Political history of Sri Aurobindo
Anushilan Samiti was founded as an attempt to organize Bengali youth through a program of physical fitness and spiritual training for a nationalist program. By 1902, Calcutta had three societies working under the umbrella of Anushilan Samity, a society earlier founded by a Calcutta barrister by the name of Pramatha Mitra. These included Mitra's own group, another led by a Bengali lady by the name of Sarala Devi, and a third one led by Aurobindo Ghosh. The Anushilan Samiti had Aurobindo and Deshabandhu Chittaranjan Das as the vice-presidents, Suren Tagore the treasurer. Jatindra Nath Banerjee (Niralamba Swami), Bagha Jatin, Bhupendra Nath Datta (Swami Vivekananda's brother), Barindra Ghosh were among other initial leaders.
By 1905, the work of Aurobindo and his brother Barin Ghosh allowed Anushilan Samity to spread through Bengal.
Anushilan Samiti
Between 1919 and 1922, the first non-cooperation movement began with the Rowlatt Satyagrahas under Gandhi and received widespread support from luminaries of the Indian independence movement. In Bengal, Jugantar agreed to a request by Chittaranjan Das (a prominent and respected leader of the Indian National Congress) to refrain from violence. Although Anushilan did not adhere to the agreement, it sponsored no major actions between 1920 and 1922 (when the first non-cooperation movement was suspended). During the next few years, Jugantar and Anushilan became active again. Resurgence of radical nationalism linked to the Samiti during the 1920s led to the passage of the Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Ordinance in 1924, enacted the following year. The act restored extraordinary powers of detention to the police; by 1927 more than 200 suspects were imprisoned under the act, including Subhas Chandra Bose. Its implementation curtailed a resurgence of nationalist violence in Bengal. Branches of Jugantar formed in Chittagong and Dhaka, in present-day Bangladesh. The Chittagong branch found a strong leader in Surya Sen, and in December 1923 robbed the Chittagong office of the Assam-Bengal Railway. In January 1924 a young Bengali, Gopi Mohan Saha, shot dead a European he mistook for Calcutta police commissioner Charles Tegart. The assassin was praised by the Bengali press and, to Gandhi’s chagrin, proclaimed a martyr by the Bengal branch of the Congress. Around this time, Jugantar became closely associated with the Calcutta Corporation headed by Das and Subhas Chandra Bose and terrorists (and ex-terrorists) became factors in local Bengali government.