SURYA SEN --- REVOLUTIONARY WITH A STELLAR SHINE ... 1

SURYA SEN --- REVOLUTIONARY WITH A STELLAR SHINE ... 1

Surya Sen, popularly known as Masterda, died on 12 January, 1934 at the age of 39, exactly the same age at which Swami Vivekananda and Martin Luther King (Jr.) died. What is even more significant, for it is highly symbolic, is that Surya Sen died on the very birth anniversary of the leonine Swami whose dream of political freedom for his motherland inspired the revolutionary who led a band of youths to stage the daring uprising against the British at Chittagong, famous in history as the Chittagong Armoury Raid. The armoury was looted on 18 April, 1930, the arms secured but the ammunition could not be laid hold of. The revolutionaries hoisted the then Indian National Flag inside the premises of the armoury and then took refuge in the Jalalabad hills where they met the pursuing British forces to their gory death. After a valiant battle with the British in which twelve young revolutionaries were martyred and a large number were arrested, the movement died with the remaining revolutionaries including Masterda going underground.

For the next several years Sen remained incognito and ever on the move to avoid detection and arrest. Workman, farmer, priest, domestic help and even a devout Muslim --- these were some of the garbs Masterda donned to elude the clutches of the British detective police and its informers. However, such a life could not last forever in perfidious British India and he was betrayed by his host Netra Sen at whose residence he had lately sought refuge to avoid British hands. The host turned informer and the forces captured Surya Sen, broke his body and hanged him to death, then cast his corpse into the waters of the Bay of Bengal whence his spirit soared into the limpid spaces stretching beyond British imperial domain.

Or did it? For Masterda's work had remained unfinished, that of liberating India. Before his hanging, the British, famed for their civility, fair play and justice, had returned to their barbarous roots to break all the teeth of the condemned man with a hammer, pull out forcibly all his nails and break his limbs and joints one and all. They then dragged him unconscious to the scaffold to hang him. Surya Sen was executed on 12 January, 1934, just under 39 years of age, on the very birthday of his hero, Swami Vivekananda who had lit the flame of revolution long before with his own hands. Had Swamiji lived beyond 39, who knows if he would also have met the same fate of martyrdom as Masterda? For it was Swamiji who had ignited Bengal with the fire of revolution which in due course of time was to lay waste the vast British empire. No wonder Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi on Swamiji's demise had made this pertinent remark, "Had Naren lived on, the British government would have kept him in captivity."

But Naren's legacy continued in the rise of the Bengal revolutionaries which ultimately forced the British to shift capital from Calcutta to New Delhi, and the fire of revolution, once lit, burst forth periodically as a blaze that consumed the very life of British imperialism, a fact recognised in secret British files but not acknowledged by the protagonists of non-violence in India who tend to corner all the glory of striking off the British fetters through their cowardly emasculate means, reducing the valorous sons of the motherland like Masterda and his band of revolutionaries to mere terrorists, misguided idealists who had no sense of history or of revolutionary proportions to be able to successfully liberate the motherland by their violent means, at once impractical and immoral and a reprehensible method altogether.

Masterda had left behind in a last letter his political testament, so to say. He wrote: "Death is knocking on my door. My soul soars to eternity. At such an hour when life and death seem befriended, at such a moment of great solemnity, what shall I leave behind for you all? Only one thing do I leave behind and it is my dream, a golden dream, the dream of a free India. Never forget 18 April, 1930, the day of the Eastern Rebellion in Chittagong. Let the names of those that fell on that day to free the motherland off her shackles, be writ in blood-letters. May you never forget their sacrifice and may it inspire you to carry on the fight for freedom till freedom is finally attained! March on my friends, never retrace your steps. The days of servitude are fast receding and the sun of freedom shines on the eastern horizon. Arise and never give in to despair, for success is yours, freedom is at hand."

My countrymen, I have gravely sinned in not remembering to write about Masterda Surya Sen along with Swami Vivekananda on 12 January, 2017, a lapse that I now make good to partially undo the damage done. But for martyrs like Masterda and his martyred band of revolutionaries, we would have remained enslaved to the British even now and despite tall protestations of the votaries of non-violence for whom revolutionary violence was perfidy, would have been grinding the grain of bondage for Providence knows how long. It is, thus, meet that we reverentially study the lives of these forgotten heroes of our motherland and seek a living inspiration in them to rebuild our country to its pristine glory and, thence, surpass it evermore.

Jai Hind! Jai Masterda!        

Written by Sugata Bose