Christmas Day Plot

The growth of the Indian middle class during the 19th century, amidst competition among regional powers and the ascendancy of the British East India Company, led to a growing sense of "Indian" identity.[4] The refinement of this perspective fed a rising tide of nationalism in India in the last decades of the 19th century.[5] Its speed was abetted by the creation of the Indian National Congress in India in 1885 by A. O. Hume. The Congress developed into a major platform for the demands of political liberalisation, increased autonomy and social reform.[6] However, the nationalist movement became particularly strong, radical and violent in Bengal and, later, in Punjab. Notable, if smaller, movements also appeared in Maharashtra, Madras and other areas in the South.[6] Political terrorism began taking an organised form in Bengal at the beginning of the 20th century. By 1902, Calcutta had three societies working under the umbrella of Anushilan Samiti, a society earlier founded by a Calcutta barrister by the name of Pramatha Mitra. These included Mitra's own group, another led by a Bengalee lady by the name of Sarala Devi, and a third one led by Aurobindo Ghosh, one of the strongest proponents of militant nationalism of the time.[7] By 1905, the works of Aurobindo and his brother Barin Ghosh allowed Anushilan Samity to spread through Bengal. The controversial 1905 partition of Bengal had a widespread political impact: it stimulated radical nationalist sentiments in the Bhadralok community in Bengal, and helped Anushilan acquire a support base amongst of educated, politically conscious and disaffected young in local youth societies of Bengal. The Dhaka branch of Anushilan was led by Pulin Behari Das and spread branches through East Bengal and Assam.[8] Aurobindo and Bipin Chandra Pal, a Bengali politician, began in 1907 the radical Bengali nationalist publication of Jugantar ("Change"), and its English counterpart Bande Mataram. Among the early recruits who emerged noted leaders were Rash Behari Bose, Jatindranath Mukherjee, and Jadugopal Mukherjee.[7]

Anushilan, notably from early on, established links with foreign movements and Indian nationalism abroad. In 1907, Barin Ghosh arranged to send to Paris one of his associates by the name of Hem Chandra Kanungo (Hem Chandra Das), he was to learn the art of bomb-making from Nicholas Safranski, a Russian revolutionary in exile in the French Capital.[8] Paris was also home at the time Madam Cama who was amongst the leading figures of the Paris Indian Society and the India House in London. The bomb manual later found its way through V. D. Savarkar to the press at India House for mass printing. In the meantime, in December 1907 the Bengal revolutionary cell derailed the train carrying the Bengal Lieutenant Governor Sir Andrew Fraser. Anushilan also engaged at this time in a number of notable incidences of political assassinations and dacoities to obtain funds.[9] This was, however, the crest for Anushilan. In 1908, two young recruits, Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki were sent on a mission to Muzaffarpur to assassinate the Chief Presidency Magistrate D.H. Kingsford. The duo bombed a carriage they mistook as Kingsford's,[9] killing two English women in it. In the aftermath of the murder, Khudiram Bose was arrested while attempting to flee, while Chaki took his own life. Narendra Nath Bhattacharya, then a member of the group, shot dead Nandalal Bannerjee, the officer who had arrested Khudiram. Police investigations into the murders revealed the organisations quarters in Maniktala suburb of Calcutta and led to a number of arrests, opening the famous Alipore Conspiracy trial. Some of its leadership were executed or incarcerated, while others went underground. Aurobindo Ghosh himself retired from active politics after serving a prison sentence,[10] his brother Barin was imprisoned for life.

Jatindra Nath Mukherjee escaped arrest in the Alipore case, and took over the leadership of the secret society, to be known as the Jugantar Party. He revitalised the links between the central organisation in Calcutta and its several branches spread all over Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and several places in Uttar Pradesh, and opened hideouts in the Sundarbans for members who had gone underground[11] The group slowly reorganised guided Mukherjee's efforts of aided by an emerging leadership which included Amarendra Chatterjee, Naren Bhattacharya and other younger leaders. Some of its younger members including Tarak Nath Das left India, to prepare scopes abroad. Through the next two years, the organisation operated under the covers of two seemingly detached organisations, Sramajeebi Samabaya (The Labourer's Cooperative) and Harry & Sons.[10] Since 1906, Jatin Mukherjee had been attempting to establish contacts with the 10th Jat Regiment then garrisoned at Fort William in Calcutta. Narendra Nath carried out through this time a number of robberies to obtain funds.[10] In the meantime, however, a second blow came in 1910 when Shamsul Alam, a Bengal Police officer then preparing a conspiracy case against the group, was assassinated by an associate of Jatin Mukherjee by the name of Biren Dutta Gupta. The assassination led to the arrests which ultimately precipitated the Howrah-Sibpur Conspiracy Case.[12]

