Modern History: Module XVI:Revolutionaries

Revolutionaries
Modern History : Module XVI:Revolutionaries

Militant Movement / Revolutionary
Terrorist Movement
q The 1st time the term 'revolutionary terrorism' is used in the book on p
142, Chandra, who wrote 2 chapters on the Revolutionary Movement,
clearly said it is "a term we use without any pejorative meaning & for want
of a different term".
q In his later writings, Chandra stopped using word terrorism as it had
acquired a negative meaning in recent years. For example, in his
introduction to Bhagat Singh's Why I am an Atheist, published in 2006,
Chandra does not use terrorism and says, "Singh was not only one of
India's greatest freedom fighters & revolutionary socialists, but also one of
its early Marxist thinkers and ideologues."(Quoted from The Writings of
Bipan Chandra: The Making of Modern India, From Marx to Gandhi, Orient
Blackswan, 2012, p. 465).

Militant Movement or Revolutionary
Terrorist Movement
q "He had also wanted to make the change in India's Struggle for
Independence & had said so publicly. However, due to ill health & failing
eyesight he could not revise the book as he had planned. The coauthors
had planned that the volume in its revised version will use the formulation
that Bipan Chandra himself made in his later writings."
q “He was the person who 1st found & published in 1970 as a pamphlet at
his own expense Bhagat Singh’s now famous essay, ‘Why I am an Atheist’.
q His last public lecture was the Inaugural Lecture for the Bhagat Singh
Chair at JNU in April 2011, in which he said that Bhagat Singh, if he had
lived, would have been the Lenin of India, & his last (unfinished) book was
a biography of Bhagat Singh.”

Phases
The Movement can be categorized into 2 phases:
q Pre-World War:
Ø In the initial period, the movement was centered around religious

symbols due to which it lacked mass appeal
Ø These movements were directed towards various British
Institutions but lacked proper planning
q Post World War:

Ø The Movement was influenced from the Russian revolution &
became more organised & gained steam
Ø At this time, HSRA emerged. Most prominent leader of HSRA was
Bhagat Singh.

Revolutionary Movement
q Emerged in 1st decade of 20th century in Bengal (Kolkata) &
Maharashtra (Pune)
q Anushilan Samiti, Sandhya, Yuganthar were the groups formed in

Bengal & Mithra Mela, Abhinav Bharat were formed in Maharashtra

Phase 1: Pre World War
Reasons:
q Started as a byproduct of the growth of militant nationalism.
q The early movement of protest by the moderates failed to yield
results.
q Disappointment with the extremists.

q Extremist leaders, although they called upon the youth to make
sacrifices, failed to create an effective organization or find new
forms of political work to tap these revolutionary energies.
q Revolutionaries were inspired by the Irish Republican Army &
Japan’s victory over Russia in 1904.
q But most of all, it was a repressive policy of the government.

Methods
q Based on individual heroic acts.
q Organising assassinations of unpopular officials & of traitors,
targeting railways tracks, posts, telegraph offices & conducting
swadeshi dacoities to raise funds for revolutionary activities
q Organising military conspiracies with expectation of help from the

enemies of Britain.
q Secret societies
q They formed throughout country.
q They organized people on religious lines & tried to inspire the
young minds through the stories & deeds of gods & goddesses.
q They even had women members of whom many were
messengers.

Revolutionary Movement
q Emerged in 1st decade of 20th century.
q Revolutionary activities in different parts of India & abroad:
Bengal:
Ø By the 1870s, Calcutta’s student community was honeycombed with secret
societies.
Ø 1902: Anushilan Samiti was the 1st revolutionary group organised in Calcutta.
Ø Established by Promotha Mitter (including Barindra Ghosh, Jatindranath
Bannerjee it became one of the most organised revolutionary associations.
q Also in Midnapore (under Jnanendranath Basu)
q It had 2 prominent if somewhat independent arms in East & West Bengal

identified as Dhaka Anushilan Samiti centered in Dhaka & the
Jugantar group (centered at Calcutta) respectively.

Continued…
q Activities were limited to giving physical & moral training to the
members.
q 1906: an inner circle within Anushilan (Barindra Kumar Ghosh,
Bhupendranath Dutta) started the weekly Yugantar & conducted a
few abortive ‘actions’.
q Yugantar wrote on the police brutalities against participants of the

Barisal Conference:
q “The remedy lies with the people. The 30 crore people
inhabiting India must raise their 60 crore hands to stop this
curse of oppression. Force must be stopped by force.”
q The newspapers & journals advocating revolutionary activity
included Sandhya & Yugantar in Bengal.

