History, Amnesia and Public Memory the Chittagong Armoury Raid, 1930-34
History, Amnesia and Public Memory The Chittagong Armoury Raid, 1930-34 Sachidananda Mohanty In this essay, I reconstruct the main It is impossible to think of the 1905.The chief architect of this phase outline of the Chittagong Armoury Chittagong movement without the was Sri Aurobindo, then known as Raid and the uprising against the intellectual, political and martial Aurobindo Ghosh. His maternal British at Chittagong (former East leadership of Surjya Sen. During his grandfather, Rajnarayan Bose, had Bengal, now Bangladesh) between college days, he came under the in 1876 formed a secret society called 1930 and 34. I also explore the reasons influence of the national movement Sanjibani Sabha of which several that might help explain the erasure of and vowed to dedicate his life to members of the Tagore family were this significant episode from public national liberation. According to other members. In a series of articles in memory in India as well as accounts, Surjya Sen, Ambika Induprakash, a weekly from Bombay Bangladesh. I rely, in the main, on Chakraborty and others were initiated edited by KG Deshpande, Sri available historical evidence including into the movement by Hemendra Aurobindo severely criticised the Manini Chatterjee’s well documented Mukhoti, an absconder in the Barisal Congress policies for sticking to non- volume Do and Die: The Chittagong Conspiracy Case. violence. He sent a Bengali soldier of Uprising 1930 and 34 (Penguin The Chittagong group’s early the Baroda army, named Jatin Books, India, 1999). I supplement this inspiration came from the Bengal Banerjee to Bengal with the objective with information based on a recent visit revolutionaries who came into of establishing a secret group to to Bangladesh and my conversations prominence especially during the undertake revolutionary propaganda Partition of Bengal Movement in and recruitment.
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