Revolutionary Nationalism: The First Phase (1907-1917)

When the open Swadeshi Movement was crushed by repression after 1908, a section of disillusioned youth turned to a different path: revolutionary nationalism. Every peaceful avenue had been closed. They took to secret societies, bombs and pistols. Their hope was to drive the British out by force and to inspire the nation through sacrifice. This first phase ran from about 1907 to 1917, in Bengal, Maharashtra and Punjab, and among Indians living abroad. It produced legendary martyrs but failed before the weight of state power. This is a high-yield topic.

The revolutionaries did not yet think a violent mass revolution was practical. So they followed the example of the Russian nihilists and Irish nationalists: individual heroic action. Their methods were:

• assassination of unpopular officials, and of traitors and informers within their own ranks;
• swadeshi dacoities (robberies) to raise funds; and
• during the First World War, military conspiracies with the help of Britain's enemies.

The aim was to strike terror into the rulers, remove the people's fear of authority, and inspire the youth by an appeal to patriotism. Their weakness was that they planned no role for the masses. The Extremist leaders failed to explain the difference between a revolution made by the people and one made by a handful of individuals. So individualistic violence took root.

Bengal was the heartland. The first groups formed in 1902, at Midnapore and the Anushilan Samiti in Calcutta (founded by Promotha Mitter, with Jatindranath Banerjee and Barindra Kumar Ghosh). An inner circle started the weekly Yugantar in 1906.

• In 1908, Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki threw a bomb at Muzaffarpur meant for the hated judge Kingsford. They killed two British women instead. Prafulla Chaki shot himself. Khudiram Bose was tried and hanged.
• The Alipore Conspiracy Case (the Manicktolla bomb conspiracy) followed. The whole Anushilan group, including Aurobindo and Barindra Kumar Ghosh, was tried. Chittaranjan Das defended Aurobindo, who was acquitted.
• In December 1912, Rashbehari Bose and Sachin Sanyal threw a bomb at Viceroy Hardinge during his entry into Delhi. He was injured, not killed. This was the Delhi Conspiracy.
• The western Anushilan found a great leader in Jatindranath Mukherjee (Bagha Jatin), who led the Yugantar party. During the war it tried to import German arms in the "German Plot". The plot was betrayed. Bagha Jatin died in a gun-fight at Balasore in 1915. His call was, "We shall die to awaken the nation."

Maharashtra. The earliest activity was the Ramosi Peasant Force of Vasudev Balwant Phadke (1879). In the 1890s Tilak preached militancy through the Ganapati and Shivaji festivals and his journals Kesari and Maharatta. His disciples, the Chapekar brothers, murdered the Poona plague commissioner Rand in 1897. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and his brother founded Mitra Mela (1899), which merged into Abhinav Bharat (1904). Savarkar was later sentenced to transportation for life.

Punjab. Extremism here was fuelled by famines, a rise in land revenue and the practice of begar. Its leaders included Lala Lajpat Rai (who brought out Punjabee) and Ajit Singh (Bhagat Singh's uncle), who organised the Anjuman-i-Mohisban-i-Watan in Lahore. Both were deported in 1907.

The hunt for shelter, arms and an uncensored press took revolutionaries overseas.

• In Europe, Shyamji Krishnavarma started the India House and the journal The Indian Sociologist in London (1905). Madanlal Dhingra assassinated the official Curzon-Wyllie in 1909. Madam Bhikaji Cama was born to Parsi parents and began her political life as private secretary to Dadabhai Naoroji. In 1907 she unfurled the National Flag at the International Socialist Congress at Stuttgart, in Germany, not in Paris. She then operated from Paris and Geneva, bringing out Bande Mataram. The Berlin Committee for Indian Independence was set up in 1915 under Virendranath Chattopadhyaya with German help.
• In North America, the Ghadr Party was organised in 1913 around the newspaper The Ghadr, with headquarters at San Francisco. Its members were mainly Punjabi ex-soldiers and migrants. Its moving spirits were Lala Hardayal, Ramchandra, Bhagwan Singh, Kartar Singh Saraba and Barkatullah. Its programme was to assassinate officials, work among Indian troops, procure arms and spark a simultaneous revolt across the empire.
• The Komagata Maru incident (1914) involved a ship of would-be immigrants turned back from Canada, then fired on at Budge Budge near Calcutta (22 died). This inflamed Punjab. With the war's outbreak, the Ghadrites fixed 21 February 1915 for an armed revolt in the Ferozepur, Lahore and Rawalpindi garrisons, but the plan was betrayed.
• Rash Behari Bose, already a fugitive after the bomb attack on Hardinge, joined the Ghadar movement and coordinated the planned revolt of 21 February 1915 from within India. He is therefore counted among the Ghadar leaders. Do not confuse him with Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee, who belonged to the Anushilan stream of Bengal revolutionaries, not to the Ghadar Party. Barindra Kumar Ghosh likewise belonged to the Bengal Anushilan group.

The British answered with the most intensive repression since 1857. Above all, they passed the Defence of India Act (1915), mainly to crush the Ghadr, with detentions without trial and special courts. The achievement of this phase was in the realm of ideology: the Ghadr preached a completely secular militant nationalism. But it failed militarily. The reasons were a lack of organised, sustained leadership, an overemphasis on Hindu religion in Bengal that kept Muslims aloof, and the absence of any role for the masses.