¹ Minto to Morley 6 May 1908. Morley Papers (British Library, Oriental and India Office Collections [hereafter OIOR], MSS Eur D573/15, p. 45.Google Scholar

² Valentine Chirol, India Old and New, quoted in Majumdar, R. C., History of the Freedom Movement in India, vol. 2 (Calcutta, 1975), 436–7;Google ScholarChirol, , Indian Unrest (London, 1910), 24–36.Google Scholar

³ Walter Laqueur writes that the ideology of Indian terrorism ’is of some interest for it contained a strange mixture of Indian traditions and Western influences’, The Age of Terrorism (Boston, 1987), 44, 64;Google Scholar Judith Brown says that the Indian terrorists were ’a curious product of Hindu orthodoxy and Western education’, Modern India: The Origins of an Asian Democracy (Delhi, 1984), 170.Google Scholar Both authors write of Indian terrorism in general, but this was chiefly a Bengali phenomenon, particularly during the 1902–1908 period.

⁴ Pal, Bipin Chandra, Memories of My Life and Times (Calcutta, 1932), 246–8.Google Scholar

⁵ Datt, Bhupendranath, Swami Vivekananda Patriot-Prophet: A Study (Calcutta, 1954), 167.Google Scholar

⁶ Frost, Thomas, The Secret Societies of the European Revolution 1776–1876, 2 vols (London, 1876).Google Scholar

⁷ Frost, , Secret Societies, vol. 2, 305–6,Google Scholar cf. vol. I, viii–ix. For Frost's influence in India see Ker, James Campbell, Political Trouble in India 1907–1917 (Calcutta, 1917,Google Scholar an important official report by the Personal Assistant to the Director of Criminal Intelligence,1907–1913, hereinafter referred to as Ker, reprinted Calcutta, 1973), 168–9; Rowlatt, S. A. T. et al. , Report of Committee appointed to Investigate Revolutionary Conspiracies in India (another important government report, hereafter referred to as Rowlatt) (London, 1918),Google Scholar para. 14 and Gupta, Nolini Kanta, Smritir Pata (Calcutta, 1381 Bengali era ’1974–1975), 34. Gupta does not mention the title of the book he read, but it evidently was Frost.Google Scholar

⁸ Frost, , Secret Societies, vol. 1, 1–2.Google Scholar

⁹ For example, Barindrakumar Ghose claimed to have been influenced by Irish and Russian societies (Ghose, B., ’Sri Aurobindo as I Understand Him’, unpublished MS [Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives, Pondicherry], 49, 55).Google Scholar This MS was written during the 1940s and contains a number of mistakes. In the first of the passages cited the author says that the Irish group that influenced him was the ’Seinfeinners’. This is an error not only of spelling but also of date or of identification. The Sinn Fein was founded in 1905, and its programme was not widely known in India before June 1906. And at this time, of course, the programme did not include the use of violence. (See Brasted, H. V., ’Irish Models and the Indian National Congress 1870–1922’. South Asia 8 (1985): 32–4).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Barin was either projecting the post-1916 Sinn Fein onto the period (1902–06) when terrorism took shape in India or was thinking of the nineteenth-century Fenians. He clearly had little knowledge of Irish revolutionary history.

¹⁰ Ghose, Aurobindo, ’New Lamps for Old’, articles published in Indu Prakash, 1893–1994,Google Scholar reproduced in SriAurobindo, , Bande Mataram: Early Political Writings–1 (Pondicherry, 1972), 22–3.Google Scholar

¹¹ Banerjie, Jatindra Nath to Tilak 15 Oct. 1901, Tilak papers (Kesari Office, Pune), vol. 3, 147.Google Scholar

¹² Potdar, M. M. Datto Vaman, ’Tilakanchya “Asantoshacha” Prakhar Purava Rashian Lashkari Sahayy-Prapticha Prayatna’, Kesari 31 07 1966Google Scholar (the author reproduces and translates parts of a letter from the Russian consul in Bombay to his superior in St Petersburg dated 5/18 March 1905); Tilak to Krishnavarma 14 July, 4 Aug. and 25 Aug. 1905, 9 Feb. and 14 Dec. 1906, Tilak papers, vol. 15, 1, 2, 3, 4, 11.

¹³ SriAurobindo, , On Himself (Pondicherry, 1972), 21–3.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Ibid., 23.

