A Great Robbery That Shook the Raj

[Shivaji.Dasgupta]

Also I am in search of information regarding the below operations/ incidents/ battle related to our freedom fighters.
1. Operation Bazadere.
2. One person may be ranked Capt. Named Golak Mishra or mishro. Who fought with British while the INA was retreating from Kohima and give them a safe passage by holding Brits. For almost 1 and half day.
3. One battle was fought in Bhalukpong area to hold a British supply unit by a local volunteer team Headed by Some" Raha" who died in that battle.
4. While INA was retreating towards Rangoon many fierce fight was fought. Some are with the almost forgotten Chindits battalions. Any book or documents if at all available.
Regards

[timmy]

Shivaji: if you come across some interesting information, please consider sharing it! Thank you!

[Shivakr]

Interesting read.. thanks for sharing.

There was another similar incident : Chittagong armoury raid
Wiki link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chittagong_armoury_raid

Three movies were made on this incident.

Chattagram Astragar Lunthan (Bengali) - 1980
Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey (Hindi) - 2010
Chittagong (Hindi/Bengali) - 2012

[timmy]

Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey (Hindi) - 2010
Chittagong (Hindi/Bengali) - 2012

I'm digging about for these two right now -- thanks for the third one!

[Shivaji.Dasgupta]

Shivaji: if you come across some interesting information, please consider sharing it! Thank you!

Sure,

Regarding operation Bazadere, some accounts described it as hoax. Same say it's true. No concrete evidence available.

The only information I got from a very old book related with Charles Tegart that one gun battle happened in NWFP area in 1943/44, Some where near a village called darra Haji khel. Story goes like this..... Some Pakistani freelance reporter was traveling in that area in 50s and come across a very old and nearly abondoed mosque. The keeper of that place show him some military gears and told him a story that a band of Sikh and Hindu militia of approx 80-100 come in that area approx 1943/44. They came from Iran via Afghanistan and was trying get into India ( that time it was India). But as they tried to going towards Punjab, they were spotted by some British spy and as a result a British troop stop them. Throughout the day cat and mouse chase was continued and in afternoon the so called foreign troops took shelter in a old graveyard by a hill side.
Almost immediately the gun fight started. The attacking force was equipped with heavy weapnary but still the fight continued till next day break. It was such a heavy firing on both sides that the old graveyard complex was turned into rubbles. On next day the locals saw that Brits gather their dead and retreated. As per that reporter Brits loss Was in few hundred and in other side they left the dead and wounded of other side in the mercy of nature. Reason is unknown.
Villagers perform the last rites of that unknown force which they recall as approx a 100 in no. Few of their belongings were kept in a room in that graveyard and mosque complex to remember their courage.

I am trying to find out the details of that incident and some concrete evidence which can declare their origin. It will help to find out the chance if at all operation Bazadere was conducted or not.

Apart from that some more INA operatives entered through sea route via Orissa and to Bengal and some other through Assam then to Bengal.
Their main purpose was sabotage and information gathering. They mostly failed due to treason from the local people.

[timmy]

Shivaj, I've come across this Charles Tegart fellow a few times in my reading. He sounds like a person who was often at the center of things in a shady way. This Bazadere event sounds like it is interesting and deserving of a follow-up.

[Shivaji.Dasgupta]

Shivaj, I've come across this Charles Tegart fellow a few times in my reading. He sounds like a person who was often at the center of things in a shady way. This Bazadere event sounds like it is interesting and deserving of a follow-up.

Yes.

Charles Tegart was police commissioner of Calcutta during the peak of Indian freedom fight. He was famous for his brutality and notorious activities. His tactics of recruitment of spies and infiltration was famous at that time. Later on he shifted to Palestine where he started building some forts and fortified walls series which has different names like Tegart fort, Tegart wall, Tegart lines etc. He has a liking for mediaeval fortress battle tactics but with the invention of modern artilary , morter and rockets by the starting of 1940s the fortress battle strategy was not of much use.

Operation Bazadere was planned in Berlin during the time when Subhash bose was there in 1941 and created his First band of soldiers which was known as Indische legion/ Indian legion or free India legion. But actual time of its execution and results are unknown.

The size of Indian legion was approx 4500. Unfortunately none of them ever returned to their motherland. After WWII they were considered as traitors by Brits and put them in different POW camps. Most of them perished there only. Few managed to merged with the refugees and entered in European refugee camps.

[timmy]

One of the many books that is in the "To read" queue at my house is "His Majesty’s Opponent : Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s struggle against empire." But this morning, I ran some searches in it, trying to find something referring to this raid, any raid, and what transpired in Berlin. I couldn't find anything. It seems that writers in English avoid these subjects and often focus on Western European history, and especially British or American history, making it difficult to dig out what happened in other places.

I am recollecting that I came across Tegart's name while reading about the British Mandate in Palestine -- or, maybe it was a TV documentary. (I'm addicted to good ones, but they are not the same as footnoted and referenced books!) Wherever I came across Tegart's name, his time in Calcutta was mentioned and I made a note to look into it. You've furnished the prodding to do this, Sivaji, thanks!

I'm fairly sure someone has written about this, but it would be nice to find a good English language history of these times and events. I need to get after the book I mentioned as a start.

Meanwhile, if you come up with other findings, please do share them! I'm interested!

[Shivaji.Dasgupta]

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-19019949
Read this article. It will give you some inputs on Tegart

Also there is un published writeup by Mrs. Tegart which supposed to be published with the name sir. Charles Tegart in Indian police or Calcutta police something like that.
It's with some British library now. Trying to get it's digital copy as it has many letters and notes of that time. This letters Also includes the actual battle descriptions and recovery afterwards.