Continued…
q Rashbehari Bose & Sachin Sanyal had organised a secret society
covering far-flung areas of Punjab, Delhi & United Provinces while
some others like Hemachandra Kanungo went abroad for military
& political training.
q 1907: An abortive attempt was made by the Yugantar group on
the life of a British official, Sir Fuller (the 1st Lt. Governor of the
new province of Eastern Bengal & Assam).
q 1907: An attempt was made to derail the train on which the Lt.
governor, Sir Andrew Fraser, was travelling.
q 1908: Barrah dacoity was organised by Dacca Anushilan under

Pulin Das to raise funds for revolutionary activities.

Alipore Conspiracy Case
q Also called the Maniktala bomb conspiracy was the trial of a
number of revolutionaries in Calcutta under charges of "Waging
war against the Government" of the British Raj between May
1908 & May 1909.
q The trial followed in the wake of the attempt on the life of

Presidency Magistrate Douglas Kingsford in Muzaffarpur by
Khudiram Bose & Prafulla Chaki in 1908.
q Two ladies, instead, got killed.
q Prafulla Chaki shot himself dead while Bose was tried & hanged.

Continued…
q The whole gang was arrested including the Ghosh brothers, who
were tried in this case.
q Chittaranjan Das defended Aurobindo.
q Aurobindo was acquitted but Barindra Ghosh & Ullaskar Dutt were
given the death penalty which was later commuted to life in
prison.
q During the trial, Narendra Gosain, who had turned approver, was
shot dead in jail by Satyendranath Bose & Kanailal Dutta.

Maharashtra
q 1879: The 1st revolutionary activities here was the organization of
the Ramosi Peasant Force by Vasudev Balwant Phadke.
q Aimed to rid the country of the British by instigating an armed

revolt by disrupting communication lines.

Maharashtra
q During the 1890s, Tilak propagated a spirit of revolutionary
nationalism, including use of violence through Ganapati & Shivaji
festivals & his journals Kesari & Maharatta.
q His disciples— the Chapekar brothers, Damodar & Balkrishna —

murdered the Plague Commissioner of Poona, Rand, & one Lt.
Ayerst in 1897.

Continued…
q Savarkar & his brother organised Mitra Mela, a secret

society, in 1899 which merged with Abhinav Bharat in
1904.
q Nasik Conspiracy Case: In 1909, Anant Kanhare & Ganesh

Savarkar shot dead Collector Jackson of Nasik with the
revolver sent by V.D. Savarkar.

1996
Match List-I with List-II and select the correct answer:

List-I. List-II
A) Abhinav Bharat Society 1. Sri Aurobindo Ghosh
B) Anushillan Samiti 2. Lala Hardayal
C) Gadar Party 3. C.R. Das
D) Swaraj Party 4. V.D. Savarkar
Codes:
(a) A-4;B-1;C-3;D-2
(b) A-1;B-4;C-3;D-2
(c) A-1;B-4;C-2;D-3
(d) A-4;B-1;C-2;D-3

Madras
q Vanchinathan Iyer (Vanchi) : killed Ashe( District Collector of
Tirunelveli), as he had fired on people who were protesting the
arrest of extremist leader V O Chidambaram Pillai
q Vanchi was a closed associate of V VS Aiyer who led Pondichery

Branch of VD Savarkar’s Abhinav Bharat Society.
q Both were members of Bharatha Matha Association

1999
‘Abhinava Bharat’ a secret society of revolutionaries was organised

by:
A)Khudiram Bose
B)V.D. Savarkar
C)Prafulla Chaki
D)Bhagat Singh

Punjab, Delhi & UP
q Rashbehari Bose & Sachin Sanyal had organised a secret society
covering far-flung areas of Punjab, Delhi & U P.
q The Punjab extremism was fueled by issues such as frequent

famines coupled with rise in land revenue & irrigation tax,
practice of ‘begar’ by zamindars.
q Among those active here were Lala Lajpat Rai & Ajit Singh, who
organised the extremist Anjuman-i-Mohisban-i-Watan in Lahore
with its journal, Bharat Mata.

q Extremism in the Punjab died down quickly after the Government
struck in May 1907 with a ban on political meetings & the
deportation of Lajpat Rai & Ajit Singh.
q After this, Ajit Singh & a few other associates Bhai Parmanand,
Lala Hardayal developed into full-scale revolutionaries.

