A new ‘friend’ made an offer and took Ananta to meet one Abdul Razzak Khan. There was some confusion about his identity. Perhaps he was in the Communist Party; perhaps he had some war experience. Ananta did not receive clear answers to his questions and was confused over what exactly it was that the Communist Party stood for or who they were. But the offer of receiving firearms was too tempting. Khan sahib was said to have many contacts in the merchant navy. He had promised to send four pistols. The ‘friend’ sent word that two pistols had been received and that Ananta could collect them from his house. He set off without informing Anukul-da.
Two fine pistols lay on the bed. The man wrapped them up with newspaper and handed the parcel over. Faint alarm bells had begun ringing.
‘No.’ Ananta refused to touch them. Bunching up spare newspapers, he wrapped them into a parcel the same size as the one he was to pick up. Tucking it under his arm he left. Nothing happened. Ananta returned to collect the pistols.
The man was amused. ‘There are two more that I left at the paan shop. We will collect them at 8 p.m. sharp.’
‘Why not now?’
‘I am tired.’ He looked faintly irritated. ‘Besides, I have told the paan-wallah that we will come at eight.’
Suspicion made Ananta’s hackles rise.
‘It may be dangerous to go now,’ warned the man.
‘Now!’ said Ananta placing a menacing arm around his neck.
‘I am telling you it is dangerous.’
‘And I am telling you I want them now.’
The ‘friend’ walked with Ananta, protesting feebly. There was no danger around. The unsuspecting paan-wallah handed over the parcel and Ananta made his way home.
LADY KATHLEEN TEGART, DECEMBER 1929
It had started with the aggressive shrilling of the bedside phone at 1 a.m. Kathleen had never got used to her husband’s sudden departures in the middle of the night and his returning like a blast from the North Pole. Mike still insisted on taking part in raids and maintaining personal contacts with agents. The six-month holiday back home might never have been. The attack on the viceroy’s special train, the week before, had indicated the start of a new campaign. Lord Irwin had escaped unhurt but Bengal had been placed on alert. The Hindustan Socialist Republican Army that had carried out the atrocity had deep and powerful links in Bengal.
She lay uneasily in bed watching the hands of the clock. Subah Khan was with him, she reminded herself. He had been their driver ever since Mike had become commissioner and was known to follow him at a distance, with his revolver ready, unless expressly told not to. Mike’s life had always been in danger and more so since he had become commissioner. But what annoyed her most was his tendency to bottle information, a point that drew loud criticism from his colleagues as well. There was, however, no denying the fact that his preference to err on the side of caution was a highly important factor in his success in the handling of underground agents. Every time any police officer kept a secret assignation he was taking a risk, for the agent could be shadowed; he might have turned traitor – though this hadn’t happened until now; or the officer could himself be recognized and trailed either before or after the interview.
The door burst open. Mike was back. With a sigh of thankfulness Kathleen moved closer towards him. He drew up the sheets and snuggled in. ‘An agent,’ he said briefly, ‘had done some invaluable work for us … found himself being shadowed by several people.’
Kathleen waited patiently wondering if he would continue. Shadowing was a dangerous game for both sides and only too often the shadower found himself to be the one being shadowed. Once, four Indian officers who had been trailing suspects had been followed back to the house in which they were living. It had been a warm night and the officers, having let down their guard, had sat down to dinner leaving the windows open. The revolutionaries’ bullets had claimed all four lives. Once a man discovers he is being shadowed, Mike had always said, his life depends on his keeping his head. If he looks back – and the temptation to do this is often irresistible, hurries unduly or dodges aside too suddenly, he makes it clear he is aware of the situation and his pursuer is forced to close in on him to take action quickly before he escapes.
‘But he succeeded in following the golden rule. It was only after the most nerve-racking experience that he managed to shake them off temporarily and take refuge in a private house. Fortunately, it had a telephone and he was able to s.o.s me.’ Mike’s eyes were closed.
Closely linked with and auxiliary to Mike’s secret service was his creation of a highly competent staff of watchers. Memories drifted in and out of Kathleen’s head, driving all thoughts of sleep away. When the Great World War had broken out, Edward had joined up from Dublin and moved to the trenches in France. To his great disappointment, Mike’s application had been turned down by the government of Bengal. And it was only the fascination of unravelling the great German–Bengali plot, in which Joteen Mookerjee was traced to Balasore and killed, that had kept him going. But Ireland’s Easter Revolution that came with the following year had brought an uncontrollable surge of emotions to the fore. It had made Lord Lytton joke that they had placed a Sinn Feiner in charge of the Bengali revolutionists. And it had amused and confused many of his friends. Being by instinct ‘agin’ the government, they said, he knew exactly what people who wanted to make trouble felt like and was able to forestall their action. In 1917, Mike had been permitted to go back to Britain and given a commission in the Horse Transport of the ASC with a promise of a transfer to RA. But, much to his annoyance, even before he could join his unit he had been recalled to give evidence before the Rowlatt Committee. They had held some forty-six sessions in camera. Mike’s memory could certainly be classified as above average. He could recall isolated scraps of information and had the power of accurate visual recollection and would often stun the committee with remarks like: I think there is material bearing on this in file number so-and-so of so-and-so year on page so-and-so. It had prompted Mr Rowlatt5 to observe to a member of the Bengal government as he examined official documents and reports on terrorism in India: You’ve got a remarkable man in Tegart.
