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The first phase, 1897–1918: Maharashtra, Bengal and the revolutionaries abroad

Revolutionary movements · Part 1 / 2 · Fact-checked on · how we check

Written with AI from the sources listed at the bottom of this page, then fact-checked by a separate AI.

Why young nationalists turned to secret societies and arms after 1905, the Chapekars and Savarkar's Abhinav Bharat, the Anushilan Samiti and Jugantar, Muzaffarpur and the Alipore case, the Delhi bomb of 1912, India House, Dhingra and Madame Cama, the Ghadar Party and the Komagata Maru, the failed rising of 1915, the wartime plots in Berlin and Kabul, Bagha Jatin, and the laws that answered them.

Alongside the open politics of petitions and Swadeshi, a smaller stream of young nationalists chose secret organisation and arms. This chapter follows these revolutionaries in two phases. Part 1 covers the first phase, from the late 1890s to the end of the First World War, when groups in Maharashtra and Bengal, and Indians living in Britain, Europe and North America, tried to shake British rule through assassinations, conspiracies and plans for armed risings. This stream grew directly out of the crushing of the Swadeshi movement and the removal of the Extremists described in the previous chapter. Part 2 turns to the second phase of the 1920s and early 1930s, the years of Bhagat Singh and the Chittagong raid.

Several things pushed young men towards violence after 1905. The Swadeshi movement had shown that the government would answer peaceful protest with bans, arrests and deportations, and by 1908 its leaders were in jail or abroad. Many students felt that the Moderates had no answer and that the Extremists had been silenced, and they came to believe that only force would move the British. The revolutionaries drew inspiration from the Italian nationalist Mazzini, from Irish rebels and from Russian secret societies. They worked through small secret groups bound by oaths, gave members physical and weapons training, attacked unpopular officials and informers, and raided wealthy households and post offices for money. They hoped such acts would frighten officials and awaken the people, but they rarely tried to build a mass following.

Maharashtra produced the earliest signs. In June 1897 the Chapekar brothers of Poona shot W. C. Rand, the officer in charge of the hated plague measures, an act often counted as the first political assassination of the period. In 1899 Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and his brother Ganesh founded the Mitra Mela, a secret society at Nasik, which in 1904 became the Abhinav Bharat (Young India). Its members studied the history of revolutions and gathered arms. In December 1909 Anant Kanhere, linked to the group, shot A. M. T. Jackson, the collector of Nasik, and the trials that followed are known as the Nasik conspiracy case. Savarkar, then in London, was arrested in 1910, brought back to India, sentenced to transportation for life and held in the Cellular Jail in the Andamans.

Bengal became the main centre of the first phase. The Anushilan Samiti was set up in Calcutta in 1902, with Pramathanath Mitra among its founders. Its public face was a club for drill, wrestling and lathi play; behind it, over the next few years, a secret revolutionary circle took shape. After the Partition of Bengal it spread fast, and its Dacca branch, founded in 1906 under Pulin Behari Das, grew into one of the largest groups in the province, with branches across eastern Bengal. In Calcutta a circle around Barindra Kumar Ghosh, Aurobindo's younger brother, and Bhupendranath Dutta began the weekly Jugantar in 1906; the paper openly preached revolt, and the group around it came to be known by the same name. The Bengal societies bound their members to secrecy by oath and planned attacks on officials.

The best-known early attack came at Muzaffarpur in Bihar on 30 April 1908. Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki threw a bomb at a carriage they believed was carrying Douglas Kingsford, a judge hated for harsh sentences on Swadeshi workers in Calcutta; it carried two Englishwomen instead, who were killed. Prafulla Chaki shot himself when cornered, and Khudiram Bose, aged eighteen, was hanged in August 1908. The police then raided a garden house at Maniktala in Calcutta that served as a bomb workshop and arrested Barindra Kumar Ghosh, Aurobindo Ghose and many others. In the Alipore bomb case of 1908–09 Aurobindo, defended by C. R. Das, was acquitted, while Barindra was sentenced to death, a sentence later reduced to transportation for life.

Revolutionary activity also reached northern India. Rash Behari Bose, a Bengali employed at the Forest Research Institute at Dehra Dun, built a network in Punjab and the United Provinces. On 23 December 1912, as Viceroy Hardinge rode on an elephant in a procession into Delhi to mark the shift of the capital, a bomb was thrown at him; he was wounded but survived. Basanta Kumar Biswas, a young associate of Rash Behari Bose, was among those later hanged in the Delhi conspiracy case, while Bose himself escaped. The attack showed that the revolutionaries could strike at the head of the government in its new capital, and it drew the police into treating the movement as an all-India threat rather than a Bengal problem.

