Alipore Bomb Trial, 1908-1910 (Set of 2 Volumes)

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One day in December 2007, at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan Prof Swapan Mazumdar, then Director, Rabindra Bhavan, asked me if I could edit the judgements of the Alipore Bomb Trial, 1908-1910, as Sri Aurobindo Institute of Culture, Kolkata, would like to publish them on the occasion of the centenary of the Trial. They would help me with the copies of the judgements and some other supporting documents. I was willing to do the job; but I told Prof Mazumdar that while the judgements in this case, as also in other such cases, are important as the final outcome of the Trial, but their historical value is limited, as they focus only on proving the culpability with the help of assorted facts sanitised by the admissibility provisions of the Evidence Act. The thoughts and ideas which inspired the acts of violence leading to the Trial were patriotism, nationalism, a pervasive spirit of self-sacrifice and above all, a strong aspiration for freedom from colonial rule. But these issues were not relevant during any trial in a colonial court. Therefore, instead of the judgements alone if all the materials, letters, documents, booklets, leaflets both in manuscript and printed copies etc found in course of police actions like search and seizure, and verbal statements generated by the administrative and legal processes are carefully shifted, compiled and analysed, then the spirit of the time would be at least partially captured and a much truer picture of the initial stage of the revolutionary terrorist movement in India might emerge.

As a matter of fact, I had gone through some of the authenticated copies of the documents produced in course of the Trial among the records of the Intelligence Branch, West Bengal, in early 1990's when I was compiling and editing the secret reports and notes. A few of the documents such as letters of Sri Aurobindo, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and other contemporary leaders and paper clippings, reports on Aurobindo were printed in Volume IV (pp.520-749) of Terrorism in Bengal, the six-volume compilation, published in 1995. Eventually, Prof Mazumdar accepted the suggestion of a comprehensive compilation and editing of the records.

In 2008, the venture became a project of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), New Delhi, thanks to the efforts of Shri Ranjan Mitra, Secretary, Sri Aurobindo Institute of Culture, Kolkata and Prof Sourin Bhattacharya, an eminent essayist, associated with the Institute. Prof Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, then Chairman, Indian Council of Historical Research, New Delhi, kindly agreed to enrol the project as that of the ICHR and to finance it.

The museum and the library of the Sri Aurobindo Institute of Culture, Tollygunge, Kolkata have a plethora of unauthenticated copies of the Trial records which serve as an excellent back-up, and the library has a good collection of literature on pre-independence revolutionary movement. I took the help of both.

The original records of the Trial are, however, available in the archives of the Judges Court at Alipore, Kolkata. Considering the decaying condition of the paper, the records have been microfilmed; but there is no microfilm reader in the archives. Even more disappointingly, there is no trained employee to look after the archives and to assist and guide the researchers in handling the documents.

The Victoria Memorial Hall Museum has obtained the records of the important pre-independence political cases from Calcutta High Court. At the time of hearing of the appeal petitions of the Alipore Bomb Case, a good number of the records of the Sessions Court trials, such as the list of exhibits, search and seizure documents, and relevant judgements in the sedition cases against the newspapers viz. Bande Mataram, Jugantar and Sandhya, the case of Muzaffarpur bomb outrage etc were sent to the High Court. They are now preserved in the museum of the Victoria Memorial Hall.

Among the old records of the Intelligence Branch, West Bengal, there are authenticated documents of the Trial, and as noted above, only a selected few of which were published by me in 1995. The West Bengal State Archives (Writers Building Branch) have some files of revolutionary terrorist literature and incidents connected with the case. The National Archives, New Delhi have confidential reports on the deliberations in the higher echelon of the bureaucracy as to how Aurobindo should be arrested and detained after his 'unexpected' acquittal.

IMPORTANCE OF ALIPORE BOMB TRIAL.

The accounts of pre-independence political cases and their trials in courts and tribunals constitute a significant part of India's nationalist historiography. Though British rule in India was established and maintained primarily by sword, yet it was not the sword alone that the rulers wielded in defence of their realm. While armed uprisings against their authority, "established by law"-an expression frequently used by the British rulers were ruthlessly suppressed, civil resistance or possible threat to their authority and power was, by and large, dealt in accordance with the procedure of the criminal justice system enforced by them in the second half of the 19th century. During the Mughal period, the law enforcement and maintenance of public order were not exclusively in the domain of the state. The zamindars used to play a crucial role in crime control and public order matters and only in case of serious disturbances or rebellions, the zamindars were obliged to seek the help and assistance of the fouzdars who were the imperial officials.

After acquiring the Dewani and Fouzdari powers, the British radically changed the prevailing Mughal concept of law and order to their advantage for protection of the British interests in trade and commerce simultaneously ensuring safety and security of their subjects. The Regulation XXII of 1793 conferred on the colonial state divested the zamindars of their powers and sole responsibilities in controlling crime and maintaining public order. In one stroke, the Company's Government was endowed with unprecedented powers over life and liberty of the subjects within its domain. Modern criminal law in India has a chequered history. Under colonial regime it could not have evolved out of the growing awareness of the people for a code with contemporaneous social and moral values, nor could it rise with the growth of the liberal representative institutions as in Western democracies. In the second half of the 19th century, after the activities of the Thuggee and other criminal communities were exposed by William Sleeman and his officers, the Company's administration for the first time felt the need for a comprehensive criminal law reform. In fact, such talks about reform, not only of criminal law but of other administrative and judicial institutions, with bearing on modernisation, were held more than once; but the outcome was nothing more than "a rhetorical trope largely intended for British public opinion in the context of Charter debates." What stifled the repeated initiative was prospective financial liability of the Company's Government for legal and administrative changes. Even the ideological arguments of the Evangelicals and the Utilitarians for reforms were brushed aside on this ground.

The Penal Code that Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) drafted in 1837 was not an Indian Penal Code drawing from Indian values and ideals, but from the universal principals of jurisprudence. It was argued by Macaulay that "by establishing the unquestionable position of law, the Company could exercise uniform jurisdiction over all territories and all residents". But that was a tall order to the Company's Government and the Code was only partially implemented.