by Arunabha Sengupta
6 February 1932. Senate Hall of the Calcutta University.
The Governor of Bengal was addressing the convocation.
The balding 52-year-old man was none other than old “Jacker”, for the last five years Sir Francis Stanley Jackson.
20 Tests had seen him score 1415 runs at 48.79, capture 24 wickets at 33.29, and he had led England to Ashes triumph in 1905, his only series as captain … After cricket, Jackson had been a Tory MP and Financial Secretary to the War Office.
It was he who had asked Churchill what post he would accept in a Tory government if he crossed the House. “Ah Jacker, I’m afraid the only job I’d want is the one I shall never get,” had been the answer.
But destiny had other plans. Churchill indeed became the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Jackson, knighted in 1927, became Governor of Bengal, and thereby Chancellor of the Calcutta University.
It was as Chancellor that Jackson was speaking to the graduate students.
Seated among the girl degree-holders was 20-year-old Bina Das.
Daughter of a well-known Brahmo teacher, Beni Madhab Das, she had been educated in St Joh’s Diocesan Higher Secondary School and Bethune College.
And she was a member of the semi-revolutionary female student body Chhatri Sangha.
Her elder sister Kalyani was a freedom fighter and at that moment serving her sentence in prison.
Before the convocation ceremony Bina had been supplied a loaded revolver by another freedom fighter and college senior at Bethune Kamala Das Gupta. The weapon was concealed in her gown.
Sir Jackson had just announced that he had procured a grant of four lakh rupees for the University that year when young Bina Das acted. She leapt forward towards the dias, levelling her revolver on the Governor, and fired five shots in rapid succession.
However, she missed. Jackson ducked. Lieutenant Colonel Hassan Suhrawardy, surgeon, military officer and first Muslim Vice-Chancellor of the Calcutta University, was nearby. He fell on the girl, and with the help of a European accomplice managed to restrain her.
Apparently, Bina had stood up as the Governor had approached the podium, but perhaps her nerve had failed her. She had resumed her seat.
Three minutes into the speech, she had attempted the assassination. Her aim, even as she shot, had been shaky. Once brought down on her chair, she fired a fifth and last shot which flew over the head of the amazed spectators.
A shaken Jackson said that it had been a lucky escape for him and his wife who had accompanied him. “The girl shot point-blank, at a range of only 10 feet,” he observed as friends crowded around him and Lady Jackson to congratulate their coming out unscathed.
Later on, when nerves had been restored, he joked that it had been the ‘Quickest duck he had ever made.’
Jackson ended his address after which the ceremony was wrapped up quickly.
Bina Das, arrested, was sentenced to nine years.
She apparently received the charges calmly enough. “I fired on the governor impelled by love for my country, which is repressed. I sought only a way to death by offering myself at my country’s feet and thus end my suffering. I invite the attention of all to the situation created by the measures of the government … I can assure you I have no personal feeling against the governor. As a man he is as good as my father, but as governor of Bengal he represents a system which has kept enslaved 300,000,000 men and women of my country.”
Bina was released from jail in 1939 and joined the Congress party. In 1942, she participated in the Quit India movement and was imprisoned for three more years. Later she became a member of the Bengal Provincial Legislative Assembly and subsequently of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly. She was awarded the Padma Shri in 1960 and passed away in 1986.
Bina Das was born on 24 Aug 1911.