The returning sailors of the Royal Indian Navy (RIN) from WWII were demobilized in very shoddy conditions at Mumbai. They were incensed by the trials of INA personnel. Small frictions led to a full fledged revolt in Feb 1946 . 20000 sailors, 78 ships, 21 shore establishments and two major cities – Mumbai & Karachi, were involved. The Maratha regiment disobeyed orders to shoot straight at the mutineers. Air force personnel asked to bomb them reported maintenance trouble in their planes. Finally, ethnic British troops were brought in to quell the revolt.

Clement Atlee, British PM in 1947, said that the INA and RIN revolts were the main reasons why the British withdrew from India. Unfortunately, independent India treated both the INA and RIN mutineers shoddily. Utpal Dutt’s Bengali play ‘Kallol’ on the naval mutiny was hounded by the state govt in the 60s.

The Wikimedia image shows the memorial to the Naval Mutiny at Colaba, Mumbai.

After falling out with the Congress, Bose formed the Forward Bloc and explored how to exploit WWII. In 1940, the British put him under house arrest at Elgin Road, Kolkata. He escaped, disguised as Mohammed Ziauddin, traveling inspector of an insurance company. He made his way to Afghanistan, thence to Germany in April 1941 and finally Singapore. There he setup the provisional government of free India in Oct 1943 and took charge of the Indian National Army (INA) made up of soldiers defecting from the British Indian Army.

The INA allied with the Japanese and fought the battles of Imphal and Kohima against the British Indian Army. They were defeated and their public trial by the British fired up the country. The Japanese had ceded Andaman to Bose’s government. Symbolically the first land to be freed, was the dreaded kaala paani. Bose could thus be regarded as the first leader of free India. He also chose ‘Jai Hind’ as the INA slogan and ‘Jana Gana Mana’ as the national anthem – his great legacies.

The Wikimedia image shows the currency issued by the Azad Hind govt of Netaji.

On Good Friday, 18th April 1930, Surya Sen and his men looted the armoury at Chittagong and started a rebellion. Unfortunately, they got guns but not adequate ammunition. The band retreated to the surrounding hills. They fought the British for three days and surrendered. Surya Sen escaped, carried on but was eventually arrested and hanged in 1933.

Azad, Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Rajguru and others revived the Hindustan Revolutionary Association. They avenged the death of Lala Lajpat Rai during protests in 1928. Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt would then explode a harmless smoke bomb in the Central Assembly in 1929, stand ground to be arrested, use the trial to draw attention to the injustice of British rule and even eclipse Gandhi ji for a while as the best known name in India of the time.

After these incidents, British arrested and hanged most. Azad evaded them but was betrayed. The famous Hindi writer and Padma awardee Yashpal is one of the suspects. The great revolutionary would take his pen name ‘Azad’ (free) seriously and shot himself.

The Wikimedia image shows the tree behind which Azad shot himself.

In the mid 1920s, the revolutionary movement which had regrouped after the failure of WWI rebellion was short of funds. Ram Prasad Bismil devised a plan to loot the government treasury when it was being moved by train. He and his associates, notably Ashfaqullah Khan, stopped the train at Kakori station in UP and looted it. In the next few months, the conspirators were hunted down and tried in the famous Kakori case.

In prison, Bismil wrote some of the famous songs associated with revolutionaries. Mera Rang de Basanti Chola was adapted for the 1965 film on Bhagat Singh, ‘Shaheed’. Bhagat Singh’s mother told the filmmakers that this was her son’s favourite song.

The Wikimedia image shows Bhagat Singh in prison.

RRR is a fictionalized retelling of the deeds of the Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem who led a two year rebellion of tribals of the Vishakapatnam area in early 1920s. Most likely inspired by meetings with Anushilan samitis in Bengal, Rama Raju started the rebellion as he was disappointed that Gandhi ji’s non-cooperation movement of the early 20s had yielded little.

The British established a penal colony at Andaman, the Malay pronunciation of Hanuman. The Cellular jail where the British housed the most inconvenient prisoners was a living hell. Since Andaman was across the seas, a stint in Cellular jail was called ‘kaala paani’ (Black Waters) from which hardly any came back. The regimen at Cellular Jail was designed to humiliate prisoners. Prisoners had cross bar fetters keeping legs apart or an iron chain around the neck, for weeks. Many broke down or went mad.

The dreaded place also kept true love alive. Ullaskar Dutt went into prolonged delirium but visions of his fiancée Lila, daughter of the famous leader Bipin Lal, are said to have kept him alive. He was freed under pressure but when he returned, Lila had married and he was heartbroken. In old age, Lila was widowed and paralysed and Dutt married her at last and took care of her. A love story for the ages.

Punjabis had started migrating to Canada, a British colony, in the 19th century. Under British pressure, many ended up in California. Inspired by Aurobindo, the scholar Lala Hardayal started the Ghadar newspaper in San Francisco in 1913. This turned into a revolutionary movement under the patronage of Jwala Singh who made his fortune selling potatoes. Sohan Singh organized the Ghadarites who cooperated with Rash Behari to harass the British in WWI with German help.

A Japanese ship Komogata Maru carrying Punjabi immigrants to Canada were unintended victims. Not related to Ghadar, the ship was still not allowed to dock in Canada and sent back to India, the Punjabis on the ship faced great hardship.

