Bhavabhushan Mitra, or Bhaba Bhusan Mitter, alias Swami Satyananda Puri (1881– 27 January 1970), was a Bengali Indian freedom fighter and an influential social worker.
He represented the link between two radical trends: the highly centralised spirit of showdown personified by Barindra Kumar Ghose; and the decentralised loose federation of regional units advancing in a progressive revolution, as practised by the Jugantar movement under Bagha Jatin.
Bhavabhushan discovered Swami Vivekananda's teachings, which had inspired the physical fitness programme in which Jatin was assisted by his boyhood friend, Kunjalal Saha of Kushtia.
As Jatin's messengers, on several occasions Bhavabhushan and Chandi Majumdar used to meet Sarala Devi, Nivedita, P. Mitter, Bipin Chandra Pal, Krishnakumar Mitra.
After the death of his illustrious grandfather, Rajnarain Basu, Barin opened a club for self-defence where recruits from Kolkata, Kushtia and Dhaka came and it was regularly attended by Satyen Chaudhuri, Jyoti Prasad Chaudhuri, Naren Chakravarti and the brothers Sailendra and Sushil Sen.[9] One of the strangers who visited the Sil's Lodge "was dressed like a sadhu and it was given locally that he was ill (...) This man was taken periodically in a palki to Digripahar, a hill nearby, for open air treatment; under this cloak the party carried out their experiments with explosives in the jungles.
[11] In the same month, Barin and a party of seven including Bhavabhushan and Bijoykumar Nag of Khulna committed a hold-up in Rampore Boalia, according to Indra Nandi's statement.
He mentioned, further: "There was a man called Jyotish [Majumdar, alias Chandi] in the garden who had been deputed by Bhaba Bhusan Mitra; he had in his possession a dynamite bomb which he took to throw at a padre somewhere in Jessore.
Lele, Upen Banerjee, Ullaskar Dutta, Prafulla Chaki (the brave companion of Khudiram Bose in the Muzaffarpur expedition), three of Sri Aurobindo's cousins from Sagardari in Jessore (Birendra Nath, Sishir Kumar and Hemendra Prasad Ghose), Krishna Jiban Sanyal, Narendra Nath Bakshi, Sudhir Bagchi alias Sarkar (recruited by Sishir Kumar who learnt self-defence from Jatin Mukherjee alias Bagha Jatin).
Sealy mentions also among Barin's friends two brothers, Narendra (supra) and Phanindra Chakravarti, grandsons of Dwarkanath Vidyabhusan of Changripota, both of them educated at Deoghar also.
Whereas this outrage is believed to have been committed by Barin's party, a confidential deponent informed Denham that this was the work of the Kushtia Society, of which "Jatindra Nath Mukharji was the leading spirit".
[16] Later, on 25 June 1908, the approver Naren Gossain told the Magistrate of Alipore that Barin and Upen Banerjee had informed him of this murder and he had learnt that "Bhavabhushan [Mitra] of Jessore or Khulna, and Kshitish [Sanyal], both residing at Kushtia, were concerned in it".
[18] Sealy came to be informed that in April 1908 Barin had sent some machinery from Sil's Lodge to his mother's bungalow: believed to be deranged, she, Swarnalata Devi, "used to rush out with a sword whenever anyone approached the Raidih house".
Moreover, one can easily evaluate his importance in the party hierarchy when Sealy records: "Mani Basu, Bhaba Bhusan, Subodh Mullick and two other Bengalis were seen in secret conversation in the compound of a ruined house".
[19] Early in May 1908, escaping the massive arrests in Bengal, Bhavabhushan fled to Mumbai under the name of Advaitananda Brahmachari; when a money order sent by one Swami Krishnananda from 275 Upper Chitpur Road of Kolkata (one of Jatin's addresses, C/o his uncle, Dr Hemantakumar Chatterjee) reached him, the Police detained it for investigation.
Exhibit LXXXVI found at the "garden" contained "a very important book, full of notes regarding the members of the society, references to religious, moral and political training, study of revolutionary histories of other countries, art of war etc".
[20] Meanwhile, Tilak published two papers ("The Country's Misfortune" and "These Remedies are not Lasting") in his Kesari, supporting the extremist challenge in Bengal since the Muzaffarpore incident; he advised the Government to appreciate the changed psychology of the people.