¹⁵ Basu, Satish Chandra, ’Anushilan Samitir Utpatti Bishaye Satish Chandra Basur Bibriti’, in Datta, Bhupendranath, Dwiliya Swadhinatar Sangram (Calcutta, 1949), 179–89;Google ScholarMukhopadhyay, Jadugopal, Biplabi jibaner Smriti (Calcutta, 1983), 165.Google Scholar

¹⁶ The two groups were the Anushilan Samiti (a descendant of the Dacca Anushilan Samiti, which replaced the original organization) and the Jugantar Party. See Mukhopadhyay, , Biplabi jibaner Smriti, 37, 220;Google ScholarGhosh, Surendra Mohan, ’A Talk by Surendra Mohan Ghosh’, Mother India 23 (1971), 26;Google ScholarGuha, Arun Chandra, Aurobindo and Jugantar (Calcutta, n.d. [?1972]), 27;Google ScholarBhattacharya, Buddhadeva (ed.), Freedom Struggle and Anushilan Samiti (Calcutta, 1979), xx, xxiv, 22–7.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Letter Nivedita to MacLeod, J. 19 July 1901, published in Basu, Sankari Prasad (ed.), Letters of Sister Nivedita, vol. 1 (Calcutta, 1982), 434–6.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Nivedita to unknown recipient 18 August 1900, published in Letters of Sister Nivedita, 381.Google Scholar The book, not named in the letter, was presumably Kropotkin’s autobiography, Memoirs of a Revolutionist, first published early in 1900 (see Woodcock, George and Avakumovié, Ivan, The Anarchist Prince (London, 1950), 256), and not Mutual Aid (not published in book form until 1902),Google Scholar as one of Nivedita's biographers has suggested (Atmaprana, Pravrajika, Sister Nivedita of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda (Calcutta, 1967), 125).Google Scholar See the first paragraph of the published letter.

¹⁹ Basu, Sankari Prasad, Nivedita Lokamata, vol. 2 (Calcutta, 1394 Bengali era [1987–1988]), 55, 58;Google Scholarchronology in Letters of Sister Nivedita, vol. 1 [37]; Datta, Patriot-Prophet, 118–19.Google Scholar Kropotkin had been living in Bromley, Kent, since 1894, but if the two met at this time, it was probably in Hove, near Brighton, where Kropotkin passed two months of the winter of 1901–1902 (Woodcock and Avakumović, Anarchist Prince, 249, 260).Google Scholar

²⁰ Cahm, Caroline, Kropotkin and the Rise of Revolutionary Anarchism 1872–1886 (Cambridge, 1989), 92;CrossRefGoogle ScholarAvrich, Paul, Anarchist Portraits (Princeton, 1988), 67–73.Google ScholarMutual Aid, Kropotkin’s classic study of the principle of cooperation in nature, was published serially between 1890 and 1896 and in book form in 1902.Google Scholar

²¹ Letter Nivedita to unknown recipient 18 Aug. 1900, published in Letters of Sister Nivedita, 381.Google Scholar

²² Horioka, Yasuko, The Life of Kakuzo: Author of the Book of Tea (Tokyo, 1963), 46.Google Scholar

²³ E.g. Chaudhurani, Sarala Devi, Jibaner Jharapata (Calcutta, 1388 Bengali era [1981–1982]), 150;Google ScholarDatta, , Patriot-Prophet, 117;Google ScholarBasu, Sankari Prasad, ’The Swadeshi Upsurge’ in A Centenary History of the Indian National Congress, vol. 1 (Delhi, 1985), 186.Google Scholar

²⁴ Nivedita, introduction to Okakura, Kakuzo, The Ideals of the East (London, 1920 [first edition 1903]), xix.Google Scholar

²⁵ Behari Das, Pulin, Amar Jiban Kahini (Calcutta, 1987), 102–3;Google ScholarPioneer (Allahabad daily) reprinted inGoogle ScholarBande Mataram (Calcutta daily) 20 05 1908; cf. Ker, 48.Google Scholar

²⁶ Bose, , Bibriti, 179;Google ScholarDatta, Cf. Bhupendranath, ’Aurobindo Smarane’. Nirnay (Paush–Magh 1357 [12–01 1950–1951]): 59.Google Scholar