Delhi-Lahore Conspiracy
q Involving Rashbehari Bose along with Sachin Sanyal, the
conspiracy culminated on the attempted assassination on 23
December 1912 when a home-made bomb was thrown on the
Viceroy Hardinge when the ceremonial procession moved through
Chandni Chowk . Viceroy escaped with his injuries, along with
Lady Hardinge.
q In the aftermath of the event, efforts were made to destroy the
Bengali & Punjabi revolutionary underground, which came under
intense pressure for sometime.
q Rash Behari successfully evaded capture for nearly 3 years,
becoming actively involved in the Ghadar conspiracy before it was
uncovered, & fleeing to Japan in 1916.

Abroad
q The need for shelter, the possibility of bringing out revolutionary
literature that would be immune from the Press Acts & the quest
for arms took Indian revolutionaries abroad.
q 1905: Shyamji Krishna Varma had started in London an Indian

Home Rule Society— ’India House’ — as a center for Indian
students, a scholarship scheme to bring radical youth from India.
q The revolutionaries such as Savarkar & Hardayal became the

members of India House.

Continued…
q Madanlal Dhingra of this circle assassinated, the India office
bureaucrat Curzon-Wyllie in 1909.
q Soon London became too dangerous for the revolutionaries,
particularly after Savarkar had been extradited in 1910 &
transported for life in the Nasik conspiracy case.
q New centers emerged on the continent- Paris & Geneva — from

where Madam Bhikaji Cama, a Parsi revolutionary who had
developed contacts with French socialists & who brought out
Bande Mataram, & Ajit Singh operated.
q After 1909 when Anglo-German relations deteriorated, Virendra

Chattopadhyaya chose Berlin as his base.

Bande Mataram
q It was an Indian nationalist publication from Paris
begun in September 1909 by the Paris Indian
Society.
q Founded by Madam Bhikaji Cama, the paper along

with the later publication of Talvar was aimed at
inciting nationalist unrest in India & sought to sway
the loyalty of the Sepoy of the British Indian Army.
q It was founded in response to the British ban

on Bankim Chatterjee's nationalist poem of Vande
mataram
q It continued the message of the journal Bande

Mataram edited by Sri Aurobindo & published from
Calcutta, & The Indian Sociologist that had earlier
been published from London by Shyamji Krishna
Varma.

1999
Q. Match List I with List II and select the correct answer:

List-I (Persons) List-II (Journals)
A. Shyamji Krishna Varma 1. Bande Mataram
B. Madam Bhikaji Cama 2. Indian Sociologist
C. Annie Besant 3. The Talwar
D. Aurobindo Ghosh 4. Commonweal
Codes:
ABCD
(a) 2 3 4 1
(b) 3 2 1 4
(c) 2 3 1 4
(d) 3 2 4 1

1991
Discuss the growth of revolutionary terrorism with special reference

to its ramification in Maharashtra, Bengal and Punjab till the first
decade of the 20th century.

Revolutionary Activity
During World War 1
q The Revolutionary activity was carried out through the Ghadr
Party in North America, Berlin Committee in Europe & some
scattered mutinies by Indian soldiers, such as the one in
Singapore.
q In India, for the revolutionaries who are striving for immediate
complete independence, the War seemed a heaven-sent
opportunity, draining India of troops (the number of white
soldiers went down at one point to only 15k), & raising the
possibility of financial & military help from Germany & Turkey—
the enemies of Britain.

Continued…
q The revolutionary activity in this period was concentrated in

Punjab & Bengal.
q The Bengal plans were part of a far-flung conspiracy organized by
Rashbehari Bose & Sachin Sanyal in cooperation with returned
Ghadrites in Punjab.
q Most Bengal groups were organized under Jatin Mukherji (Bagha

Jatin) & planned disruption of railway lines, seizure of Fort William
& landing of German arms.
q These plans were ruined due to poor coordination & Bagha died
near Balasore in 1915.

q There was a temporary respite in revolutionary activity after the
War because:
Ø the release of prisoners held under the Defense of India Rules

cooled down passions a bit;
Ø there was an atmosphere of conciliation after Montagu's

statement & the talk of constitutional reforms;
Ø the coming of Gandhi on the scene with the programme of

nonviolent non-cooperation promised new hope.

