Alluri Seetharama Raju
Alluri Seetharama Raju is known in Indian history to have
led the Rampa rebellion which took place in during 1922-24 against the British.
He was born on July 4, 1897 in Pandrangi village in the Visakhapatnam district
of Andhra Pradesh. He studied at Mrs. AVN College in Visakhapatnam.
Rampa rebellion was one of the 70 listed tribal uprisings
during the British colonial period from 1778 to 1947.
What makes Rampa rebellion unique that it was the earliest
known tribal revolt led by a non-tribal Alluri Seetharama Raju. Though an
outsider, he assembled a band of followers who had the support of the people of
the surrounding areas of at least 2,500 square miles. He became a folk hero in
Andhra Pradesh and came to be known as Manyam Veerudu (Hero of the jungles).
Though Mahatma Gandhi’s Non-cooperation Movement inspired him, he advocated
violence to win tribal goals.
The revolt takes its name from the Rampa region north of
Godavari, which was the place of action for several uprisings in the 19th century.
The immediate cause for Rampa rebellion was illegal
construction of forest roads with unpaid labour by a Tahsildar Bastian of
Gumed, who was very unpopular with the local populace.
A master strategist, Alluri Sitarama Raju used
guerrilla tactics and was said to have divine and healing powers and claimed to
survive the bullet shots. The rebellion was ruthlessly put down by the British
who deployed a company of Assam Rifles. Raju was captured and killed in May
1924. The movement failed as a result of this. The entire operation cost Madras
government fifteen lakh rupees.
Bal Gangadhar Tilak
Of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Edwin Samuel Montagu, British
Secretary of State for India between 1917 and 1922, said, "Tilak
is at the moment probably the most powerful man in India".
One of the famous triumvirate called “Lal-Bal-Pal”, Bal
Gangadhar Tilak was born on July 23, 1856 in Ratnagiri district in the Konkan
region of Maharashtra.
Bal Gangadhar Tilak was educated in Poona where had
co-founded Fergusson College, a landmark educational institution in
Maharashtra. A scholar in mathematics, law and Sanskrit, Tilak was one of the
founders of the Deccan Education Society in 1884, with Gopal Ganesh
Agarkar, Madhavrao Namjoshi and Vishnushastri
Chipalunkar being the other members.
During Home Rule movement which he started in 1914 Bal
Gangadhar was given the epithet of Lokamanya (Universally Respected). Tilak was
called "father of Indian unrest" by Sir Ignatius Valentine
Chirol, a British journalist.
Tilak was imprisoned several times by the British
authorities on charges of sedition. In July 1908, he was imprisoned for six
years on charges of sedition and sent to Mandalay Jail in present-day Myanmar
where he wrote Gita Rahasya or Bhagavad
Gita. The Arctic Home in the Vedas was also written by Tilak.
The nationalist poet Subramania Bharati translated Tilak’s
Tenets of the New Party into Tamil.
Tilak had launched two newspapers, Kesari (in
Marathi) and Mahratta (in English). His trenchant
criticism of colonial rule through these newspapers earned him the ire of the
British administration.
Tilak initiated two important festivals, Ganesh in 1893 and
Shivaji in 1895.
In 1916 Tilak signed the historic Lucknow Pact also
known as the Congress–League Pact.
Tilak breathed his last in Bombay on August 1, 1920. Gandhi
wrote of him in Young India on August 4, 1920:
“A giant among men has fallen. The voice of the lion is
hushed… He knew no religion but love of his country. He was a born democrat. He
believed in the rule of majority with an intensity that fairly frightened me…No
man preached the gospel of swaraj with the consistency and the insistence of
Lokamanya.”
Begum Hazrat Mahal
Begum Hazrat Mahal was one of the important leaders of the
Revolt of 1857 which shook the very foundation of the British rule in India.
Born a courtesan, she was one of the wives of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, the ruler
of Oudh, who was deposed by the British in 1856 and sent to exile in
Calcutta. She led the revolt at Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh.
Acting as a regent of her eleven year old son Brijis Qadr,
she ruled Awadh and under her tutelage the administration was reorganized.
