One of the most daring and dramatic events of India’s Freedom Struggle. As seen from the eyes of its youngest participant. This is the stuff of legend.

Chittagong Armoury Raid

Chittagong Armoury Raid A Memoir

SUBODH ROY

Published in 2015 by LeftWord Books 2254/2A Shadi Khampur New Ranjit Nagar New Delhi 110008 INDIA LeftWord Books is the publishing division of Naya Rasta Publishers Pvt. Ltd. leftword.com ISBN 978-93-80118-11-6 Rights to this work rest with Communist Party of India (Marxist), and it is published under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 license. For details of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ Printed and bound by Repro Knowledgecast Limited, Thane

CONTENTS

Publisher’s Note 7 Provenance by V.K. Ramachandran

8

CHITTAGONG ARMOURY RAID The Story of My Life and the Times I Have Passed Through

11

My Early Days

13

April 18, 1930

17

Independent Chittagong

23

Into the Hills

33

The Battle of Jalalabad Hill

42

Escape to My Village

53

Police Torture

59

Chittagong Jail

65

In Court

70

Rescue Attempts

75

Sentenced 80 To the Andamans

84

The Indian Bastille

88

CONTENTS

Move to Communism

93

Hunger Strike

96

Back to Bengal

99

Released! 102 Advice from Muzaffar Ahmad

105

Back to Chittagong

108

A Member of the Communist Party

110

To Burma

117

Patriotism of the Communists

126

~6~

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

T

he manuscript written by Subodh Roy has been lightly edited for clarity, and chapertization introduced where necessary. Some annotations have been added in footnotes, to help the readers find their way through — sadly — little known events in our independence movement. The story of Subodh Roy (1916-2006) is a remarkable one. As a young boy he threw himself into the independence struggle, as he describes in this book. His role in the Chittagong Armoury Raid is the stuff of legend. During his eight years in the Andaman Cellular Jail, Roy read the Communist Manifesto and Lenin’s State and Revolution. He was drawn to communism, and soon after his release became a member of the Communist Party of India. Bravery and dedication — the two attributes that he describes in this book — remained at the core of his life. He joined the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in 1964, becoming a member of the West Bengal State Committee of the CPI(M). One of his last major contributions to the communist movement was his journey to Moscow, where he read the archives and unearthed documents for a major book, which will be soon published by LeftWord Books.

~7~

PROVENANCE

I

first met Subodh Roy in the late 1990s, when Prakash Karat introduced me to him in his office in Muzaffar Ahmad Bhavan, the office of the West Bengal State Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Subodh Roy’s name was, of course, very well known to any person interested in the history of the communist movement in India. As a participant in the Chittagong Armoury Raid, a prisoner at the Cellular Jail, a member of the Communist Party, and freedom fighter, he was a leading participant in the communist and freedom movements in India. At the same time, his work in the archives in Delhi (and later in Moscow) and the books that came from his research made him a well-known — and one of the leading — students of archival documents on the communist movement as well. It was thus an honour indeed to meet Subodh Roy. When we were saying our goodbyes, Subodh Roy invited me to come and meet him whenever I came to the State Committee office, and while our subsequent meetings did nothing to diminish the awe, awe was now overlaid by affection as well. Subodh Roy was then a whole-time worker of the West Bengal State Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). He was, appropriately, in charge of State-level documentation, and of maintaining office records for the State Committee, including records of memberships, transfers, and of Party meetings. He was also a liaison person, on occasion, ~8~

Chittagong Armoury Raid

with the Central Committee office and with the offices of other State Committees for the West Bengal State Committee. On September 4, 2001, I was in the State Committee office, and went to pay my visit to Subodh Roy. He asked me to sit down and gave me a set of sheets of typed foolscap. This was a memoir, he said. He said that he had written such a memoir earlier, but that the person to whom he had given it had let him down, and that he never got the document from the person. I thumbed through the document quickly and asked whether I could prepare it for publication. Subodh Roy’s response was that I should read it, keep it, and not circulate it as long as he was alive — and that I was free to do what I wanted with it after he died. After Subodh Roy’s death, I gave the manuscript to Prakash Karat, then General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), who gave it for publication to LeftWord books. V.K. RAMACHANDRAN

~9~

THE STORY OF MY LIFE AND THE TIMES I HAVE PASSED THROUGH

B

efore I start with the actual narration, I would like to put a few lines down before my well-wishers and friends, in order that they are able to follow my narration and understand me. I participated in the Chittagong Armoury Raid in 1930. I fought in the battlefield of Jalalabad hill. I was tried in the Armoury Raid case. I was transported for life and sent to the Andaman Islands in the first batch of prisoners. I faced all hardships and fought against the prison authorities there, and we forced them to repatriate us to Bengal. I was released from jail after eight years. I joined the Communist Party of India and later the Communist Party of India (Marxist), moulding my life according to the guidance and leadership of the Party. An apology to readers: About ten years ago, I tried to note down an account of all the events of my life; this account was mysteriously lost while the document was in the custody of a “friend.” It was least expected and is, without doubt, a great disappointment ~ 11 ~