Revolutionary Activities
During 1920s
Why attraction for revolutionary activity after Non-
Cooperation Movement?
q The revolutionaries had faced severe repression during the

First World War.
q But in early 1920, many were released by the Government

under a general amnesty to create a harmonious
environment for the Montford Reforms to work.

Continued…
q Soon, Gandhi launched the Non-Cooperation Movement.
q Under the persuasion of Gandhi & C.R. Das, many revolutionary

groups either agreed to join the non-cooperation or suspended
their activities to give the Non-Cooperation Movement a chance.
q But the sudden withdrawal of the movement left many of them

disillusioned; they began to question the basic strategy of
nationalist leadership & its emphasis on non-violence & began to
look for alternatives.

Continued…
● But since these younger nationalists were not attracted to

the parliamentary work of the Swarajists or to the patient,
un dramatic, constructive work of the No-changers, they
were drawn to the idea that violent methods alone would
free India.
● Thus, revolutionary activity was revived.

Leaders
q Nearly all major leaders of revolutionary policies had been
enthusiastic participants in the Non-Cooperation Movement
Ø Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee,
Ø Surya Sen,
Ø Bhagat Singh,
Ø Sukhdev,
Ø Chandrashekhar Azad,
Ø Shiv Verma,
Ø Bhagwaticharan Vohra,
Ø Jaidev Kapur &
Ø Jatin Das.

Major Influences
q Upsurge of working class trade unionism after the War;
the revolutionaries wanted to harness the revolutionary
potential of the new emergent class for nationalist
revolution.
q Russian Revolution & the success of the young Soviet

state in consolidating itself.
q Newly sprouting communist groups with their emphasis on

Marxism, socialism & the proletariat.

Continued…
q Journals publishing memoirs and articles extolling the

self-sacrifice of revolutionaries, such as Atmasakti,
Sarathi & Bijoli
q Novels & books such as Bandi Jiwan by Sachin Sanyal &

Pather Dabi by Sharatchandra Chatterjee (a Government
ban only enhanced its popularity).

Revolutionary Activity
in Punjab-UP-Bihar
q The revolutionary activity in this region was dominated by the
Hindustan Republican Association/Army or HRA.
q The HRA was founded in October 1924 in Kanpur by Ramprasad

Bismil, Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee & Sachin Sanyal.
q It was aimed to organize an armed revolution to overthrow the

colonial government.

Continued…
q And establish in its place a ‘Federal Republic of United States of

India’ whose basic principle would be adult franchise.
q Later renamed ‘Hindustan Socialist Republican Association or

HSRA’

Kakori Train Robbery,1925
q The most important “action” of the HRA was the Kakori train
robbery.
q The men held up the 8-Down train at Kakori, an obscure village
near Lucknow, & looted its official railway cash.
q Government crackdown after the Kakori robbery led to arrests of
many.
q Of whom 17 were jailed, 4 transported for life & 4— Bismil,

Ashfaqullah, Roshan Singh & Rajendra Lahiri — were hanged.
q Hence, Kakori proved to be a setback.

Hindustan Socialist
Republican Association
q Determined to overcome the Kakori setback, the younger
revolutionaries, inspired by socialist ideas, set out to reorganize
Hindustan Republic Association at a historic meeting in the ruins
of Ferozshah Kotla in Delhi (September 1928).
q H.R.A. was changed into H.S.R.A (Hindustan Socialist Republican
Association)
q The participants included Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev,

Bhagwaticharan Vohra from Punjab & Bejoy Kumar Sinha, Shiv
Verma & Jaidev Kapur from UP.

Continued…
q HSRA decided to work under a collective leadership & adopted

socialism as its official goal.
q Bhagat Singh involved himself in this movement who was

influenced by ideology of Marxist & Lenin.
q They wanted to abolish Zamindari System & used slogans like
Inquilab Zindabad & Rang de Basanti.
q They targeted not only British but also Indian capitalists,

zamindars, kings & communal forces.
q They were influenced by communist ideologies which had wide
appeal among the educated youth.

