Taraknath Das was an anti-British Bengali Indian revolutionary . He was a great revolutionary figure who made huge efforts to make India free from the shackles of British imperialists. Tarak was born at Majupara, near Kanchrapara, in the 24 parganas district of West Bengal on June 15,1884. He hailed from a lower middle-class family, and his father Kalimohan was a clerk at the Central Telegraph Office in Kolkatta. He had a flair for writing ; and once impressed by the quality of the paper he wrote on the theme of Patriotism , one of the judges, the Barrister P. Mitter, founder Anushilan Samiti, asked his associate Satish Chandra Basu to recruit the boy. He was a patriot to the core and , he found full support from his elder sister Girija. She groomed his patriotism. In the early months of 1906, Bagha Jatin or Jatinder Nath Mukherjee was accompanied by Tarak, when the former was invited to preside over the Sitaram Festival in Jessore, the ancient capital of Bengal. On this occasion, during a closeted meeting around Jatin were present, in addition to Tarak, Shrish Chandra Sen, Satyendra Sen and Adhar Chandra Laskar-all the four, one after the other, were to leave for higher studies abroad. Nothing was known about the object of this meeting till in 1952 when, during a conversation, Tarak spoke of it. Along with specific higher education, they were to acquire military training and knowledge of explosives.
Tarak left for Madras on a lecture tour. After Swami Vivekananda and Bipin Chander pal he was the first person in the region who raised such a passion by his patriotic speeches. Among young revolutionaries he particularly inspired Nilakantha Brahmachari, Subrahmania Shiva and Chidambaram Pillai. On 16 July 1907, via Japan, Tarak reached Seattle. After earning his livelihood as a farm-worker, he was appointed at the laboratory of the Berkley University With Panduranga Khankoje , Tarak founded the Indian Independence League. Adhar Laskar arrived from Kolkatta with funds sent by Jatin Mukherjee, permitting Tarak to start his journal Free Hindustan in English, (based on the theme “ To protest against all tyranny is a service to humanity and the duty of civilization”) as well as its Gurumukhi edition, Swadesh Sevak (‘Servants of the Motherland’). Tarak served the needs of his compatriots, most of whom were illiterate migrants from the Punjab region. He founded the Swadesh Sevak Home, a boarding school for the children of the Asian Indian immigrants. Apart from that, this school also held evening classes on English and mathematics, and thus helped the immigrants to write letters to their families or to their employers. This also helped them in fostering greater awareness of their duties towards India and their rights in their adopted homeland. There were about two thousand Indians, mostly Sikh, on the west coast of Canada and North America. The majority worked in agriculture and construction.
In March 1912 a letter published in ‘The Punjabee’ asked for a leader to come and help organize Indians in the area in view of the rising revolutionary spirit. Originally they discussed inviting Ajit singh. However when Tarak arrived he suggested Lala Hardyal . Lala Hardayal agreed to work with him setting up the Hindi Association of the Pacific Ocean, which provided the first basis for the Ghadar party. “Many of the leaders were of other parties and from different parts of India, Hardayal, Ras Bihari Bose, Barakatulah, Seth Husain Rahim, Tarak Nath Dass etc.. Tarak passed his M.A. examination and started his PhD dissertation on International Relationship and International Law, while joining the teaching staff of Berkeley university. He later earned his PhD degree in Political Science.
Tarak Nath Dass confronted Tolstoy on his philosophy of non-violence and gave a point by point rebuttal to Tolstoy’s notion of non –violence and its application along with love which he suggested to Indians in his essays to get rid of British. Tolstoy’s essay “A Message to Young India’ remains central to texts of this kind. Citing examples from the Bhagavad Gita, Tolstoy maintained : “The absence of true religious consciousness and the sustenance of conduct flowing from it … lies the chief if not the sole cause of the enslavement of the Indian people by the English.” Citing three justifications for violence invoked by the dominant minority, Tolstoy wrote : “If the English have enslaved the Hindoos, it is just because Hindoos recognized coercion as the main and fundamental principle of their social order.” He saw only one answer to this problem, namely Love: “The law of human life is the law of Love cherished by all humanity from the most remote antiquity” . In rebuttal to Tolstosy’s thesis, Taraknath cited statistics from western and Indian sources to prove the point that tyranny under any guise can never be justified. “Non-violence is an absolute dogma …violence and benevolence are measured by relative value of the actions and the motives underlying them.” He added in unambiguous terms : “We are believers in universal fellowship but we are intolerant of any action of exploitation of any nation, race, society, family or individuals by others.” Invoking Magna Carta of King John in 1215, he concluded: “Love is God but at the same time … divinity is best represented in humanity, and resistance to despotism is first of all human duties.” [Emphasis in the original]
This revolutionary was opposed to the partition of India and balkanization of South Asia.
- Compiled by Prof. Rajan Kapoor
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