The Revolutionary movement for Indian Independence was part of the Indian independence movement comprising the actions of violent underground revolutionary factions. Groups believing in armed revolution against the ruling British fall into this category, as opposed to the generally peaceful civil disobedience movement spearheaded by Mahatma Gandhi.
The revolutionary groups were mainly concentrated in Bengal, Bombay, Bihar, the United Provinces and Punjab. More groups were scattered across India.
Beginnings Apart from a few stray incidents, the armed rebellion against the British rulers was not organized before the beginning of the 20th century. The revolutionary philosophies and movement made their presence felt during the 1905 partition of Bengal. Arguably, the initial steps to organise the revolutionaries were taken by Aurobindo Ghosh, his brother Barin Ghosh, Bhupendranath Datta, Lal Bal Pal and Subodh Chandra Mullick, when they formed the Jugantar party in April 1906. Jugantar was created as an inner circle of the Anushilan Samiti, which was already present in Bengal, mainly as a fitness club. The notion of self-improvement of the public along lines of physical, intellectual and spiritual development followed from ideas propagated by thinkers such as Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo who were rooted in Shakta Hinduism.
Andaman Island Communist Consolidation
Communist Consolidation was an organization formed in Cellular Jail and was founded by Hare Krishna Konar along with 39 other inmates. This organization was formed after the freedom fighters started studying Communism, Socialism and Marxism. In 1937 the political prisoners and the members of the Communist Consolidation of Cellular Jail started feeling that World War II was imminent and thought that before the war started they should get back to the mainland country to be with their people and take an active part in the upheaval that was coming, so the prisoners started a hunger strike against the British government. This hunger strike was led by the founder of Communist Consolidation Hare Krishna Konar, some notable strikers were Batukeshwar Dutt (associated with Bhagat Singh), Sachindra Nath Sanyal (founder of Hindustan Socialist Republican Association), Ganesh Ghosh (member of Chittagong armoury raid) and many others.
Andhra Pradesh Uyyalawada Narasimha Reddy (died 22 February 1847) was the son of a former Indian Telugu polygar who was at the heart of a rebellion in 1846, when 5000 peasants rose up against the British East India Company (EIC) in Kurnool district, Rayalaseema Region of Andhra Pradesh. They were protesting changes to the traditional agrarian system the British introduced in the first half of the nineteenth century. Those changes, which included the introduction of the ryotwari system and other attempts to maximize revenue, impacted lower-status cultivators by depleting their crops and leaving them impoverished.
Alluri Sitarama Raju (4 July 1897 or 1898 – 7 May 1924) was an Indian revolutionary who waged an armed rebellion against the British colonial rule in India. Born in present-day Andhra Pradesh, he was involved in opposing the British in response to the 1882 Madras Forest Act that effectively restricted the free movement of adivasis in their forest habitats and prevented them from practicing their traditional form of agriculture called 'podu', which threatened their very way of life.
Bengal Anushilan Samiti
The Greatest Influential Indian Freedom Fighters from Bengal during Indian Independence Movement (1758–1947)
Dhaka district (now in Bangladesh) Shaheed (Age: 22) Benoy Basu (Benoy of Benoy-Badal-Dinesh Trio) Shaheed (Age: 18) Badal Gupta (Badal of Benoy-Badal-Dinesh Trio) Shaheed (Age: 19) Dinesh Gupta (Dinesh of Benoy-Badal-Dinesh Trio)
Midnapore district (now in West Bengal) Shaheed (Age: 18) Khudiram Bose (Khudiram of Khudiram-Prafulla Duo) Hemchandra Kanungo (one of the founding fathers of Anushilan Samiti in Midnapore) Shaheed (Age: 21) Anath Bondhu Panja (Member of Bengal Volunteers) Shaheed (Age: 17) Mrigendra Dutta (Member of Bengal Volunteers) Shaheed (Age: 19) Pradyot Kumar Bhattacharya (Member of Bengal Volunteers)
Chittagong district (now in Bangladesh) Shaheed Masterda Surya Sen Shaheed (Age: 21) Pritilata Waddedar
24 Parganas district (now in West Bengal) Shaheed (Age: 24) Jatin Das Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose (Parakram Diwas or Day of Valour is observed every year on January 23 to commemorate his birth anniversary)
Burdwan district (now in West Bengal) Rashbehari Bose Batukeshwar Dutta Hare Krishna Konar
Bogra district (now in Bangladesh) Shaheed (Age: 19) Prafulla Chaki (Prafulla of Khudiram-Prafulla Duo)
Nadia district (now in Kushtia district of Bangladesh) Shaheed Baghajatin Mukherjee
Hooghly district (now in West Bengal) Rishi Aurobinda Ghosh
Sylhet district (now in Bangladesh) Bipin Chandra Pal (Pal of Lal-Bal-Pal Trio, Father of Revolutionary Thoughts in India)
Faridpur district (now in Bangladesh) Rashtraguru Surendranath Banerjee
Established by Pramathanath Mitra, it became one of the most organized revolutionary associations, especially in eastern Bengal, where the Dhaka Anushilan Samiti had several branches and carried out major activities. Jugantar was initially formed by an inner circle of the Kolkata Anushilan Samiti. In the 1920s, the Kolkata faction supported Gandhi in the Non-Cooperation Movement and many of the leaders held high posts in Congress. The Anushilan Samati had over five hundred branches. Indians living in America and Canada had established the Ghadar Party.