Indians abroad formed a second front. In London, Shyamji Krishna Varma opened India House in 1905 as a hostel for Indian students, founded the Indian Home Rule Society and the journal The Indian Sociologist, and offered scholarships to young nationalists, Savarkar among them. On 1 July 1909 Madan Lal Dhingra, a student linked to India House, shot dead Sir William Curzon Wyllie, an aide to the Secretary of State for India, and was hanged in August 1909. Shyamji had by then moved to Paris, where Madame Bhikaji Cama worked alongside him; in August 1907, at the International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart, she unfurled a flag of Indian independence. After the Dhingra killing and Savarkar's arrest the London centre broke up, and the work shifted to Paris, Berlin and North America.

The largest overseas effort came from Punjabi workers and farmers on the Pacific coast of North America, many of them former soldiers, who faced racial discrimination in Canada and the United States. In 1913 they founded the Ghadar Party, with its headquarters in San Francisco, Sohan Singh Bhakna as president and Lala Har Dayal as its leading thinker. Its weekly paper, Ghadar ('revolt'), first issued in November 1913 in Urdu and later in Punjabi and other languages, called for an armed uprising to drive out the British and was carried to Indian soldiers and settlers in many countries. Unlike the Bengal groups, the Ghadarites were mostly working men and peasants, largely Sikh but open to members of every religion, and their aim was an independent republic.

Revolutionary organisations of the first phase
OrganisationFoundedWhereKey figures
Mitra Mela, later Abhinav Bharat1899; renamed 1904NasikV. D. Savarkar, Ganesh Savarkar
Anushilan Samiti1902 (Dacca branch 1906)Calcutta; DaccaPramathanath Mitra; Pulin Behari Das
Jugantar group and weekly1906CalcuttaBarindra Kumar Ghosh, Bhupendranath Dutta
India House1905LondonShyamji Krishna Varma
Ghadar Party1913San FranciscoSohan Singh Bhakna, Lala Har Dayal
Provisional Government of IndiaDecember 1915KabulRaja Mahendra Pratap, Maulana Barkatullah

The First World War seemed to give the Ghadarites their chance. In 1914 the Komagata Maru, a Japanese ship chartered by Gurdit Singh, carried some 370 Punjabi passengers to Vancouver, where Canada refused to let most of them land; when the ship came back to Budge Budge near Calcutta in September 1914, police firing on the returning passengers left many dead. Anger over this helped send thousands of Ghadar Party men home to start a rising. A revolt with Indian troops was planned in Punjab for February 1915, but informers betrayed it, the units were disarmed and hundreds were arrested. In the Lahore conspiracy trials many were hanged, among them the young Kartar Singh Sarabha, while Rash Behari Bose escaped to Japan. In Singapore an Indian regiment rose in February 1915 and was crushed.

Other plots of the war years looked to Germany, Britain's enemy. In Berlin, Indian revolutionaries such as Virendranath Chattopadhyaya formed a committee that sought German money and arms. In December 1915 Raja Mahendra Pratap and Maulana Barkatullah set up a Provisional Government of India at Kabul, with Mahendra Pratap as president and Barkatullah as prime minister, hoping for help from Afghanistan and the Central Powers. In Bengal, Jatindranath Mukherjee, known as Bagha Jatin, waited for a German arms shipment that never arrived; he was fatally wounded in a gunfight with the police near Balasore in Orissa in September 1915. The government met these threats with the Defence of India Act of 1915, which allowed detention without trial and special tribunals, and in 1918 the Sedition Committee under Justice Rowlatt advised keeping such powers after the war.

Seen as a whole, the first phase was brave but narrow. The revolutionaries drew in mainly educated young men of the middle classes, with the important exception of the Ghadar movement, and their secret methods kept them apart from the crowds whom the Extremists had begun to rouse. Informers, mass arrests and harsh laws had broken most groups by 1918, and their failures pushed the government towards the Rowlatt Act and the national movement towards Gandhi's very different politics. Yet the sacrifices of Khudiram Bose, Madan Lal Dhingra, Kartar Singh Sarabha and others entered the movement's memory, and the networks they left behind fed the second phase of the 1920s, which Part 2 follows.

Exam traps

Recap

Practice questions

Q1. India House in London, a centre of Indian revolutionaries abroad, was founded in 1905 by:

  1. Madan Lal Dhingra
  2. Shyamji Krishna Varma
  3. Lala Har Dayal
  4. V. D. Savarkar
Show answer

Answer: B. Shyamji Krishna Varma

(b) is correct: Shyamji Krishna Varma opened India House in 1905 and ran The Indian Sociologist. (a) is wrong because Dhingra was a student linked to India House, who shot Curzon Wyllie in 1909. (c) is wrong because Har Dayal is associated with the Ghadar Party in America. (d) is wrong because Savarkar stayed at India House on a scholarship but did not found it.