Mike had set sail once again for England, received a commission in RFA6 and made his way to France. It had given him the chance to experience active service and the horrors of war. When it ended, he had remained behind with the army of occupation for nearly a year before being seconded for special intelligence duties at home. The Intelligence Branch in England had undergone a giant makeover. In the years before the war, German spies had overrun Britain. A counter-espionage programme had been initiated in 1908 but it had been Captain Vernon Bell, aided by nine officers of the Secret Service Bureau, who had blasted the spy ring on the eve of the war. The department had been renamed MI5 in 1916.
In 1923, Mike had accepted the post of police commissioner of Bengal. He and Kathleen had had endless discussions about this: the money was good, a point that could not be dismissed casually, and the accommodation that went with it tempting. But the factor that clinched the deal was that Mike would be free to pretty much run his own show. He got down to reorganizing the department with his usual energy, making it a model of efficiency. In an eastern city, the jostling loafers, hawkers, street vendors and beggars afforded useful cover and were ready-made aids to success, but even then the slips and pitfalls were endless, and in vain was the fowler’s net spread in the sight of the bird. It had to be freely admitted that the proper use of agents was one of the hardest and most difficult tasks an intelligence officer could undertake. Bad and unreliable agents were far worse than none at all, and, in the political field, they became instruments of the cruellest injustice. No one was more alive to this danger than Mike and his pains to cross-check all that was brought to him were unremitting. As to maintaining the agent’s security, it was with scrupulous respect to the point of sanctity that he observed the obligation to keep secret all that was imparted to him in confidence. If, wittingly or unwittingly, an employer exposed th
e identity of an agent, he would soon find himself without anyone worthwhile. Never, no matter how strong the temptation to ‘blow’, would Mike permit the sacrifice of an agent to gain some temporary advantage. Many a holiday had turned into a busman’s vacation for her husband, obsessed as he was with the way the secret service was shaping up in Britain, would join up as a special constable and work with the MI5 for the six months that he was on leave.
But in the years that he had been away, much had changed in India. India’s contribution to the success enjoyed by the Allies had been acknowledged and in December 1919, a royal proclamation had announced the release of the persons interned during the period from 1914 to 1917 under the Defence of India Act. Some 1,100 persons had already been freed. The hundred that remained had been sent home immediately and, in addition, the 130 ringleaders locked up under Regulation III had begun to be released in stages. Mr Gandhi, who had preached passive resistance when the Rowlatt Bills were being discussed, introduced his ideas for a non-cooperation movement. Support came from an unusual quarter with a group of Muslims joining in, rather illogically, for they disapproved of the Turkish peace terms. The movement rapidly gained adherents. In 1919, a disturbance broke out in Punjab when troops under General Dyer’s orders fired at a peaceful crowd, at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar. Those killed had been attending a protest meeting against the Rowlatt Bills and against the deportation of Dr Satya Pal and Dr Kitchlew, the local organizers of the non-cooperation movement. In 1920, the Congress decided to support Mr Gandhi and bands of youth, calling themselves Congress National Volunteers, joined together in pseudo-military groups. As was expected, it wasn’t long before things began to get out of hand. In August 1921, the Moplah rebellion took place in the Malabar. Fanatical Muslims rose and murdered the officials and then proceeded to murder the Hindus. Rioting became common all over India. Eventually, a mob got out of hand at Chauri Chaura in the United Provinces and burnt nearly twenty-one police constables to death. It was then that a horrified Mr Gandhi finally called for an end to the movement. With Mr Gandhi’s arrest, the fragile Hindu–Muslim bonding fell apart. A section of the Congress began to think that they were mistaken in not having a destructive finger in the government pie and formed a separate party led by C.R. Das and Motilal Nehru. The Swaraj Party had thus come into being. It was important to keep in mind that the troublemakers were not representative of the population, for the great masses of India neither knew nor cared about politics and had no reason to believe that a change of rule would benefit them in any way. Under these very disturbed conditions, the new Montague–Chelmsford Reforms made their uneasy debut. Centrally, the shift of power was with the Government of India in India and no longer with the Secretary of State in London. The provision which aroused the greatest passion was the dual system by which the governor-in-council took charge of the reserved portfolios while Indian ministers, chosen by the governor from the elected members of the provincial Legislative Council, took the transferred portfolios. On the reserved portfolios, Indian opinion was represented – usually as much as by 50 per cent – on the executive council. In the case of the transferred portfolios the governor could, if conscientiously unable to accept the advice of a minister, require action to be taken otherwise. These were special powers which were not to be used except in vital cases. But their very existence was resented.
She must have fallen asleep, for when she looked he was no longer there.
‘Blasé,’ she groaned. He treated the death threats he received like a part of everyday correspondence. Her head ached and she reached for the bottle of Aspros.