²⁷ Datta, , Patriot–Prophet, 16, 118–19;Google ScholarDatta, , Dwitiya Swadhinatar Sangram, 96, 100;Google ScholarGhose, Barindra Kumar, Agnjug (Calcutta, 1355 Bengali era [1948–1949]), 66, 72;Google ScholarMukhopadhyay, , Biplabi jibaner Smriti, 166;Google ScholarAtmaprana, , Sister Nivedita, 180.Google Scholar

²⁸ Reymond, Lizelle, Nivedita: Fille de l'Inde (Paris, 1945), 229–46, 296–310;Google ScholarBasu, Sankari Prasad, Nivedita Lokamata, vol. 2, 25–54;Google Scholaribid., vol. 3 (Calcutta, 1395 [1988–1989]), 21–38. These are Nivedita's two most influential advocates; another is Girijashankar Chaudhuri, Roy, Bhagini Nivedita a Banglay Biplab-bad (Calcutta, 1960).Google Scholar It should be noted that all three of these writers had literary rather than historical backgrounds. Basu marshals an impressive body of material, but uses it uncritically to prove his thesis that no one in India in the first decade of the century did more for the country than Nivedita except Nivedita's guru Vivekananda (see Nivedita Lokamata, vol. 2, 3–4).Google Scholar

²⁹ Majumdar, R. C., History of the Freedom Movement in India, vol. 1 (Calcutta, 1971), 409–10, 412;Google ScholarSarkar, Sumit, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal (Calcutta, 1973), 475–6;Google ScholarHaridas, and Mukherjee, Uma, Bharater Swadhinala Andolane ‘jugantar’ Patrikar Dan (Calcutta, 1972), 195–202.Google Scholar

³⁰ Basu, , Nivedita Lokamata, vol. 2, 20, 22, 27.Google Scholar

³¹ Talk of 21 January 1939, published in Purani, A. B. (ed.), Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo (Pondicherry, 1982), 636.Google Scholar

³² Chose, B., Agnijug, 37.Google Scholar

³³ Datta, , Patriot-Prophet, 118;Google Scholar Datta, appendix to Mukherjee, Haridas and Mukherjee, Uma, Swadeshi Andolan o Banglar Nabayug (Calcutta, 1961), 248ff;Google ScholarAtmaprana, , Sister Nivedita, 194–5.Google Scholar Cf. a statement by Abinash Bhattacharva, another member of the secret society: ’Nivedita had no connection or relation with our revolutionary party’ (handwritten note dated 22.4.61 in the possession of Mukherjee and Mukherjee. My thanks to the professors Mukherjee for providing me with a xerox copy of this document).

³⁴ Gupta, , Smritir Pata, Calcutta, 31,Google Scholarand typewritten note dictated by Gupta in Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives. Compare the highly romanticized and largely inaccurate account of this incident in Reymond's Nivedita, 306.Google Scholar (Reymond makes the young bomb-maker not Nolini Gupta but Ullaskar Dutt. Dutt had no need of Nivedita's help, as he had access to the laboratory of his father, a professor in a technical college.)

³⁵ Horioka, , Life, 46–50, 95;Google ScholarHorioka, , ’Okakura and Swami Vivekananda’, Prabuddha Bharata 80 (1975), 30–4, 140–5.Google Scholar Okakura paid another, briefer visit to India in 1912 but did not become involved in Indian politics in any way at that time. He died in 1913.

³⁶ SriAurobindo, , talks of 28 February and 12 December 1940,Google Scholar published in Nirodbaran, (ed.), Talks with Sri Aurobindo, vols 2 and 3 (Madras, 1985), 256; vol. 4 (Pondicherry, 1989), 279.Google ScholarIn an earlier talk Aurobindo said that the party was started by Mitra, P. and Sarala Ghosal on Okakura's inspiration (talk of 18 December 1938,Google Scholar published in Nirodbaran, (ed.), Talks with Sri Aurobindo, vol. 1 (Pondicherry, 1986), 43).Google Scholar All these remarks were made by Aurobindo to contradict statements by his brother and others that he was the be-all and end-all of the revolutionary movement. It would appear that in attempting to set right this misrepresentation, Aurobindo attached undue importance to Okakura. He was not in Calcutta when Okakura was there and he apparently never met him.

