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These revolutionary groups, that had begun to coordinate their strategies and
operations in the wake of the movement to oppose Bengal’s partition in 1905,
were now taking inspiration from the radical political ideologies and anarchist
movements in the western countries. One of their objectives was to use the racist
propaganda and anti-immigration laws in Canada and North America to convert
ordinary peasant Sikh immigrants from Punjab to join the anti-imperialist movement.
Their apparent success required the government to reorganize its intelligence
operations on a global scale, embracing India, Britain, several other countries
in Europe, North America and the Far East. Punjab had taken an early lead in
setting up a special branch in 1876 to receive and distribute secret information of
political nature. The work from Punjab was very useful and allowed the government
to monitor and curb political sedition without having to follow extensively
repressive measures, of which the authorities were generally wary. 17 As early as
1881, Viceroy Ripon wrote: “I hold as strongly as any man that we must be careful
to maintain our military strength; but, whatever may have been the case in the
past, we cannot now rely upon military force alone; and policy as well as justice,
ought to prompt us to endeavour to govern more and more by means of, and in
accordance with, that growing public opinion, which is beginning to show itself
throughout the country.” 18
But violent unrest assumed serious proportions after the Bengal partition and
required efficient handling. In those days, the police did not fake “encounters”;
revolutionaries were deported. Even then the question of evidence, as the following
letter from John Morley, the Secretary of State for India from 1905 to 1910, shows,
was a matter of scrutiny: “...Of course, I know that you will take all possible pains
not to seize wrong men... Your evidence which is to reach me soon, will be scanned
by me with a sharp eye.” 19 In January 1910, the Bengal government asked the
viceroy for permission to deport Noni Gopal Sengupta, whom the intelligence agencies
had identified as the main terrorist, although the police had failed to catch him
in the act. The Government of India replied that it did not regard deportation “as a
proper and permissible substitute for good police administration”. 20 Even to place a
suspect under police surveillance, the government had to have enough evidence to
justify the measure. In early 1909, the director of the Criminal Intelligence Department
(CID) placed a well-known nationalist leader called Gopal Krishna Deodhar
under surveillance when he went to the United Province. Deodhar was associated
with Lala Lajpat Rai, a radical leader from Punjab involved in the anti-partition
movement. When Deodhar complained, the local government sided with him on
the ground that the CID did not have sufficient evidence to justify his surveillance,
17 Enclosures of a letter to the Secretary of State for India, No. 179, 15 Nov., 1887, “Memorandum on the
Formation of an Intelligence Department under the Government of India”, Cross Papers, IOLR Mss.
Eur. E. 243/23; extract of a letter from Colonel Henderson, Superintendent of Thugee and Dacoity to
Secretary, Foreign Department, on the supposed interest taken by the Sikhs in Dulip Singh’s
movements, June 1887, Cross Papers, IOLR Mss. Eur. E. 243/22 – quoted in Richard J. Popplewell,
ibid., pp. 22-25.
18 Quoted in J. M. Brown, Modern India: The Origins of an Asian Democracy, OUP, 1985, p. 100
19 Mss. Eur. D. 573/84, Letter dated 8 December 1908, LOR:L.
20 Note by the Home Department on Letter from the government of India, No. 91-p, dated 8 January
1910, HAD April 1910, nos. 59-62, quoted in Richard J. Popplewell, ibid, p. 110.
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