Bagha Jatin (Tiger Jatin), born Jatindranath Mukherjee (7 December 1879 – 10 September 1915) was a Bengali revolutionary philosopher against British rule.
He was the principal leader of the Yugantar party that was the central association of revolutionaries in Bengal.
What Mahatma Gandhi Thought about Bagha Jatin:
"In 1925, Gandhi told Tegart (a coloniol Police ofiicer and insurgency specialist in british police) that...
more... Jatin Mukherjee, generally referred to as "Bagha Jatin", was "a divine personality". Little did he know that Tegart had once told his colleagues that "if Jatin were an Englishman, then the English people would have built his statue next to Nelson's at Trafalgar Square. In his note to J.E. Francis of the India Office in 1926, he described Bengali revolutionaries as "the most selfless political workers in India".
Bagha Jatin was a true leader and military strategist. He approached all the European countries which were against Britain in world war 1. He was planning to get full financial aid and ammunition support from Germany via the sea route of bay of bengal. But this planning all got leaked.
As soon as the information reached the British authorities, they alerted the police, particularly in the delta region of the Ganges, and sealed off all the sea approaches on the eastern coast from the Noakhali–Chittagong side to Odisha. The police found a clue which led them to Kaptipada village, where Jatin was staying with Manoranjan Sengupta and Chittapriya Ray Chaudhuri (his associates in yugantar party); a unit of the Police Intelligence Department was dispatched to Balasore.
Jatin was kept informed and was requested to leave his hiding place, by which time a large force of police, headed by top European officers from Calcutta and Balasore, reinforced by the army unit from Chandbali in Bhadrak State, had reached the neighbourhood. Jatin and his companions walked through the forests and hills of Mayurbhanj, and after two days reached Balasore Railway Station.
The police had announced a reward for the capture of five fleeing "bandits", so the local villagers were also in pursuit. With occasional skirmishes, the revolutionaries, running through jungles and marshy land in torrential rain, finally took up position on 9 September 1915 in an improvised trench in undergrowth on a hillock at Chashakhand in Balasore. Chittapriya and his companions asked Jatin to leave and go to safety while they guarded the rear. Jatin, however refused to leave them.
The contingent of Government forces approached them in a pincers movement. A gunfight ensued, lasting seventy-five minutes, between the five revolutionaries armed with Mauser pistols and a large number of police and army armed with modern rifles. It ended with an unrecorded number of casualties on the Government side; on the revolutionary side, Chittapriya Ray Chaudhuri died, Jatin was seriously wounded, and Manoranjan Sengupta was captured after his ammunition ran out. Bagha Jatin died in Balasore hospital on 10 September 1915.
When i was young, my grandfather used to tell me this story numerous amount of time. He used to say, his father and grandfather were the among those who have seen this all happening and also came in influence that bagha jatin was a bandit from Badampahar hills. Bitishers spreaded this rumour all around in balasore that few bandits from badampahar hills have came to balasore for looting common people.
There is a bagha jatin park at that house where he stayed before escaping to mayurbhanj forests.
IR has named this HWH-BHC fast passenger in remembrance of him.
There are talks and demands by some faternity here in balasore and nearby cities to rename the balasore railway station as "Bagha Jatin Balasore".