Careless. In the way he put himself out there; in the way he handled unexploded bombs recovered from the site of outrages. For years he had kept one on his desk as a paperweight assuming its contents had deteriorated. And then one day, while engaged in a friendly rag with Denham and another friend, he had picked it up and thrown it across the room at a map to point out a particularly unpleasant up-country station, saying: Lets have a shot at Bogra. When the dust cleared they had discovered a part of the wall had been blown out. It had taken sometime to explain to the department that there had been no attempt at assassination.
A woman was at the gates.
‘She has walked all the way from her village; she has journeyed for many days memsahib, just to see you.’ The chowkidar made a personal appeal.
‘Bring her into the compound,’ said Kathleen. The morning air, she hoped would do her head some good. They rarely turned down appeals, and Mike, when at home, met everybody that arrived at their doorstep. The first time when he as a very young officer, rode out with a senior officer to a village, Mike had said to her, he had been touched by the people’s genuine expression of faith. The inhabitants had come into conflict with the interests of a landlord. Word reached that they had been spotted and the entire population had come running, salaaming and crying: Dohai sahib! Jan Kampani Bahadur insaf ! (Have pity, Sir, we want John Company’s justice.) It said so much in support of the old East India Company so often accused of malpractice.
The woman had fallen on her knees groping for Kathleen’s feet. ‘Please, memsahib,’ she began, ‘tell Tegart sahib to give my husband six bighas of land. We are very poor.’
‘But,’ said Kathleen, ‘I am afraid he doesn’t own any land in India.’
‘Oh, lady sahib, we all know he owns the whole of Bengal. He has only to say the word. We don’t want money. If he won’t give six, perhaps he will give us four bighas? I have come all this way to ask it. It is very little out of the whole of Bengal.’
‘But really, I assure you, he doesn’t own any land. Even this garden isn’t his. It belongs to the government.’
The woman laughed and shook her head. She was a jolly upcountry woman. ‘Oh, memsahib, I come from a little village far away from Kolkata and even I know Tegart sahib has power over all Bengal. Let him give two bighas … see I am down on my knees to ask it.’
No attempt at explanation would convince her that Mike was not, in fact, a combination of magician and autocrat within the sphere of the province. As the chowkidar led her away, an orderly explained, ‘His honour has such a reputation that by the name of Mr Tegart, a pregnant lady suffering from delivery gives birth to child without having pain.’
Appeals begging for letters of recommendation were common, but the general public, which included his opponents, had begun to regard Mike with superstition. His many escapes and the fact that he seemed to know everything that went on both inside and outside the force had caused people to think he possessed supernatural powers. Added to this was Mike’s morbid dislike for press interviews and a natural shyness when it came to facing the camera. The press would not, however, be done out of a good story and made up for it by going ahead with their own accounts. When they first arrived in 1923, a spate of such stories had done the rounds. Kathleen had saved the cuttings in her scrapbook.
In August 1923, the Sisir, an Indian-owned newspaper of Calcutta, had published the following: It is said that a few days ago a gentleman, while passing along Central Avenue at night to procure a medicine for his sick wife, was accosted by a police constable who compelled him to hand over all the money he was carrying at the time. The gentleman proceeding in his distress further on met a European who was apparently a drunkard, being dressed to perfection for the part. The gentleman apprehending that he was to be robbed again, stated that he was penniless. The European drunkard, however, replied that he did not want money but only wished to know why the gentleman was in such distress. He asked the offending sentry to be pointed out to him, and it was only after a good deal of persuasion that the gentleman agreed to point him out. When this so-called drunken sahib met the sentry, he gave him a smart slap on the cheek. The sentry, recognizing in the so-called drunkard the commissioner of police, fell at his feet … Whether true or false, these rumours redound to the credit of …
The Nayak of Calcutta had reported in the same month: There is a wide spread rumour in Calcutta that Mr Teg
art is visiting the house of ill fame in Calcutta, dressed as a dandy in up-to-date Bengali style. The story goes that recently, thus dressed as a babu, he visited the house of a woman of ill fame at Rambagan, where four men were drinking wine. They thought he was a likely victim and hence threateningly asked him to hand over his gold studs, rings, etc. Mr Tegart at first made a pretence of being very much frightened, but while he was making a show of hesitating about giving up the money with him, the drunkards brought out a dagger. Thereupon, Mr Tegart brought out his revolver and whistled, which brought to his aid a number of policemen, posted in disguise in the neighbourhood. These are of course rumours but the public take them as true. Considering the active efforts Mr Tegart is taking to suppress goonda-ism, such rumours are bound to prevail in this country and, after all, such rumours redound only to his credit. That is why we make it public for his information.
The Dainik Basumati and the Bangabasi carried another story: Mike had been dressed as a Bengal dandy when he was surrounded by goondas who were then caught. Mike had then instructed senior police officers to inspect the thanas daily. The editor of the Bangabasi felt that the ill repute he had earned by slapping a political prisoner would now be wiped off. Mike had put the Goonda Act of March 1923 to good use, known bad characters were deported outside the city boundaries and the section of the town where their crimes were most frequently committed were policed by augmented patrols. It produced excellent results and the figures for burglary and theft steadily declined.
Chittagong Summer of 1930 Page 13