During the revolt, the residency of Lucknow was raided on her instruction.
Providing spirited lead to the rebels she joined Maulvi Ahmadullah at
Shahjahanpur.
After her defeat by the English, Begum Hazrat Mahal
retreated to Nepal. She refused to accept the pension offered by the British
and chose to die unknown in alien country in 1879. She is buried in a grave in
Kathmandu.
Binoy, Badal and Dinesh
Showing exemplary courage three Bengali revolutionaries
– Benoy Krishna Basu, Badal Gupta, and Dinesh Chandra Gupta -
barged into the historic Writer's Buildings in Calcutta on 8th December
1930 and shot dead the then Bengal's IG (Prisons) Lt Col N S
Simpson who was notorious for his atrocities and physical torture of
Indian freedom fighters. In the gun battle that ensued the trio seriously
wounded several European high officials.
Members of the Bengal Volunteers, a group set up
by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose at the Calcutta Session of the Indian National
Congress in 1928, these revolutionaries had worn western suits to
gain access to the Writer's Building, the seat of the government of undivided
Bengal.
Refusing to surrender to the British, Badal Gupta
immediately took potassium cyanide and died instantly, while Benoy and Dinesh
shot themselves with their firearms. Benoy died in a hospital on December 13,
1930, while Dinesh survived. Dinesh was later hanged to death on 7 July 1931.
Later Kanailal Bhattacharjee avenged the death of Dinesh by killing the judge
who had sentenced the latter to death.
Earlier Lowman, the Inspector General of Police, was shot
dead by Benoy Basu in August in 1930. Lowman was known for his brutal
oppression of the prisoners.
Dinesh Gupta was born in 1911 while Benoy Basu was born in
1908 and Badal Gupta was born in 1912.
The area where Writer's Buildings is located is known
as BBD (Benoy, Badal Dinesh) Bagh in honour of the trio.
Earlier the area was named Dalhousie Square.
Bipin Chandra Pal
One of the famous triumvirate called “Lal-Bal-Pal”, Bipin
Chandra Pal is known as "Father of Revolutionary Thoughts" in India.
He was born in 1858 in Sylhet (now in Bangladesh).
Bipin Chandra Pal joined Indian National Congress in 1886.
He started newspapers with a view to educating public
opinion. He was the founder editor of Paridarshak, a weekly, and later worked
as assistant editor of the Bengal Public Opinion and the Tribune.
Nationalist to the core, Bipin Chandra Pal was an exponent
of concept of Indian Swaraj and Swadeshi. He vehemently opposed the partition
of Bengal announced in 1905. He was a noted writer and a powerful speaker. His
most famous work was Memories and My Life and Times (in two volumes).
He also launched English newspaper Bande Mataram of which
the revolutionary and later a mystic Aurobindo Ghose became an editor. In 1907,
he was convicted for six months following publication of seditious views in the
paper.
Bipin Chandra Pal worked for Association for the Advancement
of Scientific and Industrial Education of India which was set up during the
Swadeshi Movement for the dissemination of scientific and industrial education.
Critical of Mahatma Gandhi, he retired from active
politics in 1920. He continued to publish in retirement till his death on May
20, 1932.
Birsa Munda
Birsa Munda was born in Jharkhand on 15th November 1875 into
a Munda family. His parents were Sugana Munda and Karmi Hatu. His place of
birth is Ulihatu, a village in the Khunti district in Jharkhand.
Birsa converted into a Christian to receive education from
the German Mission School .
In 1894, Birsa declared his opposition to the British and
the Dikus (outsiders) and thus began the Munda Ulgulan.
Birsa also started his own religion and proclaimed he was
god’s messenger. Many tribal people Mundas, Kharias and Oraons accepted him as
their leader.
Birsa asked the tribal people to keep distance from the
Christian missionaries and revert to their traditional ways. He also advocated
for the non-payment of taxes.
Birsa was arrested in 1895. Afterv coming from the jail
after two years he he resumed his armed struggle by razing police stations,
churches, government property and houses of Zamindars.