Saunders’ Murder
(Lahore, December 1928)
q Just when the HSRA revolutionaries had begun to move
away from individual heroic action & violence, the, death
of Sher-i-Punjab Lala Lajpat Rai led them once again to
take to individual assassination.
q Bhagat Singh, Azad & Rajguru shot dead Saunders, the

police official responsible for the lathi charge in Lahore.

Bomb in the Central
Legislative Assembly,1929)
q The HSRA leadership now decided to let the people know about its
changed objectives & the need for a revolution by the masses.
q Bhagat Singh & Batukeshwar Dutt were asked to throw a bomb in

the Central Legislative Assembly on April 8, 1929 against the
passage of the Public Safety Bill & Trade Disputes
q Bill aimed at curtailing civil liberties of citizens in general &

workers in particular.

Continued…
q The bombs had been deliberately made harmless & were aimed at
making ‘the deaf hear’.
q The objective was to get arrested & to use the trial court as a
forum for propaganda so that people would become familiar with
their movement & ideology.
q Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev & Rajguru were tried in the Lahore
conspiracy case.
q In jail, these revolutionaries protested against the horrible

conditions through a fast, & demanded honorable & decent
treatment as political prisoners.
q Jatin Das became the 1st martyr on the 64th day of his fast.

Continued…
q Azad was involved in a bid to blow up Viceroy Irwin’s train near

Delhi in December 1929.
q Azad was killed in a police encounter in a park in Allahabad in

February 1931.
q March 23, 1931: Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev & Rajguru were hanged.

Bengal
q After Das’s death (1925), the Bengal Congress broke up into 2

factions:
Ø One led by J.M. Sengupta (Anushilan group joined forces with

him)
Ø the other led by Subhash Bose (Yugantar group backed him)

Continued…
q Actions of the reorganized groups included an assassination

attempt on the notorious Calcutta Police Commissioner, Charles
Tegart (another man named Day got killed) by Gopinath Saha in
1924. Gopinath Saha was hanged.
q Government, armed with a new ordinance, came down heavily on

revolutionaries.
q Many including Subhash Bose were arrested.

Surya Sen
q He had participated in the Non-Cooperation Movement & had
become a teacher in the National school in Chittagong.
q He was imprisoned from 1926 to 1928 for revolutionary activity &

afterwards continued working in the Congress.
q Was the secretary of the Chittagong District Congress Committee.

Continued…
q He used to say "Humanism is a special virtue of a revolutionary".
q He was a lover of poetry & an admirer of Tagore & Qazi Nazrul

Islam.
q He soon gathered around himself a large band of revolutionary

youth including Anant Singh, Ganesh Ghosh & Lokenath Baul.

Chittagong Armoury Raid
(April 1930)
q Sen decided to organise an armed rebellion along with his
associates to show that it was possible to challenge the armed
might of the mighty British.
q They had planned to occupy 2 main armories in Chittagong to

seize & supply arms to the revolutionaries.
q A group of 6 revolutionaries, led by Ganesh Ghosh, captured the

Police Armory, shouting slogans such as Inquilab Zindabad, Down
with Imperialism & Gandhi's Raj has been established.

Continued…
q Another group of 10, led by Lokenath Baul, took over the
Auxiliary Force Armory along with its Lewis guns & 303 army
rifles. Unfortunately they could not locate the ammunition.
q They also aimed to destroy telephone & telegraph lines & to

dislocate railway link of Chittagong with the rest of Bengal.
q The raid involved 65 activists under the banner of Indian

Republican Army Chittagong Branch.

Continued…
q The raid was quite successful;
q Sen hoisted the national flag, took salute & proclaimed a

provisional revolutionary government.
q Later, they dispersed into neighboring villages & raided

government targets.
q Sen was arrested in February 1933 & hanged in January 1934.

2000
Match List I with List II and select the correct answer:

List 1 List 2
(A) Chittagong Armoury Raid (1) Kalpana Dutt
(B) Abhinav Bharat (2) Guru Ram Singh
(C) Anushilan Samiti (3) VD Savarkar
(D) Kuka Movement (4) Aurobindo Ghosh
Codes :
ABCD
(a) 1 3 4 2
(b) 1 3 2 4
(c) 3 1 2 4
(d) 3 1 4 2

Aspects of New Phase of
Revolutionary Movement in Bengal
q There was a large-scale participation of young women especially
under Surya Sen.
q These women provided shelter, carried messages & fought with
guns in hand.
q There was an emphasis on group action aimed at organs of the

colonial state, instead of individual action.
q The objective was to set an example before the youth & to

demoralize bureaucracy.

q Some of the earlier Hindu religiosity was shed, & there were no
more rituals like oath-taking, & this facilitated participation by
Muslims.
q Muslims such as Mir Ahmed, Fakir Ahmed Mian & Tunu Mian were
in his group.

