Road To Freedom

---

• For God and Country
• The Empire Builders
• Tribal Uprisings
• Sepoys on the Move
• British Authority Collapses
• The Empire Strikes Back
• Roll of Honour
• The Trial of the Last Emperor
• English Education
• The Blue Mutiny
• Perishing in Peace
• ‘Rani Ka Hookum’
• Barbarous Britannia
• Return to Swadeshi
• The Delhi Durbar
• Hunger Deaths
• The One-Man Army
• Mamool Raj
• The British Raj in Black and White
• Europeans Take To The Street!
• Pressing On !
• The Battle For A Free Press
• The Battle Lines are Drawn
• Women : Crossing the Threshold
• An Old Man's Dream
• Father of Indian Unrest
• The Monk Who Shook The Nation
• The Battle is Taken to the Legislature!
• Partition of Bengal
• The Great Divide
• The New Spirit of India
• Swadeshi Enterprise
• From Swadeshi to Swaraj
• Gandhi in South Africa
• Heroes and Martyrs
• Revolutionaries Outside India
• Carrot and Stick
• Gandhi in Champaran
• The Gentle Satyagrahi
• Massacre at Jallianwala Bagh
• Jallianwala — The Aftermath
• A People Reject Their Rulers
• The Himalayan Blunder
• Gandhiji Withdraws from Political Activities
• Bardoli
• Saga of Indian Revolutionaries
• A Pinch of Salt!
• Gandhi and Ambedkar
• Leave India to God… or to Anarchy
• Quit India
• The Last War of Independence
• Apostle of Peace
• India Wins Freedom
• The Light Has Gone Out
• Under One Flag

Saga of Indian Revolutionaries

Saga of Indian Revolutionaries

In the post-1857 period the first man to strike a blow for swaraj was Vasudev Balwant Phadke – a revolutionary. The Indian struggle for independence was dominated first by constitutionalists who believed in petitions and public debates and later by peaceful agitationalists like Tilak and Gandhiji. But, whenever there was a lull in mainstream political activities, the revolutionaries would take over. As the swadeshi movement in protest against the partition of Bengal gradually lost its tempo, the younger activists who had taken part in the agitation, formed revolutionary groups that threw up martyrs like Susheel Sen and Khudiram Bose. After Tilak's deportation to Mandalay in 1908 there was a spurt in revolutionary activities which resulted in the so-called Nasik Conspiracy in India and the assassination of Curzon Wylie in London. An unending series of revolutionary activities in Bengal, Punjab, United Provinces (UP) and Maharashtra led to the appointment of the Rowlatt Committee. The Rowlatt Committee submitted a detailed report on revolutionary activities right from the killing of Rand by the Chaphekar brothers in 1897 to the bomb attack on Viceroy Lord Hardinge in 1912. It was to counteract revolutionary activities that the Rowlatt Committee conceived the two Rowlatt bills which triggered off country-wide protests and culminated in the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh. After Jallianwala Bagh the struggle for freedom grew more defiant and even those who had admiration for the western democratic institutions and methods no longer trusted the British sense of justice and fair play. Gandhiji's emergence as the undisputed leader of the Indian masses had as its backdrop the Jallianwala Bagh tragedy which was the direct outcome of the agitation launched by Gandhiji against the Rowlatt bills. Thus paradoxically, the revolutionaries and Gandhiji who represented two extremes of the Indian struggle were in a way interconnected, notwithstanding the fact that Gandhiji abhorred violence. After Jallianwala Bagh, many young men burning with patriotic fervour including Chandrasekhar Azad and Bhagat Singh, joined Gandhiji's non-violent, non-cooperation movement. It was only when Gandhiji abruptly called off the non-cooperation movement in 1922 that some of his followers took the path of violence. Between 1922 and 1924, Alluri Sitaram Raju led the tribals of the Rampa sub-division, in the Telugu region of South India, in an uprising against the British. On 23 September, 1922 he and his men destroyed an army contingent at Damanapalli Ghat. The British mounted a massive operation to crush the uprising but it took them more than a year to subdue the tribals and capture Raju whom they immediately shot dead.

---

The year 1924 witnessed the great train robbery at Kakori, an obscure village near Lucknow. Pandit Ramprasad Bismil, Ashfaqulla, Roshan Singh and Rajendra Lahiri were caught and hanged. Chandra Shekhar Azad, the youngest of the group managed to elude the British and later together with Bhagat Singh formed the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (army). In 1928 HSRA made headlines when in a daring attack master-minded by Azad, Bhagat Singh and Sukhdev shot dead Saunders, a police official involved in the lathi charge on Lala Lajpat Rai.
In April 1929 Bhagat Singh and B. K. Dutta threw a bomb in the Central Legislative Assembly in protest against the passage of the Public Safety Bill and the Trade Disputes Bill. The two revolutionaries could have escaped in the confusion that followed. But they waited to be arrested so that the attention of their countrymen would be drawn to the freedom struggle through their trial. In the statement read out at their trial the two revolutionaries stated that they did not throw the bomb to kill but 'to make the deaf hear'.
On 23rd March 1931 Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were martyred at the gallows. Their countrymen wept and fasted on that day.
In Allahabad, Chandrasekhar Azad fought a pitched battle with the police in Alfred Park and with his last bullet, shot himself. Kamala Nehru got Azad's body released and arranged for the funeral. The tree near which Azad ended his life became a place of pilgrimage till it was felled by the police.
Revolutionaries in Bengal under the leadership of Surya Sen raided the armories in Chittagong in 1930. Surya Sen, affectionately called Masterda fought many battles before he was arrested and hanged in 1934.
The revolutionary movement threw up many women revolutionaries. Pritilata Waddedar died fighting. Kalpana Dutt Joshi was given a life sentence. Bina Das took everybody by surprise in 1932 when she fired at the Governor while receiving her degree at the Calcutta university convocation.
Rash Behari Bose who masterminded many daring missions undertaken by revolutionaries had to flee the country and made Japan his home, leaving behind an able and worthy successor in Subhas Chandra Bose whose destiny it was to lead the final assault on the British.