With his new identity as Swami Bhumananda, on 22 July 1908, Bhavabhushan joined a group of revolutionaries who, disguised as fierce monks, created a panic by attacking the armed police to protest against Tilak's trial : the Leader was accused of fomenting hatred and contempt, exciting disloyalty to HM's Government.
In the bomb factory in Kolkata, the Police also found some letters from the Chandmari post office of Darjeeling by the above-mentioned Krishnananda, addressed to one Birkumar Mukherjee.
[21] "Following the arrest of the Manicktola conspirators and the legal onslaught on the Calcutta Anushilan Samiti (1908–1909), (...) [Jatin Mukherjee's] appearance on the scene just at this juncture was a god-send to the revolutionary workers.
Also he "had immediately taken up with old confederates and members of the Alipore gang, notably Bijoy Chakravarti, Pramatha Bhattacharji, Amaresh Kanjilal in Jessore, from which place he suddenly disappeared on 8 January.
"[24] From 2 March 1916, according to Sealy's Report, Bhababhushan assumed the name of Satyananda Puri, left Sarada Datta and made a show of renouncing the world.
Bhababhushan gave out that money was needed by the revolutionaries to defray the expenses of active workers, to maintain the families of those killed or imprisoned and to collect arms and ammunition for the sending of emissaries to the Straits and the Far East where there were German Consuls.
[26] Another youth found at the ashram was Kiran Chandra Chatterji, an acquaintance of Hemangini Devi and the monk Thakurdas Babaji : according to Sealy, "the Sadhu was the religious preceptor of these dangerous persons" such as Dr Jnanendra Nath Mitra of Patna, Kedarnath Banerjee, a pleader from Kolkata, practising in Bankipore and the latter's wife, Hemangini who, believed Sealy, was "used by Dr Mitra in furtherance of his plans in much the same way as the notorious [sic!]
During 1906–1907, they had received the visit of Upendranath Banerjee, Bibhutibhushan Sarkar, Ullaskar Datta and Prafulla Chaki, four important associates of Barin, and they had been to see Thakurdas at Dhaniapahari.
Sealy considered the sequel to Bhababhushan's stay in Deoghar to be interesting : first of all, it afforded light on the workings of the revolutionaries; it showed, moreover, how the various branches of the conspiracy were interconnected and the extraordinary manner in which all known workers and sympathisers were marked down and made use of when opportunity offered.
After Ananta's arrest, a search made of the latter's belongings led to important discoveries: whereabouts of the absconding associates of Jatindranath Mukherjee such as Atulkrishna Ghose and Nolinikanta Kar, "two dangerous and important absconders", Ashutosh Ray and Anukul Mukherjee of Rodda's Theft case, Gopendra Ray, Ashutosh Lahiri; notes on Abinash Chandra Chakravarti, the ex-munsiff of Pabna and Monghyr, Jyotish Pal of the Balasore case, "32 Haritakibagan, 10 Abhoy Haldar's Lane, the headquarters of the Sibpur gang... Enquiries in Bengal showed that the youth was known as a member of the gang and was in close touch with Makhan Ghose, Atul Ghose, Nolini Kanta Kar, Debendra Chaudhuri of the Jajpur dakaiti case and Jatin Mukherjee, and that he had been lost sight of.
But Bhavabhushan seems to have avoided all overtly active part in the subsequent episodes of freedom fight, though generations of revolutionaries in Bihar and Bengal admit having consulted him and followed his advice in critical situations.
In Bihar, behind the scene, he was as much involved in the Non Cooperation Movement in 1922, as in the mass agitation organised by Sahajananda Sarasvati's Kishan Sabha ("Peasants' Guild') in the districts like Champaran, Saran, Monghyr, Madhubani to protest against the rampant unemployment, where "social banditry" prevailed, followed by a refusal to pay taxes.
Having detected this tendency in several other former revolutionaries like Jadugopal Mukherjee and Satish Sarkar, Bhupendra Kumar Datta, Bagha Jatin's loyal follower, warned them individually, in the name of History, adding supplementary facts on the agniyuga ("Fiery Epoch") that preceded and prepared the Gandhian freedom movement.