It was a note to Tegart by Mr. Kilbey from balasore dated 11th sep 1915 that total death toll on the account of gun battle in chasakhand with Jatin mukherjee described. It's not mentioned any where in books about the death toll of govt. Forces in that fight.

[Shivaji.Dasgupta]

To honour our freedom fighters and also to honour this almost forgotten topic bring in light again.

IMG_20210405_081154.jpg

The only image of sirish Chandra Mita alias Habu I am able to get. The main face in Rodda arms heist.
His death is doubtful.
In records he died in 1915. Date unknown. While trying to cross China border. Shot by frontier guards.
In some other accounts he fled to Burma and lived there with the name Avani Sarkar and died in 1930 in some epidemic.

[Sujay]

Shivaj, I've come across this Charles Tegart fellow a few times in my reading. He sounds like a person who was ofteon at the center of things in a shady way.

Timmy,
May I know why you used the word "shady" for Tegart ? Did you read anything about him which gives the impression of him being an unethical or dishonest person?

Sujay

[timmy]

Shivaj, I've come across this Charles Tegart fellow a few times in my reading. He sounds like a person who was ofteon at the center of things in a shady way.

Timmy,
May I know why you used the word "shady" for Tegart ? Did you read anything about him which gives the impression of him being an unethical or dishonest person?

Sujay

Sujay, as I said, I have come across his name a few times in my reading and watching of documentaries, but to reply to your question directly, here's the most recent reference I've come across about Tegart in my reading:

In October [1937], Sir Charles Tegart, who had stringently policed Calcutta for thirty years, arrived in Jerusalem. He built fifty "Tegart forts," erected security fences around the borders, and took charge of counter-insurgency and intelligence, creating Arab Investigation Centres. Tegart ran a school in west Jerusalem to instruct his interrogators how to torture suspects -- including the "water can" technique in which prisoners had water forced down their noses from coffeepots, a method now known as "water-boarding" -- until the city governor Keith-Roach demanded it be moved.

(Jerusalem - the Biography, by Simon Sebag Montefiore, p471

"unethical" is a subjective term, of course, depending on the viewer's notion of ethics, but for me, this describes an unethical practice.

My reading about British India also has informed my views on this subject. While i didn't find, in a quick search of my bookshelves, a specific reference to Tegart, I have found enough about British policy in India in the '20s and '30s, which Tegart would have had a part in administering, to consider those policies "unethical or dishonest," as you put it, or "shady," as I put it. The policy of encouraging communal discord that the British practiced, for instance, is hardly an honest part of the expressed intention of colonial masters to bring progress to India. As a long term member of a regime that practiced these things, Tegart must be judged, in my view, and using the word "shady" in connection with him is more than generous.

[Shivaji.Dasgupta]

Shivaj, I've come across this Charles Tegart fellow a few times in my reading. He sounds like a person who was ofteon at the center of things in a shady way.

Timmy,
May I know why you used the word "shady" for Tegart ? Did you read anything about him which gives the impression of him being an unethical or dishonest person?

Sujay

I agree with Timmy. I never found any thing which gives me an impression about Charles Tegart that he is at least following the British govt own rules ethically and honestly. One example

1. After the gunfight in Jalalabad hills in Chittagong, next day police and auxiliary force recovered 81 or 84 dead body of the Police and Auxiliary force people. Among which approx 10 was British and rest was Indian. Apart from that 10 dead and 2 seriously injured revolutionary were also there in the slopes of Jalalabad.
As per British govt protocol, all the dead should be bring to near by hospital and after a proper postmortem they should be cremated fulfilling their last rites. As Tegart was the incharge of that operation and from Kolkata he was monitored this, British police buried all the dead Indian ( that time called Hindustani sepoy ) in makeshift graves, burnt all the bodies of revolutionary along with one seriously injured revolutionary with petrol. Pick their Brit and European fellows and left that place.
Even if I do not expect a proper treatment to revolutionary teams dead members, Brits and as a master of the operation Tegart was not honest to their own sepoy. Its documented by the revolutionaries and still the Graves of the dead European and Brits soldiers can be seen in Chittagong local cemetery. Where as only one book has mentioned the place where those sepoys were in final rest. No one ever know the names of those who died there b.coz to maintain their image Brits never published it.

There was many such incidents and I personally think he is not at all a police by any means but rather he was a watch guard sort of for his businessmen masters. Who was only appointed to keep the place safe for his master's to complete their loot.

[Sujay]

Timmy,

It is ok for me , whatever word you use to judge Tegart.I was only interested if there is any material to show that person was of an unreliable/dishonest type.

Anyway, I heard about the methods of CT from my grandad who was in the thick of action in Calcutta exactly in those very years and passed away in 1983. But we have to remember that our forefathers' opinion about British changed considerably ( at least of some) when they witnessed the same brutality, colossal corruption, communal divide and decay from the administration run by Indian themselves.

In the early decades in Bengal, brutality WAS the first method to deal with any revolutionary; whether of Gandhian or Surya Sen type. The chief perpetrators of this method was not CT, rather the cops of higher ranks- I G Police ( Lowman) , I G Calcutta Police ( Simpson) etc, both were shot dead in Bengal.

C T just picked up brutality and later may be sold this "skill". His primary fascination was infiltration , in which he was totally successful and to the point that almost all revolutionary groups in Bengal disintegrated. His success in infiltration and the subsequent damage to the revolutionaries was the reason of numerous assassination attempts on him.His increasing success bought more violence and assassinations occasionally innocent Europeans being the casualty. This resulted in more brutality from police and so on....

In other words, both CT and the revolutionaries met their match. CT more or less demolished the various revolutionary groups and the revolutionaries assassinated an unbelievable number of police and administrative officials, with their meager resources , purely based on their will.

Attached is a document which you will find interesting, from page 12 onwards

[Sujay]

Where is the document I uploaded