Quick Facts — Jatindra Nath Das
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Full Name | Jatindra Nath Das (also known as Jatin Das) |
| Born | 27 October 1904, Calcutta, Bengal Presidency |
| Died | 13 September 1929, 1:00 PM, Lahore Jail (Age 24) |
| Father | Bankim Behari Das (government employee) |
| Mother | Suhasini Das (died when Jatin was 9 years old) |
| Organisation | Anushilan Samiti → Hindustan Republican Association → HSRA |
| Skill | Bomb-maker — trained by Sachindranath Sanyal |
| Known For | 63-day hunger strike in Lahore Jail, 1929 |
| Reason for Strike | Equal treatment for Indian political prisoners vs European prisoners |
| Funeral Crowd | 500,000+ in Calcutta alone |
| Last Song Sung | Rabindranath Tagore's "Ekla Chalo Re" |
| Called By Bose | "The young Dadhichi of India" |
| Connected To | Bhagat Singh, Batukeshwar Dutt, Chandrashekhar Azad, Durgawati Devi |
13 September 1929, 1:00 PM — A Death That Shook an Empire
Lahore Central Jail. A Friday afternoon in September.
Jatindra Nath Das — 24 years old, thin as paper after 63 days without food — breathes his last in the lap of his younger brother Kiron Das.
He had gone on hunger strike on 13 July 1929. He had been warned. He had warned others. He had chosen to stay anyway.
Outside the jail, thousands had been gathering for days. The news of his deteriorating condition had spread from Lahore to Calcutta to Bombay to Delhi. Every day, newspapers carried updates — his pulse, his temperature, his weight. India was watching a man choose death over submission — and the British Empire, for once, did not know what to do.
When news of his death reached the Central Legislative Assembly the next morning, Motilal Nehru rose to propose an adjournment motion — a direct censure of the British government. It passed by 55 votes against 47.
The Viceroy cabled London: "Mr Das of the Conspiracy Case, who was on hunger strike, died this afternoon at 1 PM. Last night, five of the hunger strikers gave up their hunger strike. So there are only Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt who are on strike."
Two men — Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt — continued. For 116 days total.
But Jatin Das was gone.
His crime? Making the bombs used to protest British repression. His demand? That Indian revolutionaries be treated like humans — not animals.
India gave him a funeral fit for a king. The British gave him a jail cell and a refusal.
Caption: Jatindra Nath Das (27 October 1904 – 13 September 1929) — Indian revolutionary and HSRA member who died after a 63-day hunger strike in Lahore Central Jail, demanding equal treatment for Indian political prisoners. Age 24. (Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons)
Chapter 1: The Calcutta Boy Who Lost His Mother and Found a Revolution (1904–1921)
Jatindra Nath Das was born on 27 October 1904 in Calcutta, into a middle-class Bengali Kayastha family. His father, Bankim Behari Das, was a government employee. His mother Suhasini Das died when Jatin was just 9 years old.
He was raised by his father. He was a brilliant student — completing his matriculation in the First Division. He was quiet, serious, soft-spoken. His comrade Shiv Verma, who described him later in his memoir Samsmritiyan, remembered him as someone with a deep inner conviction that never needed to announce itself.
Calcutta in the early 1900s was a city full of fire. The revolutionary tradition of Bengal — from the Anushilan Samiti to the Jugantar Party — was alive in every college corridor, every teashop, every revolutionary pamphlet passed hand to hand under the table.
As a teenager, Jatin Das joined the Anushilan Samiti — a Bengali revolutionary organisation that believed physical strength and armed resistance were inseparable from the fight for freedom. The Samiti trained its members not just in ideology but in practical preparation: bomb-making, tactical operations, underground networking.
He was 17 years old when Mahatma Gandhi launched the Non-Cooperation Movement in 1921. Despite his commitment to revolutionary methods, Jatin Das participated. He was not dogmatic. He understood that the freedom struggle needed all hands — different paths toward one goal.
But after the movement was suspended following the Chauri Chaura incident of 1922, Jatin Das — like Bhagat Singh, like Chandrashekhar Azad, like Ram Prasad Bismil — turned back to the path he believed was the only one that could actually work.
Chapter 2: First Arrest, First Hunger Strike — A Rehearsal for What Was Coming (1925–1928)
In November 1925, while studying for his BA at Vidyasagar College in Calcutta, Jatin Das was arrested by British police for his revolutionary activities and imprisoned at Mymensingh Central Jail.
What he found there changed everything about how he would approach the coming years.
The conditions for Indian political prisoners in Mymensingh were degrading. Dirty uniforms, contaminated food, no books, no newspapers, no paper to write on. Meanwhile, in the same jail system, European prisoners lived in a different world entirely — clean cells, better food, access to reading material.