The Wikimedia image is the actual photo of the Komaogata Maru.

Inspired by Aurobindo, Rash Behari Bose tried to assassinate the viceroy in 1912 during the ceremonial transfer of capital from Calcutta to Delhi. He and his associate were dressed as woman to avoid detection. He then tried to smuggle arms from Indonesia to foment revolt during WWI. Bagha Jatin was a key associate in this. The plot was uncovered and Rash Behari escaped to Japan.

The Japanese govt under pressure from Britain went after him. He was hidden by few Japanese associates and during his hiding fell in love and married a Japanese girl. This allowed him to take Japanese citizenship and escape extradition. His wife’s family were restauranteurs and he introduced Indian cuisine in their setup. The marriage was very happy but his wife died early.

Rash Behari continued to maintain contacts in SE Asia and when WWII started he was the one who first organized the INA or Azad Hind Fauj from among Indian soldiers held as prisoners of war by Japan. Impressed by Netaji, he helped him become the INA leader and the icon we all revere. He is said to have told Netaji, “one more fight, last and the best”. The Wikimedia image shows a photo of Rash Behari and his wife Toshiko.

Bhikaji Cama was born in a wealthy Parsi family in 1861. She held strong nationalist views. She moved to London as secretary to Dadabhai Naoroji, turned revolutionary and had to shift to Paris. She set up a network there along with SR Rana, a successful expat businessman. She arranged a failed getaway car for Savarkar as he escaped from the ship SS Morea.

She unfurled the Indian flag at the Socialist congress at Stuttgart, Germany. The flag was a tricolour with green, yellow and red bands. Vande Mataram was written in Devnagari in the middle band, a string of lotuses on the top band and a sun and moon on the lower band. Though not the most aesthetic design , it compelled the British delegation led by Ramsay Mcdonald, later PM of Britain to walk out. The Wikimedia image is a photo of Madame Cama and the first Indian flag.

Savarkar characterized 1857 as a revolt by Indian soldiers of all communities, to secure freedom. It contradicted the British narration of it as a mutiny. Originally written in Marathi to mark 50 years of 1857, the British went to great extent to prevent its publication – the viceroy monitored the case himself. No publisher came forth in India. It was translated and sent to Europe for publication. However the British had contacted most European governments and only a small publisher in Netherlands agreed. The book was smuggled into India under the cover of books like Don Quixote. It was a big hit underground.

The book’s premise to sow seeds of revolt among the Indian soldiers to gain freedom, became the guiding principle of the revolutionary movement. The idea finally succeeded with Azad Hind in WWII and the Naval revolt of 1946.

Shyamji Verma, a Kutchi from Gujarat was a Sanskrit scholar who joined Oxford in the 1880s. He also completed law, returned to India to become dewan of three princely states and then went back to London and made a fortune with stock trading. With his money, he established India House for students.

Vinayak Savarkar arrived in 1906 to study law and converted it into a hotbed of revolutionaries. Many great personalities like Gandhi ji and Lenin are said to have visited India House to meet rebel students.

Aurobindo Ghose was born in an upper class Bengali Anglophile family who despised Indian traditions. He went to Britain to train for ICS, discovered Indian traditions and refused to join the ICS. He returned to work for the princely state of Baroda. The Chapekar brothers, Bankim Chandra’s “Anand Math” and the partition of Bengal inspired him to setup a revolutionary movement. He wrote a tract “Bhawani Mandir” as the first testament, set up the Anushilan samiti, started papers ‘Jugantar’ and ‘Bande Mataram’. His brother Barin setup headquarters of Anushilan at Maniktola in Kolkata. Their associates, most notably Khudiram Bose, assassinated a few British officials.

The British broke the movement and Aurobindo was tried in what is now called the Alipore Bomb trials of 1908. Many were hanged but Aurobindo was externed from British India. He setup base at Pondicherry, a French enclave. There he drifted into spiritualism, never to return to politics and became Sri Aurobindo. But the Anushilan movement carried the revolutionary spirit forward.

British rule in India was marked by series of famines & plagues. In 1897, a plague raged through Pune region. In the name of firm administration soldiers committed many excesses. Pune already was a hotbed of revolt under the influence of Lokmanya Tilak. The Chapekar brothers, Damodar & Balakrishna assassinated William Rand, the plague commissioner and his assistant on Ganeshkind Road as they attended a program to celebrate Queen Victoria’s jubilee. The British clamped down. The Chapekar brothers were betrayed by some friends, arrested and hanged. Tilak was tried and sent to prison for incitement. But the incident inspired the first generation of revolutionaries.

The Wikimedia image shows the Chapekar memorial in Pune.

The war for Italian unification in the 19th century was led by the firebrand thinker Giuseppe Mazzini and the rebel general Giuseppe Garibaldi. The combination in the Chankya-Chandragupta mode inspired the earliest Indian revolutionaries. One of the first books that Savarkar read in London was the biography of Mazzini. The Irish rebellion had a profound impact too, with the Hindustan Revolutionary Army styled on the IRA. The Shakta school of Hinduism which inspired Bankim Chandra’s Vande Mataram, was a big influence.

The photo from Wikimedia Commons shows the first meeting of the two.