He was arrested in 1900 from Jamkopai forest in
Chakradharpur. He died on June 9th 1900 while lodged at the Ranchi jail. He was
only 25. Authorities claimed he died of cholera although this claim is doubted.
After his death, his movement petered out.
Dadabhai Naoroji
Born of priestly Parsi family in 1825 in Bombay, Dadabhai
Naoroji took a leading part in founding the Indian National Congress of which
he was the president for three times (in 1886, 1893 and 1906). Affectionately
called the 'Grand Old Man of India', he was the first Indian to be elected to
the British Parliament. He entered the British House of Commons as a member of
the Liberal Party in 1892.
In 1852, Naoroji established Bombay Association, India’s
first political association. In 1867 he helped establish the East India
Association which aimed to put across Indian viewpoints across to the British
public
A critic of British economic policy in India, Naoroji is
known for his enunciations of the Drain Theory in his long paper, Poverty and
Un-British Rule in India.
Dadabhai Naoroji died in 1917 in Mumbai.
Gaidinliu Pamei
Birth of Gaidinliu Pamei (26 January 1915 – 17 February
1993), popularly known as Rani Gaidinliu, who was a Naga woman revolutionary
leader and successor to the political movement launched by the Naga leader
Haipou Jadonang (1905-31) to drive away the British from Manipur.
Born in the present day Tamenglong district of Manipur Rani
Gaidinliu led a popular rebellion against the British rule at the young age of
sixteen after Jadonang was executed by the British.
In 1932, she was arrested by the British government who
sentenced her to life imprisonment. This tribal freedom fighter spent fourteen
years in different jails of Guwahati, Shillong, Aizawl, Tura and others between
1932 and 1947 making her one of India’s longest incarcerated political
prisoners by the British.
Rani Gaidinliu was finally released from the prison after
India’s independence in 1947. She died in 1993.
Jawahar Lal Nehru gave her the title of "Rani"
("Queen") whom he has met at Shillong Jail in 1937.
Kanailal Dutta
Born in Chandan Nagar in West Bengal, Kanailal Dutta was a
great revolutionary who was arrested in connection with the Muzaffarpur
Conspiracy Case in 1908. He was sentenced to death for the murder of a
revolutionary-turned-approver in the Alipur Conspiracy Case.
Kanailal Dutta was hanged on November 10, 1908 inside the
Alipore Jail in Kolkata.
Lala Lajpat Rai
One of the famous triumvirate called “Lal-Bal-Pal”, Lala
Lajpat Rai was born on January 28, 1856 in Ludhiana district in Punjab.
Lala Lajpat Rai was elected President of the Indian National
Congress in its Calcutta Session In 1920. In 1921, he founded Servants of the
People Society.
On 17 November 1928 Lala Lajpat Rai succumbed to the
injuries received by him during a protest in Lahore against the Simon
Commission which had arrived in India in 1928 to study constitutional reform in
the country.
Unhappy India is one of the works of Lala Lajpat Rai.
Madan Lal Dhingra
great revolutionary from Punjab, Madan Lal Dhingra
(1887-1909) went to England in 1906 to pursue higher education in Engineering.
In England he came in close contact with the Indian revolutionary leaders like
Shyamji Krishna Varma and VD Savarkar. He was also associated with the Indian
Home Rule Society, the Abhinav Bharat Society and the India House in London. To
avenge the atrocities committed by the British in India, he shot dead Curzon
Wyllie, an Advisor to the Secretary of the state of India, and Cowas Lalcaca at
the meeting of the Indian National Association in London on July 1, 1909.
During his trial he owned the responsibility for murdering Wyllie. When the
death-sentence was pronounced on him, he told the Judge: “I am proud to have
the honour of laying down my humble life…A son like myself has nothing else to
offer to the mother, but his own blood, and so I have sacrificed the same on
her life: “The Only lesson required in India at present is to learn how to die
and the only way to teach it is by dying ourselves. Therefore, I die and glory
in my martyrdom.”
