Revolutionaries: The Other Story of How India Won Its Freedom

by Sanjeev Sanyal

The history of India’s freedom movement, in what is now the mainstream narrative, is almost exclusively about non-violent opposition to the British colonial occupation led by the Indian National Congress (INC), and, more specifically, by Mahatma Gandhi.

The names of many of the key leaders of this new movement, such as Vinayak Savarkar, Rashbehari Bose, Bagha Jatin, Bhagat Singh and Chandrashekhar Azad, are still widely remembered.The problem is that their story is almost always presented as acts of individual heroism and not as part of a wider movement.

The next generation of revolutionaries was just as impressed by the Irish. The Indian and Irish revolutionaries would often collaborate across the world.

Colonial-era narratives particularly targeted Hindus as idolatrous heathens steeped in superstition.

The real founder of Indian communism was Manabendra Nath Roy.

The Lal–Bal–Pal trio would articulate a more clearly nationalist line in the first decade of the twentieth century.

In the middle ages, the akhadas played an important role in mobilizing local resistance against the Turkic conquest.

Leaving Barin and his associates to run the paper, Aurobindo busied himself with the setting up of the National College in Calcutta as an alternative to the British- and missionary-controlled institutions. The college would evolve into today’s Jadavpur University. It opened in July 1906 with Aurobindo as its first principal.

It appears that the Indian love for Russian military technology predates the Cold War!

Aurobindo’s change of direction may seem inexplicable, but his writings explain his reasons.

After centuries under foreign rule, Indians had come to see their own culture from the perspective of those who had conquered them. Many members of the Indian elite had imbibed the idea that sacred texts such as the Vedas and the Upanishads were just superstition

As with any large movement, the freedom movement is not a story of linear progression but peppered with mistakes, U-turns, the vagaries of fortune and leaders working at cross-purposes.

On reaching Dehradun, Rashbehari organized a meeting at FRI to condemn the attack in the harshest terms!

the British invested systematically in a Sikh identity, which was distinct from its Hindu roots. The initial effort was to spread Christianity among the Sikhs.

With Jwala Singh’s support, a formal association headed by Bhakna and Hardayal was established.

It is also quite extraordinary that any link with the famous poet was enough to waive all suspicion. It is difficult to think of a writer or poet today who would command such respect.

As it became clear that it was going to be a long-drawn war, the Germans began to look for ways to undermine the British Empire. An obvious ploy was to instigate armed revolt in India—the Germans were willing to supply the guns.

Thus, we have one of those impossible combinations of history—nationalist Hindus fighting for the pan-Islamist cause in Persia, backed by Germany.

This is consistent with the complex view of history, as history can go down many different paths and it is near impossible to predict the future—because the smallest of factors can cause a diversion.

Despite the repeated failures to trigger a large-scale rebellion in India, the second generation of revolutionary leaders certainly ratcheted up the game. The movement had come a long way from the small number of idealists in India House and the Maniktola garden house.

When the war was over, a ‘grateful’ colonial government built India Gate in New Delhi as a memorial for the tens of thousands of Indians who died fighting for someone else’s empire. Many of their names are inscribed on it. One wonders if they include the names of Manha and Hira.

The name ‘Andaman’ derives from the Malay pronunciation of ‘Hanuman’, the monkey hero of the epic Ramayana.

Apologists sometimes try to put the entire blame of the massacre on the folly of one man—Reginald Dyer. However, it should be remembered that the events in Amritsar were not isolated. There was a broader attempt to batter the population of Punjab into submission.

On a bright afternoon, with flowers in bloom, tourists taking selfies and children running around, it was difficult to imagine the horror that had visited this place in April 1919.

In short, the dominant British view was that Dyer had saved the empire from another 1857.

What was worse was the attitude of the loyalist Punjabi elite. Both the traditional elite and the newly rich contractor class were effusive in their support of O’Dwyer and Dyer.

He realized that most INC leaders simply did not appreciate the difference between conditions in a normal prison and those in the Cellular Jail.

The Khilafat Movement had mobilized the Muslims along communal lines rather than along nationalist lines.

Gandhi’s responses were disappointing. He initially denied the violence and then tried to downplay its links to the Khilafat Movement. The Moplah riots were finally put down by government troops.

His critics pointed out that his principled adherence to non-violence had not prevented him from helping the British during the Boer Wars, recruiting soldiers for the First World War or understating the brutality of the Moplah riots. The British took advantage of the confusion

In the early 1920s, Das brought in two young men into the Congress who would play an important role in subsequent events—Subhas Chandra Bose and Nalinaksha Sanyal.

In April 1921, he wrote a letter of resignation. The British must have had an inkling that this young man was likely to be just as troublesome as his predecessor—several senior officials tried to dissuade him, but he remained adamant.

Das’s death in 1925 was a blow to Nalinaksha. In common with Subhas, he had lost his mentor.

Nonetheless, it was quite an experience to eat a meal directly linked to the extraordinary life of an extraordinary man.

Mainstream narratives tend to leave the reader with the impression that the revolutionaries were niche operators with few links with mass movements and the wider freedom struggle. As should be obvious by now, they had close links with trade unions, peasant movements and with powerful factions of the INC itself.

Bismil and/or Sanyal were making a distinction between the use of targeted violence as resistance and the use of indiscriminate violence to spread fear or an ideology.

At the time they were martyred, Bismil was thirty, Ashfaqullah twenty-seven, Roshan Singh thirty-five and Lahiri barely twenty-six.

It was clear by mid-1927 that the HRA needed new leadership as most of the experienced revolutionaries had been killed, were on death row or in jail with long sentences.

They kept hitting Lajpat Rai on the head until he collapsed, bleeding profusely. All this was done in full public view, as the purpose was to instil fear—the same mindset that had led to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

One must remember that for all their bravery, these were very young men, who often argued, disagreed and acted impetuously.

The chairman of the newspaper, Madan Mohan Malaviya, publicly maintained a distance from the revolutionaries but employed several journalists such as reporter Chaman Lal and editor J.N. Sahni, who were sympathetic to their cause.

In other words, the revolutionaries did not recognize the legitimacy of the colonial government and the court, and would not participate in the trial in any way.

The best available evidence suggests that he briefly raised the matter but did not press it, and there is a possibility that he was subtly misled by the viceroy to believe that the executions were not imminent.

Yashpal would later claim that the meeting did not go well, as Jawaharlal was generally dismissive of the revolutionary approach.

The real founder of the Communist Party of India is another fascinating character—Manabendra Nath Roy, usually remembered as M.N. Roy.

This is how the Communist Party of India was founded in Tashkent on 17 October 1920.

Another reason could be that the British had infiltrated the Indian communist movement and felt that they could misdirect its energies (there is some evidence that Yashpal was used for this as well). This was entirely in character with colonial tactics. We have already seen how the British had set up the INC as a ‘safety valve’ and later infiltrated the Sikh gurudwaras in Canada to wean them away from Ghadarites. Thus, it was not uncommon for the British to divert politically aroused youth to join a movement that they indirectly controlled.

The RSS, meaning the National Volunteers’ Organization, was founded on Vijaya Dashami in September 1925.

The alternative view was that of Subhas Bose, who remained adamant that India should keep out of the war and focus on liberating itself from foreign occupation. Why should Indians die to preserve the freedom and democracy of their oppressors?

It was the passing away of a patriot who had inspired, recruited and organized several generations of revolutionaries. Given that Japan had entered the war by this time and the flow of information was disrupted, it is unclear if and when Rashbehari Bose learnt about the death of his closest ally and friend.