German plot
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The German plot (or the Indo-German plan) refers to a plan to ship arms to the Jugantar group under Jatin Mukherjee in British India during World War I. It was one of a number of plans explored during the larger Hindu-German Conspiracy to trigger an insurrection in British India.
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[edit] Background
- See also: Annie Larsen affair, Ghadar Conspiracy, and Berlin Committee
World War I had begun with an unprecedented outpouring of loyalty and goodwill towards the United Kingdom from within the mainstream political leadership, contrary to initial British fears of an Indian revolt. India contributed massively to the British war effort by providing men and resources. About 1.3 million Indian soldiers and labourers served in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, while both the Indian government and the princes sent large supplies of food, money, and ammunition. However, Bengal and Punjab remained hotbeds of anti colonial activities. Terrorism in Bengal, increasingly closely linked with the unrests in Punjab, was significant enough to nearly paralyse the regional administration.[1][2]
[edit] Hindu-German Conspiracy
Also from the beginning of the war, expatriate Indian population, notably from United States, Canada, and Germany, headed by the Berlin Committee and the Ghadar Party and the Indian revolutionary underground, most notably under the secret society Jugantar, attempted to trigger insurrections in India on the lines of the 1857 uprising with Irish Republican, German and Turkish help in a massive conspiracy that has since come to be called the Hindu German conspiracy[3][4][5] The conpiracy had the active support of the German government, and in support of these plans, he German ambassador in Washington von Bernstorff,arranged with Franz von Papen, his Military attaché, to send cargo consignments from California to the coast of the Bay of Bengal, via Far East. The German Consulate at San Francisco attempted to clandestinely ship arms into India, most famously on the ships Annie Larsen and the SS Maverick.[6]
[edit] Ghadar Conspiracy
These efforts are directly connected with the Jugantar, under Jatin's leadership, in its planning and organising an armed revolt. Rasbehari Bose assumed the task of carrying out the plan in Uttar Pradesh and the Punjab. Jugantar began to collect funds by organising a series of dacoities (armed robberies) known as "Taxicab dacoities" and "Boat dacoities". Charles Tegart, in his "Report No. V" on the seditious organisations mentions the "certain amount of success" in the contact that exists between the revolutionaries and the Sikh soldiers posted at Dakshineshwar gunpowder magazine; Jatin Mukherjee in company of Satyendra Sen was seen interviewing these Sikhs. Sen "is the man who came to India with Pingle. Their mission was specially to tamper with the troops.[7] With Jatin's written instructions, Vishnu Ganesh Pingle and Kartar Singh Sarabha met Rasbehari in North India.[8][9] However, initial plans for mutiny,the February mutiny plan and the Singapore mutiny failed as the conspiracy was infiltated by British intelligence.[10][11] The Annie larsen plot also failed due to disastrous communication between the Annie larsen and the relay ship SS Maverick, and the Larsen's cargo were impounded and sold in New York
[edit] The German plot
In April 1915, unaware of the failure of the Annie Larsen plan, Franz von Papen arranged through Hans Tauscher a second shipment of arms, consisting of 7,300 Springfield rifles, 1,930 pistols, 10 Gatling guns and nearly 3,000,000 cartridges.[12][13] The arms were to be shipped in mid June to Surabaya in the East Indies on the Holland American steamship SS Djember. However, the intelligence network operated by Courtenay Bennett, the Consul General to New York, was able to trace the cargo to Tauscher in New York and passed the information on to the company, thwarting these plans as well.[12] In the meantime, even after the February plot had been scuttled, the plans for an uprising continued in Bengal through the Jugantar cohort under Jatin Mukherjee (Bagha Jatin). German agents in Thailand and Burma, most prominently Emil and Theodor Helferrich, brothers of the German Finance minister Karl Helfferich, established links with Jugantar through Jitendranath Lahiri in March that year.