Manindra Nath Banerjee
Born on 13th January in 1907 at Varanasi, Manindra Nath
Banerji was a revolutionary who had shot his maternal uncle J.N. Banerji, the
Deputy Superintend of Police investigating the Kakori Conspiracy case. J.N.
Banerji had played a dubious role in getting Rajendra Lahiri
hanged. Rajendra Lahiri was convicted in the famous Kakori conspiracy
case and hanged in the Gonda District Jail.
Manindra Nath Banerjee was arrested and sentenced to ten
years of rigorous imprisonment. While demanding better treatment for the
political prisoners he breathed his last on June 20 in 1934 in the
Fatehgarh Central Jail in Farrukhabad district in the Uttar Pradesh after 66
days of hunger strike.
Matangini Hazra
Matangini Hazra was a woman revolutionary and brave freedom
fighter who fought for the independence of India from the British and laid down
her life for it.
She was from a small village called Hogla located near
Tamluk, the headquarters of the Purba Medinipur district in West Bengal. Hazra
was born on October 19, 1870.
Matangini Hazra was one of the protagonists of the Tamralipta
Jatiya Sarkar (Tamralipta National Government), a parallel government
established during the Quit India Movement.
Matangini Hazra was shot dead by the police in front of the
Tamluk Police Station on 29 September 1942.
Matangini Hazra was affectionately known as Gandhi
buri, Bengali for old lady Gandhi. The famed Hazra Road in Kolkata is also
named after her.
leading member of the Theosophical Society, Annie Besant was
an Irish English woman who came to India in 1893 to spread the beliefs of the
society which she had joined in 1889.
In India, Annie Besant settled in Varanasi where she founded
the Central Hindu College in 1898. In 1907, she was elected president of the
Theosophical Society. In 1914 she started the publication of the Commonweal and
New India. These journals soon became her chief vehicle for propagating the
beliefs of India’s freedom.
In 1916 Besant established the Indian Home Rule League. She
was a leading member of the Indian National Congress of which she was elected
president in the Calcutta session in 1917. She was also the founder of
Indian Boy Scouts Association and Indian Woman’s Association.
Credited with the foundations of several schools and
colleges, she had also established the National University at Adyar in 1918.
Besant died in 1933.
Pritilata Waddedar
Pritilata Waddedar (1911-32) was a woman
revolutionary from Bengal. An active member of the Jugantar and
the Chittagong Republican Army, formed by Surya Sen, also known as “Masterda”. She led
a group of revolutionaries and attacked a European club at Pahartali on
September 24, 1932 in which a number of European were killed or wounded. After
successfully raiding the club, she swallowed poison and committed suicide with
a written statement in her pocket, which was a clarion call to the womanhood of
India to rise up in arms against the foreign oppressions and to stand by the
side of their brothers fighting for freedom.
Raja Ram Mohan Roy
Born in 1772 at Radhanagar (in the Hooghly district of West
Bengal), Raja Ram Mohan was known for his advocacy of social reform and has
been rightly called the father of Indian Renaissance. In 1815, he founded
Atmiya Shabha in Calcutta to propagate monotheism and reforms in the Hindu
society. In 1828, he founded a sect named Brahmo Sabha which was later renamed
Brahmo Samaj in 1882.
He launched in 1821 a Bengali weekly newspaper Sambad
Kaumudi or “The Moon of the Intelligence” through which he started a campaign
for the abolition of Sati.
Among his Persian literary works, Tuhfat-ul-Muwahhidin (A
Gift to Monotheists) published in 1803 and Manazarutul Adyan, a
discussion on various religions deserve special mention. In 1822, he published
a Persian journal titled Mirat-ul-Akbar. Precepts of Jesus was published by him
in 1820.
In 1830 Raja Ram Mohan Roy went to England as an envoy of
the penultimate Mughal Emperor, Akbar Shah II, to the court of King William IV.
It was Akbar Shah II who gave him the title of Raja,
Raja Ram Mohan Roy was a friend of English philosopher and
reformer Jeremy Bentham. He died in England in 1833.