³⁷ Ghose, B., Agnijug, 17–18;Google ScholarKanungo, Hemchandra [Das], Banglay Biplab Pracheshta (Calcutta, 1928), 35;Google ScholarBhattacharya, Abinash, ’Baiplabik Samitir Prarambh Kaler Itihas’, in Datta, Dwitiya Swadhinatar Sangram, 192.Google Scholar

³⁸ Reymond, , Nivedita, 229 ff;Google ScholarBasu, , Nivedita Lokamata, vol. 2, 79–123.Google Scholar Basu gives some interesting citations, none of which prove a political involvement on Okakura's part. He admits that Nivedita's letters (his main primary source) suggest no reason for Okakura's visit other than his wish to persuade Vivekananda to come to Japan. He also admits that there is no mention of any revolutionary activities by Okakura in Surendranath Tagore's autobiography. (Neither is there any mention in Surendranath's ‘Kakuzo Okakura’, Visva-Bharati Quarterly, August 1936, 65–72.)Google Scholar Nevertheless in the beginning of his chapter Basu says without hesitation that the main reason for Okakura's visit to India was to work for the revolutionary cause. Later he writes that Okakura must have come to India for a different reason than the one given in Nivedita's correspondence, namely, to found, with her, Bengal's revolutionary society (pp. 86ff).

³⁹ Horioka, Yasuko, ’Okakura and Swami Vivekananda's Disciples’, Prabuddha Bharata 82 (1977), 121.Google Scholar Horioka writes that Okakura's only political activity in India was his addressing Indian youths on the subject of ’protecting and restoring Asiatic modes [of life]’ (’Okakura and Vivekananda’, 46). The passages I have cited from Okakura's Calcutta talks have more political-revolutionary substance than that. But the overall impression that one gets from Horioka's book and articles is that Okakura came to India on an artistic and religious mission with the further intention of inviting Vivekananda to Japan. In addition he seems to have been generally disgusted with the art scene in Tokyo and may also have been fleeing the unhappiness occasioned by the false report of the death of his former mistress.

⁴⁰ Heehs, Peter, ‘Terrorism in India during the Freedom Struggle’. The Historian. 55 (1993) 469–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴¹ Kanungo, , Banglaj Biplab, 178–80.Google Scholar Hemchandra left Colombo around 13 August 1906. The voyage to Marseilles would have taken him around three weeks.

⁴² Kanungo, , Banglay Biplab, 185.Google Scholar In 1908 the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal informed Lord Minto that Hemchandra ‘was accompanied to Paris by a friend, who afterwards went on to America for further study’ (Andrew Fraser to Minto 19 May 1908, Minto Papers [National Library of Scotland], vol. 1, no. 239). Ker (p. 369) says that the Bengali who went ahead of Hemchandra to America was Subodh Chandra Bose.

⁴³ Kanungo, , Banglay Biplab, 184–6, 196–8.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ See Ker, 155 ff.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Ker 155–8; Keer, Dhananjay, Veer Savarkar (Bombay, 1988), 26;Google ScholarKanungo, , Banglay Biplab, 186–91.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Kanungo, , Banglay Biplab, 196–7.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Ibid., 198; Gharpurey, V. S., ’Mystic Liaison: Senapati Bapat and Sri Aurobindo’. Mother India 20 (07 1968): 412–13.Google Scholar Hemchandra speaks only of one associate, evidently Bapat. One of their friends, Abhas Mirza, also seems to have learned something of bomb-making (Ker, 364; Birendra Chandra Sen, ‘The Bengal Revolutionaries—Evolution of the Bomb’, unpublished MS, Sen papers [Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives], typed version 10).

⁴⁸ Kanungo, , Banglay Biplab, 199–200.Google Scholar See note 55 below for the probable date of the meeting. Ker (p. 129) refers to a letter (apparently part of the Alipore Bomb Trial evidence) written by Hemchandra to his wife from Paris on 5 July 1907, in which he mentions having been to London.