Jatin Das went on hunger strike to protest. After 20 days, the Jail Superintendent apologised. Das ended the fast.
He had learned something crucial: the hunger strike as a weapon worked. Not because it was comfortable — it was agony. But because it forced the British into an impossible position. Capitulate and show weakness. Or hold firm and watch a man die publicly.
He was then transferred as punishment to Dacca Central Jail and then to the notorious Mianwali Jail — the British response to any Indian prisoner who dared to resist through fasting.
He was released in October 1928.
During this period, he came into contact with the Hindustan Republican Association and its successor the HSRA. He had been influenced by figures like Swami Vivekananda and the Bengal revolutionary tradition. Now he was part of the national network that Ram Prasad Bismil had helped build before being hanged in 1927.
The next task given to him was the most dangerous he had yet received.
Chapter 3: The Bomb Maker Behind the Assembly Explosion (1929)
Bhagat Singh was planning the most audacious act in the HSRA's history — throwing bombs inside the Central Legislative Assembly to protest the Trade Disputes Bill and the Public Safety Bill. The bombs had to be smoke bombs — non-lethal, designed only for noise and disruption. They had to work perfectly.
Jatin Das was invited to Agra specifically to make the bombs.
He came from Calcutta. He had learned bomb-making under Sachindranath Sanyal — co-founder of the HRA — during his earlier years with the revolutionary network. His technical knowledge was trusted absolutely.
He made the bombs. On 8 April 1929, Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt threw them from the visitors' gallery of the Central Legislative Assembly. The plan worked exactly as designed — noise, smoke, pamphlets, no deaths, voluntary surrender.
Jatin Das was not in the gallery. But his hands had built the device that made history.
On 14 June 1929, he was arrested for his role in making the bomb — and imprisoned in Lahore Central Jail to be tried under the supplementary Lahore Conspiracy Case.
He had been in jail before. He knew what was coming.
What he found this time was worse than anything before.
Chapter 4: The Conditions That Made a Hunger Strike Inevitable
Lahore Central Jail, 1929. For Indian political prisoners, this was the reality:
Uniforms not washed for days. Stiff, filthy, rotting fabric against skin already raw from imprisonment.
Kitchen area overrun by rats and cockroaches. Food that was technically provided but practically inedible — contaminated, insufficient, humiliating.
No newspapers. No paper to write on. No books. The British had calculated that denying reading material was the most efficient way to destroy a revolutionary's mind from the inside.
No recognition as political prisoners. The HSRA members were classified as common criminals — murderers, thieves — not as people who had acted out of political conviction.
Now compare this with the European prisoners in the same jail. Clean cells. Decent food. Access to reading material. Treated with basic dignity.
Same jail. Same British administration. Different rules for different races.
Bhagat Singh had first noticed this injustice during a brief imprisonment in 1927. He had carried the memory with him. When he and Batukeshwar Dutt were sentenced in June 1929 and began their hunger strike on 15 June from their respective jails, their demand was clear: Indian political prisoners must receive the same rights and dignity as European prisoners.
Jatin Das was in Lahore's Borstal Jail section. When news of Bhagat Singh's strike reached him, he was asked to join.
His response revealed the character of the man completely.
He did not rush to say yes. He warned the others: "Inching toward death in a hunger strike is far more difficult than death in a gun fight or on the gallows. It is better not to join the strike than suffer a premature withdrawal."
He was not afraid of death. He was being practical. He had done this before. He knew that once you begin, you cannot stop. To stop is to surrender everything.
When his comrades assured him of their determination, Jatin Das joined the hunger strike on 13 July 1929.
He would never eat again.
Chapter 5: 63 Days — The Slow Death of a Brave Man
Day 1 — 13 July 1929. Lahore Central Jail. Jatin Das stops eating.
The jail authorities initially tried to ignore it. Then they tried force-feeding. The tube was forced down his throat. Food was poured in. His body rejected it. His lungs were damaged in the process — milk going the wrong way, burning tissue already weakened by weeks without nutrition.
He did not stop.
By early August, his condition was serious enough that the jail committee recommended his unconditional release. The British government rejected the recommendation. Their offer: release on bail. Jatin Das refused. Bail meant admitting guilt. Bail meant accepting the British court's authority over him. He would not.
He only ever accepted medicine when Bhagat Singh asked him to take it. When someone once asked him why he always listened to Bhagat Singh when he refused everyone else, he replied simply: "You know not how brave he is. I can never refuse his offerings."
By early September, paralysis had begun spreading through his body. He could no longer move normally. His brother Kiron Das had been allowed to stay with him — watching his older brother die slowly, day by day, unable to do anything.
In his final days, he sang. Rabindranath Tagore's "Ekla Chalo Re" — Walk Alone. The song of a man who continues even when no one walks beside him.