Rash Behari Ghose
Born on 23 December 1845 in Khandaghosh
village in the Purba Bardhaman district of West Bengal in 1845, Rash Behari
Ghose was an eminent lawyer, educationist, social worker and philanthropist.
His was a brilliant academic career. He proved to be a very successful lawyer.
Rash Behari Ghose was a leading leader of the moderate wing
of the Indian National Congress. During the freedom struggle for India there
were two divisions in the Indian National Congress (INC)- moderate and
extremist. He is said to have called the extremists “irresponsible agitators”
and “pestilential demagogues”. He was a believer in the British sense of
justice.
Rash Behari Ghose was elected President of the Indian
National Congress at the Surat session of 1907. It was at the Surat session
when INC split into two sections: moderate and extremist. He was again elected
president of the INC in its subsequent session in 1908.
Rash Behari Ghose breathed his last on February, 28,
1921.
Savitribai Phule
Savitribai Phule was a poet, reformer and educationist. Born
on January 3, 1831 in Naigaon in a lowly Mali family in Maharashtra she was
married off at the tender age of 10.
Critical of the prevailing Hindu religion and custom she
along with her husband, Jyotirao Phule, established several schools for the
uplift of the untouchables and women.
Savitribai Phule started India’s first school for girls at
Pune's Bhide Wada in 1848.
To make the depressed classes conscious of their rights, she
and her husband founded the Satya Sodhak Samaj in 1873.
Savitribai passed away on March 10, 1897.
Savitribai Phule was born in Maharashtra’s Satara district
to Lakshmi and Khandoji Nevase Patil on January 3, 1831.
Her important works include:
• Kavya
Phule (“Flowers of Poems”) (published in 1854)
• Bavan
Kashi Subodh Ratnakar (published in1892)
• Matushri
Savitribai Phulenchi Bhashane Va Gaani
• Jotibanchi
Bhashane Vol. 1 to 4 – [Collection of Mahatma Phule’s speeches, edited by
Savitribai Phule],
In Savitribai’s honour, the Pune University was renamed the
Savitribai Phule Pune University in 2015.
Shyamji Krishna Varma
Indian revolutionary leader Shyamji Krishna
Varma was born on 4th October, 1857 in Mandvi town of
Kachchh district of Gujarat. He is known for founding the Indian
Home Rule Society, India House and The Indian Sociologist in London.
Shyamji Krishna Varma was impressed by Bal Gangadhar
Tilak and Swami Dayanand Saraswati, the founder of
Arya Samaj. He was an admirer of Herbert Spencer, a Victorian
sociologist who coined the phrase "survival of the fittest".
He worked as an assistant to Monier Williams, a professor of
Sanskrit in the Oxford University.
In 1883 Shyamji Krishna Varma graduated from Balliol College
in Oxford and was called to the Bar in 1884. In 1881, he attended the Berlin
Congress of Orientalists.
In 1905, Krishnavarma founded the Indian Home Rule
Society and India House. India House became a
meeting-place for Indian revolutionaries in London.
Krishna Varma shifted his base to Paris in 1907 to avoid
arrest by the British Government due to the political activities of India
House. He was also disbarred from practising law by the Inner Temple. He
published the journal The Indian Sociologist where he wrote against the
colonial government. He died in Geneva in 1930.
Sohan Lal Pathak
Born in 1883 at Patti (now in Tarn Taran district) in
Punjab, Sohan Lal Pathak was a revolutionary who was hanged at the Mandalay
Jail in Burma on 10 February 1916 for organizing an uprising against the
British.
In 1901, Sohan Lal Pathak got married to Laksmi Devi who
died after giving birth to their son who also died with a week of his
birth.
Sohan Lal Pathak came in contact with Lala Lajpat Rai under whom he became the editor of an
Urdu journal, Bande Mataram. Bande Mataram was being run by Lala Lajpat Rai in
Lahore.
Sohan Lal Pathak went to the USA in 1913 to join the Ghadar
Party in California. He was the first revolutionary of the Ghadar Party who
went to gallows outside India.
