Rise of militant nationalism
The first activity of militant nationalism was seen in Pune during the Bubonic plague of Bombay presidency when the Chapekar brothers shot two officials Mr. Rand and Lt. Ayerst dead in 1897.
This group of people hated the British due to their apathy, discrimination and irresponsible administration during the famine and plague.
Lord Curzon, who wanted to make England’s stronghold more strong in India actually did some political blunders
In 1899 the political powers of Calcutta Corporation was curtailed down.
The University act of 1904 reduced the number of Indian elected members.
The Official secrets act 1904 tightened the security
The police reforms increased the power and expense of the Police Force.
There was considerable unemployment in the country and these unemployed youths started getting attracted towards the anti-Government radical politics.
These youths were aware of the Russophobia of British. They could understand what was happening in Japan. They knew about the Chinese boycott of American goods. They knew about the struggle of British in the Boer war.
These news that came from across the border was enough to boost their self confidence
Around 1 million people were reading newspapers now. The Bengal, the Punjab and the Presidency of Bombay were ripe for rise of the militant nationalism.
The father of this extremism was who started Ganapati festival from 1894 and developed this religious method of mass contact into a patriotic cult and a symbol of nationalism though which later led to communalisation.
In 1896 he started organizing Shivaji festival. For him, the congress was a frog that croaked once a year.
He was able create mass unrest by writing articles in his Kesari in Marathi and Mahratta in English.
In the first half of the 20th century, revolutionary groups sprang up mainly in Bengal, Maharashtra, and Punjab.
The revolutionaries were not satisfied with the methods of both the moderates and extremists. Hence, they started many revolutionary secret organizations.
REVOLUTIONARY ACTIVITIES IN MAHARASHTRA
Vasudeo Balwant Phadke
Phadke was influenced by the vision of Justice Ranade.He held the British government to be responsible for the sufferings of the people during the famine in the Deccan in 1876-77.
Phadke denounced the British policy of ruthless exploitation of India.
The government ordered the army to suppress the uprising.
Phadke recognized his force &started guerilla warfare against the British.
He was ultimately captured and was sentenced to transportation for life. He was deported to Aden where he died in 1883 in jail.
The Chapekar Brothers, Damodar, Vasudev and Balkrishan
in 1897, W.C. Rand & Lieutenant C.E. Ayearst were shot dead by Damodar & Bal Krishna Chapekar.
Damodar was arrested immediately after and was sentence to death.
Bal Krishna was later arrested and sentenced to death.
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar
Savarkar joined the Abhinav Bharat Society founded by his elder brother Ganesh Damodar. Savarkar later proceeded to London in 1906, but his organization continued to flourish in India.
REVOLUTIONARY ACTIVITIES IN BENGAL
The revolutionary activity in Bengal was the outcome of the failure of constitutional agitation to prevent the partition of Bengal in 1905.
Anushilan Samiti
The first revolutionary organization in Bengal was the Anushilan samiti.
The Anushilan Samiti was established by Pramathanath Mitra, a barrister from Calcutta.
The people associated with this samiti were Sri Aurobindo, Deshabandhu Chittaranjan Das, Surendranath Tagore, Jatindranath Banerjee, Bagha Jatin, Bhupendra Natha Datta, Barindra Ghosh etc. Bhupendra Nath Datta was brother of Swami Vivekananda.
Barindra Ghosh was sent to Paris to learn the science of Bomb Making and here he came in touch were Madam Bhikaji Cama.
Its members Kudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki were entrusted with the task of assassination of Kingsford the vindictive judge who had sentenced many political prisoners to heavy terms of punishment.
On 30th April 1908, they threw a bomb at the carriage in which they believed Kingsford to be travelling. But unfortunately, two British ladies who were in the carriage were inadvertently killed. Kudiram was arrested and hanged on 11th August 1908
They published a periodical named Jugantar, which openly preached armed rebellion in order to create the necessary revolutionary mentality among the people. Both Sandhya and Jugantar openly preached the cult of violence.
The Alipore Conspiracy
The government’s search for illegal arms in Calcutta led to the arrest of thirty-four persons including the Ghosh brothers and their trial came to be known as Alipore conspiracy case.
One of the arrested persons Narendra Gosain became the approver, but he was shot dead in jail before giving evidence.
Of the accused in the Alipore conspiracy case, fifteen were found guilty and some of them including Barindrakumar Ghosh were transported to life.
After the Alipore conspiracy case, Rash Behari Bose planned a nationwide-armed uprising with the help of Indian soldiers of the British army. However following the discovery of the plot by the police, Rash Behari Bose escaped to Japan & continued his revolutionary activities there.
REVIVAL OF REVOLUTIONARY NATIONALISM
After the First World War, the British government, released some of the revolutionaries to create a more harmonious atmosphere.
On the plea of Gandhiji, C.R. Das and other leaders, most of the revolutionary nationalists either joined the Indian national movement or suspended their own activities.
When The non-cooperation movement under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi was suddenly suspended following the mob violence at Chauri chaura in U.P. many young people began to question the very basic strategy of the national leadership & its emphasis on non-violence and began to look for alternatives.