The irony was that he was not alone. Bhagat Singh was on strike in another part of the jail. Batukeshwar Dutt was on strike elsewhere. Across multiple jails, dozens of HSRA prisoners had joined by July. But in his cell, surrounded by British jailers and a helpless younger brother, Jatin Das was effectively alone with his choice.
13 September 1929. Friday. 1:00 PM.
Jatindra Nath Das died in the lap of his brother Kiron.
He was 24 years old.
His hunger strike had lasted 63 days.
Chapter 6: The Aftermath — A Nation That Could Not Look Away
What happened in the hours and days after Jatin Das's death was unlike anything British India had seen.
The British did not expect what came next. The jail's own committee had recommended releasing him — even the jailers had understood what was happening. But the government had calculated that holding firm would deter other revolutionaries.
They were catastrophically wrong.
Inside the Assembly: The morning after his death, Motilal Nehru rose in the Central Legislative Assembly and moved an adjournment motion — a direct parliamentary censure of the British government for allowing Jatin Das to die. He said: "The charge is that the government has stood still while human life was ebbing away. Nero fiddled while Rome was burning. Our benign Government has gone one better than Nero."
The motion passed by 55 votes against 47.
In the Punjab Legislature: Mohammad Alam and Gopi Chand Bhargava resigned from the Punjab Legislative Council in protest — two sitting members of a colonial legislature publicly resigning over one prisoner's death.
The Photograph: On 14 September 1929, The Tribune newspaper published a photograph of Jatin Das's emaciated corpse taken at the entrance of Lahore jail. The image — a young man reduced to bone and skin by 63 days of British indifference — was reproduced across India. It is considered one of the most powerful images of the entire independence movement.
What the British themselves said: The Deputy Commissioner of Lahore wrote: "Undoubtedly the courage and endurance which J.N. Das has shown has extracted sympathy and admiration."
Even the empire's own officials could not pretend to be unmoved.
Chapter 7: The Funeral That Became a National Event
Durgawati Devi — known as Durga Bhabhi, one of the bravest women revolutionaries of the freedom movement — led the funeral procession from Lahore Central Jail.
Jatin Das's body was placed on a train to Calcutta. What followed was extraordinary.
Every shop closed from Lahore to Calcutta. The entire length of the railway journey — through cities, towns and villages across hundreds of kilometres — shops shuttered. People poured onto railway platforms as the train passed. They showered coins on the coffin. Some collected those coins and said they would keep them as ornaments for their children — a piece of the martyr's journey to pass down.
In Kanpur: Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi and Jawaharlal Nehru led the procession when the train stopped there.
In Allahabad: Kamla Nehru led the reception.
At Howrah Station, Calcutta: Subhash Chandra Bose received the coffin — carried on the shoulders of Dr. Gopi Chand Bhargava, Dr. Muhammad Alam, Dr. Saifuddin Kitchlew and Bhagat Singh's own father Sardar Kishan Singh.
Bose led a two-mile procession on foot from Howrah station to the cremation ground. An estimated 500,000 people — five lakh — walked or watched.
Bose called him: "The young Dadhichi of India" — comparing him to the mythological sage Dadhichi who sacrificed his own life so others could survive.
Nehru said: "Another name has been added to the long and splendid roll of Indian martyrs. Let us bow our heads and pray for strength to carry on the struggle, however long it may be and whatever the consequences, till the victory is ours."
Subhash Chandra Bose had personally sent train fare from Calcutta to transport Jatin's body from Lahore to Bengal. He understood what this death meant — and he made sure it was not forgotten by geography.
Caption: Jatindra Nath Das — whose photograph of his emaciated body, published in The Tribune on 14 September 1929, shook the conscience of the Indian masses and forced the British to revise their policies on handing over prisoners' bodies to their families. (Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons)
Chapter 8: What Jatin Das's Death Changed
The death of Jatindra Nath Das was not just a tragedy. It was a turning point.
For the hunger strike: After his death on Day 63, Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt continued. They held on until 5 October 1929 — 116 days for Bhagat Singh, 114 days for Dutt. The British partially conceded their demands, recognising some political prisoner rights.
For British prison policy: The publication of the photograph of Jatin Das's body in The Tribune created so much public outrage that the British changed their policies on handling prisoners' remains — they could no longer deny bodies to families without facing enormous public anger.
For the freedom movement: Jatin Das's martyrdom is credited by historians as one of the triggers for Gandhi's Civil Disobedience Movement. His death made the brutality of British rule visible to every Indian who could not otherwise be reached. It was not a political speech or a manifesto. It was a photograph of a dead 24-year-old Bengali boy who had refused to eat until he was treated like a human being.
