The Beginning of Revolutionary Extremism in India
Revolutionary extremism was the most radical of the currents that flowed out of the Swadeshi Movement, representing a decisive break from both Moderate constitutionalism and the mass-based passive resistance of the political Extremists. Where the Swadeshi and Boycott programme had sought to mobilise the masses through non-violent means, revolutionary extremism turned instead to individual acts of violence — assassinations, dacoities, and bomb-making — carried out by small, secretive bands of committed revolutionaries.
Tracing its roots in Maharashtra and Bengal back to the late nineteenth century, this current gathered momentum after 1905, survived the repression that followed the Alipore Bomb Case, spread to Punjab and the United Provinces, and eventually fed into the political climate that produced the Rowlatt Bills and, in response, Mahatma Gandhi’s turn toward mass civil resistance.
Sumit Sarkar’s Four Trends within the Swadeshi Movement
- The historian Sumit Sarkar identified four major trends within the Swadeshi Movement:
- Moderate trend
- Constructive swadeshi
- Political extremism
- Revolutionary extremism
What Was Revolutionary Extremism?
- In Bengal, by 1908, political swadeshi was clearly on the decline, giving way to a new trend — individual terrorism directed against British officials and their Indian collaborators.
- As Sarkar (1973) notes, this represented a shift from non-violence to violence, and correspondingly from mass action to elite action — a change necessitated largely by the failure of earlier mass-mobilisation efforts.
- The culture of political violence was not new to India; it had persisted in various forms even after the suppression of the Revolt of 1857.
Revolutionary Extremism in Maharashtra
- Vasudeo Balwant Phadke (1876–77) gathered around him a band of Ramoshis and other backward classes, engaging them in dacoities to raise funds for a more ambitious scheme of armed revolt against British rule.
- He was captured in 1879 and deported to Aden, where he later died in isolation.
- The revolutionary tradition in Maharashtra was subsequently kept alive through the physical culture movement and the formation of youth clubs — the most well known of which, founded in Poona, was led by the Chapekar brothers, Damodar and Balkrishna.
- In 1897, the Chapekar brothers assassinated W.C. Rand, the chairman of the Poona Plague Commission, notorious for the atrocities allegedly committed by soldiers during house-to-house searches for plague victims.
- Both brothers were later captured and hanged, but the tradition of militant resistance they had established endured.
Revolutionary Extremism in Bengal
Origins: The Physical Culture Movement
- Militant nationalism in Bengal traced a similar trajectory from the 1860s and 1870s, when the physical culture movement took hold and akhras (gymnasiums) sprang up across the region to cultivate what Swami Vivekananda described as “strong muscles and nerves of steel.”
- This was, in part, a deliberate psychological effort to break free of the colonial stereotype of Bengali “effeminacy.”
Formation of Secret Societies (1902–1906)
- The real story of organised terrorism in Bengal begins in 1902, with the formation of four groups — three in Calcutta and one in Midnapur:
- The Midnapur Society, founded in 1902;
- A gymnasium founded by Sarala Ghosal on Ballygunge Circular Road, Calcutta;
- The Atmonnoti Samiti, formed by a group of central Calcutta youths; and
- The Anushilan Samiti, founded by Satischandra Basu in March 1902.
- Progress remained modest until 1905, but the onset of the Swadeshi Movement that year triggered a marked upsurge in secret society activity.
- The Dacca Anushilan Samiti was established in October 1906 on the initiative of Pulin Behari Das, followed by an all-Bengal conference of revolutionaries in December and the launch of the revolutionary weekly Yugantar the same year.
The Turn to Action (1906–1908)
- A distinct faction within the Calcutta Anushilan Samiti, led by Barindra Kumar Ghosh (Aurobindo’s brother), along with Hemchandra Kanungo and Prafulla Chaki, soon moved from organisation to direct action.
- The first swadeshi dacoity — a robbery to raise funds — was carried out at Rangpur in August 1906, and a bomb-manufacturing unit was set up at Maniktala in Calcutta.
- Between 1907 and 1908, the main features of revolutionary activity became attempts to assassinate oppressive officials and informers, alongside robberies targeting wealthy Saha merchants who had refused to abandon trade in foreign goods.
