Revolutionary Women and Nationalist Heroes in Bengal, 1930 to the 1980s

Bina Das, revolutionary terrorist and political activist, confessed in a written statement to attempting to murder the British governor of Bengal on February 6, 1932. This extraordinary confession, nearly five typed double-spaced pages in its full version, was offered to a Special Tribunal of judges convened ten days later under the Bengal Emergency Powers Ordinance. The tribunal charged Bina Das, then a twenty-year-old college student, for possession of arms and attempting to murder the Governor of Bengal, F. Stanley Jackson, at the University of Calcutta convocation, where she took aim and shot three bullets at him. The story, likely apocryphal, was that Jackson, a famed cricketer who had played for England, ducked at the crucial moment and survived. Bina Das was sentenced for attempted murder under section 307 of the Indian Penal Code and was ordered to undergo imprisonment for nine years: the possession of arms charge was dropped. Bina Das' confession was a highly crafted document, written in English and intended for circulation. Multiple copies of the confession are preserved in archives of this period -- in official legal and police files, in newspapers and in legislative debates about the effectiveness of British repressive laws. Within days, the statement was banned from publication by an emergency colonial ordinance. Nonetheless, it circulated widely over the next half-century, suggesting the widespread resonance of Bina Das's actions and words. A remarkable historical document, it provided evidence of an individual woman's voice and her self-awareness that she was historically relevant. It has since been used by historians as evidence of the widespread participation of women in India's history of nationalism. Adapted from the source document.