⁴⁹ Dubois, Félix, Le péril anarchiste (Paris, 1894), chapter 7;Google ScholarCahm, , Revolutionary Anarchism, 76.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Maitron, Jean, Le motwement anarchisle en France, vol. 1 (Paris, 1983);Google Scholar English translation of chapter entitled ‘The Era of the Attentats’ in Laqueur, Walter (ed.), The Terrorism Reader (London, 1978), 96–100;Google ScholarDubois, , Péril anarchiste, 174–81.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Dubois, (Peril anarchiste, 48–9) estimated that there were 10,000 anarchists in Paris and 20,000–30,000 in the whole of France.Google Scholar These figures are undoubtedly too high. The Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso wrote in 1895 that while the anarchists themselves claimed 7500 in Paris and 4000 in the provinces, Paris police sources estimated that there were only 500 anarchists in the capital (Gli Anarchisti (Turin, 1895), translated in Laqueur, (ed.), Reader, 191).Google Scholar

⁵² In London hostility to anarchists, particularly those who supported ‘propaganda by the deed’, was as strong as in Paris. In 1897 anarchists were singled out for attack at a public meeting in London and when a former prisoner displayed his scars in August of the same year ‘he was mobbed and hissed’. It became necessary for some time for English anarchists to call themselves ’libertarians’ (Oliver, H., The Anarchist Movement in Late Victorian London (London, 1983), pp. 141, 152–3).Google Scholar

⁵³ Moreau, A., L'Anarchisme en France, Paris Police, Brigade de Recherches, 25 April 1913, Archives Nationales, Paris (hereafter AN) F/7113050, 8;Google ScholarMaitron, , Movement, 265–74, 330;Google ScholarAvrich, Paul, The Russian Anarchists (Princeton, 1967), 72–6.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Dubois, , Péril anarchiste, 44–5;Google ScholarMaitron, , Mouvement, 275–8;Google ScholarAnarchisme en France, 22–3.Google Scholar ‘Individual recovery’ is my translation of reprise individuelle.

⁵⁵ It is not possible, on the basis of known information, to be sure about the date of or reason for Libertad’s imprisonment. A police report in AN F/7/12723 shows that he was arrested after a mělée in the Place Saint-Michel on 7 June 1907 and that he appeared before the magistrate the next day. The file contains nothing more about this incident. The normally reliable Jean Maitron (Maitron, et al. , Dictionnaire biographique du movement ouvrier français, vol. 13 (Paris, 1975), 293) as well as Roger Langlais (chronology in Libertad,Google ScholarLa Culte de la charogne (Paris, 1976), 35)Google Scholar say that Libertad was sentenced to a month's imprisonment on 30 May 1907. Neither authority mentions the offence. A news item in L'Humanité of 30 June 1907 says that the day before (which however was a Sunday) Libertad and three others appeared before the magistrate for taking part in a fracas in the metro in April. Libertad and another were fined 25 francs each and the two others sentenced to two months’ and one month’s (suspended) imprisonment. But a report in AN F/7/12723 dated 23 July 1907 says that on 23 July Libertad (still at large) announced at a public meeting that ‘the doctor did not believe him fit enough to bear a month of prison’. One can be certain in any case that the report Hemchandra read was published during the summer of 1907.

⁵⁶ It is possible that this was the celebrated Russian-American anarchist Emma Goldman (1869–1940). Goldman was reported by the Paris police to have been active in that city in September 1907, after having attended the Amsterdam anarchist congress in August. At the Congress (a major event, see Maitron, , Mouvement, 325–6) it was proposed to form an international union of anarchists, an idea Goldman supported in Paris (AN F/7/12894, no. 1, 38).Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Ker, 159.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Kanungo, , Banglay Biplab, 198–208.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Ibid., 209–11.

⁶⁰ Hemchandra does not give the names of any of the socialists. In AN file F/7/12894, no. I, entitled ‘Les Révolutionnaires Russes a Paris. Décember 1907’, there is an eight-page dossier on Nicolas Safranski, in which it is stated that in November 1907, ‘very precisely’ on the sixth of the month, Safranski met certain Indians, apparently Bengalis, to whom he gave lessons in bomb-making. According to the report, Safranski was born in Poltava (in the Present Ukraine) in 1878, was ‘formerly a brilliant officer in the Russian army’, had come to Paris in January 1907, and was considered ‘the real head of the maximalist party’ of the Russian ‘socialist revolutionaries’. I think there is no doubt that the man known to the Paris police as Safranski was one of Hemchandra’s teachers—probably the former officer but possibly Ph.D. (The [old [briddha] engineer’ could not have been the 29-year-old Safranski.) It is certain that Safranski was a former military officer; on the other hand Hemchandra describes Ph.D. as ‘a student of Hindu philosophy in a European university’ and the Paris police report that Safranski was enrolled in l'Ecole des Langues Orientales, a fact that was confirmed by British police later (Ker, 131). Gharpurey (p. 412), who claims Bapat as an informant, says that the teacher of Hemchandra and Bapat was ‘a young Russian revolutionary in Paris’. Birendra Chandra Sen, imprisoned with Hemchandra in 1908, says that the man Hemchandra contacted in Paris was ’the Russian revolutionary Mironow—an exiled military engineer and Sanskrit scholar (Sen, Biren Chandra, ‘Sri Aurobindo as I Remember Him’, Mother India 16 (04 1964), 21).Google Scholar It may he that Bapat told Gharpurey about Safranski, and that Hemchandra told Sen about Ph.D. That one or more of the men were Russian seems certain.