While incarcerated during the Howrah-Sibpur conspiracy trial, a nucleus emerged within the party comprising the most militant of the nationalists. These developed from early ideas initially mooted by Barin Ghosh. This nucleus foresaw the possibilities of an Anglo-German war in the near-future, and around this the revolutionaries intended to launch a guerilla war with assistance from Germany.[13] The trial brought to attention the direction the group headed, moving away from the efforts of the early revolutionaries which aimed to merely terrorise the British administration. The nucleus that arose during the trial held deeper political motives and aspirations, and built on this nucleus to develop an organisational network throughout Bengal and other parts of India.

The Howrah conspirators were released after about a year when the Howrah-Sibpur case collapsed due to lack of evidence.[13] Released in February 1911, Jatin Mukherjee suspended all overtly violent activities. Suspended from his government job, Jatin began a business, working as a contractor for the railway network in Bengal, a job which allowed him to roam the Bengal countryside identifying suitable spots for the revolutionary projects he was planning. In 1906, an early Anushilan member Jatindranath Banerjee (known as Niralamba Swami) had left Bengal in the guise of a Sanyasi, making his way to the United Provinces and subsequently Punjab. At Punjab, Niralamba established links with Sardar Ajit Singh and Bhai Kishen Singh (father of Bhagat Singh). Through Kishen Singh, the Bengal revolutionary cell was introduced to Lala Har Dayal when the latter visited India briefly in 1908.[14] Har Dayal himself was associated with the India House, a revolutionary organisation in London then under V. D. Savarkar; Dayal was proud that by 1910, he had worked closely with Rash Behari Bose.[15] Bose was a Jugantar member employed at the Forest institute at Dehradun, who worked, possibly independent of Jatin Mukherjee, on the revolutionary movement in UP and Punjab since October 1910.[16] The India House itself was liquidated in 1910 in the aftermath of Sir W. H. Curzon Wyllie's assassination in the hands of Madanlal Dhingra, a member of the London group. Among the India House group who fled Britain was V. N. Chetterjee, who left for Germany. Har Dayal himself moved to San Francisco after working briefly with the Paris Indian Society. In the United States, nationalism among Indian immigrants, particularly students and working classes, was gaining ground. Tarak Nath Das, who had left Bengal for the United States in 1907, was among the noted Indian leaders who engaged in political work, maintaining contact with Sri Aurobindo and Jatin Mukherjee. In California, Har Dayal's arrival bridged a gap between the intellectual agitators in the west coast and the lower classes in the Pacific coast. Welcomed by Taranath Das, he emerged a leading organiser of Indian nationalism amongst the predominantly immigrant labour workers from India, founding the Ghadar movement.

Meanwhile, in 1912, Jatin met in the company of Naren Bhattacharya the Crown Prince of Germany during the latter's visit to Calcutta in 1912, and obtained an assurance that arms and ammunition would be supplied to them.[17] The October of the same year, Rash Behari visited Lahore, rallying Har Dayal's group and beginning a campaign of revolutionary violence marked most dramatically by an attempt on the Viceroy, Lord Hardinge in December 1912. Rash Behari's associate Basanta Biswas - sent by Amarendra Chatterjee, had belonged to Jatin Mukherjee's circle of followers. Niralamba Swami informed Jatin Mukherjee further about the activities in North India when they met, on a pilgrimage to the holy Hindu city of Brindavan. Returning to Bengal, in 1913, Jatin began organising a grand scale relief in the flood-stricken areas around the Damodar. Rash Behari had gone into hiding in Benares after the 1912 attempt on Hardinge, but he joined Jatin Mukherjee on this occasion. Acknowledging in Jatin Mukherjee the true leader of the people, Bose met him several times towards the end of 1913, outlining the prospects of a pan-Indian revolution of 1857 style.