Women's Participation
q Prominent women revolutionaries in Bengal during this phase
included Pritilata Waddedar, who died conducting a raid on
Railway Institute at Paharatali ;
q Kalpana Dutt (now Joshi) who was arrested & tried along Surya
Sen & given a life sentence;
q 1931: Santi Ghosh & Suniti Chandheri, school girls of Comilla,

who shot dead the district magistrate;
q 1932: Bina Das who fired point blank at the Governor while
receiving degree at convocation.

2001
Who among the following organised the famous Chittagong

armory raid ?
(a) Laxmi Sehgal
(b) Surya Sen
(c) Batukeshwar Datta
(d) J.M.Sengupta

Official Reaction
q There was panic at 1st & then severe government repression.
q Armed with 20 repressive acts, the Government let loose the

police on the revolutionaries.
q In Chittagong, several villages were burned & punitive fines

imposed on many others.
q In 1933, JL Nehru was arrested for sedition & given 2 years'

sentence because he had condemned imperialism & praised the
heroism of the revolutionaries.

Achievements
q They succeeded to a great extent in removing fear of authority in
the minds of the common people.
q The revolutionaries were fearless in nature & heroic in their
actions which encouraged people to stand up against authority.
q Government made some legislative changes bowing to demands

from the nationalists.
q It aroused a patriotic feeling among Indians.
q They believed in secularism & promoted it. They believed that

secularism was the key to India’s unity & Independence.

q Movement became weak after the death of Bhagat as his
charisma was unmatched.
q The movement didn’t die completely & many revolutionaries

resurfaced during the 1942 Quit India Movement.

Ideological Rethinking
q A real breakthrough was made by Bhagat Singh & his comrades in
terms of the revolutionary ideology, forms of revolutionary
struggle & the goals of revolution.
q The rethinking had begun in the mid-1920s.
q The Founding Council of HRA had decided to preach revolutionary

& communist principles, & the HRA Manifesto (1925) declared
that the "HRA stood for abolition of all systems which made
exploitation of man by man possible".

Continued…
q HRA had proposed nationalization of railways & other means of
transport & of heavy industries such as ship building & steel.
q HRA had also decided to start labor & peasant organisations &
work for an organised & armed revolution.

Ideological Rethinking
During their last days (late 1920s):
q These revolutionaries had started moving away from individual
heroic action & violence towards mass politics.
q Bismil, during his last days, appealed to the youth to give up

pistols & revolvers, not to work in revolutionary conspiracies &
instead work in an open movement.
q He urged the youth to strengthen Hindu-Muslim unity, unite all

political groups under the leadership of the Congress.
q Bismil affirmed faith in communism & the principle that "every

human being has equal rights over the products of nature".

Continued…
q The famous statement of the revolutionary position is

contained in the book The Philosophy of the Bomb written
by Bhagwaticharan Vohra.
q Even before his arrest, Bhagat Singh had moved away

from belief in violent & individual heroic action to Marxism
& the belief that a popular broad-based movement alone
could lead to a successful revolution.
q In other words, revolution could only be "by the masses,

for the masses".

Continued…
q That is why Bhagat Singh helped establish the Punjab Naujawan
Bharat Sabha (1926) as an open wing of revolutionaries to carry
out political work among the youth, peasants & workers, & it was
to open branches in villages.
q Bhagat Singh was fully secular — 2 of the 6 rules drafted by him

for the Sabha were that its members would have nothing to do
with communal bodies & that they would propagate a general
feeling of tolerance among people, considering religion to be a
matter of personal belief.
q Bhagat Singh & Sukhdev organized the Lahore Students' Union

for open, legal work among students.

Continued…
q Bhagat Singh & his comrades also realized that a revolution
meant organisation & development of a mass movement of the
exploited & the suppressed sections by the revolutionary
intelligentsia.
q He used to say, “real revolutionary armies are in villages &
factories”.
q A few weeks before his death, he wrote the article ‘Why I am an

Atheist’ in which he subjected religion and religious philosophy to
a scathing critique. He traced his own path to atheism, how he
1st gave up belief ‘in the mythology & doctrines of Sikhism or any
other religion,’ & in the end lost faith in the existence of God.

