Anushilan Samiti
Anushilan and Jugantar each were organised on different lines, reflecting their divergence. "Anushilan Samiti" was centrally organised, with a rigid discipline and vertical hierarchy. Jugantar, was more loosely organised as an alliance of groups, acting under local leaders that occasionally coordinated their actions together. The prototype of Jugantar's organisation was Barin Ghosh's organisation set up in 1907, in the run-up to the Manicktolla conspiracy. It sought to emulate the model of Russian revolutionaries that was described by Frost. The regulations of the central Dhaka organization of the "Anushilan Samiti" were written down, and reproduced and summarised in government reports. According to one estimate, the Dacca Anushilan Samiti had at one point 500 branches, mostly in the eastern districts of Bengal, with 20,000 members. Branches were opened later in the western districts, Bihar, and the United Provinces. Shelters for absconders were established in Assam and in two farms in Tripura. Organisational documents shows a primary division between, on the one hand the two active leadersBarin Ghosh and Upendranath Bannerjee, and the rank-and-file on the other. Higher leaders including Aurobindo were supposed to be known only to the active leaders. Erstwhile members of "Anushilan", particularly those of the Maniktala group, had suggested that the each group were interconnected with a vast web of secret societies throughout British India. However historian Peter Heehs concludes the links between provinces were limited to contacts between a few individuals like Aurobindo who was familiar with leaders and movements in Western India. He concludes the Maniktala society had links between the other groups and the Manicktalla society, such as the Anushilan and Atmannati Samitis, were more often competitive than co-operative. An internal circular of circa 1908 written by Pulin Behari Das, describes the division of the organisation in Bengal, which largely followed British administrative divisions, with central "Samitis" linked with a few small Samitis.
History of the Anushilan Samiti
In 1914 Rash Behari Bose, along with the Maharashtrian Vishnu Ganesh Pinglay and some Sikh militants, planned simultaneous troop risings in different places in February 1915. In the meantime, in Bengal the activity of "Anushilan" and "Jantar" launched what has been described by some historians as "...a reign of terror in both the cities and the countryside..." that "...came close to achieving their key goal of paralysing the administration...". A general atmosphere of fear encompassed the police and the law courts, severely affecting the moral. In entire 1915, only six revolutionaries were successfully brought to trial.
However both the February plot and a subsequent plot for December 1915 were thwarted by British intelligence. Jatin Mukhejee along with a number of fellow-revolutionaries were killed in a firefight with Policeforces at Balasore, in present-day Orissa. This effectively brough "Jugantar" to an end during the war. The passage of the Defence of India Act 1915 led to widespread arrest, internment, deportation and execution of members of the revolutionary movement. By March 1916 widespread arrests helped Bengal Police crush the "Dacca Anushilan Samiti" in Calcutta. Regulation III and Defence of India act was applied to Bengal from August 1916 on a widescale. By June 1917, 705 were under home-arrest under the act, along with 99 imprisonments under Regulation III. In Bengal Revolutionary violence in Bengal plummeted in 1917. After the war these powers were extended by the so-called Rowlatt Acts, the passage of which was one of the goads that led to the launching of M. K. Gandhi’s Non-Co-operation Movement.