Nalini Pakrashi: Dooars Gandhi

It is now all but forgotten, but the entire area of North Bengal, including the parts that have after partition gone to East Pakistan and are now part of Bangladesh, had a proud record of anti Imperialist struggle. Today we mainly remember the politics of the region for the Spring Thunder and perhaps the Tebhaga movement,  and well we should , because they changed the socioeconomic status of not just North Bengal but also many parts of India for ever. But the foundation for struggle was laid down by many individuals, many of whom have receded into the mists of the past.

I refer to men like  Dr. Charuchandra Sanyal, Khagendranath Dasgupta, Shashadhar Kar, Rabindranath Sikdar in Jalpaiguri, Shiumangal Singh and Dr Brajendra Bose Roychowdhury in Siliguri , Putulimaya Devi in the Darjeeling Hills and many others. It is also now almost forgotten that even in the Dooars, there was a strong Independence Movement, fanned by many leaders who organized the local people and tea garden workers against the British Raj. One among them was Nalini Pakrashi of whom I shall write about today.

Nalini Pakrashi was  not from the Dooars by birth. He was born to a family of pundits in  Kaitala village in the then Comilla District of undivided Bengal. His father, Nabin Chandra Pakrashi was a well known scholar of Nyay Shastra and had been trained by the Mithila School of Brahmins. He was born on the 22^nd of October, 1898.  He cut his teeth in political action at a very young age during the Partition Movement when he enthusiastically participated in the Rakhi Bandhan movement initiated by Rabindranath Tagore.

Nalini was very close to this father from whom he received his early education. Unfortunately he was to lose him at the young age of only 12. He was sent to Rangpur, to his maternal uncle’s house, perhaps in the hope that he could gain some employment. But here, too, he became involved with the revolutionary segment of the National Movement .  At this very early stage of his life (1912-20) he came in touch with Jugantar Dal and later on, during his days in Rangpur he was inspired by Barrister Atul Chandra Gupta, Mohini Mohan Bhattyacharya, Tulsi Lahiri . As was the custom in those days, his guardians decided that marriage would wake him to his sense of the family responsibilities and he was married Kamala Devi at the age of 18. He did take up a job with a local contractor, Rangalal Dutta. His salary was a princely Rs 7 per month. Subsequently he started working in Rajabhatkhawa with another contractor, Ramrup Singh, who was also to become his friend. This was the time that that a lot of construction work was going on in the area including a new bridge over the Jaldhaka River. He had to travel all over the region and this made him intimately acquainted with the people of the region and their problems.

He really blossomed as a mass leader in 1921. The Rajbanshi community which was predominant in the Alipurduar region had been radicalized by the non Cooperation Movement of 1919.  One festering problem in the Dooars were the high taxes that the colonial government used to collect from the local markets ( Haats) In particular the Kulkuli Haat was the main market which catered to the population of tea garden workers and it was here that they bought their necessities. When protests against the tax collection began to arise, the market was shifted to Kumargram.  This was accompanied by protests and the movement took on a mass character with songs being written and sung by the villagers who also surrounded the Alipurduar Court when their compatriots were arrested. It was at this time that Pakrashi played an important role in organizing the protests and began to be known as the Dooars Gandhi. He set up a unit of the Indian National Congress at Kumargram with Pasupati Konar. They were instrumental in organizing a boycott of the Kumargram Haat which was very successful. During the flood of 1921-22 or the earthquake in Bihar in 1934, he was engaged in accumulating relief funds.

His next major political action was during the Dandi march in 1930 when he organized a satyagraha in Falakata and was arrested. His employer was ordered to ensure that he did not continue with his swadeshi activities, failing which he ( the employer) would be struck off from the list of Government contractors. On being asked to apologise formally to the Crown, Pakrashi refused and quit this job and started a business dealing with khadi cloth. To raise funds for this venture he had to sell his wife’s ornaments. Unfortunately this business failed and later he started several other businesses all of which had the same fate. During this time he continued his Swadeshi activities and was regularly jailed. His wife used to make papad and  spin cloth to eke out a living as her husband was often absent.

In 1937, the election took place under the Government of India Act of 1935. Khagendranath Dasgupta was the candidate for the he was heavily dependent on the  organizational ability of Nalini Pakrashi in Falakata, Dhupguri, Madarihat, Alipurduar and some parts of the native state Gooch Behar. From this time, he  again began to earn and was able to send five, seven or ten rupees to his family per month. Pakrashi, after the election, worked full time under Dasgupta and now he was relatively better off and  could send rupees fifteen per month to his family according to family sources.

In 1939, during the Bengal Congress conference, he was elected as a member of the Pradesh Congress Committee. It was here that he was introduced to Netaji Subhas Bose who became an important influence on his later political thinking. He also participated Haripura, Faizpura and Tripuri sessions of the Congress. When Bose formed the Forward Bloc, he joined the new party.  In 1941, he was instrumental in publishing a manifesto Bhai Chasi Tumi Garib Keno' (Brother peasant,why are you poor?). This led to another spell in prison. He was initially sentenced for one year, but on appeal, his sentence was reduced to 6 months. While he considered himself firmly in the socialist camp, he did not shy away from supporting Subhas Bose in his fight against the British.

The Quit India Movement broke out on the 9^th August, 1942.  Pakrashi threw himself wholeheartedly into the struggle. He went underground and decided that one of the best ways to fight the British at this juncture would be to try to sever the communications between the center and the Assam frontier. To this end, he organized a destruction of the telegraph poles and wires in this region. This earned him the moniker “Tarkata Thakur” ( The Brahmin who cuts wires) . On the 26^th of September, he and his colleagues conceived a plan to take control of the Kumargram Police Station. The intrepid revolutionaries crossed the Raidhak River and cut the communication system of the Police Station and then invaded it with large numbers of locals many of whom were armed with bows and arrows. The Station in Charge pretended to join in with them and the National Flag was hoisted at the Station. Unknown to the revolutionaries, the shrewd Daroga had sent a message to higher authorities via a still functioning telegraph system of the Newlands Tea Garden. Armed police and the Army were sent to re occupy the Police Station.

Pakrashi belonged to a conservative Brahmin family. That did not prevent him from being extremely radical in his positions. He was above all casteist and communal ideas and spoke Rajbanshi and Hindi as well as he did Bengali. This enabled him to become a very good organizer among the tribals and other inhabitants of the Dooars. He used this network to try to escape to Cooch Behar but was captured, ironically on the Asthami night of that year and was sentenced to three years of hard labour. When he was released, his health had broken down, but that did not prevent him from still working among tea garden workers in order to try to improve their lot. He was honoured by the Government of India with a tamrapatra in 1972 during the celebrations of 25 years of Independence. This revolutionary lived out the twilight years of his life with his son in Cooch Behar. He died on the 20^th June , 1973. An era had ended.