Alipore, 1909
My appeal to you therefore is that a man like this who is being charged with the offences imputed to him stands not only before the bar in this Court but stands before the bar of the High Court of History and my appeal to you is this: That long after this controversy is hushed in silence, long after this turmoil, this agitation ceases, long after he is dead and gone, he will be looked upon as the poet of patriotism, as the prophet of nationalism and the lover of humanity. Long after he is dead and gone his words will be echoed and re-echoed not only in India, but across distant seas and lands.
The bespectacled lawyer concluded his defense, after 8 long days, in one of the most intensely fought trials ever during the British Raj. The Alipore bomb case, where a number of Indian revolutionaries were tried on the charges of waging war against the Government. The trial was sparked by the assasination attempt of Douglas Kingford by the young revolutionaries Prafulla Chaki and Khudiram Bose. The defendant here was one of the prominent accused in the case, but acquited later after the trial, though his brother Barin would be deported to the notorious Cellular Jail.
The defendant- Aurobindo Ghosh, a firebrand revolutionary, who later became a spiritual thinker and founded the Ashram in Pondicherry.
The bespectacled soft spoken lawyer, was none other than Chittaranjan Das, popularly known as Deshbandhu, mentor to Netaji Subash Chandra Bose and founder of the Swaraj Party in Bengal.
Chittaranjan Das was born in Vikrampur, now located near Dhaka, associated with the Pala empire and later the capital of the Sena rulers Ballala Sena and Lakshmana Sena. A small town in which such legendary figures like J.C.Bose, P.C.Mahalanobis were born, as also the revolutionary trio of Binoy, Dinesh and Badal. And was a center of learning and culture during the 12th century.
He was born into a well off Brahmo family, to Bhuban Mohan Das and Nistarini Debi on November 5,1870. His uncle was the prominent Brahmo social reformer Durga Mohan Das. His cousins included Atul Prasad Sen, noted writer, Satish Ranjan Das who founded Dehradun's iconic Doon School, noted educationist Sarala Roy and social reformer Abala Bose. The former Chief Minister of Bengal, Siddartha Shankar Ray, was his own grandson. The Das family of Telirbagh, at Vikrampur to which he belonged was one of the more prominent ones.
He was married to Basanti Devi, daughter of a diwan in Assam, working for the British, and she would later carry on her husband's work, after his death. . In December 1921, during the height of the Non-Cooperation Movement, she and her sister-in-law Urmila Devi stepped onto the streets of Kolkata to sell khadi and promote the Swadeshi cause. Despite warnings from Subhas Chandra Bose himself, she courted arrest knowingly—a bold act that electrified the city.
Her detention sparked a wave of protests and voluntary arrests, filling Kolkata’s jails and swelling the ranks of the movement. Even colonial officers were reportedly moved by her courage. After Chittaranjan Das’s death in 1925, she carried forward his legacy with quiet strength—editing Bangalar Katha, presiding over the Bengal Provincial Congress, and mentoring younger leaders.
Her bond with Netaji was deeply personal. He saw in her not just a comrade’s widow, but a maternal figure—someone he could confide in. Krishna Bose even described her as one of the four most important women in Netaji’s life.
Chittaranjan Das’s early years were steeped in the intellectual ferment of Bengal’s renaissance. His admiration for Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, especially the nationalistic fervor of Anandamath, clearly left a mark on his political imagination. As a student leader at Presidency, he was already sowing the seeds of activism.
His time in England was transformative. Though he initially aimed for the Indian Civil Service, he pivoted to law and was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1892. But it wasn’t just legal training he absorbed—he plunged into political advocacy. His support for Dadabhai Naoroji’s historic 1892 campaign for the House of Commons was a defining moment. Alongside Aurobindo Ghosh, Atul Prasad Sen, and Sarojini Naidu, he canvassed for Naoroji in Central Finsbury, helping elect the first Indian to the British Parliament.
On his return to India in 1893, C R Das began to practice Law, but for the major part it was more or less a struggle for him. In fact at one stage,his family was in financial troubles, and they actually had to claim insolvency. However he managed to clear the debts, and just when his law carrer seeemd to have taken a turn, he quit it in 1894, to plunge into the freedom movement.
His most famous case would be that of the Alipore Bomb case during 1908-09, where he defended the revolutionaries, convicted of waging war agains the Government. Even though he was not in the best of health, he went all out to defend Aurobindo Ghosh in court, and managed to get him accquited. The bonding between Chittaranjan Das and Aurobindo, went much deeper, when the latter was in financial trouble, he helped him again.Again when Aurobindo was in need of money in Pondicherry, it was Chittaranjan Das who helped him, asked him to translate his book of poems Sagar Sangit into English, for which he was paid.
His role in founding the Anushilan Samiti with Pramatha Mitter placed him at the heart of Bengal’s revolutionary underground, even as he later emerged as a constitutionalist with the Swaraj Party. That duality—of radical roots and reformist strategy—is what made him such a compelling figure.
His sartorial shift to khadi wasn’t just symbolic; it was a public renunciation of privilege. And his founding of Liberty gave voice to nationalist aspirations at a time when censorship loomed large. As Kolkata’s first elected mayor in 1924, he brought governance and nationalism into the same civic space.
The 1921 boycott of the Prince of Wales’s visit was a bold stroke—organizing mass protests while maintaining non-violence. But it was the fallout from Chauri Chaura that truly tested his ideological alignment with Gandhi. While Gandhi saw withdrawal as a moral imperative, Das believed in leveraging the legislative councils to expose and obstruct colonial policies from within. His motion at the Gaya Congress in 1922, advocating council entry, was defeated—but it led to the birth of the Swaraj Party in 1923, co-founded with Motilal Nehru.
The party’s strategy was clear: contest elections, enter councils, and use them as platforms of resistance. With leaders like Subhas Chandra Bose and Vithalbhai Patel, the Swarajists became a formidable voice in the Central Legislative Assembly, often stalling unjust laws and demanding greater Indian autonomy.
Chittaranjan Das’s final years reflect the same selflessness that defined his public life—working tirelessly for national upliftment, even at the cost of his own health. His advocacy for vernacular education, women’s empowerment, and social reform—including widow remarriage and intercaste unions within his own family—was far ahead of his time.
His poetic soul, expressed through Malancha and Mala, revealed a gentler, introspective side of the firebrand nationalist. These collections, published around 1912–13, earned him quiet acclaim as a literary figure. And the fact that he translated Aurobindo’s Sagar Sangeet into English—after once commissioning Aurobindo to translate his own poems—completes a beautiful circle of mutual respect and creative exchange.
His passing at “Stay Aside” in Darjeeling was mourned across the nation. That nearly 300,000 people gathered for his funeral in Kolkata speaks volumes of the love and reverence he inspired. Even in death, Deshbandhu united people across class, caste, and creed.
Mahatma Gandhi who led the funeral procession, had this to say about him.
Deshbandhu was one of the greatest of men... He dreamed... and talked of freedom of India and of nothing else. When I left Darjeeling I left much more that I had ever thought before. There was no end of my affection for Deshbandhu and my warm feeling for such a great soul
Looking at the massive gathering and the spontaneous outpouring of emotion Rabindranath Tagore, penned the following couplet, while Netaji Subash Chandra Bose, called his death as a great calamity for the nation.
Enechhile sathe kore mrityuheen praan/ Marane tahai tumi kore gele daan.
You had brought with yourself a life-without-an-end/As you depart, you donate the same.