Continued…
q To be a revolutionary, he said, one required immense moral
strength, but one also required ‘criticism & independent thinking.’
q In the struggle for self-emancipation, humanity had to struggle
against ‘the narrow conception of religion’ as also against the
belief in God.
q ‘Any man who stands for progress,’ he wrote, ‘has to criticize,

disbelieve & challenge every item of the old faith. Item by item he
has to reason out every nook & corner of the prevailing faith.’
q Proclaiming his own belief in atheism he asserted that he was

‘trying to stand like a man with an erect head to the last; even on
the gallows.’

2007
Evaluate the contribution of revolutionary terrorism

represented by Bhagat Singh to the cause of India’s struggle
for independence. (150 words)

What was the need for
individual heroic action?
q Because of the rapidity of change in thinking, effective acquisition
of new ideology is a prolonged & historical process.
q These young intellectuals faced the classic dilemma of how to

mobilize people & recruit them.
q Here, they decided to opt for propaganda by deed, i.e., through

individual heroic action & by using courts as a forum for
revolutionary propaganda.

Drawbacks
q The movement retained some conservative elements.
q It failed to evolve broader socio-economic goals

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Revolutionaries

Modern History : Module XVI:Revolutionaries

Modern History : Module XVI:Revolutionaries

Modern History : Module XVI:Revolutionaries

Ø In the initial period, the movement was centered around religious

q Post World War:

Modern History : Module XVI:Revolutionaries

q Anushilan Samiti, Sandhya, Yuganthar were the groups formed in

Modern History : Module XVI:Revolutionaries

q Disappointment with the extremists.

Modern History : Module XVI:Revolutionaries

q Organising military conspiracies with expectation of help from the

Modern History : Module XVI:Revolutionaries

q Also in Midnapore (under Jnanendranath Basu)

q It had 2 prominent if somewhat independent arms in East & West Bengal

Modern History : Module XVI:Revolutionaries

q Yugantar wrote on the police brutalities against participants of the

Modern History : Module XVI:Revolutionaries

q 1908: Barrah dacoity was organised by Dacca Anushilan under

Modern History : Module XVI:Revolutionaries

q The trial followed in the wake of the attempt on the life of

q Two ladies, instead, got killed.

Modern History : Module XVI:Revolutionaries

q Chittaranjan Das defended Aurobindo.

Modern History : Module XVI:Revolutionaries

q Aimed to rid the country of the British by instigating an armed

Modern History : Module XVI:Revolutionaries

q His disciples— the Chapekar brothers, Damodar & Balkrishna —

Modern History : Module XVI:Revolutionaries

q Savarkar & his brother organised Mitra Mela, a secret

q Nasik Conspiracy Case: In 1909, Anant Kanhare & Ganesh

Modern History : Module XVI:Revolutionaries

Match List-I with List-II and select the correct answer:

Modern History : Module XVI:Revolutionaries

q Vanchi was a closed associate of V VS Aiyer who led Pondichery

q Both were members of Bharatha Matha Association

Modern History : Module XVI:Revolutionaries

‘Abhinava Bharat’ a secret society of revolutionaries was organised

Modern History : Module XVI:Revolutionaries

q The Punjab extremism was fueled by issues such as frequent

Modern History : Module XVI:Revolutionaries

Modern History : Module XVI:Revolutionaries

Modern History : Module XVI:Revolutionaries

q 1905: Shyamji Krishna Varma had started in London an Indian

q The revolutionaries such as Savarkar & Hardayal became the

Modern History : Module XVI:Revolutionaries

q New centers emerged on the continent- Paris & Geneva — from

q After 1909 when Anglo-German relations deteriorated, Virendra

Modern History : Module XVI:Revolutionaries

q Founded by Madam Bhikaji Cama, the paper along

q It was founded in response to the British ban

q It continued the message of the journal Bande

Modern History : Module XVI:Revolutionaries

Q. Match List I with List II and select the correct answer:

Modern History : Module XVI:Revolutionaries

Discuss the growth of revolutionary terrorism with special reference

Modern History : Module XVI:Revolutionaries

Modern History : Module XVI:Revolutionaries