⁶¹ Out of a total Russian émigré population of 25,000, the Paris police estimated that there were 550 ‘anarchists’ (including 450 ‘communists’) and some 900 ‘revolutionaries’, of whom 200 were maximalists. These 1450 odd were unqualified advocates of violence. There were in addition two groups who advocated violence against the state only: the social democrats, divided into menskeviks (800) and Bolsheviks (2000), and the Jewish Bund (300). Besides these 4000–5000 active revolutionaries there were some 10,000–12,000 moderates, each of whom was willing, according to the police, ‘to make any sacrifice to help the most criminal maximalist or anarchist’. The figures doubtless are inflated and the categories confused. The police, for example, considered syndicalist direct action (general strike), propaganda by the deed and Russian terrorism to be equivalent terms (AN F/7/12894, no. 1, 26, 34).

⁶² AN F/7/12894, no. 1. During the Revolution of 1905 anarchist groups ‘sprang up like mushrooms after a rain’ (Avrich, , Russian Anarchists, 42, citing Iuda Roshchin).Google Scholar

⁶³ Avrich, , Russian Anarchists, 82, 87–8, 62–3.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ AN F/7/12894, no. 1, dossier on Safranski. Information on terrorist bomb-making had been published in France during the 1880s and 1890s (Dubois, , Péril anarchiste 158–9, 171).Google Scholar By 1905 instructions in Russian were being circulated in St Petersburg (Avrich, , Russian Anarchists, 51–2).Google Scholar

⁶⁵ AN F/7/12894, no. 1, dossier on Safranski.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ This was the attempt to derail the train carrying Sir Andrew Fraser on 6 December 1907. Hemchandra was still in Paris at this time. The attempt was the work of Barin Ghose and other men with whom Hemchandra was associated.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Letter Préfet de Police to Président du Conseil, 16 Dec. 1907 (AN F/7/12894, no. 1); telegram Morley to Minto 30 December 1907 (Minto papers, M1011–15, no. 541). Cf. Ker, 130. The document Ker cites evidently is the letter sent through the British Embassy in Paris. This clearly was based on the above French file, but many details were left out. It should be noted that nowhere in the French file is it said that Safranski was an ‘anarchist’.

⁶⁸ Ker, 131;Google ScholarKanungo, , Banglay Biplab, 218.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Kanungo, , Banglay Biplab, chapters 13 and 14.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ OIOR MSS Eur D 709: ‘Nangla Dacoity Case Exhibits’. This is a 20-page printed copy of three manuscript documents seized at 15 Jorabagan Road, Calcutta, on 2 September 1909. They are: (1) ‘General Principles’, on the organization and activities of Russian revolutionary secret societies; (2) ‘The Simple Science of Explosives’; (3) a description of the revolutionary movement in Russia. Document (3) is identified as a translation from the Bengali; documents (1) and (4) probably were also. Document (2) speaks of the problems of making explosives in ‘our country’, i.e. India or Bengal, and mentions Darjeeling as a cool place where this might be done safely. In document (3) the author mentions meeting one or two Russians, members of a secret society, in a foreign country and records the number of Russians living in Paris. Only Hemchandra was in a position to obtain this information and to write this document. Towards the end of the document the author refers to a conversation between himself and a ‘leading worker’. The details given match the situations of Ph.D. and Hemchandra in Paris.