Some of them were convinced with the idea that violent methods alone would free India.
Gradually two separate groups of revolutionary nationalism developed one in Punjab, U.P., and Bihar and the other in Bengal.
Hindustan Socialist Republican Association
The revolutionary terrorist activity in Punjab and United Province region was dominated by the Hindustan Republican Association.
The HRA was founded in 1924 in Kanpur by Ramprasad Bismil, Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee and Sachin Sanyal.
The initial main objective of HRA was to organise an armed revolution to overthrow the colonial government and establish in its place a Federal Republic of United States of India whose basic principle would be adult franchise.
For all these activities, money was required.
The Kakori Conspiracy Case
To achieve this objective the Hindustan Revolutionary Army stopped the down train at Kakori, a village in Lucknow district on 9th August 1925 and looted the railway cash.
The government arrested large number of young men and tried them in the Kakori conspiracy case.
The chief leaders of the robbery, 
, Ram Prasad Bismil, Roshanlal were sentenced to death.
At a historic HRA meeting in 1928, the participants including Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Bhagwaticharan Vohra from Punjab and Bejoy Kumar Sinha, Shiv Verma and Jaidev Kapur from UP decided to work under a collective leadership and adopted socialism as its official goal.
Revolution was no longer equated with militancy and violence.
Its objective was to be national liberation that is imperialism was to be overthrown but beyond that a new socialist order was to be achieved, ending exploitation of man by man.
The group is considered one of the first socialist organizations in India.
HSRA was rejuvenated by the ideologies of the Bolsheviks involvement in the Russian Revolution of 1917.
The association was formed as an outgrowth of the Anushilan Samiti.
The name Hindustan Socialist Republican Association was implicative after a similar revolutionary body in Ireland.
Hindustan Socialist Republican Association consisted of younger generations of U.P, Bihar, Punjab, Bengal and Maharashtra was always in the forefront of revolutionary movements in the northern parts of India.
The group possessed ideals, which were directly opposite to Mahatma Gandhi’s Congress.
HSRA in non-violent protest advancement against the Simon Commission at Lahore decided to support Lala Lajpat Rai.
But in the protest procession, the police plunged into a mass lathi charge and the wounds imposed on Lalaji proved life-threatening to him.
To avenge the death of Lajpat Rai; Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Chander Shekhar Azad, and Jai Gopal were given the charge to assassinate J.A. Scott, who had ordered the unlawful lathi-charge but unfortunately a British official J. P. Saunders, got killed in confusion.
Trial and execution of Bhagat Singh
The assassination was justified saying that the murder of a leader respected by millions of people at the unworthy hands of an ordinary police officer was an insult to the nation.
The ideology behind the bombing was ‘to make the deaf government hear the voices of its oppressed people’.
Bhagat Singh also believed that ‘the only way to successfully convey his message to the public of India was to propaganda from Court.
On April 8th 1929 a bomb was detonated near the empty treasure benches, followed by another bomb explosion in the Central Assembly.
Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt carried out the bombing and got arrested.
Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt throw a bomb in the Central Legislative Assembly against the passage of the Public Safety Bill and Trade Disputes Bill which were deliberately aimed at curtailing civil liberties of citizens in general and workers in particular.
According to Bhagat Singh, the bomb was harmless and was only aimed at making the deaf hear recognize his voice.
Bhagat realized that a revolution meant organization and development of a mass movement of the exploited and the suppressed sections by the revolutionary intelligentsia and that’s why he used to say, "Real revolutionary armies are in villages and factories."
Bhagat Singh said in the court, "Revolution does not necessarily involve sanguinary strife, nor is there a place in it for personal vendetta. It is not the cult of bomb and pistol. By revolution we mean the present order of things, which is based on manifest injustice, must change".
While in Delhi jail, Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar demanded that they be treated not as criminals, but as political prisoners.
The trail and subsequent execution of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru on 23rd March 1931 become a political issue.
A resolution was passed by the Karachi session of the congress in1931 commending their brave contribution to the freedom struggle of India.
After the Assembly Bomb Case trial on 23rd March 1931 Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were hanged.
Jatindranath Das, who went on fast on similar grounds, died on 13th of September 1930, on the sixty- fourth day of the fast in the Lahore prison.
Baikuntha Shukla was also hanged for murdering Phanindrananth Ghosh who had become a government approver which later on led to the hanging of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru.
Another key revolutionary of Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, Chander Shekhar Azad was involved in a bid to blow up Viceroy Irwin's train near Delhi in 1929 and he was killed in a park in Allahabad on 27th February 1931 in a gunfight with the police
Surya Sen
In the later part of 1920’s, the most active & famous of the Bengal revolutionary groups was the Chittagong Group led by Surya Sen.
"Humanism is a special virtue of a revolutionary."- Surya Sen.
He had actively participated in the non-cooperation movement and had become a teacher in a national school in Chittagong.
A group led by Surya Sen captured the government armory on 18th April 1930, and for a while took control over Chittagong and proclaimed a provisional revolutionary government. They escaped to the Chittagong hills and continued to wage guerilla warfare for another three years.