CHITTAGONG ARMOURY RAID

to me. Despair and dogged determination have forced me to rethink and rewrite the account. Readers should take this into consideration and I hope they will bear with me. SUBODH ROY

~ 12 ~

MY EARLY DAYS

I

was born into an affluent family in 1916 in our village home in Noapara in the district of Chittagong, and passed my childhood days in the company of my brothers and sister and the loving care of my parents. My early school days passed off uneventfully with my class friends and in study and games. Our ancestral home was in a village about ten miles from Chittagong town. We had a large extent of landed property in the village. As my father was a practising lawyer in the District Judge’s Court in Chittagong, we stayed in the town, where we had our own house to live in. Our village house was built on a very large plot of land. As was the case with all affluent persons at that time, one person lived in our village home as a caretaker, very loyal and honest and like a family member for us. Later, I shall say more about this man, who shared many hardships with me, and who sustained me in my hour of distress and danger. I was proficient in studies, and for that reason my parents did not need to goad me into studying. They had faith in me. At that time I had no interest in politics. Even the NonCooperation movement (1921-22) did not create a ripple in my mind. My age was also a factor. My father promised to send me for higher studies to England, which at that time was the Mecca for all aspiring students. But that did not materialise because of gradual changes in my life for which today I have no regret. ~ 13 ~

CHITTAGONG ARMOURY RAID

In my childhood, I found my family members were not interested in any kind of politics, violent or non-violent, but at the same time they were not loyalists of the British Raj. I was a student in Chittagong Municipal School. In 1928 I was studying in class VIII and was known in the class as a good and quiet student. One of my classmates lived with his parents and elder brother very near our house. I used to go to his place sometimes for consultations and help with my studies. He also used to come to my house. I was acquainted a little with the elder brother of my friend. One day he asked me what I was going to do after my studies were over. I said that my father had promised to send me outside India for higher studies and that my aim was to serve my country as a good educationist. My friend’s brother told me that I would not be able to fulfill my ambition so long as our country was subjugated by the British. I was not convinced by his arguments. I told him that after I finished my education, I would secure a good job and then work for my country’s independence. He despaired but did not give up his efforts to convince me. But I was gradually drawn towards his arguments, with a tinge of romanticism added. I paid some attention to his arguments — “one’s duty is to fight for one’s country’s independence by overthrowing the British domination even by violent means” — although at that time, this argument was more a sentiment than a reasoned argument to me. My progress in assimilating the new thought was very slow. During this time the leaders of the revolutionary parties of Bengal were very active in making the Congress a base for the recruitment of bright young boys to their secret organisations. So was it in Chittagong. Surya Sen, the future supreme leader ~ 14 ~

My Early Days

of the Chittagong Armoury Raid, became the secretary of the Chittagong District Congress Committee. He used the Congress platform for over-ground work to facilitate the successful completion of underground revolutionary activities. Surya Sen was known as Masterda. I became a volunteer at the Chittagong District Congress conference in 1928. There I first saw Surya Sen, Ananta Singh, Ganesh Ghosh, Ambica Chakravorty, Nirmal Sen, Loknath Baul, and other leaders. I encountered some resistance from my family when I enrolled myself as a Congress volunteer, since they thought I would be distracted from my studies and their fond hopes regarding my future would be in jeopardy. But I stood my ground and won them over, particularly because they found that I was not neglecting my studies and was achieving good results in the examination. Another recruiting ground for the secret revolutionary group in Chittagong were physical culture clubs. Ananta Singh, Ganesh Ghosh, Loknath Baul, and others took the lead in organising such clubs. They used to keep a sharp watch on the all-round performances of boys in the clubs and suitable ones were selected for secret underground work. Recruits were gradually given assignments such as carrying arms from one place to another and finding secret shelters to keep arms in safe custody. They also had to keep secrecy, not divulging anything about their secret work or gossiping even with close friends. In this way a recruit’s suitability was judged, and quite a few could not come out successful. Future participants in the Armoury Raid were selected and judged in this way. It can now be divulged that the selection of a cadre for a particular job was so strict that even the person through whom I was ~ 15 ~

An event so dramatic, it has inspired two major feature films. On April 18, 1930, in a small corner of the mighty British Empire, a ragtag bunch of revolutionaries unfurled the Indian flag after raiding the armoury. They were led by a Congress volunteer, Surya Sen, affectionately called Masterda. Nobody, including the revolutionaries, thought the revolt would last more than a few days. They were wrong. The British Army, despite possessing far superior firepower, failed to vanquish the revolutionaries in the famous battle on Jalalabad Hill. Many revolutionaries escaped to the countryside and lived underground for months. Eventually, one by one, they were captured. Subodh Roy (‘Jhunku’) was, at 14, the youngest participant in this heroic episode. After his capture, he was tortured, tried, and sentenced to the infamous Cellular Jail in the Andamans. Here, he became a Communist. This is his story, in his own words, told with the utmost humility and self-effacement.

This is the story of a true hero.

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