Revolutionary Terrorism and Bhagat Singh

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  • Revolutionary young men did not try to generate a mass revolution. Instead they followed the strategy of assassinating unpopular officials
  • 1904: VD Savarkar organized Abhinav Bharat
  • Newspapers like The Sandhya and Yugaantar in Bengal and the Kal in Maharashtra advocated revolutionary ideology
  • Kingsford Incident: In 1908, Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki threw bomb at a carriage they believed was carrying Kingsford, the unpopular judge of Muzaffarpur.
  • Anushilan Samiti threw a bomb at the Viceroy Lord Hardinge
  • Centres abroad
    • In London: led by VD Savarkar, Shyamaji Krishnavarma and Har Dayal
    • In Europe: Madam Cama and Ajit Singh
  • They gradually petered out. It did not have any base among the people
  • The sudden suspension of the non-cooperation movement led many young people to question the very basis strategy of non-violence and began to look for alternatives.
  • All the major new revolutionary leaders had been enthusiastic participants in the non-violent non-cooperation movement.
  • Two separate strands of revolutionary terrorism developed – one in Punjab, UP and Bihar and the other in Bengal.
  • Ramprasad Bismil, Jogesh Chatterjea and Sachindranath Sanyal met in Kanpur in October 1924 and founded the Hindustan Republican Association to organize armed revolution.
  • In order to carry out their activities the HRA required funding. The most important action of the HRA was the Kakori Robbery.
  • On August 9, 1925, ten men held up the 8-Down train from Shahjahanpur to Lucknow at Kakori and looted its official railway cash.
  • The government arrested a large number of young men and tried them in the Kakori Conspiracy Case.
  • Ashfaqulla Khan, Ramprasadn Bismil, Roshan Singh and Rajendra Lahiri were hanged, four others were sent to Andaman while seventeen others were sentenced to long term imprisonment.
  • New revolutionaries joined the HRA. They met at Ferozshah Kotla Ground at Delhi on 9 and 10 September 1928, created a new collective leadership, adopted socialism as their official goal and changed the name of the party to the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association.
  • Lala Lajpat Rai dies in a lathi-charge when he was laeding an anti-Simon Commission demonstration at Lahore on 30 October 1928.
  •  On 17 December 1928, Bhagat Singh, Azad and Rajguru assassinated, at Lahore, Saunders, a police official involved in the lathi-charge on Lala Lajpat Rai.
  • In order to let the people know about HSRA’s changed objectives Bhagat Singh and BK Dutt were asked to throw a bomb in the Central Legislative Assembly on 8 April 1929 against the passage of the Public Safety Bill and the Trade Disputes Bill.
  • He aim was not to kill but to let people know of their objectives through the leaflet they threw.
  • They were later arrested and tried.
  • The country was also stirred by the hunger strike the revolutionaries took as a protest against the horrible conditions in jails.
  • On 13th September, the 64th day of the epic fast, Jatin Das died.
  • Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were sentenced to be hanged. He sentence was carried out on 23 March, 1931.
  • Bhagat Singh was fully secular.
    • The Punjab Naujawan Bharat Sabha organized by him acted on secular lines.
  • In Bengal, after the death of C R Das, the Congress leadership in Bengal got divided into two wings: one led by S C Bose and the other by J M Sengupta. The Yugantar group joined forces with the first while the Anushilan with the second.
  • Surya Sen had actively participated in the non-cooperation movement. He gathered around him a large band of revolutionary youth including Anant Singh, Ganesh Ghosh and Lokenath Baul.
  • Chittagong Armoury Raid

 

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