{"id":3859,"date":"2020-05-15T19:39:12","date_gmt":"2020-05-15T17:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/contrib.city\/?p=3859"},"modified":"2020-06-07T21:29:07","modified_gmt":"2020-06-07T19:29:07","slug":"bagha-jatin-j-n-mukherjee-the-tiger-precursor-of-gandhi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/contrib.city\/index.php\/en\/2020\/05\/15\/bagha-jatin-j-n-mukherjee-the-tiger-precursor-of-gandhi\/","title":{"rendered":"“B\u00e2gh\u00e2 Jat\u00een”: J. N. Mukherjee, the Tiger, precursor of Gandhi"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bertrand de Foucauld<\/em>: “Dear Contrib’Citizen, today you will find an epic poem about a character who preceded Ghandi: the revolutionary Jat\u00eendra N\u00e2th Mukherjee (1879-1915), grandfather of Prithwindra.”<\/p>\n

Bertrand de Foucauld<\/em>: “Prith, can you give us some more details about this colorful man?”<\/p>\n

Bagha Jatin<\/b><\/span> (\u00ab Valourous like a Tiger \u00bb) is the affectionate nickname of Jatindra Nath Mukherjee (1879-1915). One of the founders of the freedom movement in India before Gandhi, this hero preceded and prepared the field for the fight against the colonial rule. During the World War I, to accelerate a rising with the help of native soldiers in various regiments, Jatindra received the collaboration of the German Government : three steamers loaded with arms and adequate ammunition was sent by Von Papen, the German military attach\u00e9, from California to be delivered to ports on the Bay of Bengal. Informed by the Czech double agents, the British and the American maritime police confiscated the consignments . Regretting this mischief by men working under Masaryk, a Czech historian writes that had this expedition succeeded, nobody would have heard of Gandhi and Bagha Jatin would have been the Father of the Indian nation. While waiting for the arms delivery, on 9 September 1915, Jatindra with four associates got surrounded by a detachment of armed police; selecting a strategic point on a mound girdled by thorny shrub growing upon anthills, Jatindra fought up to the last bullet and died. <\/span><\/p>\n

Ten years later, during a conversation with Charles Tegart, Commissioner of Calcutta Police, Gandhi qualified Bagha Jatin as \u201ca divine person.\u201d Little did he know that Tegart believed that \u201chad Jatindra been born English, the people of England would have built his statue next to Nelson\u2019s at Trafalgar Square.\u201d<\/p>\n

The present song pays a tribute to a man who was singled out by Raymond Aron as \u201cThe Thinker in Action\u201d whose action represents \u201cthe Missing Link in our History\u201d. (MUKHERJEE Prithwindra, Les racines intellectuelles du mouvement d\u2019ind\u00e9pendance de<\/i> l\u2019Inde (The intellectual roots of the Indian independence movement<\/span>) (1893-1918)<\/i>, Editions Codex, 2010. The French preface writer, Jacques Attali, will describe this work as a fascinating thesis<\/em>). “<\/span><\/p>\n