July 21.
Reference has already been made to the poisonous leaflets attacking British administration jin India and circulated from [Tokyo by an organisation headed jby Mr. Rash Bihari Bose, a Ben lgali who is now a_natur \Japanese subject of His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of Japan. IMr. Bose, of course, finds the task lof stirring up animosity again the British most congenial to hi peculiar abilities and histor; /His connection with the attempt-led assassination of Lord Hardinge in 1912 has been noted. It well-known to the Japanese authorities. It may be useful however to recall his career more fully in order that the exact character of this spurious agita-ition may be appreciated. In 1909 Mr. Barkat Ullah was a professor at Tokyo University land had come into touch with a Hindu named Hardayal who
career at Delhi went to Oxford from brilliant university with a Government Scholarship which be threw up after two lyeers to engage in revolutionary tion. He formed a link with the group of conspirators ho engineered the assassina~ tion of Sir Curzon Wyllie—a tragedy in which an es Shanghai resident Dr. Lalkaka, iwas also murdered la a vain attempt to save Si 1910 he was back in In jing a band of young Indians and, Jon his departure to America his role of instructor was taken by two fellow Hindus of whom one iwas Rash Bihari Bose, a der the Forest Department at Dehra [Dun—in Government service in fact.. These men, drawing releruits from Bengal as well as funds and bombs, plotted the murderous attack on Lord Hard-jingo as he made his first core-monial entry on_ elephant-back unto Delhi in December 1912. Rash Bihari Bose escaped the police but his fellow teacher and three others were arrested hanged, one of his pupils having turned informer. It should be explained that the arrests really arose out of a second murderous Joutrage (the attempt on Lord Hardinge had resulted in the death of a Viceregal attendant land the wounding of—the Viceroy). In May 1913 an attempt was made to bomb the Europeans assembled in the Jopen-air "bar" of the Lahore Gymkhana Club. The conspit for entrusted with the bomb (an empty Capstan cigarette tin filled with gramophone needle: land strong explosive) was a student of a Lahore college and finding his time short—he had been reprimanded for being late {for roll-cail—placed the bomb on jan adjoining pathway. It was later picked up or kicked by the Brahmin attendant of the Club library and it exploded with terrific force inflicting such terrible injuries that the unfortunate Brahmin died in twenty minutes. From this outrage the Police were able to get on the track of the full conspiracy and to bring the miscreants (with the exception of Rash Bihari Bose) to justice after a dramatic trial. Later the Ghadr ("mut: Jeonspiracy, developed by Indians in the Far East and British Columbia, was brought forcibly the notice of the Government lof India in September 1914 by ithe arrival in the Hooghly of the Komagatu Maru with a large number of the adherents of that. movement. At the end of the next month, the arrived at Calcutta with 200 Indians from America, Japan, Manila and Shanghai. During 1915 these men gave the Punjab authorities much trouble land Rash Bihari Bose who had iso successfully eluded the police moved up to the Punjab to take general charge of the operations which, of course, had a definite intensity given them by the War. With Rash Bihari Bose was Mahratta Brahmin of Poona, named N. G. Pingle who ha lveen actively engaged in British propaganda in America. Rash Bihari established his head. quarters at Amritsar where he lived with other Bengalis whom the and Pingle had brought from Bengal for bomb-making. They Jendeavoured to seduce the Sikh land Rajput troops in the Punjab, On February 21, 1915 a general rising was planned. The idea was that in various Cantonments in Northern India the Indian troops should mutiny, seize the magazines and rebel in sup. Rash Bihari Bose and. Pingle port of the Ghadr conspirators.
moved to Lahore where they intended to supervise the revolt lof a Cavalry regiment. News of ithe plot reached the authorities on February 19 but the conspire. tors' counter-espionage was good jand they immediately changed the date of the rising to that night.
That did not avail them. F houses which they used [Lahore were raided by the police {that afternoon. Thirteen arrests were made but Rash Bihari Bose land ingle escaped. Rash Bihari Bose indeed was missed by the police by a matter of a few minutes. A mass of documents giving invaluable details lof the conspiracy and quantities of bombs, making material and' revolutionary literature were found land taken over by the police. Later at Meerut in the lines of the 12th Cavalry, Pingle was caught red-handed in the possession of bombs sufficient to blow lup a whole regiment. He was tried by the Special Tribunal set lup under the Defence.of India Act and sentenced to death. The admitted, duly carried out. sentence, the justice of which he
Sir Michael O'Dwyer, who was Lieutenant-Governor "of the Punjab at the time, says that Pingle met his death like a man and, unlike Rash Bihari Bose, shared all dangers with. his dupes and subordinates. The arrests at Lahore nipped the whole rising in the bud for warnings were sent to Rawalpinch, Sialkote, Ferozepur and elsewhere. In spite of the elaborate efforts made by Rash Bihari Bose and his associates to seduce the Indian regiments lonly one squadron—that station-led at Lahore—showed any taint. Eighteen me were tried and twelve were executed but the t were sent to afterwards and acquitted themselves well, it is believed. The magnificent work of the Panjab Police, headed by Sir (then Mr) Lionel Tomkins land Nawab Sir (then Khan) Liagat Hayat Khan, had 80 smashed the conspiracy that Rash Bihari Bose, lacking the qualities referred to by Sir Michael O'Dwyer, decided to fly the country. He' thus made his way to Japan. Incidentally it is interesting to note that Sir Liagat Hayat Khan is among the Indian States representatives. now attending the Joint Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform at Westminster which recently heard the evidence of 'Sir Michael O'Dwyer in criticism of the White Paper propos These bald details of Rash Bihari Bose's record in India where, let it be noted, he was at one time factually in' the employ of the Government, throw an interest-light on his qualification for instructing the "oppressed" peoples of the Far East in the wickedness of British rule in India. It seems unfortunate ')|that the firmness with which the Japanese Government disposed fof the earlier journalistic activijes of Professor Barkat Ullah jean be no longer invoked even though Mr. Rash Bihari Bose's Japanese citizenship makes the task of curbing his misplaced zeal almost a matter of routine. The trouble lies possibly in the difficulty of discriminating between the picturesquely imaginative bouquets thrown by." Mr. Matsuoka ut the devoted head of Great Britain and the more practised mendacity of the Ben-kali revolutionary, But this difficulty is of exclusively Japanese origin. If, during the War, Japan nad responded to her ally's sugixestion and handed Mr. Rash Bihari Bose over to the Government of India for appearance before the Special Tribunal, Mr. Rash Bihari Bose would not have become a Japanese subject. And he would not then have added his contribution to, that as: sassination cult which has been ziving the Japanese Police so much anxiety of late.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.