,’ he rues, adding that, ‘. . . patriotism and sedition were synonymous, as far as Indians’ were concerned in England. 48 Having left India after being hounded by the British intelligence, it pained Acharya to see a repeat of the same in a supposed land of liberty. Indian students outside India House were extra anxious to maintain complete distance from its inmates, lest the British suspect their motives too. 49
In September 1908, intelligence was gathered that Free Hindustan , a US-based newspaper ‘devoted to the cause of Indian freedom was distributed at the meeting’. 50 However, no structured and organized framework was created for intelligence gathering nor had the process of infiltration been described. Acharya writes about this vague method of intelligence gathering and how the India House members dealt with it:
Early in the morning, the detectives used to stand or loiter about near the house to follow anyone who went out of the India House. First it was disgusting to me to see their faces. I wanted to make use of them as my guide. I went out for a walk. About 50 yards behind me one detective followed me like shadow. I went on walking till I passed a post office. Then I walked back. The detective was waiting before the post office to let me pass. Suddenly, when I came in front of the post office, I asked him, ‘Where is the post office, please?’ The man answered, ‘I do not know.’ I asked him then, ‘If you cannot help me find out the post office and other places I want, why do you follow me?’ He was very perturbed and angry. I used to try the same method upon every new man that was set against me, to show that I know who he was. Sometimes, Savarkar and other members of the House tried to get rid of the detectives in a peculiar manner. They walked till they came to a lone taxi and suddenly jumped into it and drove away, while the detective used to stand helpless, looking for a free taxi. 51
There are a few documented instances of how spies were implanted at India House. For instance, there was an informant named Sukhsagar Dutt (which was the nom de plume of Sajani Ranjan Banerjea) who also stayed here. The DCI had engaged him as an informant from October 1909 until June 1913. His passage and outfit (£100), fees for admission to the bar (£90), final fee when called to the bar (£40), purchase of law books (£10), purchase of other books and instruments (£10), cost of a course of study at the Imperial College of Science (£124–10) and passage back to India on completing the course (£42–2–8) were fully borne by the intelligence department and paid through Thomas Cook & Sons. In addition, he was paid a monthly allowance as retainer fee for £20 for forty-five months during this period. Close to £1316 was spent on merely one informant at India House.
Dutt claims to have turned informant to pay off his family debts. He reported to the superintendent of the Special Branch, P. Quinn, and gave him regular updates. His letter dated 20 November 1912 to Quinn mentions how it was settled even before his departure to London that he should stay there till July 1913 and supply information. The approval of his science course was to ensure he came in touch with several Indian students as science was what ‘appeals to Indians with extremist tendencies’. But his studies at the Royal College of Science were discontinued after a short while when the money sanctioned for that purpose was not paid to him. Now that he was being called by the bar after finishing with the Inns of Court, he wanted to encash the money owed to him, in order to stay on for longer, so that ‘my friends here may get suspicious of my stay till June next, but if I join a barrister’s chamber for practical work for the period of six months there will be no cause for my friends to question about my stay here till June 1913’. 52 If his services were needed for a longer period, he was ‘glad to continue it for another three to six months’. His case was recommended thereafter to Sir Thomas W. Holderness, the undersecretary of state, mentioning that Dutt had ‘been of great use’ and had ‘a good knowledge of Indian seditionists’. He was assessed as having ‘the great merit of reporting, truthfully, and not making sensational statements in order to magnify his usefulness’. Dutt was ‘also eager to know if he is to put himself in touch with any official of the Criminal Intelligence Department on arrival in India. He will probably on the way back call and see Madam Cama and Virendranath Chattopadhyay in Paris and if thought advisable would go to Pondicherry to see V.V.S. Aiyar.’ 53 Dutt managed his work so adroitly that neither Vinayak nor his associates ever found out about the mole in their midst.
However, not everyone the British intelligence employed was so skilled. Kirtikar was one such person. In the early summer of 1909, Kirtikar arrived at India House unannounced, bags in hand, and managed to get close to Vinayak with his fluent Marathi. He claimed to be of aristocratic descent and that he had come to London to study dentistry. But this was merely a pretext and he was given a year’s leave by Indian authorities. He registered himself at a London hospital as a cover. Kirtikar was indolent and lazy, came late for breakfast, often skipped hospital and returned very late at night. He soon began a romantic dalliance with the English maid at India House, forcing Vinayak to relieve her of her duties. But Kirtikar managed to find her a new accommodation nearby where he frequently visited her. He was a regular at all meetings of the Free India Society and also donated a pound every month to its cause.
His actions roused suspicions and Vinayak asked Dr T.S.S. Rajan to casually inquire about him at the hospital. To their horror they discovered that he had barely attended classes for a week since his admission. It became clear to them that he was a spy and had not come there to study. One night, when Kirtikar had gone to watch a play with his English girlfriend, Aiyar opened his room with a master key. In a box there he discovered a report prepared by Kirtikar on the activities of the week at India House, to be passed on to British intelligence agencies. They decided to confront him on his return. Aiyar locked the room and held a loaded revolver to Kirtikar’s head, forcing him to confess after much denial. He fell at Aiyar’s feet and begged for pardon. Vinayak decided that Kirtikar should be allowed to stay on at India House on the condition that all reports sent by him to the British would first have to pass t
heir scrutiny. The British were thus fed false and concocted information by Vinayak and his associates through their own spy. 54
Given Scotland Yard’s general incompetence, it is unlikely that they might have had a role in planting Kirtikar. Lord Morley had asserted that the Yard did not know a Verma from a Varma. To infiltrate India House with a Marathi speaker so that the spy could get close to Vinayak, the leader, was a well-planned strategy, and expecting this level of detail from Scotland Yard is hard to believe. The DCI had an agent whom they enigmatically called ‘C’ who had been dispatched to India House along with two other Indians in early 1909. The identity of Agent C was a secret, more so because the DCI distrusted their counterparts in the Special Branch. It was Agent C who sent a secret report in June 1909 that India House members had accelerated the levels of their revolver practice at a shooting range on Tottenham Court Road in London. 55 It is quite possible that the secret Agent ‘C’ was Kirtikar. The information that he provided was to prove very beneficial, as time would tell.
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