There was a large-scale participation of young women especially under Surya Sen Revolutionary wing. These women provided shelter, carried messages and even did not hesitated fighting with guns. Prominent women revolutionaries in Bengal during this phase included
i. Pritilata Waddedar, who died conducting a raid;
ii. Kalpana Dutt who was arrested and tried along with Surya Sen and given a life sentence;
iii. Santi Ghosh and Suniti Chandheri both were school girls from Comilla and they shot dead the district magistrate.
iv. Bina Das who fired point blank at the Governor while receiving her degree at the convocation.
LIMITATIONS OF REVOLUTIONARY NATIONA`LISTS
They were not successful in politically activating the masses.
Their contact with masses was lacking.
REVOLUTIONARY ACTIVITIES OUTSIDE INDIA
Shyamji Krishnavarma
He was a member of Mitramela Abhinav Bharat revolutionary group.
He left Bombay in 1897 and went to London. He started a monthly journal, the Indian sociologist; an organ of freedom struggle of India in 1905.
Shyamji established the Indian Home Rule society and a hostel for Indian students living in London, popularly known as the Indian House.
The most important revolutionaries associated with him were V.D. Savarkar, Madanlal Dhingra, Madame Cama, and Lala Hardyal.
In 1907 Shyamji shifted his head quarters to Paris and Savarkar took up the political leadership of the Indian House in London.
Madanlal Dhingra
In 1909 Madanlal Dhingra, assassinated Curzon-Wylie an A.D.C.to the Secretary of State for India. He was spying on Indian students.
Madanlal Dhingra was arrested and brought to trial, and was hanged on 1st August1909.
Madame Cama
Madame Cama had been popularly described as the Mother of Indian Revoluation. She left India in 1902.
She took active part in editing the Indian sociologist and represented India at the Stuttgart conference of socialists in 1907.
At the confrence, Madame Cama unfurled for the first time Indian national flag on the foreign soil.
Madam Cama was already associated with the India House and the Paris India Society.
Due to her anti-British activities, she was forced to shift her residence from London to Paris.
After thirty years of patriotic service in London, Paris and other cities of Europe, her friends succeeded in repatriating her to India in November 1936. She died on 12thAugust 1937.
The Indian Independence Committee in Berlin
After the outbreak of the First World War, Hardyal and other Indians abroad moved to Germany and set up the Indian independence committee at Berlin.
The committee planned to bring about a general insurrection in India and for this purpose foreign arms were to be sent to India from abroad; expatriated Indians were to return to mother country, where they were to be joined by Indian soldiers and by the waiting revolutionaries.
The policy and activities of the Berlin committee and the Ghadar party had greatly influenced the revolutionaries of Bengal.
The Ghadar Party(1913-19)
Ghadar, an Urdu word derived from Arabic which means "revolt" or "rebellion" was an organisation (initially the Pacific Coast Hindustan Association), formed in 1913 by Punjabis with Sohan Singh Bhakna as its president headquartered at San Francisco
The economic downturn in India during the early twentieth century witnessed a high level of emigration.
The Canadian government decided to curtail this influx with a series of laws, which were aimed at limiting the entry of South Asians.
The Punjabi community had hitherto been an important loyal force for the British Empire and the community had expected, equal welcome and rights from the British and Commonwealth governments.
The party was built around the weekly paper The Ghadar, published from San Francisco in 1913.
It was an extremist revolutionary association of Indians .
Key members included, Sohan Singh Bhakna (who later became a major peasant leader of the Punjab), Rehmat Ali, Har Dayal, Kartar Singh Sarabha (executed at Lahore in 1915 for his role in the movement in when he was only 19 years old.), Abdul Hafiz Mohamed Barakatullah (known with honorific as Maulana Barkatullah was born at Bhopal. He fought from outside India, with fiery speeches and revolutionary writings in leading newspapers, for the independence of India. The Bhopal University was renamed Barkatullah University in his honour)
Rashbehari Bose (revolutionary leader against the British Raj and was one of the key organisers of the Ghadar Mutiny and later the Indian National Army. He was born in undivided Bengal) and Vishnu Ganesh Pingle (Indian revolutionary and a member of the Ghadar Party who was one of those executed in 1915 following the Lahore conspiracy trial)
The Komagata Maru incident involved the Japanese steamship Komagata Maru on which a group of citizens of the British Raj attempted to emigrate to Canada in 1914 but were denied entry and on forced return to Calcutta (Present day Kolkata), India, they were fired upon by British police resulting in killing of 20 people.
In 1952 the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru inaugurated memorial to the Komagata Maru martyrs near the Budge Budge (kolcutta).
In 1915 they conducted revolutionary activities in central Punjab.
In 1917 some of their leaders were arrested and put on trial in the Hindu German (funding) Conspiracy Trial.
The party is known for setting the foundation for future Indian revolutionary movements.
Though predominantly Sikh, the party included members and leaders of many religions, demonstrating an accepting and democratic and secular attitude towards all people as they united in their patriotism.
After the conclusion of the war, the party in America split into Communist and Anti-Communists.
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