As Bhagat Singh and his comrades wrote to the British government after Das's death: "Let us point out that India can produce many more Jatins. The last two named laid down their lives in the Andamans in 1917 — the first breathed his last after 92 days of hunger strike while the other died a great hero after silently undergoing inhuman tortures for a full six months."
They were warning the empire. The empire did not listen.
Key Statistics
| Metric | Jatindra Nath Das |
|---|---|
| Age at death | 24 years |
| Hunger strike duration | 63 days (13 July – 13 September 1929) |
| First hunger strike | 20 days, Mymensingh Jail, 1925 |
| Reason for strike | Equal treatment for Indian political prisoners |
| Government response | Offered bail — refused. Never released unconditionally |
| Funeral crowd in Calcutta | 500,000+ (five lakh) |
| Assembly motion after death | Adjournment motion passed 55 to 47 |
| Resignations triggered | 2 Punjab Legislative Council members resigned |
| Postage stamp | Issued 1979 — 50th death anniversary |
| Film portrayal | Played by Amitabh Bhattacharjee in The Legend of Bhagat Singh (2002) |
Modern Legacy
| Recognition | Status |
|---|---|
| Postage Stamp | Issued in 1979 on 50th death anniversary |
| Film | The Legend of Bhagat Singh (2002) — supporting character |
| Memorial at Lahore | In Pakistan — not accessible to Indians |
| Wikipedia page | Exists — reasonably detailed |
| UPSC Syllabus | Mentioned in context of Lahore Conspiracy Case and hunger strikes |
| Separate biography | Rarely written — almost always mentioned only as "the man who died on Day 63" |
Sources
- • Wikipedia: Jatindra Nath Das — en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jatindra_Nath_Das
- • Grokipedia: Jatindra Nath Das —grokipedia.com/page/Jatindra_Nath_Das
- • The Untaught Historian: Rediscovering Bhagat Singh — The Hunger Strike — theuntaughthistorian.com
- • Awaz The Voice: Jatindra Nath Das Martyrdom as Catalyst — awazthevoice.in
- • JETIR Research Paper: Hunger Strikes by Bhagat Singh and Comrades — jetir.org
- • IAS Gyan: Jatindra Nath Das Contributions — iasgyan.in
- • Wikipedia: Lahore Conspiracy Case — en.wikipedia.org
- • All images: Wikimedia Commons — Public
Domain, free to use
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Here are some common questions about Jatindra Nath Das
Jatindra Nath Das, also known as Jatin Das, was an Indian revolutionary freedom fighter born on 27 October 1904 in Calcutta. He was a member of the HSRA and made the bombs thrown by Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt in the Central Legislative Assembly on 8 April 1929. He died on 13 September 1929 after a 63-day hunger strike in Lahore Central Jail, aged 24.
Jatin Das went on hunger strike to demand that Indian political prisoners be treated equally to European prisoners in British jails. Indian prisoners had dirty uniforms, contaminated food infested with rats and cockroaches, no newspapers and no paper to write on — while European prisoners in the same jails received clean conditions and basic dignity.
His hunger strike lasted 63 days — from 13 July 1929 to 13 September 1929. It was part of a larger hunger strike movement in which Bhagat Singh had started fasting on 15 June 1929. Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt continued for 114–116 days total after Jatin Das's death.
No. The jail committee recommended his unconditional release as his condition deteriorated. The British government rejected this and only offered release on bail. Jatin Das refused bail — accepting it would mean admitting guilt and recognising the court's authority. He chose to continue the strike and died on the 63rd day.
Durgawati Devi (Durga Bhabhi) led the funeral procession from Lahore to Calcutta by train. Every shop closed from Lahore to Calcutta as the train passed. People showered coins on the coffin at every station. Subhash Chandra Bose received the coffin at Howrah station and led a two-mile procession to the cremation ground. An estimated 500,000 people attended in Calcutta alone — one of the largest gatherings in Indian history at that time.
Why Jatindra Nath Das Matters
Bhagat Singh threw the bomb. Batukeshwar Dutt was beside him. But Jatin Das made the bomb — and then went to jail for it, and then refused to eat until the British treated Indians like human beings, and then died rather than accept bail on the empire's terms.
He is almost always described as a footnote to the Assembly bombing story. He appears in Chapter 6 of Batukeshwar Dutt's biography as the man who "died on Day 63." He is rarely given a chapter of his own.
This is that chapter.
He was 24 years old. He left no autobiography, no extensive letters, no long revolutionary record. He had nine years between losing his mother and joining his first revolutionary organisation. He had four years between his first hunger strike and his last.
He spent those four years building bombs and building himself into someone who could hold 63 days against an empire.
"Another name," said Jawaharlal Nehru on the day after his death, "has been added to the long and splendid roll of Indian martyrs."
It deserves to be remembered on its own — not just as someone else's footnote.