By: Mou Banerjee Published in: *The Wire* Date: February 2, 2026 Source: https://thewire.in/books/how-a-christian-convert-took-on-a-butcher-judge-in-colonial-india A Brahmin convert to Catholicism, Bhabanicharan Banerjee, had once communicated his vision for a free nation in the toughest of circumstances – while undergoing trial.
The following is an excerpt from *Mou Banerjee’s The Disinherited: The Politics of Christian Conversion in Colonial India, *published by Harvard University Press. The book is distributed in India by Harper Collins India. Douglas Kingsford, the feared and hated judge, presided over an astonishing scene in his court in September 1907. Judge Kingsford was already infamous for his merciless treatment of prominent Bengali politicians and ideologues during sedition trials. He had sentenced nationalist leaders like Bipin Chandra Pal and Bhupendranath Dutta to prison earlier in 1907 But on that hot autumn day, Kingsford found himself staring down a particularly intractable culprit, who was being represented by an even more obdurate barrister. The accused was a Brahmin convert to Catholicism, Bhabanicharan Banerjee, who self-styled himself as Brahmabandhab (Theophilus) Upadhyay. He was the editor of a rabble-rousing Bengali vernacular periodical called the Sandhya. In this periodical, over its four-year print run from 1904 to 1908, Brahmabandhab Upadhyay espoused armed extremism as the most important and immediate form of resistance to colonial repression. The paper was very cheap and cost one paisa, and by 1906 it had reached a circulation of almost 7,000 copies a day. His editorials, written in colloquial idiomatic Bengali, had taken that message to every corner of Bengal, especially to the non-elite Bengalis. His violent rhetoric was a response to the turbulent political atmosphere during the swadeshi or “own country” movement in Bengal and across India, which had emerged in protest of the partition of Bengal by the viceroy Lord Curzon on October 16, 1905. Brahmabandhab found himself in a difficult situation, since Kingsford had often been the target of his revolutionary diatribes. He had smeared Kingsford with the appellation of paji or “wicked.” He also frequently referred to Kingsford as the kasai kazi, or the “Butcher Judge.” On August 28, 1907, a mere fortnight before his own arrest, Brahmabandhab learned that Kingsford had ordered the whipping of a fifteen-year-old boy named Sushil who was accused of brawling with the police. The magistrate turned a deaf ear to all pleas for clemency on account of the boy’s youth. Brahmabandhab was furious: “The Government of Bengal has set up a Kasai Kazi (a butcher of a Magistrate) at Lal Bazar. . . . Sushil Chandra Sen was tried yesterday – one loathes to call it a trial – he was butchered; how to talk of a trial before a butcher!” On September 21, 1907, as it became clear that Brahmabandhab faced a lengthy and rigorous prison term, the Sandhya printed a parody of folk singer Pagla Kanai’s songs, heaping obloquies on Kingsford: The prison to me is Heaven. O it is the kind favor of the butcher Kazi. Whatever may be our fate, brothers, To the Andamans, if need be, we shall go! Tempers were frayed inside the courtroom at Lal Bazar. Indecorous confrontations between Upadhyay, his legal team, and the magistrate were regular occurrences. The meanness of Kingsford’s conduct weighed heavily on the trial. The Bengalee, a newspaper founded and edited by Surendranath Banerjee, a prominent leader of the “Moderate” old-school faction of the Indian National Congress, which was usually restrained in its reportage, recorded at least two such instances. On September 20, 1907, Brahmabandhab and his counsel J. N. Roy were “rudely” treated by a police constable, who hit and pushed them around repeatedly. Kingsford took notice of the incident and instructed the police to take steps to discipline the constable, but TheBengalee went on to say, “We are glad Mr. Kingsford took prompt notice of the man’s conduct. But he must be very much mistaken if he thinks that mere departmental punishment can satisfy public opinion in such a case. Indeed, it is not enough that the man should be punished. The public must know what punishment he receives for his misconduct.” Kingsford was rude and condescending to Brahmabandhab’s legal counsel, the young barrister Chittaranjan Das, who would emerge as one of the most important nationalist politicians in India in the next two decades. On October 5, Chittaranjan had requested a short break in the court proceedings so he could eat lunch, being dizzy with hunger due to Kingsford only allowing a thirty-minute break during the day. Most barristers and lawyers usually went home for lunch in those days, making the half-hour break insufficient. Faced with Chittaranjan’s polite request, Kingsford behaved as if his dignity as a judge had been affronted