Jugantar or Yugantar ( Jugantor; lit. New Era or Transition of an Epoch) was one of the two main secret revolutionary trends operating in Bengal for Indian independence. This association, like Anushilan Samiti, started in the guise of suburban fitness club. Several Jugantar members were arrested, hanged, or deported for life to the Cellular Jail in Andaman and many of them joined the Communist Consolidation in the Cellular Jail.
Notable members
Abinash Chandra Bhattacharya (1882-1962) Basanta Kumar Biswas (1895-1915) Khudiram Bose Satyendranath Bosu (1882-1908) Prafulla Chaki Ambika Chakrabarty (1891-1962) Amarendra Chatterjee (1880-1957) Taraknath Das (1884-1958) Bhupendra Kumar Datta (1894-1979) Kanailal Dutta (1888-1908) Ullaskar Dutta Bipin Behari Ganguli (1887-1954) Santi Ghose (1916-1989) Surendra Mohan Ghose alias Madhu Ghosh (1893-1976) Barin Ghosh Ganesh Ghosh (b. 1900 ) Arun Chandra Guha (b. 1892) Bagha Jatin alias Jatindra Nath Mukherjee (1879-1915) Hare Krishna Konar (1915–1974) Hemchandra Kanungo, alias Hem Das Bhavabhushan Mitra Santosh Kumar Mitra (1901-1931) Satyendra Chandra Mitra (1888-1942) Mohit Moitra Jadugopal Mukherjee (1866-1976) Subodh Chandra Mullick Surya Sen (1894-1934)
The beginning
The Jugantar party was established in April 1906 by leaders like Aurobindo Ghosh, his brother Barin Ghosh, Hemchandra Kanungo, Upen Banerjee . Along with 21 revolutionaries, they started to collect arms, explosives and manufactured bombs. The headquarters of Jugantar were located at 27 Kanai Dhar Lane then 41 Champatola 1st Lane in Kolkata.
Activities
Some senior members of the group were sent abroad for political and military training. One of the first batches included Surendra Mohan Bose, Tarak Nath Das and Guran Ditt Kumar, who, since 1907, were extremely active among the Hindu and Sikh immigrants on the Western coast of North America. These units were to compose the future Ghadar Party. In Paris Hemchandra Kanungo alias Hem Das, along with Pandurang M. Bapat, obtained training in explosives from the Russian anarchist Nicholas Safranski. After returning to Kolkata, he joined the combined school of 'self-culture' (anushilan) and bomb factory run by Barin Ghosh at a garden house in Maniktala, a suburb of Calcutta. However, the attempted murder of Kingsford, the-then district Judge of Muzaffarpur by Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki (30 April 1908) initiated a police investigation that led to the arrest of many of the revolutionaries. The prisoners were tried in the famous Alipore bomb conspiracy case in which several activists were deported for life to the Cellular Jail in Andaman.
In 1908, as a next step, Jugantar chose to censure persons connected with the arrest and trial of revolutionaries involved in the Alipore Bomb Case. On 10 February 1909, Ashutosh Biswas, who conducted the prosecution of Kanai and Satyen for the murder of Naren Gosain (a revolutionary turned approver), was shot dead by Charu Basu in the Calcutta High Court premises. Samsul Alam, Deputy Superintendent of Police, who conducted the Alipore Case was shot and killed by Biren Dutta Gupta on the stairs of Calcutta High Court building on 24 January 1910. Charu Basu and Biren Dutta Gupta were later hanged.
Several including Jatindra Nath Mukherjee were arrested in connection with the murder of Police inspector Samsul Alam on 24 January 1910 in Calcutta and other charges. Thus started the Howrah-Sibpur Conspiracy case that tried the prisoners for treason, waging war against the Crown and tampering with the loyalty of Indian soldiers, such as those belonging to the Jat Regiment posted in Fort William, and soldiers in Upper Indian Cantonments.
The German plot
Nixon's Report corroborates that Jugantar under Jatindra Nath Mukherjee counted a good deal on the ensuing World War to organise an armed uprising with the Indian soldiers in various regiments. During World War I the Jugantar Party arranged importation of German arms and ammunitions (notably the 32 bore German automatic pistols) via Virendranath Chattopadhyay alias Chatto and other revolutionaries residing in Germany. They had contacted Indian revolutionaries active in the United States, as well as Jugantar leaders in Kolkata. Jatindra Nath Mukherjee informed Rash Behari Bose to take charge of Upper India, aiming at an All-Indian Insurrection with the collaboration of native soldiers in different cantonments. History refers to it as the Hindu German Conspiracy. To raise fund, the Jugantar party organized a series of dacoities which came to be known as Taxicab dacoities and Boat dacoities, in order to procure funds to prepare the ground for working out the Indo-German Conspiracy.