⁷¹ Rowlatt, paras 90 and 91 The Rowlatt Report gives a précis of document (1) and two sentences concerning document (2) of the Nangla Dacoity Case Exhibits (see previous note). It says that a ‘District Organization Scheme’ and ‘Rules for Members’ of the Dacca Anushilan seized in 1913 ‘embody the elaboration in detail of the requirements…of the document “General Principles”’, i.e. Nangla Case document (1).

⁷² The police supposed that Hemchandra brought the manual with him (Government of India, Home Department Political (hereafter GOI HP), series A, October 1909, 142–3, 4). This is supported by other sources, see Sarkar, , Swadeshi Movement, 479.Google Scholar But see note 75.

⁷³ GOI HP-A, May 1908, nos 112–50, 18; French opinion in AN F/7/12894, no. 1, dossier on Safranski; summary of Smallwood’s testimony in the Alipore trial in Bose, B. K. (ed.), The Alipore Bomb Trial (Calcutta, 1922), 82.Google Scholar Smallwood said that ‘Kerosine Powder’ was ‘an entirely new explosive’; this is one of the substances mentioned in Hemchandra's summary, i.e. Nangla Case Document (3).

⁷⁴ See for example the police's description of a book-bomb that failed in its intention only because the judge to whom it was sent neglected to open it (GOI HP-B, March 1909, 181–2).Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Ker, 55–6.Google Scholar On 26 May 1991 V. D. Lemai of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram informed me that he was told by P. M. Bapat that twenty copies of the manual were made, three of which were brought to India by Hotilal Varma (this is plausible, see Ker, 408), these three being intended for Bengal, Maharashtra and Punjab.

⁷⁶ Account of Revolutionary Organizations in Bengal other than the Dacca Anushilan Samiti (1917) (West Bengal State Archives), 24–5.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Sen, ‘Evolution of the Bomb’, typed version 3–5; Kanungo, Banglay Biplab, chapter 9.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Statement of Ullaskar Dutt to magistrate, reproduced in Bose, (ed.), Alipore Bomb Trial, 28.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Even Valentine Chirol, who harped on the imitativeness of Bengalis, conceded that ‘the use of the bomb had become the common property of revolutionists all over the world’ (cited in Majumdar, , Freedom Movement, vol. 2, 437).Google Scholar

⁸⁰ See Ker, 115–285; Rowlatt, chapter 7, as well as many detailed government reports and secondary sources.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Cuttings from L'Eclair, L'Action Française and other papers (including the establishment press) in AN F/7/12900. See also report translated from Dépêche algérienne in the Mahratta (Poona) 25 07 1909.Google Scholar Brief reports on the assassination of Narendranath Goswami and the burial arrangements for one of the assassins appeared in L'Humanité, the Paris socialist organ, on 1 September and 20 November 1908. The first of these has been made much of by Indian writers, who speak of it as though it was full of praise for the heroic Indian assassins (Datta, , Dwitya Swadhinatar Sangram, 60,Google Scholar and, apparently following Datta, Gopal Haldar in Gupta, A. and Chakravorty, J. (eds), Studies in the Bengal Renaissance (Calcutta, 1977), 240Google Scholar and Sarkar, Sumit, Swadeshi Movement, 482).Google Scholar In fact both L'Humanité reports were brief news items, the first containing much wrong information and neither of them a word of praise for the assassins.

⁸² See note 56.

⁸³ OIOR L/P/6/918. The information on Goldman's proposed visit was communicated by the Governor-General of Canada to the India Office on 29 December 1908. The India Office sent the information on to India along with a four-page report on Goldman compiled by Scotland Yard.

⁸⁴ See for example a statement by Alberto Franceschini, the founder of Italy's Red Brigades, in the Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine, 27 10 1991, 15Google Scholar ‘We never had ties with Palestinian groups, never sought them. And we also never had ties with Japanese terrorists.’ After admitting to links with a German and a French group, Franceschini concluded: ‘The Red Brigades’ reputation was always inflated. It served the purposes of the State to make us seem bigger than we were.’

⁸⁵ Minto to Morley, 27 May 1908. Morley Papers, OIOR MSS Eur D573/15, 98–9.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ Banerjee, Upendranath, Nirbasiter Almakatha (Calcutta, 1976), ‘Bhumika’;Google ScholarCharan, Bhagavat, ‘The Philosophy of the Bomb’, reproduced in Lacquer, (ed.), Reader, 137–9.Google Scholar