Q2. Consider the following statements:
1. Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki carried out the bomb attack at Muzaffarpur in 1908.
2. Aurobindo Ghose was convicted and transported for life in the Alipore bomb case.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

  1. 1 only
  2. 2 only
  3. Both 1 and 2
  4. Neither 1 nor 2
Show answer

Answer: A. 1 only

(a) is correct: statement 1 is right; statement 2 is wrong because Aurobindo was acquitted in 1909, while his brother Barindra was sentenced. (b) is wrong because statement 2 is false. (c) is wrong because only statement 1 is true. (d) is wrong because statement 1 is true.

Q3. Match List I (organisation) with List II (person):
List I
A. Abhinav Bharat
B. Anushilan Samiti, Dacca
C. Ghadar Party
List II
1. Pulin Behari Das
2. V. D. Savarkar
3. Sohan Singh Bhakna
Select the correct answer using the code given below:

  1. A-2, B-1, C-3
  2. A-1, B-2, C-3
  3. A-2, B-3, C-1
  4. A-3, B-1, C-2
Show answer

Answer: A. A-2, B-1, C-3

(a) is correct: Savarkar founded Abhinav Bharat, Pulin Behari Das led the Dacca Anushilan Samiti and Sohan Singh Bhakna was president of the Ghadar Party. (b) is wrong because it swaps Savarkar and Das. (c) is wrong because it swaps Das and Bhakna. (d) is wrong because it swaps Savarkar and Bhakna.

Q4. With reference to the Komagata Maru episode, consider the following statements:
1. The ship, chartered by Gurdit Singh, carried Punjabi passengers to Vancouver, where most were not allowed to land.
2. On its return in 1914, police firing on the passengers at Budge Budge near Calcutta caused many deaths.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

  1. 1 only
  2. 2 only
  3. Both 1 and 2
  4. Neither 1 nor 2
Show answer

Answer: C. Both 1 and 2

(c) is correct: both statements describe the episode accurately. (a) is wrong because statement 2 is also true. (b) is wrong because statement 1 is also true. (d) is wrong because both statements are true.

Q5. The Provisional Government of India set up in December 1915, with Raja Mahendra Pratap as president, was located at:

  1. Berlin
  2. San Francisco
  3. Kabul
  4. Tokyo
Show answer

Answer: C. Kabul

(c) is correct: it was set up at Kabul, with Barkatullah as prime minister. (a) is wrong because Berlin was the seat of the committee seeking German aid, not of the Provisional Government. (b) is wrong because San Francisco was the Ghadar headquarters. (d) is wrong because Tokyo is linked to Rash Behari Bose's later exile, not to this government.

Q6. Madame Bhikaji Cama unfurled a flag of Indian independence in 1907 at:

  1. the International Socialist Congress at Stuttgart
  2. India House in London
  3. the Ghadar headquarters in San Francisco
  4. the Calcutta session of the Congress
Show answer

Answer: A. the International Socialist Congress at Stuttgart

(a) is correct: she raised the flag at the International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart in August 1907. (b) is wrong because India House was a London hostel, not the place of the flag. (c) is wrong because the Ghadar Party was founded only in 1913. (d) is wrong because the Calcutta session was in 1906 and in India.

Q7. Arrange the following in chronological order:
1. The bomb attack at Muzaffarpur
2. The bomb thrown at Viceroy Hardinge in Delhi
3. The killing of Curzon Wyllie in London
4. The founding of the Ghadar Party
Select the correct answer using the code given below:

  1. 1-3-2-4
  2. 3-1-2-4
  3. 1-3-4-2
  4. 1-2-3-4
Show answer

Answer: A. 1-3-2-4

(a) is correct: Muzaffarpur (April 1908), Curzon Wyllie (July 1909), Delhi (December 1912), Ghadar Party (1913). (b) is wrong because Muzaffarpur came before the London killing. (c) is wrong because the Delhi bomb came before the Ghadar Party. (d) is wrong because the London killing (1909) came before the Delhi bomb (1912).

Q8. Consider the following statements:
1. The Defence of India Act of 1915 allowed detention without trial and special tribunals.
2. The Sedition Committee headed by Justice Rowlatt reported in 1918.
3. Jatindranath Mukherjee (Bagha Jatin) was killed in a gunfight in Delhi.
Which of the statements given above are correct?

  1. 1 and 2 only
  2. 2 and 3 only
  3. 1 and 3 only
  4. 1, 2 and 3
Show answer

Answer: A. 1 and 2 only

(a) is correct: statements 1 and 2 are true; statement 3 is wrong because Bagha Jatin was fatally wounded near Balasore in Orissa in 1915. (b) is wrong because it includes statement 3 and leaves out statement 1. (c) is wrong because it includes statement 3. (d) is wrong because statement 3 is false.

All partsNext: Part 2 →

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