- This phase culminated in the abortive attempt on the life of Presidency Magistrate Kingsford at Muzaffarpur on 30 April 1908, carried out by Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki.
- The attempt failed, and the subsequent arrest of the entire Maniktala group — including Aurobindo Ghose and Barindra Kumar Ghosh — dealt a severe blow to the movement’s militant activities.
Achievements and Impact of Early Revolutionary Terrorism
- In terms of direct, tangible gains, the revolutionaries achieved very little — most of their attempts were either aborted or failed outright.
- Nor was assassination or dacoity ever meant to be sufficient in itself: Aurobindo’s original vision was to use such acts to prepare the ground for an eventual open armed revolution.
- Yet the movement’s indirect impact was considerable.
- The hanging of Khudiram Bose and the Maniktala Bomb Conspiracy trial, widely publicised by the press and later immortalised in folk songs, fired the imagination of the Bengali populace at large.
- At the trial, C.R. Das — then still a briefless barrister — appeared as defence counsel for Aurobindo, famously arguing that if preaching the principle of freedom was itself a crime, then the accused was certainly guilty of it.
- To general surprise, Aurobindo was acquitted; Barindra Kumar Ghosh and Ullaskar Dutta, however, were sentenced to death, while others were ordered deported for life.
- On appeal, the death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment, and several other sentences were also reduced.
- The movement thereafter went underground and became decentralised, but it did not die out.
- Revolutionary terrorism had, by this point, acquired real legitimacy in the popular imagination, seen by many as a more effective alternative to what they viewed as the “mendicant” politics of the Moderates.
- When the Morley-Minto Reforms were announced in 1909, many attributed the concession to the fear generated by revolutionary activity.
- Similarly, one historian has argued that the appointment of Lord S.P. Sinha as Law Member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council was very likely a result of pressures generated by terrorist activity.
- The annulment of the Partition of Bengal in 1911 — officially presented as a “coronation boon” from King George V — may also not have been entirely unrelated to such pressures.
- Other administrative calculations were at play too, chief among them the transfer of the capital from Calcutta to Delhi, a step that needed careful political packaging.
- Together, these measures marked the end of Bengali dominance in Indian national politics — achieving, by a different route and with far less resistance, the very weakening of Bengali political influence that Curzon had originally intended through partition.
Spread of Revolutionary Activity: Punjab and the United Provinces
- The annulment of partition did not bring militant nationalism to an end, since the underlying causes of revolutionary violence went well beyond the partition issue alone.
- The centre of revolutionary activity now shifted to Punjab and the United Provinces, where Bengali revolutionaries were joined by Punjabis returning from North America, who had earlier formed the Ghadr Party.
- This alliance organised dacoities across north India to raise funds and, in 1912, plotted an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Viceroy Lord Hardinge.
- In September 1914, Punjabi Ghadrites stranded aboard the Kamagata Maru clashed with the army at Budge Budge, near Calcutta.
The First World War Phase: Armed Revolt and Repression
- The outbreak of the First World War gave rise to still more ambitious schemes — plans to organise armed revolts within the Indian Army with assistance from Germany or Japan.
- Rash Behari Bose, operating out of Lahore, attempted to organise a mutiny across north India but failed to secure any response from the sepoys and ultimately fled to Japan.
- In Bengal, revolutionaries under the leadership of Jatin Mukherjee attempted to smuggle in arms from Germany; the amateurish plot ended in an uneven battle with British police at Balasore, Orissa.
- The government’s unrestrained repression during this period — freely exercised under the new wartime Defence of India Act, 1915 — steadily reduced the frequency of terrorist attacks.
Legacy: From Revolutionary Violence to Mass Non-Cooperation
- Even so, the spectre of revolutionary violence never fully disappeared, and it prompted the Sedition Committee to draft the draconian Rowlatt Bills in 1918.
- These proposals inflamed Mahatma Gandhi into political action, inaugurating a new phase in Indian nationalist politics — one that shifted the central focus from violence to non-violence, and from elite action to mass agitation.