In response to Britain's entry to the war on the side of France, Germany had begun actively considering efforts to weaken the British war efforts by targeting her colonial empire.[18] Germany nurtured links with India nationalists before the war, seeing India as a potential weakness for Britain. In the immediate period preceding the war, Indian nationalist groups had used Germany as a base and potential support. As early as 1913, revolutionary literature referred to the approaching war between Germany and England and the possibility of obtaining German help for the Indian movement.[19] In the early months of the war, German newspapers also devoted considerable coverage to Indian distress, social problems, and colonial exploitation by Britain.[19] The Indian situation featured in the German war strategy. The German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg finally authorised German activity against India in the early weeks of the war, and decision was taken to offer active support to the Indian Nationalists.[20] Through the newly formed Intelligence Bureau for the East, headed by prominent archaeologist and historian Max von Oppenheim, Germany contemplated plans for nationalist unrest in India. Oppenheim helped the formation of the Berlin Committee formed by C. R. Pillai. Among the members of this group was V. N. Chatterjee of London India House. Har Dayal himself had fled the United States for Switzerland after he was arrested on the charge of being an anarchist. He left the Ghadar party in charge of Ram Chandra Bharadwaj, and from Switzerland, he agreed to support the Berlin Committee. Through Indian emissaries and through staff of the German consulate at San Francisco, contacts were established with the Ghadar Party. Germany offered to aid in finances, arms, and military advisors to plans considered between the German foreign office, Berlin Committee, and the Indian Ghadar Party in North America to clandestinely ship arms and men to India from United States and the Orient with which they hoped to trigger a nationalist mutiny in India in 1914-15, on the lines of the 1857 uprising.[20][21][22][23]

At the time the war broke out, Jugantar, in a convened meeting, elected Jatin Mukherjee the supreme commander. The German consulate in Calcutta was at this time able to establish contacts with Jatin who, encouraged by Sir Ashutosh, had met D. Thibault, the Registrar of Calcutta University. The Consul General reported back to Berlin that the Bengal revolutionary cell was significant enough to be considered for active support in undermining the British war effort.[24] Jugantar began a campaign of politically motivated armed robberies to obtain funds and arms in August. On 26 August, the Calcutta store of Rodda & co, one of the biggest arms stores in Calcutta, was looted. The raiders made off with ten cases of arms and ammunition, including 50 Mauser Pistols and 46,000 rounds of ammunition.

German agents in Thailand and Burma included Emil and Theodor Helferrich— brothers of the German Finance minister Karl Helfferich. Through a Jugantar member named Jitendranath Lahiri, the Helferrichs had been able to establish links with Jatin Mukherjee in March 1915.[36] In April Jatin sent to Batavia Jitendra Nath and Narendranath Bhattacharya, the latter by then his chief lieutenant. Through the German Consul, Narendranath met with the Helfferich brothers in Batavia and was informed of the expected arrival of the Maverick with arms. The duo were to guide the Maverick, when she arrived, to the coast of the Bay of Bengal. In April, 1915, following instructions from Chatto passed on through, in order to make a deal with the German authorities concerning financial aid and the supply of 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 Sundarbans and Balasore in Orissa, instead of Karachi as had been originally decided.[35] 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 maverick.[37] Jugantar also received funds (estimated to be Rs 33,000 between June and August 1915) from The Helfferich brothers through Harry & sons in Calcutta.[38]

The Christmas Day plot was ultimately leaked out through a number of sources. The earliest information was received on the details of the cargo being carried by the Maverick and of Jugantar's plans that were leaked to Beckett, the British Consul at Batavia, by a defecting Baltic-German agent under the alias "Oren". The Maverick was seized and alerts were sounded to British Indian police. Another source was the German double agent Vincent Kraft, a planter from Batavia, who passed information about arms shipments from Shanghai to British agents after being captured. Maps of the Bengal coast were found on Kraft when he was initially arrested and he volunteered the information that these were the intended landing sites for German arms.[47] 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.