Jugantar
Barin Ghosh was the main leader. Along with 21 revolutionaries including Bagha Jatin, he started to collect arms and explosives and manufactured bombs. The headquarters of Jugantar was located at 93/a Bowbazar Street, Kolkata.
Some senior members of the group were sent abroad for political and military training. One of them, Hemchandra Kanungo, obtained his training in Paris. After returning to Kolkata he set up a combined religious school and bomb factory at a garden house in the Maniktala suburb of Calcutta. However, the attempted murder of district Judge Kingsford of Muzaffarpur by Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki on 30 April 1908 initiated a police investigation that led to the arrest of many of the revolutionaries.
Bagha Jatin was one of the top leaders in Jugantar. He was arrested, along with several other leaders, in connection with the Howrah-Sibpur Conspiracy case. They were tried for treason, the charge being that they had incited various regiments of the army against the ruler.The major charge... during the trial (1910–1911) was "conspiracy to wage war against the King-Emperor" and "tampering with the loyalty of the Indian soldiers" (mainly with the 10th Jats Regiment) (cf: Sedition Committee Report, 1918)
Jugantar, along with other revolutionary groups, aided by Indians abroad, planned an armed revolt against the British rulers during the First World War. This plan largely depended on the clandestine landing of German arms and ammunitions on the Indian coast.Rowlatt Report (§109–110)First Spark of Revolution by A.C. Guha, pp. 424–434. This plan came to be known as the Indo-German Plot. However, the planned revolt did not materialise.
After the First World War, Jugantar supported Gandhi in the Non-Cooperation Movement and many of their leaders were in the Congress. Still, the group continued its revolutionary activities, a notable event being the Chittagong armoury raid.
Benoy Basu, Badal Gupta and Dinesh Gupta, who are noted for launching an attack on the Secretariat Building – the Writers' Building in the Dalhousie Square in Kolkata, were Jugantar members.
Uttar Pradesh
Hindustan Socialist Republican Association
The Hindustan Republican Association (HRA) was established in October 1924 in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh by revolutionaries like Ramprasad Bismil, Jogesh Chatterjee, Chandrashekhar Azad, Yogendra Shukla and Sachindranath Sanyal. The aim of the party was to organise armed revolution to end the colonial rule and establish a Federal Republic of the United States of India. The Kakori train robbery was a notable act of this group. The Kakori case led to the hanging of Ashfaqullah Khan, Ramprasad Bismil, Roshan Singh, Rajendra Lahiri. The Kakori case was a major setback for the group. However, the group was soon reorganised under the leadership of Chandrashekhar Azad and with members like Bhagat Singh, Bhagwati Charan Vohra and Sukhdev on 8 and 9 September 1928– and the group was now christened Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA).
In Lahore on 17 December 1928, Bhagat Singh, Azad and Rajguru assassinated Saunders, a police official involved in deadly lathi-charge on Lala Lajpat Rai. Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt threw a bomb inside the Central Legislative Assembly. The Assembly Bomb Case trial followed. Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev Thapar and Shivaram Rajguru were hanged on 23 March 1931.
Maharashtra
Abhinav Bharat Secret Society The Abhinav Bharat Society (Young India Society) was a secret society founded by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and his brother Ganesh Damodar Savarkar in 1904.; Initially founded at Nasik as "Mitra Mela" when Vinayak Savarkar was still a student of Fergusson College at Pune, the society grew to include several hundred revolutionaries and political activists with branches in various parts of India, extending to London after Savarkar went to study law. It carried out a few assassinations of British officials, after which the Savarkar brothers were convicted and imprisoned. The society was formally disbanded in 1952.
Savarkar's revolutionary propaganda led to the assassination of Lt. Col. William Curzon-Wyllie, the political aide-de-camp to the Secretary of State for India, by Madanlal Dhingra on the evening of 1 July 1909, at a meeting of Indian students in the Imperial Institute in London. Dhingra was arrested and later tried and executed. A. M. T. Jackson, the district magistrate of Nasik, was assassinated in India by Anant Laxman Kanhare in 1909 in the historic "Nasik Conspiracy Case".
The investigation into the Jackson assassination revealed the existence of the Abhinav Bharat Society and the role of the Savarkar brothers in leading it. Vinayak Savarkar was found to have dispatched twenty Browning pistols to India, one of which was used in the Jackson assassination. He was charged in the Jackson murder and sentenced to "transportation" for life. Savarkar was imprisoned in the Cellular Jail in the Andaman Islands in 1910.
Kotwal Dasta Veer Bhai Kotwal alias Veer Bhai Kotwal during Quit India Movement formed group of underground mercenaries called "Kotwal Dasta", a parallel government in the Karjat taluka of Thane district. They were about 50 in numbers including farmers and voluntary school teachers. They decided to cut down the electric pylons supplying electricity to Mumbai city. From September 1942 through November 1942 they felled 11 pylons, paralyzing the industries and railways.
South India
The uprising against the British was evidenced at Halagali (Mudhol taluk of Bagalkot district). The prince of Mudhol, Ghorpade, had accepted British overlordship. But the Bedas (hunters), a martial community, were seething with dissatisfaction under the new dispensation. The British proclaimed the Disarming Act of 1857 whereby men possessing firearms had to register them and secure a license before 10 November 1857. Babaji Nimbalkar, a soldier thrown out of job from Satara Court, had advised these people not to lose their hereditary right to own arms.