Modern History / National Movement
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Revolutionary freedom fighters of India are those freedom fighters who took arms into their hands to fight against the British. In India, Maharashtra was the birthplace of revolutionary freedom struggle. The first revolutionary freedom fighter of India was Vasudev Balwant Phadke of Maharashtra. He is called father of Indian armed rebellion. In 1879, he was arrested by the Nizam of Hyderabad and handed over to the British, who sent him to Aden jail, where he died.
Anushilan Samiti was established at Calcutta in 1902 by Pramathanath Mitra and prominent leaders are Jatindra Nath Banerjee, Bagha Jatin, Aurobindo Ghosh,
Barindra Kumar Ghosh (brother of Aurobindo Ghosh) and Bhupendranath Datta (brother of Vivekananda).
Dhaka Anushilan Samiti (1905) was established by
Pulin Behari Das. Anushilan Samiti had 500 branches throughout Bengal. It ran revolutionary journals Sandhya and Yugantar.
Members of this organization made an assassination attempt on a judge of Muzaffarpur, D.H. Kingsford on April 30, 1908. The members were Prafulla Chandra
Chaki (who committed suicide) and Khudiram Bose (18 years) who was hanged in 1909.
Kingsford got escaped. But two women were killed, wife and daughter
of Pringle Kennedy, a famous lawyer of Muzaffarpur Bar.
In May, 1908, the headquarters at Muraripukur Road in Calcutta (where bomb factory was located) was seized. 14 revolutionaries were caught from the factory and its activities came to an end with the trial of Alipore Bomb Case.
The mastermind behind this raid was Surya Sen. He was more popularly known as Masterda. He was a school teacher turned revolutionary.
In 1930, he
along with others made a raid on Chittagong armoury and captured all the weapons. In 1933, he was given death sentence and was hanged.
Ganesh Ghosh and
Ambika Chakrabarty were sent to Andaman. The other revolutionaries were Prtilata Waddedar who committed suicide and the school girl Kalpana Datta was put into
the prison.
Komagata Maru is the name of a Japanese ship. It was carrying 376 passengers of Punjab from Hong Kong to Vancouver. At Vancouver, the immigration
officers refused to admit to Canada.
From Vancouver the ship came to Calcutta. Police opened fire in Calcutta believing that the Punjabis were Gadar
party people. Many people died in this incident.
Ghadar party planned for armed rebellion against this event. They decided to take armed rebellion in 21st February, 1915 called Ghadar Mutiny. This information got leaked to the British. By 21st February, all the party leaders were put behind the bars.