One of India’s earliest revolutionaries to die on the
gallows on August 11, 1908, Khudiram Bose was member of the revolutionary
society the Yugantar of Barindra Ghosh. He along with Prufulla Chaki threw a
bomb at the carriage of Kingsford, an English Judge at Muzaffarpur in Bihar. He
was arrested in the Muzaffarpur Conspiracy case and sentenced to death at the
young age of 18.
Surendranath Banerjee
orn in 1848 in Calcutta, Surendranath Banerjee was an
educationist, journalist and political leader. In 1868 he successfully competed
for the Indian Civil Service but on technical grounds he was disqualified.
After a court judgment that went in his favour, he was inducted into the Civil
Services but not long after, was dismissed over a procedural error.
After dismissal, he became more politically active. In 1876,
together with Anand Mohan Bose they formed the Indian Association of
Calcutta.
In 1879, he became editor of The Bengalee, an English
language newspaper in Kolkata.
He was a vocal critic of the partition of Bengal in
1905.
One of the founders of the Indian National Congress,
Surendranath Banerjee became its president on two occasions in 1895 at
Poona and in 1902 at Ahmedabad.
He left Congress following the emergence of Mahatma Gandhi
on the Indian political scene. After accepting a knighthood from the British in
1921 he was appointed as minister of local self-government and health in the
Bengal government becoming the first Indian to hold that position. His
acceptance of office was met with strong protest by the nationalists.
He passed away on 6th August 1925.
Surya Sen
Born in 1894, Surya Sen founded the Chittagong Republic Army
with a view to freeing Chittagong (now in Bangladesh) from the British rule. A
teacher by profession, Surya Sen led an armed uprising and organized
simultaneous attacks on the British strongholds.
On April 18, 1930, the Chittagong (or Indian) Republican
Army, founded by Surya Sen, raided two government armouries. The
telegraph, telephone and railway station were disrupted. As a result,
Chittagong was completely cut off from the rest of India. After these daring
raids and attacks, Surya Sen declared the formation of a free National
Revolutionary Government.
But his venture did not last long. As a result, successive
defeats, he went for guerilla warfare and in the meantime extended his fight to
the adjoining districts of Chittagong. After nearly three years of valiant
struggle, he was captured in February 1933 due to the betrayal by one his
followers. He was sentenced to death in 1934.
Rajendra Lahiri
Revolutionary Rajendra Lahiri was hanged to death on 17th
December 1927 in Gonda District Jail, now in Uttar Pradesh. After a long trial
he was found guilty of taking part in the Kakori conspiracy carried out on
August 9th, 1925.
On this day a train carrying government money was passing
Kakori near Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, Lahiri pulled the chain resulting in the
stopping of the train. The money was looted, but an Indian passenger named
Ahmad Ali got killed by mistake.
Rajendra Lahiri, Ram Prasad Bismil, Roshan Singh and
Ashfaqullah Khan were sentenced to death. Rajendra Lahiri was hanged two days
before the other three.
Rajendra Lahiri was an active member of the Hindustan
Republican Association.
Lahiri was also prosecuted for his role in the Dakshineswar
bombing.
Sachindra Nath Sanyal
Death of revolutionary leader Sachindra Nath Sanyal who
was born on 3rd June 1893 in Benares, then in North-Western Provinces. He died
on 7th February 1942. Jailed for his involvement in the Kakori conspiracy,
Sanyal was the co-founder of the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA), which
after 1928 became the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association).
Tilka Majhi
Birth of Tilka Majhi on 11th
February in 1750. Tilka Majhi was a tribal leader and
revolutionary who laid down his life in 1785 some 72 years before the First War
of Independence in 1857. His place of birth is Tilakpur in Sultanganj in
the Bhagalpur district of Bihar.
He had killed Augustus Cleveland, a British East
India Company administrator in Bengal and Collector of Bhagalpur, who was known
for his arrogance and hatred towards Indians.
Tilka Majhi was executed by the British on January 13,
1785. The site where he was hanged from a banyan tree is known as Tilka
Manjhi Chowk. The Bhagalpur University is also named after this heroic
figure.
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