Road To Freedom

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• 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

Heroes and Martyrs

Heroes and Martyrs

Around 1908 the Swadeshi movement had run out of steam. "When I went to jail the whole country was alive with the cry of 'Bande Mataram', alive with the hope of a nation, the hope of millions of men who had newly risen out of degradation," wrote Aurobindo in 1909. "When I came out of jail I listened for that cry but there was instead a silence. A hush had fallen on the country." This was not surprising because a mass movement cannot continue indefinitely at its original tempo in the face of repression. However, the movement had drawn a large number of youth in its vortex and many of them continued to be fired by dreams of freedom. Some expressed their anger against the British through acts of violence. When mass support for the Swadeshi movement began to wane, such acts both by individuals and groups, increased in number in Bengal, Punjab, Maharashtra and further south. Revolutionary activities in the country began in the country in the last quarter of the nineteenth century with Vasudev Balwant Phadke who dreamt of raising an army to drive out the British. Twenty years after Phadke's capture and deportation, the Chaphekar brothers, Damodar and Balakrishna shot dead Rand, the Plague Commissioner of Pune on 22nd June 1897. Their younger brother Vasudev aged 16 and his friend, Mahadev Ranade killed the police informers. All four young men were subsequently caught and hanged. The decline of the Swadeshi movement threw up several such revolutionaries. Among them were Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Lala Hardayal, Ajit Singh, Wanchi Iyer (who shot dead a district magistrate in Tamil Nadu in 1908), Rashbehari Bose (who threw a bomb at Viceroy Hardinge in 1912) and Jatin Mukherjee, popularly known as Bagha Jatin who had organised an international chain of Indian revolutionaries, known as the Indo-German Plan, and died in a gun battle with police at Balasore in Orissa. Bagha Jatin or Jatindranath Mukherjee 1903, at Darjeeling, as a Government servant 1910, at Alipore Central Jail, under-trial prisoner Pictures provided by Shri Bagha Jatin's grandson and historian of that period Dr Prithwindra Mukherjee, Researcher (Paris). 1915, after the battle of Balasore on 9 September.

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Between 1908 and 1918 nearly 200 revolutionaries were killed or convicted. The heroes and martyrs of this period included Sushil Kumar Sen who at the age of fifteen was given 15 lashes of the whip for striking a police sergeant. The fact that the policeman was beating up innocent people when Sushil struck him was not taken into account by the magistrate, Mr. Kingsford.
Sushil Kumar died tragically a few years later on 2nd May 1915. He and a friend had committed a dacoity to raise money for revolutionary activities and were fleeing from the police in a boat. Suddenly shots rang out and Sushil Kumar was struck by a bullet. He knew that his end was near but did not want to be taken alive. He requested his companion to throw him overboard after cutting off his head so that he would not be identified and his relatives and friends, harassed. This his friend reluctantly did. Sushil Kumar was 23 years old at the time of his death.
On 30th April 1908 a bomb was thrown on a horse-driven coach. The intended victim was the magistrate Kingsford who was hated for the harsh sentences he handed down to captured revolutionaries. But Kingsford was not in the coach and two English ladies were killed instead. The police gave hot chase to the two teenagers who had thrown the bomb. Prafulla, real name Dinesh Chandra Roy, was apprehended at a railway station. The youngster whipped out a pistol and to the horror of the policemen, shot himself. He was about 17 years old.
His companion, Khudiram Bose was later arrested and tried and sentenced to death by hanging. He was 17. Two years earlier he had been jailed for possessing and distributing literature on Swadeshi.
Khudiram expressed regret at the death of the two innocent women and when asked if he was afraid to die, said he wasn't. He ascended the gallows without flinching.
To the British, Khudiram Bose and the others who waged war against the government were terrorists. But to their countrymen they were revolutionaries, brave sons of the soil. Modern historians like Bipin Chandra describe their activities as revolutionary terrorism ('for want of a better term'). But whatever their label, no one questioned their love for their country or their motives. When the revolutionary Kanailal Datta was hanged, his dead body, according to the historian, R.C. Majumdar, "was carried in a funeral procession which kings and conquering heroes might envy."