and accused him of purposefully wasting the court’s time. The incident was, once again, reported widely in the Bengali press. TheBengalee opined ruefully on the deteriorating relationships between the Indian barristers and the British judges and the judiciary’s overt expression of racial prejudices: “Surely, Mr. Kingsford could easily have avoided being as discourteous as he was, without any detriment to the cause of justice. Mr. Kingsford is not only not cordial to Mr. Das, but is positively rude….Would he have treated it the way he did if it had proceeded from an English Barrister?” Noting the many daily humiliations the magistrate heaped on both the accused and his legal team, Chittaranjan Das was naturally worried about judicial impartiality. His daughter Aparna Devi left behind a poignant portrait of Chittaranjan and his client, exasperated by Kingsford’s petty tyranny, lack of decorum, and refusal to maintain any pretension of impartiality or even civil behavior toward Indians: Father decided to represent Brahmabandhab Upadhyay. . . . During the trial, my father protested against the prejudiced conduct of Magistrate Kingsford. . . . My father said to Brahmabandhab, “I feel a great reluctance in going back to the court of that unreasonably behaved magistrate— I regret that it seems you may have to go to prison.” Brahmabandhab smiled and replied, “I assure you – the English lack the power to imprison me.” The case was temporarily adjourned while Das made an ultimately unsuccessful application in the Calcutta High Court to have the trial shifted to another judge. While Kingsford and the government attorney Mr. Gregory asked for a continuation of the trial, Brahmabandhab had already refused to defend himself in a judicial court administering British justice. To him, the British were an alien power, with no right of jurisdiction over Indian patriots. Brahmabandhab had always been an extraordinary prose stylist: the popularity of the Sandhya, and the unease that his fiery language caused among British administrators, reflects his charisma and the power of his stirring speeches. Standing on the dock, Brahmabandhab now made an impassioned plea that rocked the very foundation of the civilizing mission that purportedly justified British imperialism: the creation of Pax Britannica in India. In his statement, he said: I accept the entire responsibility of the publication, management and conduct of the newspaper, “Sandhya” and I say that I am the writer of the article, “Ekhane theke gechhi premer dai,” which appeared in the Sandhya of the 13th August, 1907, being one of the articles forming the subject-matter of this prosecution. But I do not want to take any part in this trial, because I do not believe that in carrying out my humble share of the God-appointed mission of Swaraj, I am in any way accountable to the alien people who happen to rule over us, and whose interest is and must necessarily be in the way of our true national development. This was a remarkable statement. To his contemporaries, both the young Bengali revolutionaries and the intelligentsia, Brahmabandhab’s supreme defiance of the colonial law of sedition was a personal and national declaration of independence. For Brahmabandhab, authentic nationalism, and the creation of an ethical vision of swaraj(self- government) and swadesh (one’s own country), depended on discrediting an alternate vision of colonial modernity’s superiority. By refusing to be judged on racial and civilizational criteria thinly veiled as legal discourse, Brahmabandhab sought to delegitimize the ideological foundations of Anglo- Indian law and the politics of imperial liberalism that made British rule in India possible. Brahmabandhab’s alternate vision was for a modern, free nation that was strong in the power of arms to keep itself secure from foreign depredation, a nation where the dignity and self-respect of its people was unassailable. He recognised, as Elizabeth Kolsky has pointed out, that “the rule in India must be understood from its inception as integrally linked to a principle of racial inequality and to a practice of legal exceptionalism.” His statement before Kingsford at the trial, read out by Chittaranjan on September 23, 1907, is in many ways a political declaration of his patriotic ideology: we get a glimpse of the intellectual basis of his opposition to colonial rule through his comments before the “Butcher Judge.” But it is also a glimpse into the soul of this enigmatic man. He defined his purpose in terms of love for his country, his patriotism, rather than the Brahminical Hindu faith of his birth or the Catholic Christianity that he had embraced. *Mou Banerjee is a historian. Banerjee received their Ph.D. from the Department of History at Harvard in 2018.* *Copyright © 2025 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Used by permission. All rights reserved.*
