Anushilan Samiti
By 1902, Calcutta had three secret societies working toward the violent overthrow of British rule in India. One was founded by Calcutta student Satish Chandra Basu with the patronage of Calcutta barrister Pramatha Mitra, another was led by Bengali woman Sarala Devi and the third was founded by Aurobindo Ghosh. Ghosh was one of the strongest proponents of militant Indian nationalism at the time. By 1905 the work of Aurobindo and his brother, Barin, enabled Anushilan Samity to spread throughout Bengal. Nationalist writings and publications by Aurobindo and Barin, including "Bande Mataram" and "Jugantar", had a widespread influence on Bengal youth. The 1905 partition of Bengal stimulated radical nationalist sentiments in Bengal's Bhadralok community, helping Anushilan acquire a support base of educated, politically-conscious and disaffected members of local youth societies. Its program emphasized physical training, training its recruits with daggers and "lathis" (bamboo staffs used as weapons). The Dhaka branch of Anushilan was led by Pulin Behari Das, and branches spread throughout East Bengal and Assam. More than 500 branches were opened in eastern Bengal and Assam, linked by "close and detailed organization" to Pulin's headquarters at Dhaka. It absorbed smaller groups in the province, soon overshadowing its parent organisation in Calcutta. Branches of Dhaka Anushilan emerged in Jessore, Khulna, Faridpur, Rajnagar, Rajendrapur, Mohanpur, Barvali and Bakarganj. Estimates of Dhaka Anushilan Samiti's reach indicate a membership of 15,000 to 20,000. Within two years, Dhaka Anushilan devolved its aims from the Swadeshi to that of political terrorism.
History of the Anushilan Samiti
Between 1919 and 1922, the first of the noncooperation movement began with the Rowlatt Satyagrahas under the call of Gandhi. This received widespread support both amongst leading luminaries of the Indian political movement. In Bengal, "Jugantar" agreed to the request of Chittaranjan Das, one of the most prominent and respected leaders of Congress at the time, and abstained from violence. However, "Anushilan" did not subscribe to the agreement but sponsored no major actions between 1920 and 1922, when the first non-Co-operation Movement was suspended. The years after saw both "Jugantar" and "Anushilan" becoming active again. The activity and influence of the Bengal terrorists led to the passage in 1924 of the Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Ordinance, extended as an Act the next year. This again gave the police extraordinary powers, and between 1924 and 1927 almost 200suspects were imprisoned, among them Subhas Bose. Acts of terrorism in Bengal dropped off Branches of "Jugantar" formed in Chittagong and Dhaka (present day Bangladesh). The Chittagong branch found particularly strong leadership in Surya Sen and in December 1923 staged a daring robbery of the Chittagong office of the Assam-Bengal Railway. In January 1924, a young Bengalee Gopi Mohan Saha shot dead a European he mistook to be Calcutta Police Commissioner Charles Tegart. The assassin was openly praised by the Bengali press and, to Gandhi’s chagrin, proclaimed a martyr by the Bengal provincial branch of the Congress. Around this time "Jugantar" became closely associated with the Calcutta Corporation, headed by Das and Subhas Chandra Bose. Bose apparently ‘‘met with active revolutionaries and knew in a general way what they planned to do’’. Terrorists and ex-terrorists would be factors in the Bengal local-government equation from this point on.