Living for freedom - anti-British freedom fighter Benode Bihari Chowdhury

Living for freedom
Nearing his centenary, anti-British freedom fighter Benode Bihari Chowdhury shares harrowing stories of guerrilla warfare with Faizul Khan Tanim and warns ‘I’m not dying so easily’
photo by Momena Jalil

On his 98th birthday Benode Bihari Chowdhury is still going strong. Sitting on his bed, the smiling anti-British freedom fighting veteran Benode Bihari Chowdhury was waiting for this interview. Even at this age, he did not seem tired or worn out but rather walked outside without an aide or even a walking stick. His memory is incredibly accurate — he remembers all dates and his major battles with the British and can narrate gripping personal stories. Amongst his contemporaries in the movement against the British, he is the only one still alive and living in Bangladesh.
When asked about any resolutions to mark his 98th birthday, his reply was, ‘I’m not dying so easily. I would not be leaving you people without hitting a century and there is still work to be done.’
‘I never want people to celebrate my birthday but my friends have been doing this every year since 2000. And most importantly, this honour and love showed to me is actually a tribute to Master Da’, he added.
The Master Da that Benode Bihari refers to is, of course, Surya Sen, one of the legends of the anti-British movement in this part of Bengal during the era of colonisation. Sen was the man who briefly ousted the British colonial government from Chittagong for three days, the only instance in 200 years of the British Raj that they lost control of territory before independence in 1947.
Benode Bihari was introduced to ‘Master Da’, Surya Sen in 1927 when he was 16. As a teenager who joined the group of revolutionaries — Jugantor and Benode Bihari became a very close subordinate of Master Da and worked with a number of revolutionaries under Surya Sen. Among them were Tarekswar Dastidar, who was sentenced to hanging by the same tribunal that tried Sen in 1933, Madhusudan Dutt, martyred in the war of Jalalabad, and Ramkrishna Biswas, who was accused of trying to assassinate aninspector general of police, a Mr Craig, and subsequently hanged.
After being released from jail on April 18, 1930, Master Da declared an armed revolution against the British after planning with six leaders of his army — Anurup Sen, Ambika Chakravarty, Nirmal Sen, Lokenath Bal, Ganesh Ghosh, Ananta Singh. Under his leadership, they carried out the famed Chittagong Armoury Raid of 1930. But taking over the city of Chittagong was, as Benode Bihari says, the original plan.
After years of disappointment and movements destroyed by leaks and disunity amongst the ranks, the six comrades of Master Da decided to keep things amongst themselves and try and replicate the Easter Rising of Dublin in 1916. In that year a band of Irish revolutionaries liberated Dublin and remained in power for seven days. Master Da even chose the same acronym, IRA — Indian Republican Army, Chittagong Branch, inspired by the Irish Republican Army.
The plan was simple. First, the revolutionaries would simultaneously take over the armouries of the police and auxiliary forces to secure heavy weaponry, destroy the telegraph office and rail-tracks so that no immediate reinforcement could be called in, and attack the European Club to decimate the ranks of senior British officials.
In the second phase, the revolutionaries would take over more governmental establishments as well as a local weapons shop and hold the town until the British destroyed them. ‘Do or die’ was a popular slogan among the Indian freedom-fighters. For the Chittagong revolutionaries it turned out to be ‘do and die’. Their plan was to rock the British to the core and teach them ‘how to die an honest death’.

At the Battle of Jalalabad
Ananta Sen was declared commanding chief and Gonesh Ghosh, the GOC of the army. Realising that it would be impossible to fight the British imperial power in open war, Surya Sen chose guerrilla warfare tactics against the British. On April 18, 1930, IRA attacked the Chittagong Armoury. Following the victory in the armoury attack, the IRA guerrillas defeated the British troops in various fights around Chittagong and forced a British retreat. Surya Sen then declared the formation of a provisional revolutionary democratic government.
But British reinforcements arrived and launched another series of attack on the IRA. IRA lost a crucial number of guerrillas in the war. In one instance, while setting the armoury on fire, one of the guerrillas, Himangshu Sen Andu, accidentally set himself on fire. To save the boy’s life, Ananta Sen and Ganesh Ghosh left without Master Da’s permission. As they left on the night of April 20 and did not return, Loknath Bol was named the new commanding chief. Running guerrilla operations, the first target set was the police inspector general, Mr Craig. The plot backfired and instead of Craig, his bodyguards were shot to death by mistake.
On April 22, Surya Sen and his fellow rebels came down town to fight the British. In the evening that day, when the revolutionaries were stationed inside the dense forests of Jalalabad hill, a youth amongst them spotted the British soldiers walking up the hill. The youths were immediately ordered to take up their positions.
For three hours the British forces, using modern weaponry, were held back by police muskets that were getting jammed in inexperienced hands. Sen himself went around cleaning the weapons one by one in the midst of the battle.
Two rounds of battle ensued and the revolutionaries not only held out, but held out without losing any of their members. But then they made a fatal mistake.
When the British were preparing to retreat, the revolutionaries started singing victory chants such as ‘Vande Mataram’. Jalalabad is actually a low peak surrounded by higher peaks all around and as such the British machine gun artillery stationed above easily marked them in the dark and started firing away relentlessly. The revolutionaries who survived the battle were only 44 in number. Two had been sent earlier into the town to gather information, made their way down the hill while the British also withdrew for the day.

The Kalarpole War
The British retreated that night. Surya Sen and Nirmal Sen went into hiding immediately, moving from one village to the other, sending the boys whom the British did not know back to their homes while the rest went into hiding with them.
At around the same time, Ananta Singh, Ganesh Ghosh and the others decided to make their way to Kolkata. On their way there by train they were confronted by police officials at Feni and a shootout ensued in which the rebels successfully escaped though they were separated. Months later, they met up at Kolkata.
Lokenath’s Bal’s troops were, however, not satisfied with the events and decided to have one more go at the British. Five young guerrillas — Rajat Sen, Debu Prasad Gupta, Monoranjan Sen, Fanindra Nandi and one other comrade engaged in a fight with the police. This group decided and told Master Da that they would not give up so easily and launched an attack near Karnaphuli river at Kalarpole. Benode Bihari sees this as a fatal mistake devoid of courage. Only Fanindra survived the battle. Comrades were lost when they were needed the most.
Benode Bihari Chowdhury wanted to end the interview on a high note. ‘As my birthday is nearing, one of Sukanta Bhattacharya’s poems, ‘Chharpotro’ is constantly ringing in my imagination — ‘e bishshokey shishur bash joggo kore jabo ami — nobojatoker kachey e amar dhrihro ongikar’. I am very disappointed with the situation of this nation. Our country did not become the Sonar Bangla we dreamed of. Corruption, destruction, anti-democratic practices are rampant and we need to fight this unanimously. It is now or never.’

http://www.newagebd.com/2008/jan/11/jan11/xtra_inner4.html