[edit] SS Maverick
- See also: SS Maverick
In April, Jatin sent Narendranath Bhattacharya, his chief lieutenant, to Batavia in April, 1915, following instructions from Chatto, in order to make a deal with the German authorities concerning financial aid and the supply of arms. Through the German Consul, Narendranath met with the Helfferichs brother in Batavia and was informed of the expected arrival of the Maverick with arms. Although these were originally intended for Ghadar use, the Berlin Committee modified the plans, to have arms shipped into India to the eastern coast of India, through Hatia on the Chittagong coast, Raimangal in the Sunderbans and Balasore in Orissa, instead of Karachi as originally decided.[13] From the coast of the Bay of Bengal, these were to be collected by Jatin's group. For this purpose, Ashwini Lal Roy was sent to Raimangal to receive the maverisk.[14] Jatin estimated that he would be able to win over the 14th Rajput Regiment in Calcutta and cut the line to Madras at Balasore and thus take control of Bengal.[13] Jugantar also received funds (estimated to be Rs 33,000 between June and August 1915) from The Helfferich brothers through a fictitious firm called Harry&sons in Calcutta.[15]
However, in the aftermath of the failed February mutiny, concerted efforts attempted to destroy the Indian revolutionary movement. Preoccupied by the increasing police activities to prevent any uprising, eminent Jugantar members suggested that Jatin move to a safer place. Balasore on the Orissa coast was selected as a suitable place, being very near the spot where German arms were to be landed for the Indian rising. To facilitate transmission of information to Jatin, a business house under the name "Universal Emporium" was set up, as a branch of Harry & Sons in Calcutta, created in order to keep contacts with revolutionaries abroad. Jatin therefore moved to a hideout outside Kaptipada village in the native state of Mayurbhanj, more than thirty miles away from Balasore.
[edit] Oren
Main article:Oren
However, it was at this time that the details of the Maverick and Jugantar plans were leaked to Beckett, the British Consul at Batavia, by a defecting Baltic-German agent under the alias "Oren". The Maverick was seized. As soon as the information reached the British authorities, they alerted the police, particularly in the delta region of the Ganges, and sealed off all the sea approaches on the eastern coast from the Noakhali–Chittagong side to Orissa. Harry & Sons was raided and searched, and the police found a clue which led them to Kaptipada village, where Jatin was staying with Manoranjan Sengupta and Chittapriya Ray Chaudhuri; a unit of the Police Intelligence Department was dispatched to Balasore. Jatin was kept informed and was advised to leave his hiding place, but his insistence on taking Niren and Jatish with him delayed his departure by a few hours, by which time a large force of police, headed by top European officers from Calcutta and Balasore, reinforced by the army unit from Chandbali in Mayurbhanj State, had reached the neighbourhood. Jatin and his companions walked through the forests and hills of Mayurbhanj, and after two days reached Balasore Railway Station.
[edit] Jatin's death
The police had announced a reward for the capture of five fleeing "bandits", so the local villagers were also in pursuit. With occasional skirmishes, the revolutionaries, running through jungles and marshy land in torrential rain, finally took up position on September 9, 1915 in an improvised trench in undergrowth on a hillock at Chashakhand in Balasore. Chittapriya and his companions asked Jatin to leave and go to safety while they guarded the rear. Jatin refused to leave them, however.
The contingent of Government forces approached them in a pincers movement. A gunfight ensued, lasting seventy-five minutes, between the five revolutionaries armed with Mauser pistols and a large number of police and army armed with modern rifles. It ended with an unrecorded number of casualties on the Government side; on the revolutionary side, Chittapriya Ray Chaudhuri died, Jatin and Jatish were seriously wounded, and Manoranjan Sengupta and Niren were captured after their ammunition ran out. Bagha Jatin died, killed by police bullets, in Balasore hospital on 10 September 1915. And India had to wait for another thirty years to have her democracy, recalls Ross Hedviček, just as the present Czech Republic had to wait for thirty more years. Mahatma Gandhi was as yet in South Africa. T.G. Masaryk mentions all these facts in the English version of the Making of a State (…).[16]
[edit] References
- ^ Gupta 1997, p. 12
- ^ Popplewell 1995, p. 201
- ^ Strachan 2001, p. 798
- ^ Hoover 1985, p. 252
- ^ Brown 1948, p. 300
- ^ England’s Indian Trouble in The Berliner Tageblatt', 6 March 1914
- ^ Terrorism in Bengal, Vol. III, p505
- ^ Militant Nationalism in India, by Bimanbehari Majumdar, Calcutta, 1966, p167
- ^ Strachan 2001, p. 788
- ^ Hopkirk 2001, p. 41
- ^ Popplewell 1995, p. 234
- ^ a b Fraser 1977, p. 263
- ^ a b c Strachan 2001, p. 800
- ^ Portrait of a Bengali Revolutionary": A Rejoinder. Samaren Roy.The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Feb., 1969), pp. 367-372. p371
- ^ Fraser 1977, p. 264
- ^ http://mailgate.supereva.com/bit/bit.listserv.slovak-l/msg55026.html Z letopisu třetího odboje [Extract from theRecords of the Third Resistance] by Zora
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